Newsbites: Amazing! Ridge! Church!

Time for a few quickies.

1. The Hollywood Reporter says shooting on Amazing Grace, starring Ioan Gruffudd and Albert Finney as 19th century abolitionists William Wilberforce and John Newton, has begun. And it looks like the supporting cast will be decent, at least:

1. Ramola Garai (who, as Jeffrey Overstreet rightly notes, “stole every scene she visited in last year’s Vanity Fair“
2. Michael Gambon (the current Albus Dumbledore)
3. Rufus Sewell (Dark City, Cold Comfort Farm)
4. Ciaran Hinds (Persuasion, The Sum of All Fears)
5. Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking)
6. Youssou N’Dour (the Senegalese singer)

As ever, here’s hoping the movie does the true story justice.

2. The revival of Festival Cinemas continues apace. The Vancouver Sun reports that the Ridge Theatre as we know it is coming to an end, but Festival may semi-save the day:

The Ridge repertory cinema in Kitsilano is set to end operation on Christmas Eve, but negotiations continue that may see it reopen the next day as a first-run theatre under new management.

Both outgoing general manager J Bradford and potential operator Leonard Schein cite onerous hikes in municipal property taxes, 16 per cent this year alone, as a key reason for the change. . . .

Schein said Tuesday he has nothing but sympathy for Bradford and her group, as well as others caught in Vancouver’s tax squeeze. With business taxes pegged at six times the residential mill rate, the residential housing boom is fuelling a boost in business taxes that Schein describes as “outrageously high, and it’s affecting a number of art galleries and cultural groups, as well as small businesses.”

Schein hopes to sign an agreement with Sonjan Enterprises that will see the Ridge re-open with the same mix of current arthouse and mainstream movies that his Festival Cinemas provides at the Fifth Avenue and Park cinemas. . . .

Sigh, so many memories. I remember seeing a double-bill of Alice (1990) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) there with Trent in the early days of the Hoy House, when the Ridge had some sort of opening ceremony (I can’t recall if it had recently become a repertory theatre, or if it was simply under new management). The Ridge was also the first theatre to post one of my reviews in their display case outside; the film in question was The Sum of Us (1994), an Australian indie starring a then-virtually-unknown Russell Crowe as a gay man who gets along just great with his nosy father, played by Jack Thompson. The Ridge has also been home to the various animation festivals that have come through town — it was there that I discovered Wallace & Gromit sometime in the early 1990s — plus it has long been one of the mainstays of the Vancouver International Film Festival, although these days it’s the only theatre linked to the festival that isn’t downtown.

Interestingly, the Ridge almost came into the Festival Cinemas fold — or into the Alliance-Atlantis fold, I forget if it was before or after the buy-out — a few years ago, but the deal was called off when the Ridge’s manager at that time died in a car accident on the Burrard Street Bridge, possibly as a result of a heart attack.

UPDATE: You can download the Ridge’s last program as a PDF file here. Looks like the last few weeks will be heavy on the classics, music-oriented films and/or documentaries.

I have also just received a press release announcing that Festival Cinemas is taking over the lease on Christmas Day:

Festival Cinemas will open the Ridge Theatre on Christmas Day with Mrs. Henderson Presents, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. Tom [Lightburn, Festival vice-president] added that, “all of the existing seats will be replaced before its re-opening. Further upgrades will be made to the Ridge in the next few months to enhance the movie going experience.”

Glory be! Those seats have needed replacement for years. I guess some people will be working overtime on Christmas Eve, then!

3. The National Post reports that churchgoers are now theatregoers, too, at least where The Meeting House is concerned:

The crowd of urbanites, most of them in their 20s and 30s, files in to the theatre and takes their seats among the rows of chairs with headrests and cup holders.

It’s Sunday morning and church is about to begin.

“It’s got the pews beat,” says seminary student Dick Black, as he settles into a plush seat inside the Paramount Theatre in the Entertainment District, where Toronto’s newest church is now holding Sunday service.

A movie megaplex may not be the typical place for preaching the teachings of Jesus Christ, but The Meeting House is not your typical religious organization.

Billed as “church for people who aren’t into church,” The Meeting House launched in 1986 in Oakville, and it now has sites in Hamilton, Brampton and, as of this fall, Toronto. Congregants at each site — all spaces rented from Famous Players and Silver City movie theatres — are witness to the same sermon each Sunday, recorded onto DVD a week earlier in Oakville, where pastor Bruxy Cavey preaches to a live audience.

“It’s totally weird,” admits Cavey of going to church at the movies. “It’s very kind of 1984 sci-fi-ish.”

Hmmm, this is how they promote what they’re doing? Doesn’t sound very church-ish to me. And no, I don’t say that just because I go to a church where we stand, not sit, through the services. I wonder how they handle communion or baptisms at this church; it’s not like you can receive or perform them from a movie screen. Or is that the sort of thing that people would bother to do in the first place at a “church for people who aren’t into church”?