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  • H+ THE DIGITAL SERIES

    H+ THE DIGITAL SERIES

    H+ The Digital Series, the futuristic online series will make its debut on YouTube on 8th August. The ground-breaking, multi-platform digital series is brought to us by Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. This exciting event will premiere on digital platforms, released as 48 short episodes, delivering over 3 hours of unique Sci-fi storytelling.

    The highly anticipated live-action web series has been produced by Bryan Singer (X-Men, Superman Returns, House) and centres on the aftermath of an act of cyber terrorism that kills of a segment of the world population who elected to hardwire their brains to the Internet. H+ The Digital Series takes viewers on an episodic, apocalyptic journey into the future where consumers are rapidly installing a chip called H+ into their nervous systems that allows them to access the Internet 24 hours a day – by just thinking it. One day, a virus is released – causing a third of the world’s population to die instantly. The series deals with the massive political and human changes that take place, the fight for survival and the mystery to discover who is behind this atrocity.

    Bryan Singer said: “Our first venture into the digital space gives us the freedom to engage fans with new content that is immersive, interactive and is tailored to be enjoyed online,” H+ The Digital Series on YouTube provides us with a strong two-way dialogue with our fans, creating a deeper and ongoing connection.”

    Starting today, fans can subscribe to the H+ The Digital Series channel on YouTube.  In the coming days and weeks leading to launch, viewers will have access to exclusive new content which will provide insight into the origins of H+ and details about this ambitious and innovative digital series.

  • RoGoPaG (Masters Of Cinema) Trailer

    RoGoPaG (Masters Of Cinema) Trailer

    Conceived by the legendary Italian producer Alfredo Bini, the multi-director portmanteau film Let’s Wash Our Brains: RoGoPaG (Laviamoci il cervello: RoGoPaG) brought together four giants of European cinema to contribute comic episodes reflective of the swinging post-“boom” era. The resulting omnibus collectively examines social anxieties around sex, nuclear war, religion, urbanisation – and the promise of a modern cinema.

    Roberto Rossellini’s Illibatezza (Virginity) follows an airline stewardess plagued by an obsessed American tourist whose 8mm camera enables the indulgence of a personal, and solipsistic, vision of the Ideal. Jean-Luc Godard’s Il Nuovo Mondo (The New World) takes place in an Italian-dubbed Paris beset by nuclear fallout, and wittily chronicles the changes that take place in the lives – and medicine cabinet – of a handsome young couple. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s scandalous La Ricotta (Ricotta, as in the curded cheese) presents the goings-on around a film shoot devoted to the Crucifixion and presided over by none other than Orson Welles (playing a kind of stand-in for Pasolini himself); it is this episode that landed Pasolini with a suspended four-month prison sentence. Lastly, Ugo Gregoretti’s Il Pollo Ruspante (Free-Range Chicken) depicts a middle-class Milanese family flirting with the purchase of real-estate and engaging catastrophically with an antagonistic consumerist infrastructure.

    Let’s Wash Our Brains: RoGoPaG remains one of the definitive entries of the Sixties vogue for the multi-auteur anthology film, and The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present it for the very first time anywhere in the world on Blu-ray, in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition, released on 27 August 2012. (DVD edition also available!)

  • Swede Dreams – A Festival Of DIY Remakes Of Hollywood Classics

    Swede Dreams – A Festival Of DIY Remakes Of Hollywood Classics

    There was a time when cinemas were temples, movie stars were gods and films were sacred texts to be revered by supplicant crowds. Not any more. The arrival of home video gave audiences control over their viewing habits, then the digital revolution provided them with ways of contorting and reimagining Hollywood output and sharing the results. SWEDE DREAMS celebrates the best of this work in the aptly hybrid livingroom – cum-cinema that is the Roxy Bar & Screen.

    Online piracy is widely perceived as a challenge to the mainstream movie industry, and it’s true that today’s viewers approach cinema with a new sense of entitlement. But that entitlement has creative and artistic as well as economic consequences. This two-day festival programmed by Ben Walters takes its name from ‘sweding’ – the term coined in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind to describe affectionate, irreverent and unauthorised amateur remakes of established titles – and it celebrates the finest fruits of this approach.

    SWEDE DREAMS includes five features:
    – Be Kind Rewind – sweding starts here!
    – Star Wars Uncut – the whole movie remade in 15-second chunks by superfans!
    – Son of Rambow – two kids remake First Blood in the English countryside in the 80s!
    – Flooding with Love for the Kid – one man remakes First Blood in his flat – alone!
    – Night of the Living Dead Reanimated – animators feast on Romero’s classic!

    The season also includes a special edition of regular Roxy cult-cinema night Midnight Movies’ Nightcap, paying tribute to stop-motion maestro and sweding aficionado Lee Hardcastle. A smattering of notable sweded shorts, mash-ups, supercuts and faux trailers will be showcased over the weekend too.

    More info here.

  • Hysteria

    Hysteria

    Directed by Tanya Wexler, Hysteria tells an untold tale of discovery – the surprising story of the birth of the electro-mechanical vibrator at the very peak of Victorian prudishness.

    Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), a dedicated and forward-thinking young doctor, is struggling to establish his career when he meets Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), London’s leading specialist in women’s medicine. Dalrymple’s waiting room is overflowing with well-dressed women suffering from “hysteria.” Fortunately, Dalrymple’s treatments are so successful that “another pair of hands” is his urgent need. Granville is hired on the spot.

    Granville’s improved lot in life makes him a worthy suitor for Dalrymple’s daughter Emily (Felicity Jones), whom Granville considers “the epitome of English virtue and womanliness”. As dutiful and proper a daughter as is Emily, her elder sister Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the opposite: she’s a firebrand social reformer, arguing passionately for women’s rights to be educated, vote, and live independent lives unshackled by domestic drudgery.

    Just as Granville’s life seems to be settling into prosperity and security, engaged to Emily with the prospect of partnership in Dalrymple’s lucrative practice, his hopes are dashed by an affliction of his own: hand cramps.

    This is the story of how one of the first electrical appliances in history to earn a patent sent sparks flying between a cautious man and a liberated woman, brought together by the wonders of friction.

    In cinemas September.

  • After The Wizard

    After The Wizard

    After The Wizard is a heartfelt, often humorous and always entertaining story about a 12-year-old girl named Elizabeth who lives in an orphanage in Kingman, Kansas. Like millions of girls her age she has read the beloved L. Frank Baum novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” countless times. But unlike other girls, Elizabeth believes she is Dorothy … and maybe she is. Because Elizabeth refers to herself as Dorothy and constantly looks for Toto and a way back to Oz, the headmistress at the orphanage worries Elizabeth is losing touch with reality.

    Meanwhile, the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow embark on an incredible cross-country adventure as they leave Oz to search for Dorothy in Kansas. Traveling by hot air balloon, train, bus and foot, the endearing duo find themselves lost in a world full of colorful strangers who are familiar with them, including a group of New Jersey schoolchildren they mistake for Munchkins and a wise Southern blind man who guides them on their journey.