Digital Cinema Media (DCM) is getting behind Movember in 2014, with a team of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas committed to helping change the face of men’s health, specifically prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health.
Movember is about bringing back the moustache, with Mo Bros taking action by changing their appearance through the growth of a new moustache for the 30 days of Movember, while Mo Sistas sign up and commit to supporting the men in their lives, while helping to promote men’s health at home, in the workplace and within their community. Read more
Goodstuff were crowned winners of Digital Cinema Media’s (DCM) inaugural Halloween Quiz.
Held at the BFI Riverfront Café on 29 October, over 150 guests were treated to a The Shining themed quiz night, with representatives from Carat, Goodstuff, Mash, Maxus, McCann, MGOMD, Mindshare, OMD, Performics, Starcom, Total Media and Zenith present. Read more
The Soho House Group’s Electric Cinema Shoreditch (formerly The Aubin Cinema) will open on Friday 31 October after undergoing refurbishment.
The cinema has been completely refreshed with comfortable armchairs, footstools and cashmere blankets, very similar to the original Electric Cinema on Portobello Road (now Electric Cinema Portobello). A first floor deli bar and coffee station will serve snacks and refreshments. Read more
Last week's Media Week Awards celebrated the best talent and creativity in the UK's media sector, with 1,400 guests from agencies, media owners, advertisers and production companies in attendance.
More than 100 judges were involved in deciding this year's winners, led by co-chairs Bruce Daisley, managing director of Twitter UK, and Claudine Collins, managing director of MediaCom, as well Digital Cinema Media's (DCM) CEO, Simon Rees. Read more
I write this as Rebecca and I travel from Newcastle to Greenock. Yesterday we had a great day at the Tyneside cinema with the lovely Jonny Tull. Thank you Jonny for putting on a fine show. The bar/restaurant they've created at Tyneside is amazing. It was great to catch up with Parkway, Propix, Ritz Thirsk, Plaza Workington, Savoy and obviously Tyneside. In the evening I also finally got to watch Pride at Tyneside. What a great film.
The open meeting kicked off with the CEA welcoming the Industry Trust. They gave us a great overview of the fine work they’ve been doing to prevent IP theft over the years and how they are combating those pirates! 1 in 3 people pirate apparently, which I found truly shocking! I’d forgotten just how powerful and etched into our psyche the ‘You wouldn't steal a car’ and ‘Knock off Nigel’ ads were. Also fascinating was their change in tack during the recession to ‘Thank You’. Read more
The cinema industry gathered last week to celebrate excellence in film marketing, distribution and exhibition at the 2014 Screen Awards.
For the second year in a row, Digital Cinema Media (DCM) sponsored the ‘Brand Partnership of the Year’ category, recognising top brands that have aligned themselves with film to achieve outstanding partnerships. Read more
The Weekend Round-up
The closing night film of the 58th BFI London Film Festival proved a hit with the public as Fury opened with £2.7m (including £698k from previews) and knocked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the top of the box office. That’s a better start than the £1.6m The Monuments Men managed in February and that film topped out at £6.2m, so Fury will be looking at getting close to £8m at least. Read more
The fifth film from Abderrahmane Sissako is an impactful look at the brief 2012 Islamist occupation of the iconic Malian city of the title. At times brutal, at others comedic, this film plays somewhat like an African ‘Four Lions’ (Morris, 2010) for its first half, humanising the terrorists through documenting their gaff-prone attempts to force the residents of Timbuktu toward their fascist worldview. With a virtually total non-diagetic soundtrack until around the one hour mark, the film plays out with an almost documentary feel as it chronicles the Islamists’ relations with the townspeople. When modern technology and ideology clashes with an ancient way of life, the results are equally humorous and disconcerting. Highlights include a stubborn woman refusing to wear gloves in the marketplace and demanding the militia arrest her – “How can I chop fish with gloves on? I’m fed up!” – and the local, moderate Imam extracting a chilling confession from the Islamist leader as to why a local teenager is being forced to marry one of his soldiers. His calm explanation will be deeply troubling for Western audiences, yet goes a long way to showing why the fight against militant Islam cannot be won with weapons alone. The all too brief moments in the mosque, where the two radically different interpretations of Islam come into contact, are some of the most fascinating in the film.
Sissako lulls his audience in with twin narratives; on the one hand the slapstick efforts of the Islamists to take control, and on the other a tale of enduring, loving familial bonds that blossom under the canvas of desert tent. The herder Kidane spends his days drinking coffee and exchanging pleasantries with his wife in this nomadic setting, while his adopted son tends the cows and his daughter sews and learns basic arithmetic. Yet the shadow of a threat looms over all this in the form of a brief, inconsequential visit from the Islamists. Even in the desert one can be reached, it would seem. And so it proves to be, as the second half descends into increasingly darker territory. Shocking highlights here include a vicious stoning of two adulterers and the arrest of a small group who dared to play music in their house; a crime under the new regime. The human face given to the extremists in the first half of the film makes their increasingly totalitarian behaviour all the more oppressive to witness once it’s begun in earnest. Read more
NEW TITLES ADDED TO SCHEDULE:
Still Alice is released on 6 March 2015 Read more
DCM's Tom Linay reveals his pick of the best films from the BFI London Film Festival 2014.
The UK’s premiere film festival and my favourite two weeks of the year are over for another 12 months and while I contemplate the sad situation that I’m no longer able to watch three exciting new films a day, I’ll instead reflect on what has once again been a huge success for the BFI, with record numbers of tickets being sold and some of the film world’s biggest names in attendance. Read more
Last week, The Maxime Cinema in Blackwood staged a screening of Northern Soul. The film, which has been 17 years in the making, completely sold out, with 220 people in attendance for the showing.
The film tells the tale of two Northern boys whose worlds are changed forever when they discover black American soul music. Northern Soul was phenomenally popular with British youths in the 1960s and 1970s, taking the North of the country by storm. Featuring Steve Coogan, John Thomson, Ricky Tomlinson and Lisa Stansfield, the film took director Elaine Constantine 17 years to make. Read more
The weekend round-up
The heroes in a half shell are back and as popular as ever. The new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opened with £4.8m, which includes £1.6m from previews. The last film featuring the pizza-eating reptiles was the computer animated TMNT in 2007, which kicked off with £1.3m and ended its run with £3m, so the newest incarnation has smashed through that benchmark. 39.4% of the £4.8m was from 3D presentations and with half term next week, there’s plenty more to come. Read more
