One of the attractions of the authentic diner experience is that ritual of having your coffee cup repeatedly topped up. On my first morning in Chicago last autumn, taking a seat in the Sweet Maple Cafe, I realised I could partake in that ritual. There was just one problem: I don’t like coffee.
Read MoreCritics of Secret Cinema Aren't Real Film Fans
I won't deny: the negative opinions left me wondering whether I should be shelling out for a ticket. I'm not a die-hard Star Wars fan; I can give or take the fact that there's a new one coming out at Christmas. So what kind of over-privileged middle-class type does it make me when I'm prepared to jump on board the hype train?
Read MoreMy First Cinema Visit
Whether an all-time classic, or a candidate for ‘so bad it’s good’, inaugural films command our affections to the extent that even the most mediocre first movie lodges itself in the memory. My introduction to cinema was the unremarkable Dante’s Peak, so it’s hard to think of another circumstance under which I’d remember it so fondly.
Read MoreFinding the Best in Film Screenings
What Sam has created in Screening Film is the website I once imagined ... but ten times better. Cinemas, film festivals and community screening organisations register on the site and enter their events, which then show up on a map like the one above. The whole thing is searchable by area, and blog contributors pick out upcoming highlights or review recent events.
Read MoreIndie Cinema Euro Stars
The only thing I can do with the language of France is ask for a vanilla ice cream, so understanding heated political debate was never on the cards. I fired off an email to the Nova’s contact address asking if I stood a chance of getting anything out of the evening, and started on a Plan B.
Read MoreLook at What We Made
The marina just outside Barton-under-Needwood, not far from Burton, is a unique setting for a cinema. The distinctive location put me in mind of the Kinema in the Woods in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. The eighteen-month-old Red Carpet can’t quite match the back-story of the Kinema (their first screening was in 1922), but history is irrelevant when it comes to a cheery hello and a bloody good lunch. The Red Carpet offered both in spades.
Read MoreSold Out! (the author, that is...)
You don't have to pretend. You can admit that you're taking down the system from within, using the establishment to propagate your anti-establishment argument!
Read MoreThe Critique in All of Us
You see, I never stopped to think who might be interested in my writing. Being a man in his late-twenties, I assumed a similar demographic would be most likely. I never wrote with a target audience in mind, though; only a faceless crowd sitting before their computers, stumbling across my online ramblings. Thanks to the course, suddenly I was confronted by something more tangible: a group of real people!
Read MoreDays of Ideas and Plumbers
You would think that a film adaptation featuring two video game plumbers, around which the stench of failure perpetually hangs like a blocked sink (ahem), would do little to merit a place in a celebration of science fiction. Happily, there are people out there who disagree.
Read MoreGot Everything Covered
It's a significant milestone in the life of the book: with the interior editing and formatting also completed, it brings the ebook and print versions a big step closer to reality.
Read MoreBack on my Usual Stomping Ground
Amateurish effects are part of the charm of these films, but they only grant so much grace. Thankfully, the story of an island's native population being exploited by ruthless profiteers stood up in its own right, and ensured that Mothra wasn't simply an unremarkable preamble to the main attraction: a 35mm print of Godzilla.
Live Every Day Like it's Your 20,000th
It might sound like a whistle stop tour around a man's life, but Cave's mesmerising creative outpourings and deliberate articulation of thought made it impossible to feel rushed. The concentrated blend of philosophy, life history and song-writing entranced the viewer with a world that seemed entirely plausible in its artifice. Rather than begging multiple questions, it was a world that concentrated on just one: who is Nick Cave?
Lessons for the Future
Because, done right, cinema distils universal moments with elegant objectivity, encapsulating and presenting them ready to be coloured by the prism of our own feelings and beliefs. To witness characters bestowing their wisdom on the adolescent Mason was a perfect context for my quest for answers from the film.
Before the Collapse?
One tweet shared around a bit might receive a thousand views, yet the number of people who go to the trouble of clicking through and visiting a link in that tweet is astonishingly, pathetically small. Small as in, single figures small; and a stark reminder that however 'social' our media is, often we are basically talking to ourselves.
Love Me, Love My Book (part two)
Happily, the submission to Publisher 4 appeared to have better prospects. They still hadn’t read any of the actual book, but they were interested enough by the description to send their submission guidelines – a series of seven questions, the answers to which would make up a detailed proposal. A really detailed proposal.