January 11, 2016January 12, 2016 by hutchwp

David Bowie R.I.P.

Well, today started off on an awful note. I woke up at my normal hour after a particularly banal dream to a string of texts from a variety of people, many of whom hadn’t been in touch for years. I immediately knew something was awry.

Scrolling through the messages, I pieced together that something had happened to David Bowie. Whether it was good or bad news wasn’t immediately obvious. The first was actually from my mum. “Have you seen the news about Bowie?” it read. My immediate hope was that he would be touring again – it was nice my mum thought it was such urgent news! This was ambushed by the slow realisation of what had happened. He wouldn’t be touring again. He had passed away after an 18 month battle with liver cancer.

Devastated just doesn’t cover it.

The following is going to be a cathartic and self-indulgent diarised memory of me discovering David Bowie as an artist, character and chameleon.

1996-2002

David Bowie has been a part of my life for a very long time. I would still be classed as a relative newcomer to the party. My first memory of him was listening to ‘Little Wonder’ on one of those cheap compilation double CDs that were the rage when I was younger. This isn’t his best song by a long way, though it is a great example of him producing something special and cutting edge in a genre previously unfamiliar to him. At the time, of course, I didn’t really think that, though I was probably influenced by the fact the CD didn’t even list him on the front cover of the album as one of the top artists (Gina G, 3T and Mark Morrison did make the cut). He was just some old guy doing weird dance music that I didn’t understand.

As time went on, I began to see his influence more and more. Oasis covered “Heroes” as the b-side to ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ in 1997. Nirvana covered ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ for the MTV Unplugged in New York album, which I picked up when I reached my angsty phase (which lasted, all told, about six months). I was absorbing the snippets I was hearing but not really taking the bate.

When the album Heathen was released in 2002, it had a quality that finally made me take notice. The song ‘Slow Burn’ was a regular on UK radio stations and that alone convinced me to pick it up. It was Bowie’s 22nd album but it was my first Bowie album. Sitting alongside Gemma Hayes, Elbow and Doves, my year in music was certainly very melancholic and reflective; the tones reflecting the mood of the world in 2001 when most of the songs were written and recorded. This formed the soundtrack to my A-Level studies.

Slowly working backwards and learning more and more about Bowie, I was able to reward my patience with a thorough look at his different periods as I discovered them. This was a deliberate choice. That’s one of the great things about discovering an older artist – they usually have years of releases that you can pick up as you read more about them. So if, as I did, you get stuck on Hunky Dory for a whole year, then you don’t need to worry as the other 20+ albums will wait for you to finish with it.

2003-2012

As time progressed, I become progressively more aware that everything had gone quiet on the Bowie front. After two albums in quick succession (Heathen was followed shortly after by 2003’s Reality), I’d managed to sweep up the last of the Bowie albums by around 2010. Somewhat inevitably this went to the much derided Never Let Me Down from 1987, an album that I felt had merits but lacked any reason to hold my attention beyond his better work.

Now well versed in Bowie’s music, it dawned on me that the length of time he’d been away from the music scene could be construed as him having retired without really telling anyone. If he’s retired, then that meant he probably wouldn’t tour again. Had I missed my chance to see The Thin White Duke? Surely not.

I began to think back to when I had considered going to see him during his Reality tour. My friends and I were debating which music festival to go to. The choice was either V Festival or T in the Park. We opted for the former, getting a day ticket to see Dido and Muse. Yep. That actually happened. As it turned out, Bowie pulled out of T in the Park due to ill health and he never toured again.

I will forever regret never getting to see Bowie live. But it is something I have come to terms with over the last ten years.

2013-2016

When Bowie announced a surprise album in 2013, it almost felt like a hoax. Out of the blue on 8th January, a new single titled ‘Where Are We Now?’ was delivered to radio stations across the world and played simultaneously. For a surprise return to the music industry, it was a far cry from anything that could be considered immediate or upbeat. This, I’d come to learn, was typical Bowie.

