Angels in films …
A list of Angels in films written by Rebel Reel Cine Club founder Chris McGill - 5 December 2023
as featured in Hero Magazine…
LET’S DANCE
A highly subjective list of some of the best dance scenes in films …
written by Rebel Reel Cine Club founder Chris McGill
a list for Hero Magazine of some of the best dance scenes in film …
Chungking Express by Wong Kar Wei, 1994
“To say that Chungking Express is like a pop video is kind of insulting, but it literally is so visually stunning and beautiful – AND yet odd. Faye Wong’s carefree bopping to one of the best soundtracks of any film (there I’ve said it) is as good as her version of The Cranberries’ Dreams in Mandarin.”
Bande à part by Jean Luc Godard, 1968
“A cliché to say this is one of the great dance scenes of all time – NON!
This is perfection – Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur dancing the Madison inspired Quentin Tarantino to name his production company after the film (we know you know!)… and to include an homage in Pulp Fiction… “
Mauvais Sang by Leos Carax, 1986
“Long before his genius Sparks opera Annette starring Adam Driver and Marion Cottilard, Leos Carax directed this story of a virus infecting people who have loveless sex. The scene of Denis Lavant running, punching and dancing through Paris for just over a minute to David Bowie’s Modern Love is joyous and terrifying…
See also, Frances, Ha!…”
Frances, Ha! by Noah Baumbach, 2012
Greta Gerwig does an almost moment-for-moment copy of the run/dance in Mauvais Sang (AND to Bowie’s Modern Love!) – and I can’t hate her for doing it and Noah Baumbach for directing her to do it. She is brilliantly annoying and loveable and kind of shit at dancing in this brilliant film (which also stars Adam Driver, linking it to Mauvais Sang via director Leos Carax)
Northern Soul by Elaine Constantine, 2012
It’s not surprising that Elaine Constantine directed Northern Soul with an authenticity of high-kicking split-dropping energy – she WAS part of the Northern Soul scene and her photographs from the 90s capture movement and kinetic energy like no one else. Elliot James Landridge learned to dance northern soul from scratch… come catch Rebel Reel talking to them at the Rio in Dalston on 27th September.”
Raw and Authentic –Out of the Blue
Out of The Blue coming to the Rio Cinema on 30 September
One of film’s most raw performances
Linda Manz captures teen confidence and insecurity in equal measure
Sid Vicious and Elvis obsessed Cebe (Manz) and her twisted father Don (Hopper)On Friday 30 September we’re celebrating Out of The Blue on Friday night at the Rio Cinema, in Dalston – kicking off with a DJ in the bar (people do dance! Or just chat!) from 9pm
On the big screen before - Primal Scream’s Kill All Hippies (which was a seminal video and samples Linda Manz’s opening dialogue from Out of The Blue) – it’s a proper night out and all our audiences are interesting, chilled, fun, and welcoming!
Out of The Blue at 11pm
We’ve got the last remaining copies of Another Magazine so we’ll be giving them out too!
“Linda Manz: the androgynous New Yorker who brought a raw, exposed kind of girlhood to screens like nobody else had, or ever would.”
Another Magazine
Get dressed up in your 1980s double denim and faded sweatshirts … and channel that small town America sense of boredom and no-where to go. Whether you grew up in a small northern town or a suburb of London there’s something universal about teenage dreams and angst…
DJ Martin Green selecting the next track ...I re-watched Out of The Blue this week … Linda Manz is a teenager in the film – she was 19 when she filmed it (looks younger). She plays troubled teen Cebe in a beyond–dysfunctional family with a literally absent (banged up) father and fucked up mother.
‘A haunting portrait of juvenile delinquency that ranks among the most powerful in American cinema.’ – Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
Manz’s character Cebe is cocky, insecure, spiky, emotionally longing and confused. It’s genuinely one of the best representations of a teenage on film.
Dennis Hopper took the direction of the film on after the original director’s first disastrous week.
