The Last Detail film still

Each month, Melanie Friesen invites a distinguished guest to Vancity Theatre’s Cinema Salon, in order to present his/her favourite film. After the screening, both audience and speaker have the opportunity to engage over drinks and snacks in the Vancity lounge. This month’s film is Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail.

“Jack’s best film,” according to many Nicholson fans, was written and produced during the Vietnam War era and released during the early months of Watergate. Larry (Quaid), a young seaman, gets royally shafted after stealing $40 from the charity box of his officer’s wife.

Eight years in prison is the ludicrous sentence and two navy “lifers” (Nicholson and Young) take Larry from Norfolk, VA to Portsmouth, NH with cultural stops in New York City and Boston. Neither can believe the severe sentence imposed, however they bring some fun into Larry’s last week before his life in the brig. As with most Ashby films, duty and institutional authority are challenged, making him one of the most vocal anti-establishment directors from this volatile period of American history.

Toby Jones at a photocall for Berberian Sound Studio in Edinburgh
[Toby Jones photo credit: Edinburgh International Film Festival on Flickr]

Toby Jones won both last year’s British Actor of the Year Award at the London Critics Circle Film Choice Awards and Best Actor at the London Evening Standard Awards. He also won 2012’s Best Actor Award at the British Independent Film Awards. Portraying Swifty Lazar in the feature film “Frost/Nixon”, Jones was nominated for British Supporting Actor of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards, 2009 and nominated in the same category at the 2008 London Critics Circle Film Awards for “The Painted Veil.”

In 2007, he won the award for Best British Actor at the London Critics Circle Film Awards as Truman Capote in “Infamous.”

 Other film credits include “Berberian Sound Studio”, “Snow White and the Huntsman”, “Red Lights”, “My Week with Marilyn”, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, “Your Highness”, “W”, “City of Ember”, “St. Trinians”, “The Mist”, “Nightwatching”, “Finding Neverland”, and most recently “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

Jones voiced the character of Silk in Stephen Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” He was also the voice of Dobby, the house elf, in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – Part 1”, for which he was nominated for Best Digital Acting Performance at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards. 

He will be seen next in the mob thriller “God Only Knows” as well as in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

Vancity Cinema Salon with Toby Jones Presents The Last Detail

Date: Tuesday, February 4, 7:30 pm
Venue: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver
Tickets: $13.00; may be purchased online

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