Given that Bowie was now effectively a recluse, he had taken on the kind of godlike status usually afforded only to artists that had already passed away. Nobody thought they’d hear from him again. In a way The Next Day felt like the first posthumously released album put out during an artist’s lifetime. It was a wonderful present to fans old and new, many of whom were in the exact same boat as myself.

Blackstar was announced in November and was set for release on 8th January 2016. It arrived with no special mention of what was going on behind the scenes. A couple of weird videos with a hard to decipher message, the usual Bowie-esque ambiguities in the lyrics. It is a fantastic album and I listened to it almost non-stop for the first weekend of release.

Then on the morning of 11th January the news of Bowie’s death hit the world and suddenly the content of the album all fell into place. He had written and recorded his own obituary and released it to the world without anyone realising.

And with that, Bowie confirmed himself as one of the most confident artists of all time. Who else in the history of music would look on his own death as his final chameleonic transformation?

Today has been a day that may have started off in a depressing manner, but became one of listening, watching and consuming all things Bowie. It has been a completely beautiful experience. A sad but beautiful experience.

January 8, 2016April 19, 2017 by hutchwp

Film review – 千と千尋の神隠し / Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

Whilst Studio Ghibli has been a powerhouse of cinema in the East for many decades – since being born of the release of 風の谷のナウシカ / Nausicaä of the Valley of the Sea in 1984 – many Western cinema-goers weren’t introduced to the wonders of the animation house until 2003. This was the year that Spirited Away reached the wider audiences after being nominated and winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Those whose interest was peaked enough were rewarded with a fantastic picture realised in beautiful 2D traditional animation. Its use magically imaginative turns that seemed uniquely Eastern mesmerised the audiences, allowing its popularity to grow through word of mouth and causing a renewed interest in the studio’s back catalogue.

The story itself follows ten-year-old girl Chihiro who is moving house to a new and unfamiliar location with her parents (a familiar opening gambit in a Ghibli picture). Accidentally stumbling upon an abandoned amusement park, her mother and father greedily consume some mysterious but luxurious food whilst Chihiro investigates the surroundings. By the time she returns, her parents have turned into pigs and she cannot escape, forcing her to go deeper into the mysterious world to try to work out how to turn her parents back to humans and allow her life to return to normality.

In its most basic form, it is a coming of age tale akin to Alice in Wonderland, with a setting that is just as supernatural as the western equivalent. She is forced to find her identity as an adult after having her childhood identity removed from her – including her name – and only by doing so can she bring back her parents.

Whether this means the film is set in a supernatural world, or the middle portion of the film is simply a figment of her imagination is open to debate. Certainly the possibility is there that she has slipped into a dream and this is a manifestation of her fears and resistance to growing up. However, Miyazaki clearly decided to show that Zeniba’s hair band was still in her hair after her return to the “normal” world, a move to clearly show this wasn’t a dream at all. A subtle but sweet reveal.

It was a reminder of how to do it properly. Disney was yet to move away from traditional animation in favour of the 3D animation being celebrated by the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks, instead releasing both Lilo and Stitch and Treasure Planet in the year this reached western cinemas.

In contrast, Studio Ghibli wasn’t afraid to aim squarely at a more adult audience, and hadn’t been for years. Spirited Away was just the tip of the iceberg – representative of a rich body of work but standing out as one of their greatest achievements.

January 6, 2016January 5, 2016 by hutchwp

浪華悲歌 / Osaka Elegy (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936)

Artificial Eye, Cinema, Japan
cinema, Japan, Japanese Cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi, Osaka Elegy, review, 浪華悲歌
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浪華悲歌 / Osaka Elegy, now eighty years old, came midway into director Kenji Mizoguchi’s career. Despite this, it is one of the earliest examples of Kenji Mizoguchi’s work readily available to view by the general public and has just been restored and released by Artificial Eye as part of a boxset titles The Mizoguchi Collection.