‘Hopper, as director and uncredited writer, extends no hope whatsoever, and there’s something vital and cleansing about the movie’s thorough nihilism.’ – Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
Hopper rewrote the script away from a study of a child psychologist and teenage girl into something darker … he gave Linda Manz a vehicle for her authentic portrayal of a street-smart kid (she literally grew up on New York streets – see this interview HERE where she mischievously twinkles as she recounts growing up in New York (watch from 0.50)
Out of The Blue was originally was meant to be a sequel to Easy Rider (focussing on Hopper’s character – er, how? … yes, exactly … PLOT SPOILER - Billy (Hopper in Easy Rider) dies so not sure how this would work BUT it’s more that it’s a window into a destructive time (entering the 80s) with a truly immoral damaged dark (so dark) person imploding with disastrous consequences in a small post-industrial town. It’s horrible but you can’t turn away …
The scenes on the streets of small-town America - such as the diner and the bowling alley in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon/ Washington) - seem filtered through a seventies/ early eighties Kodachrome washed out worn out post-industrial lens.
Hopper directs some beautiful scenes – the tracking in the diner when we first meet Cebe’s mother is entrancing (mixed with Linda Manz’s movement – she moves in such a cocksure but elegant way…
‘In the late Dennis Hopper’s mind a better film than Bertolucci’s Luna and his own Easy Rider, the actor-director’s brilliant, still shockingly subversive 1980 cherry bomb is as sad and unsettling as dysfunctional-family dramas come.’ – Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
The costumes are so authentic so spot on it’s easy to see why so many fashion designers and stylists discovered this once forgotten film and made it a cult classic.
It’s been given a 4k restoration helped in part by a Kickstarter promoted by Natasha Lyonne and Chloe Sevigny and by the work of Producers John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr who’ve made this all happen
Another Magazine on
facebook.com/OutOfTheBlueDennisHopper
facebook.com/Discovery-Productions
instagram.com/outofthebluefilm
The history of Out of The Blue
Despite critical acclaim at its original Cannes premiere in 1980, OUT OF THE BLUE went unreleased because it was considered too bleak for U.S. audiences. John Alan Simon, then a film critic/journalist, rescued the film from the shelf, secured distribution rights and took it on the road with Dennis Hopper back in 1982 to art house theaters across the U.S. including a 17-week record-breaking run at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Boston and then NYC and Los Angeles theatrical releases.
“It’s incredibly important to us that OUT OF THE BLUE be preserved for future generations to experience its emotional impact and as the artistic achievement that helped re-establish Dennis Hopper as an important American director,” Elizabeth Karr for Discovery Productions.
“For me, this restoration project was pay-back for all I learned from Dennis Hopper when we originally took OUT OF THE BLUE on the road in 1982 after I rescued it from the shelf. He was an amazing artist and friend and OUT OF THE BLUE remains as unforgettable as he was and serves as an indelible tribute to the talents of Linda Manz,”
John Alan Simon
Dave Baby - Icon Artist - The Devil?
Meeting the post-punk House of Beauty and Culture Living Legend
Rebel Reel Cine Club meets the legend
Dave Baby drawing Gothic for Rebel Reel Cine Club x Underground EnglandDave Baby – an occult obsessive and creative punk …
This coming Wednesday we’re screening two short films starring Dave along with his artwork along with the brilliant (and of its time) Hammer Horror Films The Devil Rides Out
Dave Baby is an Artist, Model, Clothing Designer, Punk, sculpture, last standing member of House Of Beauty & Culture.
Judy Blame and Dave Baby, Photography by Cindy Palmano for Vanity, 1986 © Cindy PalmanoThe House of Beauty and Culture was a fashion movement born out of the 1980s and encompassing some of the most creative post-punk talented makers including shoemaker John Moore, Super Stylist Judy Blame, Furniture makers Frick and Frack and Dave Baby – look in almost any photo of the boutique and you’ll see Dave’s tell tale
Alan Macdonald, Photography by Cindy Palmano for Vanity, 1986 © Cindy PalmanoA boutique, design studio and crafts collective The House of Beauty and Culture (HOBAC) changed the cultural landscape. Experimenting with deconstruction and pushing home-spun a DIY aesthetic championing androgynous style.
An important part of this was the semi-erotic paganist and satanic sculptures and images made by Dave Baby who I’m delighted to say is coming to our screening for an early Halloween on Wednesday.
I visited Dave’s home which is stuffed full of objects he’s made and collected over a lifetime – a studio/ home/ workshop – a flat that can only exist as it does from a lifetime of collecting/ creating and being Dave Baby …
Dave handed me a VHS recording of John Maybury’s Circus Logic I – IV which I’ve had transferred to a digital file – Dave also starred in Love Is The Devil and his friend Derek Jarman’s films.
Dave also made a short film Blindman’s Lane which fittingly seeing him doing a deal with The Devil created by DI.AL (Diego Indraccolo and Alice Gatti).
