film

FlixFixer — a new type of cinema at the Custard Factory

FlixFixer is Social Cinema at the Custard Factory Theatre. “It allows you to choose movies you love, find a venue to screen them and invite friends, family or other like-minded film-lovers to share in a screening where you set the rules – be it dress-up, dress down, no hats or no food. It allows you to build a community of friends around your shared love of movies and get together regularly to celebrate that. We screen here on Wednesdays… or you can screen here whenever you want” Loads of special nights already booking, including an offering from the Dirty Bristow team.

What ‘culture’ do you do?

Brum is, as you’ll no doubt be aware, is bidding to be UK City of Culture 2013. The final bid has to be in in May and getting a full picture of what culture is for Birmingham is and important part of it. We’ve already had Cliff Richard and heavy metal ballet suggested — but what do people actually get up to? One idea to capture that is to let everyone contribute to a one day celebration of all Birmingham’s cultural activity. For 24 hours from midday on Friday 23rd April to midday on Saturday 24th anyone can blog anything cultural they’re doing on the bid website (it’ll be at http://birminghamculture.org/blog) — you contribute via email. Anything sent to blog@birminghamculture.org will make the site — pictures video or audio included. I think this is the opportunity to show all that stuff that’s going on that doesn’t usually get publicity — culture is a pretty wide thing; are you watching football and singing? In a book club, out doing some parkour? All three at the same time? From the grottiest punk gig to the, er, soppiest punk gig, it’d be good if someone was there and recording it in some...

Flatpack – part of the furniture

Brum’s (perhaps the World’s) best film festival starts today — I’m off to the Stephen Duffy film on Sunday at least. But here’s some recommendations from other people Danny Smith (more here): “Down Terrace – Friday 26 march Normally I stay away from anything that even resembles a kitchen sink drama having been inoculated against the allure of grey bleak humanity by growing up in a house with EastEnders on every single day. But when you introduce Ben Wheatly (him what did Ideal and Modern Toss) and tense crime plot then I have to say I’m a little more than intrigued.” & PixieSixer from More Canals…: “Short Film Triple-Bill at VIVID on Thursday 25 March (6-10.30pm). With a selection of regionally made animated shorts, highlights from Shooting People’s Shooters Film of the Month competition, and an assortment of music videos and other shorts from London’s only weekly short film evening, Short and Sweet, it is sure to be a highly entertaining evening jam-packed with creative audiovisual goodness. And, what’s more, it’s free!” If you’ve got any yourself I’m sure we’d be glad to hear them.

Birmingham’s always been a place for stirring up a bit of trouble, a bit of controversy, enjoying a frisson of something a little bit special from Joseph Priestley defending the revolutionaries in France and having to flee the city to The Winterval Debacle to the decision to take away our HP sauce and make it somewhere else. I love how Birmingham opens it’s heart to everyone who visits the city and gives them a warm welcome. I love it’s arts scene, it’s creative community and the city has (another) long tradition of innovation in the arts. I’m quite excited about a new Arts festival that’s about to spread out over the whole city & take over. SHOUT is a festival of LGBT art, music, dance, theatre and sport. It also has a dollop of political and community activity. (There is literally something for everyone and if you can’t see something that doesn’t stir an emotion you need to check your pulse) The festival has come about through a number of key partnerships between the LGBT community, arts organisations and lots of dedicated volunteers and they’ve pulled together a really diverse and exciting programme. For full listings of events you...

1Day

Trailer for a new film shot and set in Brum with “a cast entirely made up of people from the streets”. Looks gritty, looks a little glamorous, expect the local press to be up in arms. Nice opening shot of Spaghetti.

Brendan O’Neill has just told me about yet another film from Stickleback Productions — he described it as “Rapunzel on smack”, which has sold me. I can’t wait to see it. But first they’ve got to raise the money. They, Brendan and Kriss Dosanjh (who you may have seen in This Is England) plan to film ‘Paper Aeroplane’ in nine days in August, and are after dough to do so now. So they’ve got a gig at the Hare and Hounds — featuring amongst others head-Destroyer Paul Murphy — coming up to get some of that cash:

Birmingham Resilience Team

… are planning to let people throw cricket balls at their nadgers for hours on Saturday to prove their resilience. And after that they’re looking for people to be in a DVD about what to do in the event of an emergency. You know, this sort of thing: Ben has the full details.

BiNS Postbag

Couple of interesting emails to BiNS in the past day, both worth bringing to your attention — you may be able to help. First Jane who’s having comic-based film anxiety: “I went into London on the train aged 16 and bought my copy the Watchmen graphic novel from the old Forbidden Planet in Denmark St in 1987. I read it from cover to cover in parks, coffee shops and on the train home that day. It was amazing Yesterday I tried to book cinema tickets for the film I have been waiting 20 years for. Everyone else in the country can see this film in most regular cinemas as of Friday’s general release, as far as I can tell. But we can’t in central Birmingham. Unless we go to the Odeon – which frankly sucks as a cinema. the IMAX has cancelled it’s planned showings (we could book tickets last week, it all seemed fine) – this was alleged to be due to a refusal to show 18 cert films, but I’ve called them up leant on them and it’s actually because they could not come to an agreement with Paramount, who decided they wanted much more money than...

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Birmingham's emotional wellbeing* on Saturday 11th of February 2012 13:30: 57 % (average)