London Alt Gigs and Cult Cinema

Sergio Leone is probably still best known for his trilogy of mid-60s Man With No Name spaghetti westerns but his peak came just afterwards with Once Upon a Time in the West, which extended the formula to the length of an epic and the emotional scale of an opera. It's in my top five of all time and I've never seen it on the big screen.

Claudia Cardinale is the beautiful widow who has inherited a dangerously attractive piece of real estate. Henry Fonda (brilliantly cast against type) is the evil mercenary who will stop at nothing to get her to sign it over. Jason Robards is the outlaw caught in the middle. And Charles Bronson is the mysterious, harmonica-playing gunman who has his own reasons to get involved.

Master soundtracker Ennio Morricone gave each their own theme (literally like an opera) in arguably his greatest work, the gunfighting scenes are terrific and the plot twists and turns like a river snaking through a valley, courtesy of a story Leone devised with Bernado Bertolucci and Dario Argento(!!)

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8CJ6L0I6W8

Tickets here (I'm in C5). We can meet for a coffee round the corner at Ole and Steen at 12.30pm and head in afterwards.

No one really talks about this anymore because of the subsequent infamy of its director and at least one of the actors, but The Usual Suspects is still safely ensconced in the IMDb top 250 and remains one of the most influential films of the 90's. The plot is intricate, the cast is top notch and the ending isn't bad either.

The plot: A low-level thief called Verbal Kint is the sole survivor of a shoot-out on a pier, and when he's brought in for questioning, he tells how he was one of five criminals, brought in for the same police line up and subsequently recruited to pull a job together. Could his tale be the key to catching Keyser Söze, a crime figure so evil he may or may not be a legend?

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3t0Nc6fg7w

As ever, we meet online, press play together and chat through a WhatsApp group while the film is on. Links to both will go up half an hour before. Don't be late, don't no show!

I saw Crocodiles a few months ago at the Moth Club and they were really good. Loud, shadowy rock n'roll like it was the early 2000's, complete with dark glasses indoors and people standing in a triangular shape. They aren't reinventing the wheel, but the wheel goes really fast and it shakes you up a bit on the way.

Anyway, if you missed that show, you should definitely see this one. The free gig spot at the Shacklewell is usually reserved for up-and-coming touring bands, it's rare you get a band with a decent body of work behind them. And here are some examples:

Oh, and did I mention this is the night before End of the Road? It's going to be my warm up show. More info on the gig: https://link.dice.fm/G638d66829c8?pid=ba9399ca. People don't usually have to book for the free shows but I always do on the off chance. This'll be rammed though, so let's get there for seven, have one in the front room and head in around half past.