NOW SHOWING

The Artist

Friday February 17th - March 1st

Showtimes for Fri Feb 17th - Thurs Feb 23rd ONLY
Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon/Wed/Thurs - 3:00p, 5:00p, and 7:00p
Tues - 3:00p and 5:00p

A crowd-pleasing tribute to the magic of silent cinema, The Artist is a clever, joyous film with delightful performances and visual style to spare.

Hollywood 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie superstar. The advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), it seems the sky's the limit - major movie stardom awaits. The Artist tells the story of their interlinked destinies.

The film has been hailed by critics, and is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

"Strangely, wonderfully, The Artist feels as bold and innovative a moviegoing experience as James Cameron's bells-and-whistles Avatar did a couple of years ago." - Philadelphia Inquirer

"Everything about The Artist is unique, from its beautiful black and white images as it pays tribute to the silent movies of the 1920s." - Urban Cinephile

2011/ PG - 13/ 100 minutes

The Room

The THIRD Saturday of every month!

Next showing: Sat, Feb 18th @ 10pm

A benevolent, friendly, selfless man who greets everyone with a disarming, "Hi," discovers that you can't trust anyone after getting engaged to a manipulative, self-serving siren who seduces his best friend and destroys his life in The Room. Johnny (writer/director Tommy Wiseau) has everything a man could ever want; great friends, a good job, and a gorgeous fiancée named Lisa (Juliette Danielle). But Lisa's innocent act masks the fact that she's looking to bring Johnny down, and her manipulations are tearing Johnny apart. As Lisa informs her cancer-ridden mother Claudette (Carolyn Minnott) that Johnny hit her (he did not hit her, that is bull$&*t, he did not), Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero) finds his resistance to Lisa's seductive charms weakening. Meanwhile, local orphan Denny (Philip Haldiman) looks up to Johnny, and needs the older man's help after the teen rips off a drug dealer. What kind of drugs? It doesn't matter. Then guys play football in tuxedos, because you can play football anywhere. Upon release in Los Angeles, The Room began attracting a small crowd of devoted cult followers who hailed it as the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, talking back to the screen and acting out scenes as the soft-core, melodramatic train wreck of a film derails up on the big screen. In time, word of The Room's hopelessly incompetent, unintentionally hilarious charms began to spread, and screenings began to crop up from coast to coast.

2003/ R / 104 minutes

Il Trittico - Royal Opera House, London

Sunday February 12th - 2:00p
Tuesday February 21st- 7:00p

Sung in Italian with English subtitles

3 hrs 45 mins including two intermissions

Michele: LUCIO GALLO
Il ‘Talpa’: ENRICO FISSORE
Giorgetta: EVA-MARIA WESTBROEK
La Frugola: IRINA MISHURA
Luigi: ALEKSANDRS ANTONENKO
Ballad Seller: JI HYUN KIM
Il ‘Tinca’: ALAN OKE
Two lovers: ANNA DEVIN, JI HYUN KIM

Conductor: ANTONIO PAPPANO
Director: RICHARD JONES
Set designs: ULTZ
Costume designs: NICKY GILLIBRAND
Lighting design: D M WOOD

Program Note:

This is The Royal Opera’s first complete presentation of Puccini’s Il trittico since 1965. Leading director Richard Jones staged his witty, darkly comic realization of Gianni Schicchi for The Royal Opera in 2007, and here he completes the trio. Royal Opera Music Director Antonio Pappano will conduct. Il trittico (‘the triptych’), unveiled at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1918, represented an operatic departure. Instead of a single evening-length narrative, Puccini offered three contrasting one-act works. Il trittico reached Covent Garden in 1920, but has rarely been performed there complete.

The first panel, Il tabarro (The Cloak), takes us to a barge on the banks of the Seine, where an unusually dark version of the eternal operatic triangle is played out with a gruesome and violent ending. World-famous soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, recently on the main stage as Anna Nicole Smith in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole, directed by Richard Jones, takes the role of the wayward Giorgetta, bored with her elderly husband, who embarks on an affair with the handsome Luigi.

Next comes the pastel-shaded Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), set in a convent where a woman has been sent to expiate the ‘sin’ of having an illegitimate baby; suddenly a relative arrives to bring her some devastating news. The devoted and tormented mother, Suor Angelica, is sung by German soprano Anja Harteros, who made her triumphant Royal Opera debut in 2008 as Amelia Grimaldi in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Acclaimed Jette Parker Young Artist Anna Devin sings the charming cameo role of young Suor Genoveva.

Finally, in the mordant comedy Gianni Schicchi we meet the Florentine relatives of the late Buoso Donati, intent upon altering the will of their deceased family member with the aid of a wily newcomer to the city. Renowned baritone Lucio Gallo returns to The Royal Opera after his triumphant performances as Iago in Simon Boccanegra, Elena Zilio returns in the grandly comic role of Zita and rising star Francesco Demuro sings the role of her nephew Rinuccio.