By today’s standards, it has a strange narrative that seemingly unravels itself from a reasonably happy place to a completely unhappy place for everyone unlucky enough to be wound up in the story. It is built around telephone operator Ayako (Isuzu Yamada), a girl who uses manipulation out of desperation for her own family. Her father is struggling to keep afloat financially after finding himself unemployed and owing 300 JPY. Her brother is also in desperate need of money to pay for his tuition fees or he will be thrown off his course. A solution presents itself in the form of Sumiko Asai (Yoko Umemura), the owner of a successful drugs company who has taken a shine to Ayako. Agreeing to be his mistress to solve the financial issues, she soon realises that the solution isn’t quite as simple as she had hoped.

The topics covered by the film are explored and exploited. It’s a clever technique as the initial story seems quite bland. As the reality is revealed to those involved Ayako comes out as the only person to be perceived to be in the wrong. Several men have had an affair with a girl under half their age, effectively buying her time, but they are above the law due to their standing in society. Since she is perceived to be of a lower class, it is on her that the blame is left.

She was in fact trying to live by her giri morals – the duty to do right by ones family. Whilst her methods may be unorthadox, she never sways far from these morals. The most upsetting part is her final line in the film, revealing that she believes herself to be a delinquent.

The quality of the film is lost slightly by the poor condition of the remaining footage. Throughout the film there are issues with sound – the constant background hiss is quite off-putting, there’s the odd loud pop and the dialogue can feel muffled. It’s not inaudible, but a far cry from perfect.

Similarly, the picture quality is poor, particularly in the darkened interiors of the traditional Osakan houses where the blacks appear muddy. This, like the sound, is not the fault of Artificial Eye. They’ve clearly made a decent job of some imperfect source material. It’s a shame, but realistically this is a business venture and spending the money to restore relatively obscure Mizoguchi films would be hard to justify.

As I understand, the other three films in this box set (The Story of the Last Chrysthanthemum, Utamaro and His Five Women, Sisters of the Gion) are all in the same boat, with imperfections in both audio and visuals (I haven’t watched them yet). That these films have surfaced at all is enough to be grateful for and those looking for more Mizoguchi after enjoying the Master of Cinema releases will be well served. As such, despite the flaws this box set is a recommended purchase.

January 2, 2016December 26, 2015 by hutchwp

The Skull (Freddie Francis, 1965)

Freddie Francis’s 1965 Amicus Productions film The Skull was recently restored and released by Eureka Entertainment in the UK. It’s perhaps not the most gripping of horror films ever made, but with the classic pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the leads roles it offers a lot to fans of Amicus and Hammer.

The film follows Christopher Maitland (Cushing), an antiques dealer with a penchant for the obscure and curious, particularly pertaining to the occult. He acquires the valuable skull of Marquis de Sade, a man we learn about in the opening prelude set over 100 years previous. The skull has been stolen from Sir Matthew Philips (Lee), a fellow antiques dealer. Valuable though the skull is, Philips has no interest in reclaiming it, for reasons that are initially unapparent.

When watched alongside modern horror films, The Skull may be hard to appreciate. This is to do with pacing. Watching a horror film celebrating its 50th anniversary needs to be watched with a mindfulness of the context. The cheap shots and by-the-numbers techniques used today are nowhere to be seen. The horror in a film like this is drawn from the suspense built up by every element of the film working together and a quality acting performance of the lead character. You simply can’t view any film like this out of the context of the landscape of cinema at the time of original release.

Lee is atypically subdued in his performance as Sir Matthew Philips. It is a supporting role but it’s really worth checking out to see him portraying someone likeable for a change.

The plaudits should go to Cushing though. He carries it towards a tremendous climax in a film that actually has almost no dialogue for the final act. He may have more popular roles – or indeed more mainstream roles – but this is an off-the-radar performance that warrants at least one viewing to underline his acting credentials.

