Picturehouse Recommends
The number one film in Picturehouse Cinemas this week and for the second week in a row is Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop – featured in the current edition of Picturehouse Recommends. This week is also deadline week for the next issue of Picturehouse Recommends (Issue 13 no less) which inevitably means some long hours peppered with a few arguments – not least about the cover which is yet to be confirmed.
Picturehouse Recommends was born out of a necessity to champion a few exciting and diverse films opening at Picturehouse Cinemas during the summer months of 2007 (the summer is a notoriously difficult time for certain films when big budget blockbusters dominate with their saturating marketing campaigns).
The first magazine featured Penelope Cruz on the cover with a ‘little’ film called Volver. As well as Almodóvar’s masterpiece, there was work by Laurent Cantet (Heading South), Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) and Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly). The magazine proved surprisingly popular both with our customers and the distributors of the film’s featured – issue 2 had a green light to follow hot on its heals.
Fast forward 2 years and here we are at Issue 13 which covers May to August 2009 and includes the likes of Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric, Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, Vincent Cassel’s award-winning Mesrine Part 1 (aka Public Enemy #1), Audrey Tatou in Coco Before Chanel and Rebecca Miller’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee to name but a few.
Looking back over the last 12 issues, the magazines have proved a fairly accurate barometer of films that went on to capture audience imagination. Particular hits were Volver, Pan’s Labyrinth, The History Boys, The Last King Of Scotland, Notes On A Scandal, Tell No One, The Lives Of Others, This Is England, Atonement, La Vie En Rose, Control, Juno, No Country For Old Men, Son Of Rambow, Persepolis, Man On Wire, The Duchess, I’ve Loved You So Long, Burn After Reading, Waltz With Bashir, Slumdog Millionaire, The Class, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and In The Loop.
We haven’t always got it right, no one came to see Atomised.
One thing I always have an issue with in cinema promotional mags is that the cinema has a vested interest in making the movies sound good, so it’s hard to trust what they say about them. The features or “reviews” can end up being a bland series of superlatives, meaning very little. I’ve never read the Picturehouse magazine so this isn’t a comment on that specifically. But how do you walk the line between providing an honest opinion of the films you feature, and the fact that you are trying to persuade as many people as possible to come to see them?
That is a fair point and one that a few customers have levelled at us before. We are certainly in the business of selling film and one of our objectives is undoubtedly to encourage as many people to visit our cinemas as possible. Another objective, at least as important, is to programme the very best in film and events for our audiences at our cinemas. We recognize, of course, that film appreciation is entirely subjective – you should hear the animated discussions after certain screenings – therefore an understanding of our local audiences is also vital.
It isn’t an exact science and we don’t always get it right of course, but what separates us from the competition and one of the reasons we believe we have such a loyal customer base, is the level of trust between our customers and our programming. We are always being asked to suggest something to watch and Picturehouse Recommends is an extension of that. It is an opportunity for us to highlight a selection of films we believe deserve extra attention. We don’t include every film we play and we don’t expect you to love every film that is featured, but we hope that by putting a few chosen films into some sort of context, our audiences will be encouraged to give them a try.