Popcorn Comedy comes to Brum!

That's right, Popcorn Comedy, a comedy night dedicated to bringing you the funniest online videos and stand up, is coming to Birmingham Comedy Festival!

We'll be presenting the opening night of Popcorn Comedy Birmingham at Britain's oldest working cinema The Electric on Monday 5th October at 8.30pm, featuring the rap/stand up stylings of Doc Brown and the wonderful Holly Walsh live on stage, as well as a selection of the newest and funniest videos from the web in glorious high resolution.

We should also be premiering a brand new video on the night too, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Popcorn is sponsored by the good people at Hello Digital.

Tickets are only £6 each. Order here: http://www.theelectric.co.uk/booking/book.php?date=1453

Here's some quotes about Popcorn Comedy if you're not already convinced:

"Popcorn Comedy does the hard work for us, offering a monthly selection of the strongest, sharpest and funniest videos online. And instead of the usual 320 by 240

pixels, here they’ll be transposed to the altogether more satisfying platform of a full-size cinema screen, and mixed with live performances."
The Guardian

"Popcorn is such a good idea you almost can’t believe it’s the only club like it."
Spoonfed.co.uk

"I haven’t been to a better comedy night for yonks and yonks. It is that good."
Robert Popper

The Electric Cinema
47-49 Station Street
Birmingham
B5 4DY

0121 643 7879

It's near New Street Station and pretty much next door to the Old Rep Theatre if you don't know it.

Off to Edinburgh!

Ehy! Message in a Bottle will be making an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of Popcorn Comedy's Best Of Show. The shows will be on 6th and 26th August and only cost £5 which is an amazing price 6 top quality stand ups and bunch of videotic gems.

Go HERE to see more details. Don't ask why! Just do it!! It's really good... Oh well read on.

We won't be able to catch the shows, but we'll be catching the aftermath of it on the last weekend of the festival (28th-30th). The last time we were up I was a student there and the smug occupier of a beautiful flat... It's going to be a bit more guerilla style this time round. We'll keep a log and possibly even a fun bit of video to document our travels.

This is bringing back all sorts of memories. If you ever happen to be in the National Gallery of Scotland keep a look out for this painting of 'Jesus'. However, if you look closer it's not Jesus... it's Tom. That also appears to be Andy Murray flogging him. That guy on the left looked familiar too but we just couldn't work it out. After carefully ripping it off the wall and gently ramming it down Tom's trousers we took it away to have a closer look......

..... Turns out it was Dave Benson Phillips.

Popcorn Comedy

Final screening anecdotalism of the week.

Somewhere else that we've been screened the last couple of months is at Popcorn Comedy. Run by Jon Petrie (brother of the really quite good Ed Petrie), it seems to be one of the most exciting comedy nights out there. By the looks of it, it's much like Filmrats, in that it has the live/video mix, but instead of musical acts has some of the best break through comedians about and has the choice of some of London's coolest little hideaways. Although they're not afraid to tour around having moved up to Edinburgh this August for the festival.

We were really chuffed to have been approached by Jon to screen some stuff and can't wait to actually get down to one of the nights. Especially with such comedy heroes as Robert Popper hailing the boots off it.

Here's a round up of the night by SpoonFed and an ickle name check to ourselves.

Screened at FilmRats

On Wednesday, was FilmRats, based in the Bristol Pear in Selly Oak. We've had our stuff screened there for the last couple of months but weren't able to make it, so it was a nice surprise to see the evening's films finished off with Bored Stiff and Message in A Bottle.

Organisers Andrew and Tom Hewson seem to have got the event down to a T, warming up the night with some music/live performance, then some films, then polishing of with a final musical act. An audio visual sandwich if you will. I think the guys have got a great feeling for keeping the mood up in the room too. It's easy for these sort of screenings to end up as a endless depressing sludge of grainy experimental films - which is great in moderation - but here the films were mixed up so that there was a nice change of pace and our in-your-face-dirty-little-treats were used as little pick-me-ups at the end. Most importantly though Andrew compared. The most important thing for events like this is to TELL people to clap and get some repore going. For some reason people just don't do it otherwise. I still don't understand why.

The venue's the perfect setting, it's relaxed, nice size and layout, built in projector and a decent sound system. It's a shame no where in the city centre really matches up. Highlights were personal favourites KateGoes plus FaceOmeter, as well as meeting Black Country Cinema collective, Birmingham Salute.

The Great Animation Challenge

The last week involved a few lovely screening/social events. Here's the first.

On Tuesday was The Great Animation Challenge at the Lighthouse, Wolverhampton, which started off with brilliant round up of animations from last year's Flip Festival. My personal favourite was about a man who's slipped coordinates in 3D space and is trying to fix it by being hit by asteroids. I can't tell you the name of it yet as I don't know... (Skhizein, directed by Jeremy Clapin) I also missed the first half of it. Maybe that added to the feeling of just watching a snippet of someone's life, rather than going through the whole process of setting up the character. I quite enjoy watching films half way through or without the sound on. You have to piece together a story which is probably no where near as interesting as it seems because it's turned into a puzzle, everything they do suddenly becomes potentially important.

After that bit of reflection, came the screening and announcement of the winner of the Animation Challenge itself. The prize rightly went to Joe Lea's interpretation of Underwater Fax of Death, which thanks to other people's attraction to the song means I'm still singing that song in my head 4 days later. Afterwards, I got to catch up with some familiar faces and chat to some new ones... which was nice.

P.S. I'll find out the name of that animation and see what I can link to.

Don't Touch goes to Glastonbury

*Edit* Looking back through the emails I believe we were shown twice at Glasto, courtesy of the lovely ChewTV.

Don't Touch is off too Glastonbury Festival with thanks to Dave Allen of the mighty Animation Forum West Midlands! From what I've heard it'll be screened on the BBC's back-to-back 25m2 screens. Whoop-di-whoop. Other films being shown are Second Home Productions' The Animal Book, and The Brother McLeod's Codswallop. Fine company indeed.

For info and a bit of a history on Don't Touch lookee here.

Birmingham Big Screen / Time Travel

Shhzzzwaaap* Bit of time travelling here. Hello 2006!.. Heh... Nah, better not. Best you found out yourself. No, honestly. It's... Ahh, no. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

Having un-earthed events and tings that happened before the blog exsisted, it seems to make sense to use the blog as an archive. So now when someone says, "Heh. Do you remember that day with the Doritos?" You can say, "No, but what was the approximate date and I can find out about it on the blog."

'It Came In Peace' makes Birmingham Big Screen's December lineup. Lots of other animations there, but one that jumps out is Natalie Ann Hinchley, whose name will be popping up all over the place. Brother McLeod's 'M-Man' is also in the line-up. There is a video of the screening, but old big boots Tony B. talked all over it. It all started to go wrong after that.

Lets see if the time continuum stands up to this callous abuse.