Wednesday 17 August 2011

So it's been a while since i posted here, things have been up and down at Flix.
We have had some very busy periods but also some very very slow ones, like the one we are in at the moment.
Our Facebook page has over 2800 fans, i just wish half of them would come once a week and spend a fiver, things would be great.
We have made a few changes at Flix after realising that certain things work and others don't.
The cinema side of things has been scaled back to just the back room now, we list a movie Wednesday to Friday now instead of every night.
Our movie quiz night is going awesome, although as the students are on holiday it has slowed slightly. we have had to get rid of the couches and armchairs in the front half of flix and replace them with restaurant tables and chairs, we now have 12 extra chairs and people will be able to get a seat to do the quiz. we have a Thursday night MUSIC quiz which is going to change to a Monday in September, it has been building slowly but i have no doubt that it'll get busier and busier.

Another thing we have been doing is Live Comedy Nights, we have had 10 very busy nights and couple of crap ones but the comics were still great.
These nights run on the 2nd Wednesday and 3rd Saturday of each month. come along and have a laugh.

The new £5.00 tickets system is great for screenings and i'm sure it'll be good for comedy nights as well. it gives people a sense of what the costs are at Flix, we had lots of people ringing here and asking how much it costs? with us being a restaurant we don't have a set price, you go off the menu, everything is individually priced. Now it's a straight fiver for a seat and you can redeem the price back on food for screenings. for comedy the fiver is an admission charge to see live comedy but we still let you get a free drink with your ticket.

The quiz night on the other hand has been a bit of a nightmare. some people were coming to the quiz nights and paying their £1 to play and then not spending a penny all night or maybe buying an orange and water then nursing it like a newborn. whilst others who were spending money couldn't even get a seat.
We introduced the ticket price to ensure people don't treat us like a free night after we found that people had secretly been bringing in their own food and drinks. it has backfired a little as it has put some people off coming because they have to pay the fiver up front.
To be fair, they normally spent that much an more anyway, i just don't understand some people though. Maybe i am in the wrong.

We are sticking with the ticket price so if they don't come back then it is their loss, who plans to go out and spend less than i fiver anyway. if i was that skint i'd stay at home and cry (I know that sounds harsh but they obviously should be spending their time on something more important than i movie quiz)

Private bookings are going well now, we used to only do them for 10 people or more but now we are allowing people to buy a minimum of 10 tickets (£50) and they can have the room privately no matter how many their are, tomorrow we have a booking for 3 and a booking for 6 that have both done so, they can only redeem for food the amount of tickets that there are guests though, anything else must be paid for.

I feel like i have said a few things here that i probably wouldn't have said on Facebook or Twitter (140 characters, what a joke) it's made me feel better though.

So Flix Movie Cafe is still here, we are struggling at the moment and need peoples support. everyone always says how great of place it is but they fail to come along. one day they'll turn up and it could be closed (shit! i'm baring my soul here).
So tell you friends, family and everyone to come along and spend a FIVER, it's only a bloody FIVER!

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Brick Walls

I am not getting anywhere with my investigations into screening cinema releases, i hit brick walls all over the place, i am getting so annoyed, people keep directing me to Filmbank, i know who they are i already have licenses from them but i want to do something different to what they offer.
AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Thursday 17 December 2009

Avatar (My Greatest Cinema Experience EVER!!)

I've never seen a 3D movie before, so i decided to start with the most hyped film of the year (possibly of all time).

Big Mistake!!!!

I should have started with something a little older, 'Jaws 3D', maybe 'Nightmare on Elm St 4' (I think thats the 3D one).

By watching 'Avatar' first i have probably ruined the next 5 years worth of 3D movies i'm going to see because it was truly magnificent and nothing is going to live up to it for along time..

I'll start at the beginning....

Along time ago a guy named James Cameron had an idea about
Big Ass Smurf's popping out of cinema screens all over the world.

To do this he needed to wait along time for the world to accept the idea that 12ft Smurf's really existed on another planet (Pandora) and that Humans travelled there to steal expensive rocks and oppress them, luckily for him with all thats in the headlines on this planet it wasn't hard to accept that people do actually invaded other places and steal shit from them.

The big ass smurf's are actually called Na'vi, whilst watching the movie i likened them to native indians, they were at one with there surroundings, they used the jungle and accepted that it also used them.
The humans on the other hand were as humans normally are, greedy and ignorant to anything that they deem smaller or less significant than they are.

I don't want to tell you the plot so i'm going to stop here about it (or my interpretation of it i should say). What i really want to tell you about is the experience as a whole. the story was amazing but what James Cameron has done to the world of film making (or will do once everyone else has caught up) was even more amazing, in my eyes he has created a silent role for everyone who goes to see this film, I WAS THERE!!!!

