My week with Marilyn & The prince and the showgirl showing in #Southend!
My week with Marilyn & The prince and the showgirl showing in Southend!
SUNDAY EVENING
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
94mins : 2011 : Certificate ‘15’
Sunday 10th June : 7.30pm : £6.00
My Week with Marilyn is the true story of a star-struck boy who falls in love with the biggest celebrity in the world, Marilyn Monroe. 1957: 23-year-old Colin Clark was determined to break into the film business and his first job was The Prince and The Showgirl - the film that was set to be the smash hit of the year, famously uniting the biggest stars of the day, Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier. On honeymoon in Britain with her new husband, Arthur Miller, Marilyn is excited about the project but her insecurity quickly comes to the fore and she becomes desperate to run away from her Hollywood entourage, the pressures of work and the press who hound her. For Marilyn, Colin is a welcome antidote and he offers her everything she craves when, together, they escape the film set to get closer in an idyllic Britain.
Michelle Williams takes on the formidable challenge of playing Marilyn Monroe, and does so with depth and assuredness, and without resorting to caricature, commanding the screen with pain and delicacy. Kenneth Branagh gives an uncharacteristically restrained performance as the exasperated Olivier, resentful of the Hollywood "new blood" that the young actress represents and disdainful of her cult-like devotion to Method acting - and of her chronic tardiness, which threatened to undermine the strict British work schedule. Eddie Redmayne plays Colin Clark with a sweet, gentle veneer, someone who grows to care genuinely about the complex Monroe, Julia Ormond is clipped and proper as Olivier's then-wife, Vivien Leigh, Emma Watson shows a lovely gravitas as Lucy, Monroe's acting coach, while Judi Dench is superb as the redoubtable Dame Sybil Thorndike.
Michelle Williams is flawless, brilliant and exhilarating. I can’t think of a better performance in the role of an icon Vanity Fair. One of the best movies of the year. Oscar worthy on every level. Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench are terrific KCBS
SUNDAY MATINEE
THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL
111mins : 1957 : Certificate ‘PG’
Sunday 10th June : 4pm : £6.00
A rare chance to see, on the big screen, the film which inspired this evening’s presentation, My Week with Marilyn. In 1957, hoping to cement her reputation as a serious actress, screen icon Marilyn Monroe travelled to the UK to co-star with England’s greatest theatre actor, Sir Laurence Olivier. Playing against type, she’s a second-rate hoofer living (in 1911) in a theatrical boarding house in Brixton, plucked from the chorus to entertain the Regent of Carpathia and ultimately smoothing his rough edges.
Monroe sparkles, and shows a terrific sense of comic timing, in a performance of great skill and beauty in which she was aided considerably by the great Sybil Thorndike, who became her ally during the filming (and who was memorably played in My Week with Marilyn by Judi Dench). The Prince and the Showgirl is a fascinating collision of acting styles and temperaments - and Marilyn looks fantastic!
Combining the light comic skills of Monroe and the grand acting ability of Olivier, the film succeeds as a wonderful mixture of two very different screen personalities.
Tickets will be available from 3pm (for My Week with Marilyn) and 6pm (for The Prince and the Showgirl) at the Film Desk in the Park Inn Palace Hotel.We regret advance booking is not available. However, the hotel's large ballroom comfortably seats 250, so no-one is going to be turned away.
