1st2thebar
I’m neither Madonna, a coffee machine, nor a new mother, this is why I can’t express myself, I’m not being defeatist, I just don’t fit into the ‘express demographic.’ My vocals are annoyingly monotoned with an unfortunate Foreign Secretary pomposity – audibly not suitable for expressing. Due to this unsavouriness, movie buffs have never invited yours truly to the ‘Cannes Film Festival,’ instead I’ve lived the experience through wealthy wannabe directors who annually make a bee-line to the South of France and comeback lobster red; claiming they mingled tirelessly promoting their movie concepts, showing their 22 minute synopsis and suchlike, rubbing thighs with the so-called well-connected who’re usually onboard luxury boats in dim lit cabins, sitting in beige suits, anodyne in nature. I’ve also got wind of the ‘darling’ crowd-funding rituals which coolly need a manageable thirty one million Euros to bring the fantasy to screen. The movie world effect is a contagion unlike no other, I recalled witnessing straight set-designer arrived back to ‘ol Blighty, all Gok Wan, eyelashes tinted wearing flannel trousers. One of the drawbacks of over expressing I suspect, the end product is neither an improvement or warrants an audience.
Ye-s, the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ employs a magnetic field of divine proportions… a festival that attracts the ‘A list,’ the ‘whos who’ of film, their kindred spirits and onlookers. They all can’t be hapless romantics, flatulent dreamers, silver screen stalkers, flannel trouser wearers, or Captain Bird’s Eye. Among the encyclopedic folly of guff, there resides immense munificence; lucrative narratives and creative concepts waft about the silky noir Lamborghinis and sederunt arrangements. Competing for the ‘Palme d’Or’ hasn’t wained for film-makers either, for an outsider the reward is to be played in eighty cinemas in the UK and US; another step towards financial security – albeit, due to poor receipts the UK cinema industry cannot expose young film-makers talent and so the injustices continues – annually the UK cinema industry fails the budding Stephen King’s of Europe, which bodes terribly for the future of film-making, there’s simply not enough creativity within the corridors of authority to relate to the importance of having exposure. A few of you may think why can’t film be made without external aid or funding and go via the digital-publishing pathway? Well they do, the problem isn’t necessarily production / ideas in the rawest of form i.e. synopsis… it’s merely finding a paying audience, and therefore a platform. There’s so many on the first-wrung of the ladder, waiting patiently, putting their lives onhold – experiencing debt, living impoverish to make ends meet; it’s inhumane to disregard this sacrifice. Practically everyone in the film industry is duped into the theory that success at the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ ensures a positive outcome including stardom. Why I tend to prefer to seek out off-the-beaten-track picture houses and pay to view successful ‘Cannes Film’ productions; that possibly due to no fault of their own professionalism, had not been gifted a mainstream outlet – the film industry is ruthlessly elitist and yet, I mope for our cinemas too.
The winner of last year’s ‘Palme d’Or’ was Ken Loach’s ‘I, Daniel Blake;’ a one-off drama-film, you’d say that had the ‘X’ factor, the film managed to grace 443 screens. As the film was produced in three languages I don’t have credible data on exposure, but to give an indicator how poorly exposed Loach’s film was in the UK – 443 screens equates to 11.7% of total screenings in the Britain alone. Docu-dramas has only 18.7% of screening coverage, in retrospect, the percentage doesn’t fluctuate year by year – naturally, the market is prominently advocating fiction; 50% higher demand apparently; albeit, there’s no precise measure of how this is calculated; although, I do have a premise. ‘Walt Disney’ via definition has their own genre pickings and I understand why, productions have a tendency to be box office hits, Just this week, early May ‘Walt Disney’ were the makers of two films in the top five; picking up nearly 69% of total box office revenue in the UK. ‘Universal’ film-makers, unlike the universe is somewhat shrinking and from a consumer prospective our movie choices are diminishing. The West needs varied film-productions hence to keep them all afloat simultaneously it’s always best to deviate from your usual film genre preference.Confuse the legs off the cyber-marketing donkey; I say this because ‘cyberspace’ a term made up by William Gibson is following everyone’s choices and movements, sounds like science-fiction doesn’t it. Unfortunately, by having a smartphone device on your person whereby you’re subconsciously interacting with it, for example: reading certain film reviews and then following up the research by buying cinema tickets by clicking rather than chatting etc, you’re effectively adhering to the cyberspace surveillance narrative. To clarify, this is the means virtual reality and cyberspace researchers are structuring their agenda. What we require is varied choices, y’see pedantic behaviours conjure up more choices… At present the imbalanced fictional film coercion is proof we’re predictable. If the coercion gets greater, there’s a case for complicit monopolization. Eventually balances have to be enforced – an area by which ‘Microsoft Corp’ is proficient in; see: ‘US Courts’ against ‘Microsoft Corps’ – in 2001. If I was so bold, I’d say there’s incoherent wealth in the movie world, that’s not managed with egalitarianism remotely in mind. Scarily, in 2014, the box office receipts were at a twenty year low and yet big production corps were still raking in profits that year, mainly on mega budget sequels and franchise opportunities. Movie production teams are also patenting famous movie sayings and many invoices have been sent to mainstream media broadcasting houses due to use of patented catchphrases. Their creative financial streams emulates the banking sector – this is another reason why I opt for a picture house production; for a super-capitalist, my judgment is defined by moral and social values. Inadvertently, it leads me on to a film I like to recommend… Ozon’s ‘Frantz’ (2016); originally released in Luxembourg; a WWII film, produced in a contemporary perspective.