I WANT MY NAME IN THE CREDITS!!!!! i got hit in the face by a gun, i got insect bites and i got burned by falling ash. i walked out of the cinema and my shoes were squelching because i'd been swimming in a Pandoran lake.
It felt like i was really there and i could touch everything.

That is what movies should and hopefully are going to be like in the future (the not too distant future i think).

When i read a book i immerse myself to the point i don't even hear the phone ringing or the smoke alarm going off when my GF burns toast. I stand next to the characters and listen to them speaking through the words i read.

James Cameron has created a watchable book!! I felt like i was the only person in the cinema!! It felt special!!

GO and see this movie... You will not be disappointed!!! if you are disappointed though i would advise you to stop reading my blog because we have nothing in common. (only kidding)

Enjoy it for the masterpiece that it is.

Friday 4 December 2009

Guilty Pleasures

Everyone has guilty pleasures when it comes to movies, we all love to watch something that you'd never admit to liking in a million years. this is a list of those type of films, if you haven't seen one or more of them then why not try them out.

(You'll probably be disappointed, well thats what you'll tell people but really you'll love them)



10 great bad movies



Leaving Showgirls off a list of great bad movies is like having a safari suit party and not inviting Roger Moore

You can't beat a good old fashioned guilty pleasure. Here's Luke's choice of ten bad movies you can't help but have some love for...

Published on Nov 24, 2009

Movies don't always have to be good to be entertaining. Sometimes, just sometimes, it's better when they're not. Because when things go wrong, and that alchemy of making great movies gets diluted by blind folly, mixed intentions, or just plain old ineptitude, wonderful things can happen.

Although that's not to say Uwe Boll is in any way a great entertainer. Sitting through Alone In The Dark is a feat of endurance no one should ever have to suffer. Unless they've done something wrong, like stolen a shoe, in which case it's a fitting punishment for the crime.

It takes a special kind of bad to tread that fine line between unmissable and unwatchable. Below are ten such films, in no particular order, that get the mix just right.

Warning: For those easily offended, this piece contains one use of the 'S' word, and reference to Whoopi Goldberg.

1. Volcano

While rival lava film Dante's Peak went for the caring, sensitive approach, Volcanohad the right idea all along - just blow stuff up. And blow it up huge. People melt, fire engines explode, skyscrapers are levelled, lava bombs shoot out of the ground. Some more people melt. At one point, a dog has his head bandaged next to a snake with a big plaster on it. A girl cries out, "Dad, hurry, my leg's on fire."

In a movie where logic has no place at all - Anne Heche's sexy geologist has to explain to a stunned LA crowd what lava is - not even Tommy Lee Jones' gruff chief can bring sense to it all. Walking up to a bemused technician in the centre of all the chaos, he taps on a computer and barks, "See that, that and that? Now watch this!" Hard to take seriously then, but oh so easy to watch.

Best bad bit: The Spectrum ZX effects are pushed to the limit as a hero ticket conductor selflessly throws himself into a pool of custard-like lava.

2. Remo: Unarmed And Dangerous

Originally intended as the first in a Bond-style franchise (and with the pedigree too - Bond veteran Guy Hamilton directing), the adventures of Fred Ward's police officer turned martial arts assassin spy were brought to a crushing halt after just one mission. But what a mission. With everything that made 80s movies so unforgettable - training montages, a synth soundtrack, big beards - Remo is bad in all the right places.

Plus, it showcases the golden talents of Mr. Ward, one of the most criminally under-used actors of his generation; forget Tremors, just watch Miami Blues to see how good he was when given a role befitting his talent. He even gets mentored by an old Chinese guy (well, Joel Grey) who can walk on water and dodge bullets. It'll be enough to give you goosebumps.

Best bad bit: Remo's training sees him master the long-forgotten, and always useful, art of diving really quickly through a big mound of sand.

3. Cocktail

Sorry The Room, but this just might be the Citizen Kane of bad movies. If Orson Welles' masterpiece is rightly celebrated as a probing examination of an American icon fuelled by hate and ambition, then Cocktail deserves just the same, for here is a look into the soul of that rarest and most confounding of beasts: a man who knows how to mix drinks. And mix them really, really well.

Armed with one of the best taglines of all time ('When he pours, he reigns'),Cocktail runs breathlessly through the whole gamut of bar experience - Cruise learns to pour drinks in swish New York bar; Cruise branches out and pours drinks in nice little Jamaican bar; Cruise realises his dream and pours drinks in his own Irish, down-to-earth bar.

And if Kane's potent message was of the hollowness of the American dream, thenCocktail's is all the more daring: never under-estimate how long people are prepared to wait for a drink, especially if the barman is doing a shit-hot karaoke version of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love.

Best bad bit: "I make drinks so sweet and snazzy. The Iced Tea ... the Kamikaze!" The Cruise-ster takes to the bar stage for some beat poetry.

