• SUNSET Boulevard is the legendary black comedy about Hollywood in the 50s, narrated by a corpse floating face-down in the pool.

William Holden is an impecunious hack who hides up in the gothic mansion of deranged silent-movie star Gloria Swanson, living in the past (epitomised by footage from Queen Kelly) with her ex-director butler von Stroheim in tow.

Acerbic and nightmarish, with tour-de-force performances, and replete with half-bitter, half-wistful memories of a vanished golden age, it is being shown at Harbour Lights Picturehouse in a special Sunday lunchtime screening this weekend.

  • THE Royal Opera House Live Cinema Season gets off to a dramatic start at Winchester’s Everyman Cinema on Tuesday with the return of Puccini’s musically sublime final opera Turandot – a tale of disguised identities, riddles, ritual executions and powerful, triumphant love.

Andrei Serban’s production of this dark Oriental fairytale is spectacular, with Sally Jacobs’s magnificent sets and elaborate masks, and costumes inspired by traditional Chinese theatre.

One of the greatest Turandot singers today, Lise Lindstrom, makes her Royal Opera debut, with Marco Berti, a wonderful Puccinian singer, in the role of Prince Calaf.