Forum - View topicNEWS: Ghibli Cinema Screenings in August
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Punpun's ghost
 Posts: 73 Location: Wales |
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Sigh...
Ghibli certainly has a place in my heart, as it was seeing Spirited Away when it came out in the UK that sparked my initial interest in anime and then manga. But this also reminds me I saw Spirited Away twice at the cinema before it came out on DVD: once at the FACT (arthouse) cinema in Liverpool, and then at the local Odeon cinema in Chester... Yep, an anime on a pretty general release! A high water mark, certainly. Living in North Wales, the nearest I've gotten to see anime at the cinema since is Manchester for select Ghibli films, and then festivals in Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Leeds for a few other titles, which I hardly ever get to because I work weekends. I'm sure I'm not the only person frustrated at the dross being shown week in week out at multiplexes, to tiny audiences I might add... And as a general film-lover, I have to say I have nearly as much difficulty seeing decent live action films - even something along the par of Greta Gerwig's films are hard to find; don't even bother hoping to see foreign language films this side of Manchester or London. I know the niche market excuse is always made, but if I hadn't stumbled across Spirited Away that first time at a (reasonably) local cinema I would probably have missed what has become a real passion for Japanese culture. The work I now do as a musician, writer and artist owes so much to Japanese artists, novelists, Japanese bands, composers, film makers... I wonder how many other people would find their lives similarly enriched if national distributers/cinema chains actually showed some balls and released a good range of current animes, together with retrospectives for Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosoda, Yasuhiro Yoshihura among many others? My 10 year old daughter absolutely loves anime; yet the closest we could get last week at the cinema was the recent Ice Age film. My god, what a pile of raw and stinking tripe. So yes. Deep and wistful sighs. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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I imagine it is a "numbers game". If there are no posters on the sides of buses, the masses will contend themselves with the Hollywood echo chamber in perpetuity. Alas, the obstacles in place against initiating a marketing campaign of that magnitude is the sort of matter that causes our good friend Jerome such consternation... |
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Punpun's ghost
Posts: 73 Location: Wales |
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Been a long time since ads on the sides of busses in my neck of the woods were for current films!
I take your point, but actually, I genuinely question the methodology behind what's released and how these days. Out here in the sticks, there's several large multiplexes and one parochial cinema doggedly doing its thing, each serving the same limited community (Chester/North East Wales)... each cinema shows nothing but the same round of narrow blockbusters and CG kiddie films, meaning each gets a limited market share spread frightfully thin, so even on the first few nights, the very best they can hope for is half full, quickly dropping to 10-15 punters per viewing. How is there any money in that? Wouldn't they get greater share if they opened up a few of those screenings to other genres/film types? They always used to. I remember our local VUE showing a later evening screening of Lost in Translation and it was absolutely packed. I'd be amazed if LiT would get a showing if released today. But there were more people in that one screen (It was their largest one too) than the whole of the rest of the cinema these days. What with that and their latest strategy of releasing what would previously have been potentially solid B-list movies on such a limited release they barely scrape £100 at the box office... What's that about? I'd love to see all good and interesting films get a decent release, across the country: anime very much has a place in that, and who knows? People might like it. Most people I talk to go 'no, not seen any anime', but then say 'oh, I've seen Spirited Away... Yes, that's pretty cool'. Why not try it? I also wonder whether it might do better than keeping anime screenings to the marathon format, such as at the Leeds festival: much as I enjoy it, it's pretty full on, going to see 5 films back to back: most people would be frightened off by the prospect, I think. |
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