Author Archives: Viva VHS

Video Palace

Video Palace – March 26th to 29th. A joint creation between DVD Bang, Scalarama and Viva VHS. Funded by the BFI.
After taking part in Flatpack Festival last year with a double-bill of Anguish and Popcorn for a movie-within-a-movie event, I was incredibly fortunate enough to be asked again for this year’s festival. Michael at Scalarama had the idea of joining forces with London-based Asian disc worshippers DVD Bang to bring the city of Birmingham its very first pop-up rental store – Video Palace.

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Top 10 Movies of 2014

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This year was my lowest film tally to date, but I put that largely down to a new job that presented itself slap bang in the middle of the year. At worst, my film count is usually around the top end of the 200s or lower 300s, but we’re talking less than 150 in this calendar year.
That means that there are some HUGE casualties that I missed at the cinema and probably won’t get around to until the latter stages of 2015.

I toyed with the notion of not even publishing a list, especially considering that I have averaged two a month for the past six months, but I felt there were some strong inclusions regardless. Please judge the selections accordingly. You would not believe some of the ‘misses’ – Birdman, Interstellar, It Follows, Whiplash, Only Lovers Left Alive, Boyhood etc.

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Top 25 Older Movies Seen For The First Time in 2014

Furious – The Mockingbird Theatre, Birmingham

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The Mockingbird Theatre in Birmingham is looking like being my spiritual home for the foreseeable future, and the hope is to create a semi-regular VHS club. However, with work this could be a problem.
The next treat, and I do mean treat, that I had install for the good people of Birmingham is the 1984 oddity Furious. This movie blew my mind when I caught it a few years back, and I was even fortunate enough to screen it at The Prince Charles Cinema in London as part of the Martial Arts All-nighter. You can’t seem to shake what goes down in the relatively short run time for months afterwards, even years. Furious stays with you, lying dormant.
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