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Don’t let the Sun set on SUGARHOUSE…..

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

If you are a friend or supporter of slingshot and our first movie SUGARHOUSE, we really need you to go see the film this weekend. The reason is this: if not enough people see it in its opening weekend, the cinemas will pull it next week and it will never get to a second week, and all our work will be for nothing, and a film that the BBC calls “bristling and brutal…. an unusually solid piece of British film-making” will be consigned to the DVD bin of cinema history.

Its as terrifyingly simple as that.

I know many of you want to see it, but if like so many, you are thinking”its finally sunny, I’ll catch movies next weekend when it is rainy again” I have to tell you that if you don’t go and see it tonight or Monday, you might never have the chance. That’s the brutal reality of the UK cinema circuits.

If the film doesn’t pull an audience on opening weekend, the powers that be can it.

And if that happens, two years of hard work and sweat that went into making a film that Jason Solomons of The Observer descibes as “a funny, furious and frightening little film…. with magnetic performances…. and a script that bristles with threat and misunderstanding. After years of trying, London film at last has its Tarantino moment - if not quite Reservoir, then certainly Walthamstow Dogs.” will go the way of the Dodo.

We at slingshot have put two years of our lives on this film. That of course isn’t your problem, but it does seem terrifyingly unfair that two years can be decided in the one sunniest weekend of August. This film deserves to be seen in the cinema. If you don’t see it this weekend, you might never have the chance to.

At the moment its on 43 cinemas across the UK, you can see details of where and book tickets right here

Please see our film.

Another world first…from sugarhouse

Friday, August 17th, 2007

Check it here:

Check out the sugar site…

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

If you haven’t seen it yet, the website for Sugarhouse is now fully flashing, check it out

www.sugarhousemovie.com


—-> the countdown to the release on 24 August is ticking, ticking, baby!

conference circuit again: digital creativity?

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

OK, so whilst I’ve been relatively quite on the blogosphere, I have been out spreading the word of slingshot in other places.

Last Friday saw not one but two conference appearances (what can I say, I’m like a travelliing troubador, singing the songs of the sling). In the morning I was at the London Media Summitt where I got to debate Content, Cash and Creativity with Reuter’s “Head of Innovation” and the aliterating nemesis of the UK digital media scene Azeem Azhar

One of the more interesting questions was about how one can use new technologies and new business models to better harness creativity. It’s a question that tends to stump most creative business entrepeneurs, but there are interesting examples of it out there.

Here is one: StarWreck - a collaborative creative phenomenon which would have been unthinkable in the pre-social media era. The transformative effect of MySpace on the garage band (a melee my brother has just joined); as is the collaborative journalism/discussion of the blogosphere itself: see the high scholarship and wit being applied to shopping by the VisaDiarist and her peers.
Any others people can think of?

But that was just the mornings conference. In the afternoon, I was speaking, with the gorgeous Mr. Gary Love at the BFI’s Young Talent week, part of the London Film Festival. We told war stories, including this one, from our experience on Sugarhouse Lane, and it all seemed to go down quite well. Almost as well as the vino tinto at the reception at the end of that day of speaking. Well what can I say, one gets a dry throat…

the rise and rise of british urban

Monday, October 9th, 2006

one of the things we set out to do at slingshot was think about niche audiences that the traditional film-making establishment was ignoring.

Recent pieces in the press about “britsh urban cinema” suggests that we may be on to something in that area with Sugarhouse Lane. More on the sugarblog…

HOWEVER, the fact that 3 of the 6 movies in competition in the British Film Festival at Dinard (including 2 of the 3 winners) were also British Urban stories, suggests that we aren’t the only ones… which on balance is a good thing….