As with the Punk screening we did in August it’s seating at tables and benches with multiple screens – it’s relaxed and fun – you can order drinks and food to your table, mix with other people (it’s outside but covered and heated), Please do watch here for a flavour of PUNK.
You can find out more about Dave’s work with Judy Blame and the exhibition Never Again that ran at the ICA and the accompanying book (which is sadly sold out and out of print - The House of Beauty and Culture, written by Kasia Maciejowska and edited by ICA Executive Director Gregor Muir.
What is The Hang Out?
The Hang Out is a monthly evening event (every last Thursday of the Month) celebrating counterculture.
A collaboration between Rebel Reel Cine Club and Bolt Motorcycles, we attract a diverse audience, brought together by a curated collection of images, film, food, drink and music in an easy atmosphere of cultural inquiry and celebration of Rebellion and The Maverick. We strive to find interesting places to do this safely in these difficult times, offering a chance to escape.
The Hang Out started when I walked into Bolt’s motorcycle yard in Stoke Newington and met owner Andrew Almond. From our first conversation The Hang Out began to take shape.
I was looking for a partner who shared my love of counterculture and subcultures to create events. Bolt is London’s maverick (and best) motorcycle shop and garage, creating custom bikes and selling apparel inspired by the subcultures of motorcycling. It also houses Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace Library and Zippo Records.
The Hang Out is a space for people who ride bikes or drive classic cars, and people who don’t (!), to gather together for food, drink and curated content in a stunning setting. The Silver Building, our latest venue, is a former factory with seating under the concrete ramp of the DLR (there’s a sense of Brutalism mixed with a dystopian future as the lights of Canary Wharf and the City form a backdrop glimpsed between slabs of concrete).
With a love of film and years of reading, watching and talking to like-minded people, Rebel Reel Cine Club’s curation of The Hang Out is about more than just film. Our September Hang Out was inspired by the 70s road movie Vanishing Point, and included a short film by John Pearse (co-owner of legendary 60s boutique Granny Takes A Trip and still tailor to almost everyone involved in arts and culture in London), along with denim hunters and photographers Melody and Bryan Kahtava – whose extraordinary discoveries of vintage denim are showcased in Vanishing Dreams of The West. Bolt’s friends Youth Club Archive (see blog post 2) again made a bespoke film of images for the event while Zippo Records DJed.
As well as the cultural curation we secured Brewdog Beers to sponsor everyone’s first drinks (thank you Brewdog!) and Smoke and Bones – the only Halal Texas BBQ in London (anywhere?) – to provide us with their amazing slow-cooked meat (this doesn’t do justice to the taste…). The venue served us with cocktails as well as other drinks (whilst maintaining all anti-Covid safety measures!)
Our next Hang Out is on 29th October - click here and join us! We’d love to see you if you’re open, friendly and would like to celebrate the outsider.
Chris McGill
photos by Sam Simpson Photography
Youth Club Archive - become part of the museum
For the last two events we’ve worked with Youth Club Archive who created films of their images around our theme - the first was The 59 Club screening of The Wild One - The 59 Club was a motorcycle club (which still exists today) set up in 1962 by Rev. Bill Shergold.
Rebel Reel Cine Club worked with the YCA (who are planning to build a museum of youth culture - you can submit your memories here - http://www.youthclubarchive.com/submit
Rebel Reel Cine Club
Rebel Reel Cine Club is a members club showing films in appropriate settings - your ticket price includes so much more than the film - talks, events, food, drinks, happenings - screening Cult Classics, ArtHouse and Independent Films all with a rebel twist
Rebel Reel Cine Club has come out of Cine Club This Is Not A Club - screening films in appropriate places - Cult Classics, ArtHouse, Forgotten Gems and just brilliant films which remind you why you love the movies…
Sign Up and buy a ticket (membership is included!)
We’re starting this year with a Hang Out (so much more than just the film) in association with Bolt Motorcycles … visit the website to see when and where …
Why Badlands?
It all begins with an idea.
Rebel Reel Cine Club at Home
Why Badlands? - Maverick director, counterculture and a favourite that people have seen before (a long time ago) or wished they’d seen - the evening bringing us together on the anniversary of the arrest of the inspiration for the film characters in a time of uncertainty for all of us.
