We’re planning some really exciting speakers and content for the upcoming Maker Monday events.
This month, we invite you to join the Maker Revolution with a live link up with Short Circuit Venice, the digital art event curated by the fabulous Aly Grimes. Using a 360 deg camera and VR, Aly will be taking us on a virtual tour of the event.
MakerMonday is open to anyone and is free, including beer and pizza. Not to be missed, so book your place here.
If you’ve previously attended a Maker Monday event, we’d love to hear your views. We’ve put together a few questions that will take just a couple of minutes to complete. Go to the survey, by clicking here.
I am delighted to be working with No11 Arts, a self-organised co-operative recently formed by lead persons of the ten Local Arts Forums in Birmingham.
No 11 is a locally rooted, ground-up city-wide umbrella organisation for the city’s Local Art Forums. The Forums have been successful in generating locally-based participatory arts activities with residents over the past five years.
As part of my work, I’ll be providing a steer on the marketing and promotion of the organisation as it launches its presence and services including web, social media, marketing and PR support.
Tim is working with Birmingham City University to work on the future strategy of their Maker Monday project. Now 12 months old, Maker Monday a monthly event that brings creatives, artists and technologist together to develop ideas through open innovation and collaboration. Held each month on the last Monday in Birmingham.
My band Oktopus has released its debut album, Worlds Apart, today on Digital Download and on CD.
The physical release is in a beautiful digipack and includes unlimited streaming of Worlds Apart via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Welcome to this week’s At The Flix. In a busy week, we look at Marvel’s latest comic adventure Deadpool, observe Will Smith fighting the cause for medical advancement, bask in the fashionista glory that is the return of Derek Zealander, observe a mashup of Jane Austen and zombies and realise that Ralph Fiennes can really dance!
Deadpool (15)
Marvel seem to back in their A league territory with this latest and altogether more adult adventure. Ryan Reynolds plays Wade, a former Special Forces operative who on facing a critical life decision is offered the alternative ‘get out’, to become part of a rogue experiment leaving him with accelerated healing powers, becoming Deadpool.
Meta comic book action
Reynolds clearly laps up the opportunity to be the ‘reluctant’ super hero as the film’s meta tone, knowing, self-aware humour, and fourth wall breakages sees Marvel side with a style of dark comic cartoon that we have seen previously in the first Kick Ass.
If comparisons are to be made then Reynolds takes the mouthy, swagger of the Downey Jr hero model and turns it up a notch through providing a foul-mouthed, blood spilled realism that adult audiences will largely lap up.
Crude, sly and very much cartoonish – perhaps this is the Marvel movie that Marvel actually needs!!!
Zoolander 2 (15)
It was only a matter of time, albeit 14 years, yet I think the cinema is ready again for a blast of Derek Zoolander’s warped fashionistic wisdom!
Derek and Hansel Return
In No.2, the setup is a simple one, as Messrs Stiller and Wilson return as Derek and Hansel begin modelling again, when an opposing company led by Will Ferrell’s Mugatu attempts to take them out from the business.
The first film has turned out to be very prophetic in its portrayal fame and vanity, for example, the prediction around selfie culture. At the time this was relatively cutting edge, partly because it had something to say and that it wasn’t dumb.
Given the way the world is, I think there’s never a shortage ammunition through which Stiller, Theroux and the other scriptwriters can take aim at! The satire, at least for me, is far more interesting than any plot angles – and here’s to also hoping the film keeps its sense of ‘fun’ and actually also funny.
A Bigger Splash (15)
This week’s most interesting looking film is set in Italy – a story of pent up desire, jealousy and rock and roll.
A story of pent up desire, jealousy and rock and roll
Tilda Swinton plays a rock legend called Marianne Lane who is recuperating from a voice related illness with her partner Paul played by Matthias Schoenaerts when an iconoclast record producer and old flame Harry played by Ralph Feinnes unexpectedly arrives with his daughter Penelope and interrupts their holiday. Harry brings nostalgia and recollection – and the dynamics of relationship boils up and over under the Mediterranean sun.
There’s an brooding excitement and anticipation at the heart of pairing Swinton and Fiennes together as two ex-lovers – with sexual tension simmering around the swimming pool, comparison must be made to Francois Ozon’s excellent 2003 film Swimming Pool.
If that’s a comparator, then I’m sold.