Enhancing Cushing’s performance is some excellent camerawork and framing from director Francis and cinematographer John Wilcox. It’s all about intelligence in angles and getting close enough to feel the sheer panic on Maitland’s face as the cursed skull becomes increasingly threatening. They do such a great job that the skull becomes a character itself, especially when we’re seeing the world through its empty eye sockets.

A thoroughly enjoyable horror film for anyone looking for an unusual and obscure Cushing-Lee release.

The Skull is available to purchase on Eureka Blu-ray now.

Note: The poster I used for the featured image of this article was by the excellent Andy Potts. His website is full of fantastic posters he’s done for various reasons. Check it out.

January 1, 2016January 1, 2016 by hutchwp

Happy New Year!!

I’ve had a phenomenal 2015 for so many reasons. I started the year pretty much unable to walk following a sporting injury, battled back through hard work and lots of physiotherapy to the point where I ran a 10k and two half-marathons. To not only get back to walking but also be able to exceed my previous capabilities in athleticism is a huge personal achievement and tells me anything is possible with a strong mental attitude.

I’ve watched a HUGE amount of films, at the cinema and at home. I’ve written about a lot of them here. Over 100 in fact. Wow, writing that down… is that something to be proud of? I’m going to say yes regardless.

2016 is full of huge events too. I’ll be visiting Japan for the first time and I still need to plan all of that. Studio Ghibli and Disney Tokyo Resort are two stops – why ever stop being a big kid?

I hope 2015 was as successful for you as it was for me. Make 2016 even bigger and see where you are in twelve months’ time.

December 31, 2015December 28, 2015 by hutchwp

Films of the Year 2015

I couldn’t decide on just ten films this year, so I went with twelve instead.

Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
UK release date: 2nd January 2015
Review: “There are some brilliant moments of hilarity in here, some surprising and well-handled special effects and a few intensely emotional back-and-forths from actors giving their everything to their art. The first truly great film I’ve seen this year. I can’t recommend it enough.”

The Theory of Everything
UK release date: 2nd January 2015
Review: “Redmayne’s performance was astonishing. He completely nails it, working as both a great piece of acting and an uncanny impersonation. The frustration that must be felt by the thousands of sufferers of MND is channelled directly to the viewer by coupling some intimate close-up camera work with some exceptional acting. If Redmayne wins the Oscar next month it will be because of the latter parts of the film.”

Whiplash
UK release date: 16th January 2015
Review: “In the history of cinema, there have been a small number of characters so full of evil they barely resemble human beings anymore. We’re talking Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched, Ian McDiarmid’s The Emporer. I think we can add another one to the list after seeing Whiplash.”

Big Hero 6
UK release date: 30th January 2015
Review: “The animation is the really mind-blowing element of a film that scores highly across the board. It’s fast-paced without ever feeling like it’s trying to lose you in action. The detail given to the plethora of uniquely designed characters is notable, too, and this serves to make each character feel worthy of your investment. If they’re going to spend that long making Hiro’s hair look so awesome, he must deserve a bit of attention on an emotional level too.”

The Duke of Burgundy
UK release date: 20th February 2015
Review: “A highly satisfying, twisting and twisted tale that deserves a wide audience.”

Listen Up Philip
UK release date: 5th June 2015
Review: “Each character is introduced to us from a position of imbalance and for the most part they spiral into a world of depression and failure. Schwartzman is in fine form throughout, in a role not too dissimilar to others we’ve loved to hate him in. Irritating and overly-confident characters are something of his forte, which is funny if not just because he comes across as anything but irritating in interviews he gives.”

Inside Out
UK release date: 24th July 2015
Review: “This is truly up there with the best Pixar films, no easy achievement given they have been responsible for so many of the best animated films over the last twenty years. It’s the perfect emotional rollercoaster to ride on whilst celebrating reaching the start of their third decade in the motion picture business.”

