VIEWING PLEASURE...

I haven't talked about films here for ages, because I haven't been to see any! Something weird is going on in the film industry and I know it's all to do with the financial crash, but come on! All I know is I love going to the cinema and I used to go at least once a week, or be lucky enough to go to the occasional preview screening. I think I haven't been to the cinema in London since January? The films that are getting released here aren't exactly those that appeal to me - hmm, let's look at the latest offerings at my local (usually arthouse friendly) boutique cinema: The Hangover II, X-Men: First Class, Kung Fu Panda 2, Bad Teacher. Oh, here's a link to an article about how one in five films released this year will be sequels. *Burns cinema membership card.* Surely this strategy of only backing films that are projected to make a certain box office return isn't working, if it's putting cinema lovers comme moi off going at all. The weird thing is, once you get out of the habit of making a night of going to the cinema, it's hard to get back into it. I finally joined the BFI because I went there so often - and since I joined I haven't been once! I have no explanation for this.

However, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris has been getting big thumbs up from a lot of people whose taste in film I respect so I'm really looking forward to that. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be excited about the new Woody Allen film. Except it has no UK release date - what! And Miranda July's new film The Future will be out (or maybe just shown at the BFI London film festival?) in er, November. So that's ONE FILM in a year to look forward to? Odd. Very, very odd.

But there is hope! Tonight on BBC HD (or rather tomorrow) at one o' clock in the morning there is a screening of Kinga Burza's first short film Candy, which will then be available to watch on BBC iPlayer for the following week. If you've seen the new issue of Lula you'll have seen the article about the film. Kinga Burza has directed music videos for Ladyhawke, Kate Nash, Patrick Wolf, La Roux and The Teenagers among others, and she directed this cute little film for Kate Spade earlier in the year. So yeah, Candy, a thirteen minute long film I'm interested in seeing, being screened in the middle of the night on TV. It's a start!

(p.s. If your internet connection isn't fast enough to watch it online in HD (hello me) you can download the BBC iplayer to your desktop, then download the film and watch it.)

{Candy poster shot by Kasia Bobula, photo from Lula by Ren Rox}