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Monday, March 01, 2004

Eyes Down

Watched this film House! at the weekend. I'd seen trailers previously, but it was one of those films which came and disappeared of the radarscope without any fanfare. A real shame - it was really enjoyable. Not least because it was filmed locally and because it was set in a world I had a great deal of experience in.

I wound up as a bingo caller for a good few years back in my teens. It was good fun and I still enjoy the odd game of bingo now - in fact a load of us are going from work Thursday night (again).

Despite lots of factual inaccuracies, lots of the film's characters and humour rang true. The old decaying hall was very reminiscent of the one I worked in, The Gaiety, - to the state of me thinking it was for a long while into the film. I then figured it was too small and it was actually in Newbridge - according to the directors commentary.

A lot of the club exteriors were shot outside Penarth Pier with the old ball room doubling up as La Scala.



Some of it was filmed in Barry Island also - noticeably the opening sequence which saw the old woman tramping to the hall (in reality the two locations were about 10 miles apart, hell of a tramp!) and the poster ripping scene. Amazingly I spotted it from a small section of the side of the building, in the dark. It was confirmed when the camera pulled out to show a small section of the best burger stall in south Wales, a part of the building.

It certainly stirred up some fond memories, and despite a highly improbable story, was really enjoyable. The director's style was quite visually exciting - he said he had aimed to make what could have been a drab social-realism style comedy about South Wales Bingo really exciting. It had a strange fusion of John Woo stylistics and pacing with a sack full of whimsy and a dreamlike feel. It worked well, much credit. Some good laugh-out loud moments. I can see this being a good film to bore the little one with - 'when I was a lad...' style.

Posted by Dio Bach at 21:29  

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