Irrational Man
UK release date: 11th September 2015
Review: “There are six listed cast members here, but there really are only two stars here. Phoenix and Stone make a formidable pairing. He may have put on some weight for this role, but Phoenix’s allure is still very much there and his convincing lost soul act is enough to make his appeal to the much younger Stone quite believable. It doesn’t quite reach the joyful heights seen in Midnight In Paris, though is streets ahead of the unfathomably popular Blue Jasmine. Well worth checking out if you can find it.”

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King
UK release date: 25th September 2015
Review: “Orion is a documentary worth watching, and it’s an experience enhanced if you know nothing about Ellis. It goes a long way into intimately portraying a man torn between being forced to hide behind a mask and enjoying the limited success he was achieving. It is balanced and as such avoids over-celebrating Ellis, concentrating on his personality rather than his success.”

Suffragette
UK release date: 12th October 2015
Review: “This is a powerful piece of cinema and a relevant work of art. It is essential viewing for all women, any of the 33.9% of the UK public who decided not to vote in the 2015 general election, and anyone with a passion for excellent cinema.”

Bridge of Spies
UK release date: 27th October 2015
Review: “This is an ode to traditional storytelling and any movements it makes to remind us of Spielberg’s supreme talents are trumped by its underlining of Tom Hanks as one of the greatest living actors. This is not a story about espionage, politics or the Cold War. It is a film about one man’s unwavering desire to stick to his principles.”

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
UK release date: 17th December 2015
Review: “J. J. Abrams has managed to pull off a minor miracle. In just over two hours he has erased most of the memories of the prequel trilogy, reminded us of the best of the original trilogy and set up a new storyline that has the whole world anticipating where the next steps will take us. The prospects for the future of the franchise all of a sudden look extremely rosy.”

December 31, 2015December 26, 2015 by hutchwp

Cinema Etc. – Most Popular Film Reviews 2015

There have been quite a few reviews posted here this year, so I thought it would be of interest to frequent visitors to find out which were the most popular posts on the website for the year. These are all reviews of new films release in 2015, counting down from ten to one.

10. Into The Woods (Rob Marshall, 2015)

9. Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014)

8. No Manifesto (Elizabeth Marcus, 2015)

7. Spy (Paul Fieg, 2015)

6. My Dad (Marcus Armitage, 2015)

5. Fußball, Wie Noch Nie / Football as Never Before (Hellmuth Costard, 1971)

4. Tiger Orange (Wade Gasque, 2014)

3. Esio Trot (Dearbhla Welsh, 2015)

2. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)

1. Elstree 76 (Jon Spira, 2015)

I suppose the thing about all these films is that they are slightly less covered in popular media so searches would place each review higher. Football as Never Before has picked up a huge amount of interest over the last couple of months after an article was published about it on a popular British news website. City Lights is a strange one as it’s one of Chaplin’s most popular films, though it was recently rereleased on Blu-ray, which could explain it.

Enjoy catching up on those articles if you missed any of them this year!

December 29, 2015April 19, 2017 by hutchwp

Film review – Hasta La Vista / Come As You Are (Geoffrey Enthoven, 2011)

Belgium, Cinema
Come As You Are, Film, Hasta La Vista, review
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As road movies go, Come As You Are follows a well-worked formula quite closely. It goes something like this: a group of young friends decide to go on a road trip together to overcome a fear or hang-up. In the process of doing so they also learn a lot more about themselves and thus the purpose of the trip changes despite the goal remaining the same.

