Our Next Film - 'The Iron Lady' - 7/8th March

"The Iron Lady" is a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century's most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.

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Call to artists

Arts and crafts people with a love of the North York Moors are being invited to take part in an exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of the National Park. ‘Your Place’ runs from 21 July to 19 August at the Inspired by… Gallery, Danby and will feature exhibits from 60 creatives whose work captures the area’s special qualities.

The Inspired by… Gallery was set up five years ago to give local artists an opportunity to promote their work to a wider audience. The Your Place exhibition will build on this ethos by offering 60 artists a chance to hire space at the gallery to raise awareness and sell their artwork throughout the four week run. The gallery is part of The Moors National Park Centre which attracts over 110,000 visitors each year.

The exhibition is part of a range of events to mark the National Park’s anniversary and will follow Inspired Landscape – a showcase of new work by six of the region’s leading contemporary artists Peter Hicks, Len Tabner and William Tillyer, Joe Cornish, Stephen Gillies and Kate Jones which runs from 13 May to 17 July.

Next Film - 'Hugo' - 29th February

Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Brian Selznick's award-winning novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret stars Asa Butterfield, as an orphan boy who lives in a Parisian train station. Sent to live with his drunken uncle after his father's death in a fire, Hugo learned how to wind the massive clocks that run throughout the station. When the uncle disappears one day, Hugo decides to maintain the clocks on his own, hoping nobody will catch on to him squatting in the station.

His natural aptitude for engineering leads him to steal gears, tools, and other items from a toy-shop owner who maintains a storefront in the station. Hugo needs these purloined pieces in order to rebuild a mechanical man that was left in the father's care at the museum -- the restoration was a project father and son did together.

When Georges (Ben Kingsley), the old man who runs the toy stand, catches on to the thievery, he threatens to turn Hugo over to the station's lone police officer (Sacha Baron Cohen, who makes every effort to send any parentless child in the station to the orphanage. But Hugo's run-in with Georges leads to a friendship with the elderly gentleman's goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who unknowingly possesses the last item Hugo needs to make the mechanical man work again.

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Helmsley's Jazz 'n' Swing Weekend - line up announced

The line-up of musicians for this first ever jazz 'n' swing weekend has now been announced. Tickets are still available for the weekend, programmed by international jazz drummer John Petters.  It will bring together a unique combination of traditional jazz, swing and American songbook music, played by some of the top jazz performers in the UK today.

The musicians performing include the incredible Julian Stringle on clarinet, who made his TV debut with Acker Bilk when he was just 14. He has since played with George Chisholm, Don Lusher, Kenny Baker, Cleo Lane & Sir John Dankworth and Meatloaf. He has recorded with Roy Williams, Marc Almond,  George Melly, Joe Brown, Chas & Dave and the Spice Girls.

Featured on double bass is Annie Hawkins, another great international musician dubbed "Europe's first lady of the double bass".

Also in the line-up is pianist Dave Browning, who has been playing the British jazz scene for 20 years to great acclaim and who’s main influence is the great Thomas 'Fats' Waller.

The weekend has lectures, a forum and quizzes and incredible jazz performances, including the music of Fats Waller, Benny Goodman and the wonderful ‘Satchmo’, Louis Armstrong.

It runs from 2pm on Saturday 24th March to late on Sunday 25th March.

Full details and online booking click here.

Tickets start from £4 and a full weekend tickets to all the events costs £65.

The Shed brings KAN to Kirkby

The Shed On Tour brought the folk group KAN to Kirkbymoorside Memorial Hall tonight and attracted an appreciative audience of 180+ to the delight of promoters Simon Thackray and Sue Wright.

KAN

Irish flute and whistle player Brian Finnegan and Scottish fiddler Aidan O’Rourke, front men with Flook and Lau, have joined forces with two of the brightest stars in the world of rhythm and accompaniment – Yorkshire-based guitarist Ian Stephenson, who works with Kathryn Tickell, and Jim Goodwin, drummer and percussionist with the Halle and Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, to travel an innovative new musical path.

Visit the KAN website here.

The Shed On Tour is a new collaboration between The Shed and Rural Arts North Yorkshire and will bring leading artists from the world of folk, jazz, country and contemporary classical music to village and community halls like ours across Ryedale and beyond.

The Shed has been awarded £34,500 from the National Lottery through Arts Council England to work with Rural Arts on this exciting new pilot project.

You can watch KAN footage on YouTube here.

Chris Ware and the Benbecula Saga part 6

See how the paintings develop.

Our next film - The Deep Blue Sea - 22nd February

 
There couldn't be a better fit for playwright Terence Rattigan than film-maker Terence Davies, in his adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea, one of Rattigan's most touching plays....The film taps into the emotional thrust of the play, aided by an understated but eloquent and finally very moving performance from Weisz that's one of the best she has accomplished on screen....