Concussion (12A)
In this awards season, Concussion ticks many of the boxes which get rewarded with gongs, at least on paper. Will Smith plays a forensic pathologist who on conducting an autopsy on a former NFL football player discovers neurological deterioration similar to Alzheimer’s disease.
The film covers the doctor’s crusade to raise awareness of a disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy – otherwise known as football-related head trauma.
This is a message movie with an earnest story, a bit of a corporate wrongdoing thriller thing and in Smith, you’d usually expect him as epitome of a likeable lead for the mission!
Yet despite all of this, the critics haven’t gone for it.
Pride And Prejudice And Zombies (15)
Keeping the ‘knowing’, ‘meta-ish’ theme going, another big film for this week is a kooky genre mashup blending one part costume drama, one part zombie fest.
A kooky genre mashup.
Based on Seth Grahame-Smith book, this is a film aspiring for B-Movie status – blending dark horror comedy and a cast of young British talent, led by Lily James .
The setup is made for the teen audience and those kids studying Jane Austen will go along to see what aspects of the book make it in whilst really going for fight sequences and a hint of gore.
Add the mix Charles Dance as Mr Bennet and Matt Smith as a standout Mr Collins, and there’s an element of fun to perhaps be had. That said, Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter got adapted a few years to less than satisfactory results.
With its aspirations for a younger crowd, this doesn’t feel like a film for the hardcore horror fans, and it might be that any gore violence is kept off screen.
The jury is out but one expects it to be a rip-roaring success box office wise.
Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Road Chip (U)
As half term is approaching – we’re starting to get the family films creeping in – starting with another big screen adventure for Alvin and the Chipmunks and they’re are off on a road ‘chip’.
This is the fourth big screen adventure for The Chipmunks, and the film can be summed up by one reviewer stateside, “puns that can be constructed from “chip” or “munk” represent roughly 80 percent of the creative inspiration.”
If you know the Alvin and the Chipmunks then you know exactly what you’re getting.
It’s Valentines Day this Sunday, so expect a few one off films. For example, the mac, yes the mac, are showing Dirty Dancing (15), not once but twice. They know their audience.
The Electric have been doing a great season of classics as part of their Cinematic Time Machine season. On Saturday, they move to Birmingham Cathedral for a silent movie night to showcase the comic genius of silent star Harold Lloyd in Safety Last!. Laugh-out-loud funny and jaw-dropping in equal measure, this very special screening will feature live organ accompaniment from David Ivory, and will also be preceded by the 1920 Buster Keaton short One Week. Worth booking early for. Watch out also for a showing of Gone With The Wind too at The Electric on Sunday.
So that’s it from me. It’s a very busy week at the cinema, so whatever you go and see, be sure to tweet me your thoughts at @timmy666.
Watch out also for my weekly appearance on Paul Hadsley’s Happy Talk on Mondays on Brum Radio between 12pm and 2pm where I shall discuss film, tech and anything else geeky.
Hello one and all. Welcome to this week’s #AtTheFlix, your weekly fix on what is coming out this week.
This is a very strong week, with a number of this week’s releases having a definitive air of awards season. Yet there’s more than that as well.
Let’s take a peek shall we…
The Revenant (15) Part western, part survival flick, part revenge thriller, The Revenant is the latest full-bodied Innaritu feature from feature set in 1820s America with DiCaprio as a frontiersman, who when abandoned following a bear attack is forced to muster his survival skills to find a way back home to his family. He tracks down John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the confidant who betrayed and abandoned him.
The proof is in the film’s commitment to its survival element, with DiCaprio committed to demonstrating acting performance with added Bear Grylls grit and zeal.
A big winner at The Golden Globes, this could be the feature that lands Oscar gongs for both Innaritu and the film’s leading man. A love/hate director, this is the sort of setup that was made for his particular, intense and close-up style of filmmaking.
Beautiful, bleak and tough, this is a film not to miss.
Creed (12A) Probably the film I’m most anticipating this month signals a shift in the trajectory of the Rocky franchise.
The consistent part of what has made Rocky work, or at least when it works, is not just its constituent elements that have served to make it iconic, it is an exercise in pure cinematic conviction and personality.
Rocky Balboa is Stallone’s most enduring character!
The film’s key spin is that it is a spin-off switching over to the Creed bloodline, with Apollo Creed’s son taking centre stage, as a boxer with by a tough upcoming, and turning to an initially reluctant Rocky Balboa to coach him.
On the surface, the film has parallels to the first Rocky with a rates of passage element very fitting of this enduring franchise.
