Film Trailer

Last week, Twentieth Century Fox was the first major studio to release a trailer tailored for Vine, Twitter’s six second video service.

The Vine trailer was the first glimpse of the movie, due for release 26 July. It created a huge buzz on the internet, with over 600 retweets from followers of the @wolverinemovie account, reaching over 20k people. With a predicted box office of £15m in the UK, The Wolverine is set to continue the commercial success of the X-Men franchise, which has now taken over $1b worldwide. The audience are predicted to be predominately affluent males, aged between 25-34.

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“It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to”, wise words from Jean-Luc Godard. Hollywood has never been afraid to take a successful novel and translate the magic to the big screen.

There’s a good reason for Hollywood adapting novels, attracting an upmarket audience. This is good news for advertisers as research shows that these audiences prefer premium products, have a 10% higher than average income and are predominately AB consumers. They are early adopters and key influencers in their peer groups.

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Last Thursday I was lucky enough to attend a media screening of the highly anticipated, 23rd Bond instalment, Skyfall. Whilst spending my lunchtime speaking to BT and reheating the previous night’s pasta bake was a flawless plan, I felt attending the screening was something I couldn’t pass up on.

Left with a sour taste in my mouth from the last bond venture, A Quantum of Solace, I was feeling sceptical about Skyfall. Whilst it’s been one of my most anticipated releases of the year, I was hesitant to throw my full enthusiasm into it in the interest of avoiding disappointment.

After entering the plush Sony screening room with dubiety squashing my child-like excitement, I am happy to confirm that I left the screening grinning like a 6 year old that’s overdosed on Sunny Delight.

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The young characters of My Brother the Devil live in a world of perpetual violence, gang feuds and abuses both chemical and physical. It’s a world where a legitimate road to success is all-but invisible, and brash machismo – often backed-up by cold steel – is an ugly substitute for ambition. They’re pawns to their generals, men in their late-20s whose council houses are decked out like City Boy bachelor pads, except that for every set of iconic black-and-white photographs in a frame cluster, there’s a pair of antique machetes.

This is the world that Sally El Hosaini presents, and it’s one we’re all familiar with. Over the last decade, British cinema has indulged in something of an angry love affair with ‘the endz’, pushing out a steady stream of ‘gritty crime dramas’ with a tendency to feel like washed-out retreads of Boyz N the Hood with more muddled Afro-Caribbean patois and fewer barbeques. This recent tradition is carried over into My Brother the Devil but, thankfully, there’s something else going on underneath…

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On the rainiest of Wednesday nights, the DCM faithful padded over a sodden red carpet into a packed-out UK premiere of End of Watch – the new cop thriller by the writer of Training Day, David Ayer. The influences really show too – the action is stark and brutal, with sombre down moments and tension hitting fever pitch at the grand finale.

This is no mindless shooter mind you, and underneath the gritty handheld realism and harrowing subject matter this is a buddy cop movie with a sincere heart. The magnetic on-screen chemistry of Jake Gyllenhall and Michael Pena (present on the night to welcome the crowd) would be enough to carry the audience through from start to finish, displaying a friendship that is layered and believable. They even make mention in the script that they are beyond friends – they are brothers.

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It’s the beginning of an exciting new week at The BFI London Film Festival and the order of this evening is The Sapphires, the debut feature film from resident Aussie, Wayne Blair. Inspired by true events, it’s a gutsy, upbeat and at times satirical story of four girls with one dream.

It’s the late 60’s, 1968 to be precise, indigenous Australians have just been granted the right to vote, the civil rights movement is rife across the globe, and of course, the Vietnam War is in full throttle. The story focusses on three Indigenous sisters who have grown up in a rural mission, and whilst the universal notion of sisterly bickering is clearly still applied in deep Australia, the girls have one united dream… to make it big in the music industry and become stars.

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If you’re a fan of French cinema, Michael Haneke’s Amour is a must-see film this November. As soon as it screened at the Cannes Festival, it was clearly very special and was the obvious choice to win the Palme d’Or. But be prepared, it’s a gritty, matter of fact look at what happens in later life as the aging process takes over a couple’s world.

The Austrian director has united French cinematic legends Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in this study on the beauty of spending your life with another person and how one copes with the suffering of a loved one. The acting is stunning. Emmanuelle Riva gives possibly the best screen performance I’ve ever seen as Anne, a piano teacher, whose life degenerates when she suffers a series of strokes. Trintignant’s tenderness as her husband Georges and his resolve to care for her as she becomes increasingly incapable is incredibly moving.

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It’s the opening of the BFI and what better way to kick off the 56^th London Film Festival than to pick a film which was crafted at the Three Mills Studios in East London and is the latest great offering from the quirky director who brought us the classic Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride.

Under the Disney banner, Frankenweenie 3D is enough to make the death of Bambi’s mom look like a happy affair. Set in a small suburban town in America, this monochrome film based on old Hollywood movies such as The Bride of Frankenstein and Gremlins is exactly what we’ve learned to expect from a Tim Burton film; gangly looking characters, death and a whole load of heart.

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This week saw another successful edition of DCM Tuesdays take place with an advanced screening of latest horror fest from Momentum, Sinister.

From the producers of Paranormal Activity and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister lived up to its predecessors, provoking many hidden eyes behind popcorn boxes and screams of fright in the screening room of the Courthouse Hotel.

An assortment of agency representatives from across media land braved 2 hours of sheer terror as Ethan Hawke attempted to figure out the ‘sinister’ goings on at his family’s new house, haunted by terrible crimes committed there in the past.

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The final quarter of the year is full of testosterone fuelled movies. With many Action epics scheduled for release in this period this is an ideal time to reach the traditionally hard to target young male audience in the 15-24 age bracket.

LOOPER

Releasing September 28 is Looper, starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Looper is a mind bending time travel epic that pits Joseph Gordon-Levitt against his older self (Bruce Willis) in a race to close the loop by killing himself to stop the mob doing it for him. This movie is expected to take £6m at the box office with 1.1m admissions.

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