It was with a sad slow-mo wave that we bid farewell to the BFI London Film Festival for another year. The festival closed in typically grand fashion with a Gala screening of Mike Newell’s Great Expectations. Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irvine were in attendance on the red carpet and the after party at Battersea Power Station certainly drew the festival to a dramatic and well-earned close.
The 56th London Film Festival has hosted over 200 feature films in just under two weeks including Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, which won the Best Film Of The Festival Award on Saturday (This is the fourth year of the standalone awards but a second win for Audiard, who won in 2009 for A Prophet) and Beasts of The Southern Wild, which scooped up the prestigious Sutherland Award for the most original and imaginative film of the festival. All award winners can be viewed here. Read more
The UK box office went loopy this weekend for an exciting original sci-fi title. Time travel mind-bender Looper came out on top with £2.4m, outperforming a number of well received recent sci-fi films including District 9 (£2.3m), The Adjustment Bureau (£1.4m) and Source Code (£1.3m). It’s also comfortably more than any other film where Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the lead, beating 2009’s (500) Days Of Summer (£1.2m).
Despite having a quiet Monday - Friday, ParaNorman 3D once again had a very strong weekend hold, easing just 11% to £1.1m for a cume of £4.3m. It didn’t open as well as Coraline but ParaNorman 3D appears to have more staying power, with Coraline only grossing £458k on its third weekend. The fifth entry in the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: Retribution 3D with £792k. The previous Resident Evil film, Resident Evil: Afterlife opened with £1.7m in 2010. Read more
Today DCM is digital – with both Sony and Tesco amongst the first to benefit from the faster, more flexible and more creative cinema medium.
The move heralds a bold new era in cinema advertising, with brands already taking up the options of shorter lead-times and greater freedom to choose, change and adapt messaging. Sony Home Entertainment is using the new flexibility to rotate copy for its DVD release of “Breaking Bad Series 4”. Ad spots running over the weekend prior to launch will carry ‘Out Monday’ copy before switching to ‘Out Now’ from Monday. Read more
After The Sweeney’s previews prevented it from topping the box office last weekend, ParaNorman 3D gained his revenge emerging as the clear winner this weekend. With a great hold, easing just 12% to £1.2m, the stop-motion charmer has now grossed £2.9m in ten days. In second spot was the week’s highest new entry, Killing Them Softly. The brutal Brad Pitt crime drama opened with £955k, which is pretty similar to another Cannes premiering crime drama Lawless, which opened with £973k two weeks ago. Killing Them Softly has also been compared, perhaps inaccurately, to Drive which opened with £609k almost exactly a year ago.
In third spot was another new entry, Jennifer Lawrence thriller House At The End Of The Street or HATES, as it has come to be known. It turns out the audience didn’t hate it and a £796k debut is a perfectly respectable performance and far superior to another recent female star-led thriller in May’s Silent House (£215k). Last week’s number one The Sweeney fell a chunky 53% to £728k, although that figure falls to a more respectable 35% if you don’t include previews. The Ray Winstone crime drama now has a cume of £3m. Read more
The Sweeney was out on its tod at the top of box office this weekend. The new Ray Winstone and Ben "Plan B" Drew version of the 70s television favourite opened to £1.5m, which included £433k from Wednesday and Thursday previews. British director Nick Love has not had huge success at the UK box office in the past but this is comfortably his biggest opening, almost tripling his previous best - 2007’s Outlaw (£586k). Outlaw is also Love’s highest grossing film outright, with £1.6m and The Sweeney almost beat that in one weekend.
Charming stop-motion animation ParaNorman 3D opened in second place with £1.4m and would have come out on top had it not been for The Sweeney’s previews. ParaNorman 3D is the second feature film from the American stop-motion animation studio Laika, with their first Coraline released in May 2009. Although it didn’t open as well as Coraline’s £2.4m debut, it’s still a decent start for an animation film outside of the school holidays. Read more
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 Read more
The awards season kicked off when The Toronto Film Festival opened on Thursday with a preview of the Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt time travel thriller, Looper.
The festival is a chance to see some of the early contenders for the upcoming awards season. Anticipation was high for one of the world's premier film festivals that follow other big, international events in the film calendar, such as Festival De Cannes, Venice and Sundance, which for the first time, was held in London this year. Read more
On Friday the exhibitors were imploring the populace to get their mass to ours, as the remake of Total Recall was finally on general release. The populace agreed and twenty two years after the original was released, the new Total Recall topped the UK box office with £2.8m (including £959k from previews).
In second spot and benefitting from the unusual step of opening on a Monday was all-star comedy The Watch with £2.2m (including £1.4m from previews). Brave 3D continues to enchant adults and children alike with a further £1.6m over the weekend taking its cume to £17.9m. Ted still bears fruit, easing 42% to £989k for a cume of £28.1m. Read more
Ask any cinema goer and they’ll agree that the immersive big screen experience provides complete escapism from daily life. It’s no wonder, therefore, that gamers are avid cinema goers.
Recent TGI (Q3 2012) data shows that 64% of cinema goers own a games console (with 32% of these bought in the last 12 months), spending above the UK average and making up a whopping 83% of the total £1.6bn spent on consoles, and 86% of the £1.4bn spent on games in the last year. Read more
For the second successive weekend Brave 3D hit the bullseye, falling a very light 9% to £2.4m (fall-off not including opening weekend previews). Including bank holiday Monday, Pixar’s latest smash now has a cume of £14.4m and is fast closing in on Cars 2 (£15.6m) and Cars (£16.5m). After that the next Pixar title in its sights is Toy Story with £22.3m, which is looking increasingly likely.
The remarkable performance of ribald bear Ted shows little sign of slowing down as a further £1.7m over the weekend takes its cume to £26.2m. It has now grossed more than any Austin Powers film and will probably finish around Meet The Fockers’ final total of £28.9m. It is also the fourth biggest film of the year so far, having just surpassed The Amazing Spider-Man 3D’s current cume of £25.8m. Read more
Every so often a documentary is released that emphatically proves the age old adage that truth really is stranger than fiction. The Imposter is one such film; an extraordinary tale of intrigue, deception and the nature of memory that will leave audiences opened mouthed with its twists and turns.
In 1993, thirteen year old Nicholas Barclay went missing after playing basketball with friends in San Antonio Texas. Three and a half years later Frederic Bourdin is found by police in Madrid claiming to be Nicholas Barclay. Despite bearing little resemblance to Barclay, indeed having different colour hair and eyes, and speaking with a strong French accent, Barclay’s family welcome Bourdin into their home, convinced he is their missing son/sibling. Read more
What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more. The immortal words sung by 90s pop star Haddaway but they could just have easily been spoken by Seth Rogen’s character Lou in Sarah Polley’s wonderful and painfully honest drama Take This Waltz.
Lou is the kind, gentle (slightly boring) husband to Michelle Williams’ Margot. Margot and Lou have been happily married for five years and their relationship is all brilliantly observed affection and baby talk. However, after a series of coincidences, Margot meets their new neighbour, the handsome, spontaneous, Daniel (Luke Kirby). There’s an instant, electric connection between them that is in stark contrast to Margot’s relationship with Lou. Read more