4. Showgirls

An obvious one perhaps, but leaving Showgirls off a list of great bad movies is like having a safari suit party and not inviting Roger Moore. It just isn't right. Made when Paul Verhoeven was at his commercial peak following the triple whammy ofRobocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, and with a multi-million dollar script by the so-hot-right-then Joe Eszterhas (actually, he'd just done Sliver, so not that hot),Showgirls feels like the ultimate dare movie; hey, let's tell a morality tale about Vegas erotic dancers with that girl from Saved By The Bell.

About as erotic as Keith Chegwin's Naked Jungle, Showgirls is nonetheless strangely hypnotic; just when you think you've seen it all, including a conversation between Berkley and Gina Gershon about what type of dog food they used to eat, Kyle MacLachlan and Berkley take the kind of dip in the pool that would get you thrown out of Butlins in a shot.

Best bad bit: LA Law's Alan Rachins kindly offers an ice cube to Elizabeth Berkley. If you've seen the Adam & Joe doll version, it'll bring it all back.

5. McBain

Christopher Walken - two words big enough to make the bad movie connoisseur weak at the knees. Boasting a CV that's overflowing with the type of duff movies that would be enough to derail mere mortal film actors, Walken has somehow managed to fight on after a litany of career wrong turns; Gigli, The Country Bears,Excess Baggage, Kangaroo Jack.

It's McBain, however, that stands head and shoulders above all, a film so violent and wooden it feels like an episode of The A-Team directed by Abel Ferrera. Only not as subtle.

Walken's retired soldier-slash-welder (hey, someone's got to weld all that stuff that needs welding), McBain is a role so one-dimensional you wonder if Chuck Norris turned it down first. That's not enough to put off Walken, though. If you've ever asked the question ‘what would Rambo have been like if Christopher Walken beat Stallone to the role?', McBain provides the glorious answer. It would have been brilliant.

Best bad bit: Walken sympathises with Maria Conchita Alonso's loss of her brother by telling a story about going to Woodstock when it was really muddy. It's all in the delivery.

6. Mission Impossible 2

Is it wrong to have two Tom Cruise films in here? Not when they're as bad/good asM:I-2, a film that proves even when you have a bag full of money, a terrific director, and a leading man with great hair (is that blow dried?), that's still no guarantee of quality.

Admittedly M:I-2 has its moments (Ving Rhames's "Nyah's in the building" may be the most perfectly delivered line in the history of movies), but after Brian De Palma's elegantly crafted franchise opener, John Woo's effort feels like a Danielle Steele love triangle dressed up in SWAT clothing. And it's every bit as trashy as that promises.

Anyone who can keep a straight face to Cruise's Last Of The Mohicans-inspired goodbye to Thandie Newton in the factory shootout, or their swirly car seduction (just watch that hair!), is made of stronger stuff than I am.

Best bad bit: Cruise's Ethan Hunt, stricken with grief as Newton's super sexy thief injects herself with a slow acting poison, does a little cartwheel in the sky as he parachutes away. The man is hurting!

7. Striking Distance

Bruce Willis apologised in a 2004 TV interview for this 1993 offering, saying that "it sucked". Which is kind of like saying the Titanic had a bit of a bumpy ride.

A movie so bad it effectively ended the career of director Rowdy Herrington (the man directed Road House - that's got to count for something!), Striking Distancetries to add a fresh twist to the police action movie by putting Bruce Willis' alcoholic cop (he must have read the script) behind the wheel of a boat and partnering him with Sarah Jessica Parker. Bad idea. Twice.

Frasier's Dad turns up, but then realises what he's got himself into and ducks out early. Willis, meanwhile, isn't quite so lucky, forced into a pair of shorts and a plot that tries to convince us he's Irish-American. Neither is all that convincing, but there's something oddly reassuring about watching John McClane and Carrie Bradshaw patrol the waters.

Best bad bit: Parker's magical appearing bra trick, post fireworks party, beats anything Derren Brown can muster.

8. Theodore Rex

Whatever way you look at it, Theodore Rex is bad. Really, really, really bad. This is a movie where dinosaurs can talk, walk on two legs, hold down a steady office-based job, wear clothes (does that make Jurassic Park a skin flick for any dinosaurs watching at home?), and dream about pairing up with Whoopi Goldberg's grizzled detective to solve crimes.

But maybe because of Jurassic Park's quantum leap forward in making dinosaurs look frighteningly real, Theodore Rex should be treasured. Coming two years after Spielberg's CGI hullabaloo, here we have a man dressed up in a big rubber foam suit and squeezed into a very questionable blue dungarees ensemble.

There's something about an end of the world, ice-age disaster going on, but essentially the movie is about how the hell Whoopi Goldberg can hold a straight face next to a special effect that looks like it was thrown out by Barney for being too crappy-looking.

