Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Room aftermath.

I kicked myself that I forgot to bring my camera to the screening of The Room this previous friday. I wanted to take pics of the mess the theatre was in after the screening. The Room is a very very bad movie that got the Rocky Horror Picture thing going. There's actions done at certain times and lines spoken at certain points. It's not as regimented as Rocky Horror but also not as messy.

When I restarted the Midnight series I had several people ask for this movie The Room that I had never heard of. I decided not to play it and when I e-mailed one of the guys who suggested the film he sent back a link to a newspaper article about how monthly shows at a theatre in Toronto were selling out. I mentioned it at the next couple midnight shows and got quite the audicence reaction.

I decided to book it for Nov 12th and see what happned.

We had 295 people show up, one of the biggest crowds we've had in years. We sold $800 worth of snack foods. Most of the patrons were drunk or stoned so they all had the munchies I guess.

The screening went over okay, the crowd was a bit loud but everyone had a good time, except for the few people who left becuase they were expecting to watch the actual movie.


I booked it again this previous Friday. We had about 30 fewer people but it was bloody cold that night. We sold about the same amount of food. I know this becuase again it took me about 40 minutes just to pick up the garbage?!

One of the elements of the audience participation is the throwing of plastic spoons at certain places. There must have been at least a couple thousand spoons all over the floor.


I didn't have a Midnight film scheduled for April 1, for some reason I thought it was easter weekend when I initially did the schedule. I decided to book The Room in for one more screening this year. It's just before classes end so it will be a good way for the students to blow off some steam.


The image below I found on the net. Imagine a floor with about 20 times as many spoons and you'll see what Western Film looked like.


The clip below gives a good idea about what to expect from the film.




Funny yet thought provoking article.





I came across this article on cracked.com today. I didn't even know they were still in business. I thought it was interesting and correct in many ways. It's about how 9 famous movie villains were actually correct and maybe not the bad guy they were made out to be. The one about the Wizard of Oz sounds pretty legit to me.




Check it out.




Ironic blog redesign.

You may have noticed the blog has a new look. This was not intentional but worked out. I had noticed when I embedded YouTube videos they always seemed to be cut off at the side. The new wide screen format wasn't translating properly. I started looking around at how to fix it and discovered that you could change the look of the blog. As it so happens the one I choose looks very similar to the new look of the Western Film website. I was quite happy.

Next Week's Films. Jan 28 - Feb 4



There were two movies available but there was a bit of a conundrum. To do well both would need to be the 7:00 show so I decided to experiment.




The Tourist I booked in for 7pm. This movie got some bad buzz but people have been asking for it so I think it should do okay. Even if it's a bad movie it's still got Depp and Jolie.




Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1- This has to play at 7pm for at least the first week so I booked it to start Feb 4th.




So for a late show for next week I had to get creative. There wasn't anything left that we had chosen not to play in the past. I briefly toyed with playing Jackass 3. I decided to try bringing in Inside Job a documentary about the global financial crisis narrated by Matt Damon. I'm not sure if enough people have heard of it to do well but we'll see. There are two other factors at work. The Oscar noms are being announced tomorrow and Inside Job has been mentioned as a likely nominee for Best Documentary. There is a local teacher that bring a couple classes of high school students to educational type films sometimes. I had asked him a few weeks ago if he would bring them to Inside Job and he said he probably would. Hopefully the timing is good and he can bring the students. That would cover about half of what the film needs to break even.




So Harry Potter is the following week. Not sure what or if there will be a late show since Harry is fairly long. Maybe I'll bring in Jackass, it's short and might be popular. We didn't do great with the second one though.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

I can't tell if this is real or fake.

This is supposedly a trailer for a real movie. If it is it's already in the running for worst.movie.ever. If this is really David Carradine's last film that would be a real shame. He should be remembered for the Kill Bill films.
Since three of the cast of the Kill Bill films are in this film I wonder if it's some sort of joke trailer made by Tarantino?

Friday, January 14, 2011

I want this guys job!

The first is a cool little short film making the rounds. I didn't want to give anything away by making the title of this point more specific.

According to Cinematical this short's creators have now attracted the attention of Hollywood. This adds it to the growing list of short films from the internet that are either being made into films or have gotten the filmmakers noticed. Just as an aside I'll post one of the other ones below. The second short is supposedly being made into a feature length film. It's an interesting little film, I wonder how they'll make it full length?

MODERN TIMES from BC2010 on Vimeo.



PIXELS by Patrick Jean from ONE MORE PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

This is just the credits for Enter The Void.

I've heard of the film but I'm not sure what it's about. However if this is the just the opening credits for a 161 minute film I'm not sure if my nervous system could take watching the whole film?!


Thursday, January 13, 2011

New Trailer for Battle: Los Angeles.

Sci-Fi is my favorite genre and I'm a sucker for big blow it all up action films so this looks like the perfect combination for me. If any of this looks familiar there may be a reason for it. The company that did the visual effects for Battle: Los Angeles just happens to be owned by the guys who directed Skyline which has awfully similar effects. I heard Sony was thinking of suing them but I'm not sure if they did.
I like the song near the end of the trailer. I'll have to find out who sings it.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Advance Screening of The Mechanic Jan 24th!

Alliance Films called me today and asked about doing an advance screening of Jason Statham's new film The Mechanic. Naturally I said yes, advance screenings are cool to do, especially a movie I think will be popular. We are doing the screening on Monday the 24th at 7pm. The movie opens Jan 28th.

I don't yet know how Alliance wants to handle distributing the passes. Usually they are given away as prizes by various media and groups. If there are any leftover we usually have them at the door for walk ups. It's a pretty big theatre so there's usually extra passes.

Here's the Red Band trailer: Red Band also means NSFW.

An Interesting Map.




I found this on another site, it's a map of the US with the movies most associated with each State. Kinda interesting but since I'm Canadian I don't know all of the states locations. I wonder if they had included Canada what film it would have listed? Or would Canada just be a big grey blob like it is on most US tv channel maps?
Click on map for bigger version.