That opening paragraph drastically does this film a disservice, because the unique plot elements are more than enough to allow this film to feel fresh and deliver an effective message. The three Flemish friends in this case all suffer from a form of physical handicap: Lars (Gilles de Schryver) is wheelchair-bound due to a debilitating and aggressive brain tumour; Philip (Mariano Vanhoof) suffers from paraplegia and has vastly restricted physical movement, thus needing constant care; Jozef (Tom Audenaert) is almost fully blind and can only see vague outlines of objects. The story starts with Philip, who has recently discovered that there is a brothel set up in the south of Spain especially for men with physical disabilities, so they decide they need to trick their parents into letting them go on a holiday to the vineyards of Europe, with the brothel as their real destination.

The basic hilarity of this situation would be easy to play for cheap laughs, but director Geoffrey Enthoven and writer Pierre De Clercq thankfully find a more pertinent voice in the bittersweet frustration of their situation. Whilst the holiday should be a huge release to finally get away from their parents and see the outer world at their own pace, the day-to-day reality of their disabilities is far too restrictive.

One of the more interesting story arcs is actually for the backup minibus driver Claude

December 28, 2015March 8, 2016 by hutchwp

Secret Cinema February 2016 Preview

Secret Cinema is a company that puts together immersive film-based experiences, set around one film. You step into an alternative reality and live in the film for a few hours, somewhere along the line actually watching the film too. Having thoroughly enjoyed the Star Wars Secret Cinema earlier this year, my first Secret Cinema event, when Secret Cinema announced their next project was coming in February 2016 I instantly put my name down for tickets.

The biggest difference this time is that nobody knows what the film is. We’ll be stepping into a world of the unknown, much like the older Secret Cinema events. A lot of people have rushed to buy tickets but are now wondering what exactly they’ve signed up to.

So what clues have they given to us? Let’s break it down.

What films won’t it be?

I think we can safely rule out any film that Secret Cinema and Future Cinema have already performed. The following films have already been covered.

A Night at the Opera (2008)
Alien (2009)
Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2009)
Back To The Future (2014)
The Battle of Algiers (2011)
Blade Runner (2010)
Brazil (2013)
Bugsy Malone (2009)
Dead Poets Society (2014)
Dirty Dancing (2013)
Funny Face (2008)
Ghostbusters (2008)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
The Harder They Come (2009)
if…. (2008)
The Interview (2014)
Lawrence of Arabia (2010)
Paranoid Park (2007)
Prometheus (2012)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (2010)
The Red Shoes (2011)
Saturday Night Fever (2013)
The Shawshank Redemption (2012)
Star Wars: A New Hope (2015)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (2015)
The Third Man (2012)
The Warriors (2009)
Wings of Desire (2010)

Quite an extensive list there. It’s a shame some of them have already been done and may never be repeated. The videos of some of them have been reported recently on the Secret Cinema Facebook page. The Third Man looked particularly immersive.

What clues have we got?

Perhaps the biggest clue as to the content of the film is the fact it is simultaneously being played out in London and Moscow. Secret Cinema regularly performs in London, but Moscow seems to be significant.

There are a number of popular English-language films wholly or partly set in Moscow that could be relevant:

The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Cast Away
Iron Man 2
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Rocky IV
Rocky V
X-Men: The Days of Future Past
X-Men: First Class

These films are all fine, but the Moscow connection is tenuous at best. The Bourne series could be the best option. However, they simply don’t fit the cult film status that you could categorise all the previous films as.

Surveillance seems to be key

Throughout all the visuals about the event have been suggestions of spying and surveillance. Going to the official page on the website, you are greeted by audio that sounds like a submarine sonar blip, with someone typing on and old-fashioned typewriter overlaid. These also feature on some of the visuals.

