Funny trailer for Arthur remake

Here's the first trailer for the remake of Arthur starring Russell Brand. It looks pretty funny, he's trying to sound a bit like Dudley Moore I would say. The joke involving two European countries made me laugh out loud which I don't do often.

Interesting Video about Visual Effects from Hereafter

I find this kind of stuff fascinating. It's amazing what they can do with effects these days. I never saw Hereafter but I heard it was worth seeing just for the Tsunami sequence at the beginning.

Cool Trailer - X-Men First Class

Hopefully this prequel will be more like the first two X-Men films than the third one, they have a good director (Matthew Vaughn) so that's a good sign.

Next Week's Film Feb 18 - 24

Next week is Slack Week AKA spring break so it's usually a dead week since the majority of the students are gone. I usually try to play a film that primarily appeals to adults if possible, or, I try to play a film I don't expect to do great but feel I should play. In this case it's Little Fockers, it didn't get great reviews or word of mouth but it was one of the Big Christmas releases so I feel I should play it. I think the students aren't all that interested in it but the adults who saw the first two movies when they were new might be interested.

I decided to play only the one show, there wasn't anything suitable for a late show available. Monday is a holiday so it's a good week to only have one show in terms of saving some labour costs.

We won't be having a showing of Fockers on Wednesday as we will be having an advance screening of Nicolas Cage's new film Drive Angry at 7pm. It will be free, check the website at westernfilm.ca for details.

There were two other films available:

The Dilemma- I'm not sure I'm going to play this one, it didn't get a lot of press, got bad reviews and generally bombed.

Barney's Version- I'm also not sure about this one, it has low awareness but is apparently a good film.

The Fighter was already available but I didn't want to play it during Slack Week. I'm currently planning to play it starting on the 25th. The weekend is part of Slack Week but the students will be back for the weekdays.

True Grit has done well enough to keep for another week but again I didn't want to play it next week. I'm planning to bring it back starting Feb 25th as a late show unless something more interesting is available. It will be back at some point. True Grit has done pretty well this week and the numbers are low because the students start leaving for Slack Week early or have assignments right before Slack Week.

I was quite surprised True Grit came available when it did so that leaves me some hope Black Swan and King's Speech may come available during March.

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.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18417_the-lighter-side-dark-side-5-villains-who-were-good.html

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.

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?

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?!

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.

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.

This looks interesting.

I don't know if this movie is going to get a Canadian release, probably not, but I'd go see it.

Midnight Movies so far update

We've only done three midnight films but all have done quite well so I'm optimistic the series will work.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail did about 70 people and they quite a few bought snacks.

The Shining did about 53 people but they bought more snacks and the dollar total was almost the same as Holy Grail.

I expected it to do less but Princess Bride did the best with about 85 people and a ton of snack bar sales.

So far each movie has done more than double what it needed to break even. This is good as some of the later movies may not break even. As long as the series as a whole doesn't lose money I can keep doing it.

This week is Clockwork Orange which I expect to do about the same as The Shining.

I purposely front loaded the schedule with the obvious Cult films to give the series a kick start, after Clockwork we get into some movies that are less obvious and I'll be curious to see how they do. I'll also be watching carefully what does well to help decide what to book for next term.

I'm still taking requests at wfilm@uwo.ca.

Next Week's movie Oct 15 - 21

I had already booked in Inception to start on the 15th. It was available last week but I had already booked Eat Pray Love. I think Inception will do well, we've been waiting for it for a while.

My only decision was whether to play a late show next week. Inception is so long a late show would have been at 10pm, really late for us. Only certain movies will work that late, generally movies aimed only at younger people. Scott Pilgrim might have worked but I had already played it for two weeks. I considered bringing back Toy Story 3 since it was popular and is short so it wouldn't end too late at night. I decided not to. I also briefly considered playing Inception for two shows a night. I think it's popular enough to do so but the late show wouldn't finish until 12:45 which is after the last buses. It would also mess up the Friday Midnight movie.

Let Me In turned out to be available for next week. I wasn't expecting it to come off so fast. I considered playing it after Inception but decided I should wait for a week when I can play it earlier. I don't get a lot of movies that are good late shows so I wanted to make the best of it. Let Me In is basically a horror film but has enough other elements that it might play well at Western Film. It got good word of mouth as well. It may tank but it seems worth the risk.

So in the end Inception is playing by itself at 7pm.

Let Me In will be the late show the following week. I'm not sure what to expect for the early show.

Sometimes I think we should play this trailer before each movie.

Let's just say occasionally I find things up in the back row I don't want to touch after the movie.

3D Discrimination - Jackass 3.

UPDATE: Paramount moved the 2D release back to Oct 15th, the same date as 3D. I find it funny I never heard anything about this anywhere else but somone must have complained pretty loudly.


I just found out that anyone who can't play Jackass 3 in 3D has to wait 3 weeks before they can play it in 2D. 3D runs open Oct 15th but 2D runs open Nov 5th. This is new, up til now 2D always opened the same day as 3D. Yet more discriminatory practices against smaller theatres that can't afford the $100,000+ it takes to convert one screen to 3D.

I think they are doing this because more and more people are choosing 2D screenings over 3D because it's cheaper when given a choice. They are attempting to make more people pay the 3D surcharge as most admissions for any movie are in the first two weeks. However this movie is actually shot in 3D, not converted, and is probably one of the films that the 3D will be beneficial. Although I'm not looking forward to what they 'throw' or 'point at' the audience, I imagine gross substances and body parts not normally seen on screen will be involved.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think Western Film will play the movie anyway, we'll see how it does.

Midnight Movies return.

We used to run a series of cult films Fridays at Midnight. It was quite popular however most of the films people wanted to see were no longer available on 35mm film for various reasons, mostly age and worn out and not replaced. I couldn't do the series on video because the video projector in the room generated a small, dim picture I would have been embarrassed to try to charge money for.
That's not the case any more.
The USC has invested in a new, high end video projector for the McKellar room for Western Film to use as well as other users of the room. It isn't a Digital Projector like some theatres use, those are still about $100,000. One of the main reasons I listed in my business case for buying the projector was the possibility of bringing back Midnight movies and playing them on video. People still ask about midnight movies all the time.
So now we can play the films off a DVD or Bluray. The new projector makes an image almost as good as the film projector and fills most of the screen.
Now we can play anything available that we can get the rights for. We can also play some movies that were never available on film in Canada such as Donnie Darko.
There's still some movies we can't play. Fox and George Lucas have all the Star Wars films out of service which means we aren't allowed to play them.
The most requested film is Rocky Horror but it's too messy to play in our nicely renovated theatre.
I've booked the first few films, however as of this writing only Holy Grail is confirmed so the list may change. I'm having trouble finding who owns the Canadian theatrical rights to Evil Dead, it's not the same as who owns the DVD rights which is unusual.
Now hopefully people show up. I'll be quite embarrassed if I've talked this series up to get them to invest in the new projector and not many people show up.
In the previous series we had more than 100 people show up for a few of the movies, however almost all of them were the movies with horrible prints. (Shining, Clockwork Orange)
If anyone has any suggestions please e-mail or leave them in the comments. However, take note, I reserve the right to ignore suggestions. I kept track of the movies suggested before, one of the most requested films, Taxi Driver, has one of the lowest attendances. I've had 4 people suggest a movie called The Room which I had never heard of. Since three of those requests arrived in one day I suspect one person had his or her friends request it as well. I'll embed the trailer below. Anyone think I should play it?