Calendar of Gaddesden Society Events
This calendar shows Gaddesden Society events, including talks, film nights and other events run by GadSoc.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a 2011 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas and Amr Waked. Based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Paul Torday, and a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, the film is about a fisheries expert who is recruited by a consultant to help realize a sheikh’s vision of bringing the sport of fly fishing to the Yemen desert, initiating an upstream journey of faith to make the impossible possible. The film was shot on location in London, England, Scotland, and Morocco from August to October 2010. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. The film received generally positive reviews upon its release, and earned $34,564,651 in revenue worldwide.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 crime comedy-drama film written, produced, co-edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning in supporting roles.
The film is set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression. Its story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer’s epic Greek poem The Odyssey that incorporates social features of the American South. The title of the film is a reference to the Preston Sturges 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels, in which the protagonist is a director who wants to film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a fictitious book about the Great Depression.
Much of the music used in the film is period folk music. The movie was one of the first to extensively use digital color correction to give the film an autumnal, sepia-tinted look. Released by Buena Vista Pictures (through Touchstone Pictures) in North America, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain and by Universal Pictures in other countries, the film met with a positive critical reception, and the soundtrack won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002, making it the only motion picture soundtrack to have ever received the accolade. The country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film included John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, Chris Sharp, Patty Loveless, and others. They joined to perform the music from the film in a Down from the Mountain concert tour which was filmed for consumer consumption via TV and DVD. (Wikipedia)
Top Gun is a 1986 American action film directed by Tony Scott, and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, in association with Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., and was inspired by an article titled “Top Guns”, written by Ehud Yonay and published in California magazine three years earlier. The film stars Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, with Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, and Tom Skerritt in supporting roles. Cruise plays Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a young naval aviator aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. He and his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant (junior grade) Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Edwards), are given the chance to train at the US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California.
In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
The Duke
- 2020 12A 1h 35m
In 1961, Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old taxi driver, steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. [IMDB]
Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren star in this 2022 film based on the true story. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history.
Quartet
- 2012 12A 1h 38m
At a home for retired musicians, the annual concert to celebrate Composer Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday is disrupted by the arrival of Jean (Dame Maggie Smith), an eternal diva and the former wife of one of the residents. [IMDB]
Director Dustin Hoffman and a cast including Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Michael Gambon make this a film not to be missed.