Things we learnt on 29th January 2021
It was 63 years to the day that infamous killers were arrested
Martin Sheen’s name is Ramon (and why he puts his jacket on the way he does)
Jimmy Galvin’s music is haunting and beautiful
PLUS ending Dry January can result in your fire alarm going off (twice)
29th January 2021 – Rebel Reel Cine Club at Home
We collectively watched Badlands after an hour of Jimmy Galvin playing live from Bristol, cooking, quizzes and fun from the home of Rebel Reel Cine Club.
29th January 1958
On this day Charles Starweather (aged 19) and Caril Ann Fugate (14) were arrested - following 10 days of killing and a 500 mile chase across the Badlands of Nebraska and Ohio – read more about the whole case here.
Their story, as well as inspiring Badlands (which in itself inspired Natural Born Killers (1994) and True Romance as well as one of the dance sequences in Dirty Dancing – don’t expect to be seeing anyone carrying a watermelon at Rebel Reel Cine Club …) plus The Sadist (1963), Kalifornia (1993) and Starweather (2004)
Check out Redheaded Peckerwood - a collection of photos taken from 2005 to 2010 along the 500 mile route that Starweather and Fugate drove. Released in 2011 by Christian Patterson as a book, it includes reproductions of documents and photographs of objects that belonged to Starkweather, Fugate and their victims.
Bruce Springsteen penned Nebraska as a first-person narrative from the viewpoint of Charles Starkweather, here’s the lyrics …
I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died
From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path
I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir, me and her we had us some fun
Now the jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest
Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor neck back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap
They declared me unfit to live, said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world
As well as Springsteen’s song check out J Church’s 1994 song Hate So Real, Nebraska-based electropop trio Icky Blossoms song entitled "Stark Weather" - narrated from Starkweather's point of view and includes references to his killing of Fugate's mother, stepfather, and half-sister, Nicole Dollanganger's song "Nebraska" is a retelling of the murders, Caril Ann Fugate is mentioned “… showed his Caril Ann how to use a knife/picked it up slowly/killed with it twice".
The ‘Badlands’ Murders are also mentioned in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" with the line "Starkweather homicide.." but this mentions a huge amount of events throughout the twentieth century – check out Wikipedia on the list …
The Estervez’s
Martin Sheen’s mother (Irish immigrant mother Mary-Ann Phelan and Spanish-born father Galicia Francisco Estevez named their son Ramon Estevez but Sheen changed his name to Martin Sheen (only as a stage name legally retaining the name Ramon) discovering that there were few roles for Hispanic actors in Hollywood. Charlie Sheen’s name is actually Carlos, his older brother Emilio retained his birth name …
There’s a scene in Badlands where Sheen’s character Kit throws his jacket over his right shoulder from behind to put it on – apparently Martin Sheen has one arm 3 inches shorter than the other because his shoulder was damaged during birth complications - If you’ve watched The West Wing you’ll see that 30 years later he’s still doing it that way
From Tadcaster to Greenwich, from Northumberland to Charvill …
A huge thank you to everyone who came on Friday – we’ve sold out of badges now – I hope you spotted the moment in the film that the Voice O-Graph on the badge appears …
Thanks as ever to Smoke and Bones for partnering with us on the Burger Meal boxes – check out their monthly boxes – next month I’m going big on the vegetarian Jackfruit Burger Box which we’ll be putting up on Rebel Reel Cine Club shortly …
Thanks to Alex and Greg at 12 Oz Bottle Shop for curating a selection of craft beers
Jimmy Galvin – how to thank you? I hope you agree that Jimmy’s playing was sublime, his tolerance of me muting him after my confusion with the red telephones … please check out Jimmy’s website – Jimmy puts us all to shame – an artist, composer and curator – I really hope you enjoyed his music.
A huge thank you to my team - Iris for directing me (whilst I consumed the six beers in the hour …), Maud for her research on the films in the quiz (sorry I didn’t use your bonus questions), Felix for the seamless interaction between Jimmy and I with the red telephones and Emma for managing the comments, feeding them to me and endless support.
BUT mainly THANK YOU TO YOU for coming, for commenting, for supporting and hopefully having fun!
As the lockdown continues Rebel Reel Cine Club can’t meet in real life but we’ll continue to do Rebel Reel Cine Club at Home, working with Smoke and Bones again (check out their cute introduction to Smoke and Bones on the Rebel Reel Cine Club YouTube Channel).
The next Rebel Reel Cine Club at Home is on Friday 26th February – I’ll announce our partners next week and put it on-sale.
Oh, I’ve written barely anything about the film … but check out –
https://filmschoolrejects.com/badlands
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/aug/29/drama3