Best bad bit: All of it. Until Soldier came around, this was the most expensive straight-to-video film ever after being deemed too rubbish for cinemas.

9. Species

Okay, so the original Species was no masterpiece (and in Forest Whitaker's ‘psychic' - a man so incredibly psychic that he was able to sense that "something bad happened here" when walking into a carriage filled with an alien cocoon pod and a half digested ticket conductor - it had one of the most annoying movie characters of all time). But the sequel takes things to another level, one that makes the original look nuanced in comparison.

"They could f**k the human race out of existence," says Michael Madsen's fearless (which for Madsen means bored) mercenary of the alien sex fiends. True, but at least we'll go with a smile. And with Homicide's Munch as the American president.

Best bad bit: It all gets a bit frisky in the film's climactic alien face off, which comes off as a Playboy Channel version of Alien Versus Predator.

10. Hard To Kill

You know you're in for something special with a film made by one Bruce Malmouth, sandwiched between his directorial efforts of an episode of TV's Beauty And The Beast and Pentathlon starring Dolph Lundgren. Add in the lure of Steven Seagal and Kelly LeBrock and this is Christmas in bad movie land.

Seagal's Mason Storm is a man intent on revenge after his wife and child are gunned down and he's spent seven years in a coma growing a fake beard so fake-looking you wonder if it's going to walk off halfway through each scene and exit camera left.

It's hard not to love Hard To Kill for Seagal alone, who seems like he's wandered onto a film set by accident during the film's many emotional scenes. His waking-up-from-a-coma acting has to be seen to be believed, and even then it's pretty hard to believe. The film has its fans too; watch Seagal's escape from hospital half-woken from a coma and try not to think of Kill Bill.

Best bad bit: "I'll take you to the bank, alright. The blood bank!" Seagal's quip to the bad guy is so corny not even Arnie would go near it. Or the Eastenders-style drum beat that follows it for added impact.

Thursday 3 December 2009

Hartlepool Mail

May the Force be with you against cancer...

Adam Bouabda (front left) with Star Wars characters outside Flix Movie Cafe
Adam Bouabda (front left) with Star Wars characters outside Flix Movie Cafe

Published Date: 25 November 2009
A MOVIE cafe used the Force to help in the fight against cancer.
Flix Movie Cafe held a Star Wars day with colourful movie characters visiting the eaterie in Church Square, Hartlepool.

Darth Vader, Jedi Knights and Chewbacca helped raise £77.29 for The Christie, one of Europe's leading cancer centres.

Adam Bouabda, owner of the cafe, said: "The event was great and they managed to raise a fair bit of money.

"It is something I would definitely do again and I've already been told about groups like Doctor Who fans who do similar things."

The costumed characters were members of the 99th Imperial Garrison, a group of Star Wars fans who make replica outfits that would not look out of place on a film set.

Hartlepool man Nigel Jukes, a member of the 99th Imperial Garrison, said: "It was a really good day and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

"We went into the town centre and we got a bit mobbed there. It was great."

The group are now set to visit the MetroCentre, in Gateshead, on Saturday.

They will be raising money for Help for Heroes from 11am to 3pm.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Nice looking place or what?
















Flix is such a cozy place and theres always something to occupy you, be it posters of movies or one of the three 120" screens playing great movies and TV shows.

Introduction to Flix Movie Cafe

Welcome to the Flix Movie Cafe Blog

At Flix Movie Cafe you can eat, drink and catch a fantastic movie on one of our big screens.

We don't charge for the movie but if you book seats for an evening show you must eat as we are a first and foremost a restaurant.

Tuesday-Friday between 11:30am and 4:30pm we play popular TV shows to entertain you be it on you lunch hour or if your just wanting a lazy afternoon.

Tuesday-Saturday @ 5:15pm we play a family movie, children are obviously welcome, come along for you dinner with the kids and enjoy a classic or new movie suitable for everyone.
We also play family films from 11:30am on a Saturday and Sunday.

Every Tuesday we have a Movie Quiz that starts at 8:00pm followed by a movie at 9:00pm.
People who partake in the Quiz get to vote for one of four movies shortlisted by us and the winner gets played.
There is also a £20 voucher to spend at Flix for the winning team.

Wednesday-Saturday @8:15pm we show themed movies.

Wednesday is 'Back to the 80's' - 80's Classics
Thursday is 'Cult Fiction' - Cult and Indie
Friday is 'Chick Flix' - Ladies Night
Saturday is 'Blazing Sat'days' - Comedy

Sundays are our trilogy days, sometimes more than three.

to find out what we have playing at Flix check out our Facebook Page or
call us on (01429) 863300

Flix Movie Cafe is the first of it's kind in the North East of England.

Check us out at www.flixmoviecafe.com

25 Church Square
Hartlepool
Cleveland
TS24 7EU