The Death Of Stalin (Film)

It does sound great - am thinking of seeing it tonight as it's on at a cinema just round the corner from where I work so I can get to the 6pm showing and still be in bed by 930pm, which is how I like to rock Friday nights...!

The Curzon Q & A did sound appealing but Saturday evening is not great scheduling from the viewpoint of keen theatregoers & I already had my 2 plays booked so will go to an early performance of the film, before the matinee. Do please report back, though, Marwood! Plus my last attempt to see a Q & A at Curzon Mayfair was chaos: we were kept waiting and waiting until there was eventually an announcement about a technical hitch and a further, official delay of up to another hour (at this point the film should have been well under way), at which point I and quite a few others elected to obtain a refund and leave. The director who had come to do the Q & A also had to leave; moreover, from the email I later received they weren't able to show the film even belatedly. But I am sure that was an untypical experience.

The poster they had up at the Curzon tonight (about half a dozen of them, but that is to be expected when the director is there) had SRB billed second behind Steve Buscemi, maybe they've made different posters for different regions?

I wouldn't go as far as say its been the most highly rated film of the year so far (as it was introduced prior to the screening), but I enjoyed it: not a laugh a minute film, more the sort of film you smile along with while watching it and when the proper laughs come along, they are more hearty chuckles than roars of laughter (there was an annoying eejit sat somewhere behind me who kept going overboard with loud HAHAHAHAHAs at every opportunity for the first 40-50 minutes) Not sure how much business this is expected to rake in (can't see it getting screened on hundreds of screens in the US or doing amazing business in multiplexes worldwide) but I was entertained, it was well acted all round (kudos to Paul Whitehouse and Jeffrey Tambor in particular), and you don't have to have an in-depth knowledge of the USSR to understand whats going and enjoy it: five minutes of this had more laughs than the (what seemed like an extremely long) 71 minutes of The Party, and unlike Blade Runner 2049, I never drifted off to sleep (always a bonus in a cinema unless you're homeless and have wandered in off the street to doss down in a cinema).

Re. the poster, yes, SRB is named (the cast is listed in alphabetical order) but his picture isn't on it. So I was amazed to find he has one of the biggest roles, in fact the film revolves around him and he is of course, superb. At last, a film role worthy of his talents! He is certainly not in the 'twinkly' mode of which he is sometimes accused.

Overall the film was brilliantly done but I think they put all the best jokes in the trailer (apart from moving the body which was funny). Shout out for Michael Palin, who is great, and also theatre stalwart Paul Chahidi.

Oh, and I recognised staircase and the gents loos at the Freemasons Hall from my visit to Letters Live!!