Quotes

Elsewhere there are quotes featured, which include the following:

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” – Anais Nin

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.” – Leon Trotsky (The Revolution Betrayed)

“Take a walk on the wild side.” – Lou Reed (Take A Walk On The Wild Side)

“Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame and withdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation’s treasure. Because he fusses over his men as if they were infants, they will accompany him into the deepest valleys; because he fusses over his men as if they were his own beloved sons, they will die by his side. If he is generous with them and yet they do not do as he tells them, if he loves them and yet they do not obey his commands, if he is so undisciplined with them that he cannot bring them into proper order, they will be like spoiled children who can be put to no good use at all.” – Sun Tzu (The Art of War)

“Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust — of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold — smells of nothing”
– Anna Akhmatova (The Smell of Gold)
Note: This was a quote provided in Russian

These quotes imply some kind of war theme, or perhaps people being oppressed or under over-zealous surveillance. There are also hints of revolution against it.

So what are the best bets?

Possibility 1

It is unlikely that the film won’t be English-language, but not impossible. What if the film wasn’t language-dependent at all? Silent films would be a bold move but one that could pay off if it was the right film.

1924 film Aelita from director Yakov Protazanov is an early silent film and is often cited as an influence on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Based on a novel by Alexei Tolstoy, it features heavily topics of sci-fi but its setting in 1920s Russia allows themes of political and social commentary that meant it was banned from cinemas in the Soviet Union.

You can watch the whole thing for free here.

I also found an excellent article on the film by Andrew J Horton at this location. A fascinating read.

I’d love to see this but in all honesty it seems highly unlikely.

Possibility 2

One film that seems to be cropping up in discussions across the Internet is Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The satirical comedy from 1964 certainly has the surveillance and war themes running throughout and is also considered a cult film by many. Its 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes shows it would be a popular choice.

The opportunity to witness a live recreation of the war room scenes would be hilarious. However, how they would skip between the war room and the B-52 bombers is a mystery to me so I’m not convinced this is the best option.

Possibility 3

Before George Lucas took on the universe with Star Wars, he had an extremely popular cult film called THX 1138. A little thought makes this a real possibility.

The tickets on offer come in two categories: Operative (standard) and Operative X. The latter comes at twice the price, but the use of the word Operative brings the suggestion of a dystopian reality where names are gone and people are just a number.

The lead characters in THX 1138 included the titular character played by Robert Duvall, an operator in a factory building android police officers, and SEN 5241 played by Donald Pleasance, a CCTV operator in charge of surveillance. Both are operatives but one has a distinct superiority over the other.

The world would be immersive if done properly. Imagine plentiful android police wandering around and telling us to not do certain things. White rooms with seemingly no walls with everyone wandering around aimlessly.

Whether enough people know of the film to really enjoy it is another matter. For me, this is a strong contender based on what we currently know.

Possibility 4

The final option considered is 1984 (Michael Radford, 1984). If you’re going for a surveillance-themed film then you can’t go wrong with this film. It is the quintessential film and book on the topic, so much so that the words “Big Brother” are used in common vocabulary to describe anything the public seems to be over-bearing on the surveillance front.

The totalitarian state rules the world in which it is set, and the main character Winston Smith (John Hurt) works for the Ministry of Truth rewriting history to suit the desired story.

The settings would be much easier to achieve than THX 1138, and it is slightly more mainstream than that film. Imagine being sent into a huge office block to rewrite a scandalous news story into something far more saccharine. The dystopia on the outside of the buildings and attempting to avoid capture by the Thought Police… All very appealing!

The only downside is the similarity to the film Brazil, already featured in a previous Secret Cinema event.

Conclusion

Well, nothing is nailed on and their clues don’t really help too much, but there are some strong contenders I wouldn’t mind experiencing. Hopefully this article has got you a little more excited.

Tickets are almost gone but some nights have limited availability.

Update

I’ve written an update following the recent communications. Check it out here.

A preview for the next event, Secret Cinema Presents 28 Days Later, can be found here.

December 27, 2015December 24, 2015 by hutchwp

Best Albums of 2015

2015 has been an excellent year for music. I’ve missed so many great albums off this list, but I ended up having to be ruthless. Here’s a list of the music that has soundtracked my year.

Bjork – “Vulnicura”
Release date: 15/01/2015
Essential track: Stonemilker