Davies dares to fillet the play of some of its extraneous characters, and not all the dialogue is Rattigan's. He collapses most of the first act into a 10-minute wordless sequence and occasionally adds his own take on the affair between Rachel Weisz's Hester, married to Simon Russell Beale's High Court judge, and Tom Hiddleston's Freddie, an RAF pilot who scarcely deserves her love.

What he does tap into is the emotional thrust of the play, aided by an understated but eloquent and finally very moving performance from Weisz that's one of the best she has accomplished on screen.

Comparisons with David Lean's Brief Encounter seem obvious. And this, in its own way, has the same feeling for the period, in this case the post-war fifties, and the same sympathy with characters bound by the constraints of the time.

A request for help

Chris Ware's Benbecula video diary part 5

More stormy weather to paint.

Our Next Film - My Week With Marilyn - 15th February

"In 1956, Marilyn Monroe came to Britain to make a movie at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier. This was the tense and ill-fated light comedy The Prince and the Showgirl, scripted by Terence Rattigan, a film that became a legend for the lack of chemistry between its insecure and incompatible stars. One was a sexy, feminine, sensual and mercurial diva. The other would go on to make Some Like It Hot.

The story is told – or part of it – in this intensely enjoyable, entirely insubstantial movie featuring glorious performances from Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Williams as Olivier and Monroe, participants in a love triangle of two stars and a nobody. The whole thing is seen from the standpoint of the film's star-struck third assistant director, Colin Clark, son of the great art historian Kenneth, and younger brother of the notorious Tory MP Alan. The movie-mad youngster had wangled a job in Olivier's production office, been hired as a dogsbody on the movie, and something in this pretty ingénu caught the eye of Marilyn herself. With her genius for enslaving dazzled men to a courtier's life of gallantry and self-abasement, she made him her confidant and helpmeet. In 1995, Clark published his diaries from that time, but then in 2000, landing a deferred dramatic punch, published a further memoir – on which this film is based – revealing an intimate, romantic week alone with Marilyn when her husband Arthur Miller had gone away. Of course, he fell hard for the bewitching star". Read more. Buy tickets.

UNCORKED at the Helmsley Arts Centre

There's a new night launching at Helmsley Arts Centre, led by new Artistic Director Em Whitfield Brooks on Friday 17th February. UNCORKED will feature spellbinding sets from three top accoustic acts with fine wines and nibbles in the bar between each act.

The music on the menu at this first UNCORKED event will be:

Beccy Owen: A welcome return to HAC for Beccy, described by the NME as a “delinquent Carole King,” Beccy’s latest album of intent is the self released long player ‘Down With Gravity.’ Produced by Joe Rusby her third album features performances from world-class luminaries such as Kate Rusby, Peter Tickell and Rachael McShane, and is hailed as “a stunning collage of tender romanticism, off-kilter harmonies and disarming rhythms” (Alt Vinyl). Her music has been endorsed by Elvis Costello, who described it as “lovely and original” following Beccy’s live session for BBC Radio 2’s Janice Long. She has performed alongside Maximo Park, Rachael Unthank, Nitin Sawhney, Northern Sinfonia, Bellowhead, Jim Moray and Field Music; she supported the award-winning folk collective Bellowhead on tour, appeared on BBC 2’s The Culture Show, and was nominated for the Performer of the Year award at the Journal Culture Awards. “A fallen, aggrieved, dark angel and a very, very special talent” Music Week. “A soulful, guiding light.” Metro “A real discovery…Gorgeous” – Janice Long, BBC Radio 2. Beccy spends a lot of time these days singing with North East supergroup Sharks Took The Rest, so this is a rare opportunity to catch her mesmerising solo performance.

Dave Keegan: Excellent singer-songwriter, who channels a whole host of left-field pop and rock influences in his melody-driven, bittersweet acoustic songs. Dave’s powerful performance style, versatile voice and compelling songs always hold audiences spellbound. If you haven’t seen Dave perform solo before you’re in for a real treat.

The Cornshed Sisters: these four singers, hailing from Tyne and Wear, offer a stunning and original blend of guitar pop, folk tales, protest songs, piano ballads and gospel. Their sound is magical, with songs displaying a healthy disregard for unity of subject matter. One of their singers Liz Corney was a huge hit with Icene at Helmsley Arts Centre last year. Recently signed by London-based label Memphis Industries, this appearance is part of a tour to highlight the release of their first album Tell Tales on 9th April. The future is bright for this group - you’ll see them here first… Uncorked @ Helmsley Arts Centre Friday 17th Feb 7.30pm Tickets: £9 - includes free glass of wine Box Office: 01439 771700 or book online.

Chris Ware : Facing the Storm part 4

At last some stormy weather! And some paint!