Yet the real magic trick though is that this is a Ryan Coogler film and Stallone’s focus is on acting his heart out alongside Michael B Jordan. Coogler brings his own energy and smart style to this franchise and this is another must seem
Room (15) Not to be confused with the impossibly bad 2009 film The Room, this is in fact the third Oscar of the week. Lenny Abrahamson’s The Room. Emma Donoghue brings her 2010 novel to the big screen.
Brie Larson plays a young women kidnapped and imprisoned for years by an abuser; she lives with her young son Jack in a tiny room in basic rudimentary conditions.
Jack calls the space “Room”, a cruelly ironic term as well as space in which they operate. The film asks many questions of what’s at play and the psychological impact on Larson’s character as well as her attempts to protect her son from the truth, as much as possible.
The film’s uniqueness is in its focus, intensity. It a reflection on time itself and on family and seems to have human traits that we can all recognise, irrespective of the extreme situation.
Sunset Song (15) Showing at the mac, from the 15th to 21st January, a chance to catch Terence Davies’s adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel.
Set on the coast of Aberdeenshire on the eve of World War, Agyness Deyn plays Chris Guthrie, a daughter in a farming family of a father (Peter Mullan); yet when tragedy strikes, she finds liberty in the dissolution of their tight-knit family.
Davies captures nature and nostalgia like no other director, contrasting beauty with the bleakness of life and the uncertainty provided by war. Powerful, poetic and yet another must see.
Güeros (15) Showing from Mon 18th to Thu 21st, Gueros is a comedy road movie road in which the travellers barely manage to leave town, a tale of self-discovery set across Mexico City’s many frontiers.
This film has garnered many awards including Best First Feature, Berlin International Film Festival in 2014 and deserves a good reception.
Finally, at the Electric this weekend, watch out for showings of Bugsy Malone and Singing In The Rain as part of their Cinematic Time Machine season.
Ok, so that’s it from me this week. What a great week for films, so whatever you go and see, I wish you a great one.
Happy New Year! Welcome to the first #AtTheFlix of the New Year! As the countdown to awards season approaches, so expect a number of films that are just Oscar worthy versus those that are a little bit more Oscar bait!
It’s a quiet week in terms of mainstream releases this week following a busy Christmas period with films such as The Danish Girl and In the Heart of the Sea. Let’s take a genders.,
Hateful Eight, The (18) Out on wide release this week is Quentin Tarantino’s latest magnum opus, The Hateful Eight. As Tarantino approaches his self-announcement retirement, love him or hate him, each release comes with a mass of anticipation. Even at his most self-indulgent, Tarantino is an auteur of the ticks and eccentricities of cinema with a keen eye for genre-bending entertainment with knowing post-modern pokes at anything in his way, and always with ultra-violence, punchy dialogue and rip-roaring music!
So in the Hateful Eight, most of those constituents are in place, a three-hour Tarantino Western, a cast filled with Tarantino regulars and shot in glorious 70mm (oh for a local screen that can max this format!) with the added joy of a Ennio Morricone score mixed in with some typical Tarantino DJ-ing.
There are few directors who effectively have a niche all of their own – how many times have I said Tarantino above?
Being Tarantino he doesn’t lack self-importance in his own content – three hours long and one might argue where’s the word “cut”. Critical response has ranged from the five-star eulogies to those who find his ticks overbearing at times. Tarantino continues to divide opinion. I tend to err to the former – I think his films are never less than a compelling proposition and worth the price of a cinematic ticket!
Doctor Zhivago (PG) David Lean’s legendary tale of romance, hardship and wartime gets a warm Mac welcome from Friday 8th to Tuesday 12th January.
It’s a film of beauty and heartbreak. It gave us Julie Christie and in Freddie Young, some of cinema’s greatest photography.
Radiator (15) Running Monday through Thursday at the mac, here’s the opportunity to see Tom Browne’s joyous and pithy portrayal of a marriage unravelling, in typical British fashion, held together by fear and familiarity.
The Lesson (15) Showing at the mac next Wednesday and Thursday, this tough 2014 Bulgarian drama follows a woman’s desperation to keep her house at all costs. Filled with honesty and reality, the film has resonated in the art house circles, garnering awards at film festivals globally and it is good to see it getting a showing next week.
That’s it from me this week. As always, if you have any quibbles or comments, I’m available on Twitter at @timmy666. Have a great week at the movies.
