Channelblog

Get Involved

Looking for a worthy cause?
Here it is... run by our friend Sonali, who deserves an OBE for her efforts in promoting a wider understanding of the plight suffered by the people of Tibet, through Film. Lend your voice and check out the events still available following the hugely successful Tibetan Film Festival.  

THREE MONKEYS

Watch now or Download… Three monkeys, the latest film by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan won him the Prize for Best Director at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. The premise for this dark and brooding piece is that of a man who assists in a covering up a potentially career destroying mistake for his politician boss in the run-up to an election; though the film is really about how these events bring to a head the process of disintegration of an already gravely troubled family. The cast is small but highly motivated, in particular Ercan Kesal as Servet, the boss and Hatice Aslan as Hacer, the wife who in a gripping perfomance spends much of her time like a carpet, either being trodden on or beaten. Director of Photography Gokhan Tiryaki gives us sumptuous visual treats: exquisite skies and long penetrating studies of the characters’ faces, unfettered by dialogue. Complimented by the thoughtful and elegant sound design by Murat Senurkmez, this film will delight fans of Ceylan and those who love this ultra-arthouse style of film making. Ben Lee

TELSTAR

Nick Moran directs the film of his play about Joe Meek, firebrand music producer of the 1960's responsible for hits including Telstar, the biggest No.1 of its day. He baffled and thrilled people with his weird sounds and unconventional studio techniques from a rented flat above a shop in the Holloway Road. The road to sexual liberation is paved with the broken hearts, dreams and bones of people who unlike Meek left nothing to remember them by. Moran illustrates this in midnight visits to Hampstead Heath and Meek’s vulnerability to opportunists like the now forgotten talent-vacuum Heinz; culminating with his arrest for cottaging. Commercial suicide in the swinging sixties.

Con O'Neill’s performance as Meek was consistently riveting and showed great range: from tender to psychotically furious. The supporting cast worked hard and delivered, though Kevin Spacey as Meek's backer veered towards caricature in an almost perfect clipped British accent. More of Meek’s music and more episodes like the Gene Vincent tour would have dispelled some of the film's staginess.

This affectionate biopic charts Meek's hard-working tragicomic arc from giddy, arrogant success to amphetamine-fuelled paranoid despair. Meek stamped an indelible mark on pop from Hawkwind to Eno and far beyond. Ben Lee

MOON

A welcome return to a more introspective style of sci-fi, Moon, stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell; maintenance man and sole occupant of Sarang, a mining plant on the moon operated by Lunar Industries.

Sam has but two weeks ‘til he completes his lonely three-year stint and he’s starting to get a wee bit edgy. The headaches are bad enough, but the hallucinations are really beginning to affect his judgement. Duncan (Zowie Bowie) Jones’s first feature owes much to such films as Dark Star, Silent Running and 2001, without being overly derivative and incorporates a not dissimilar design aesthetic with some great flourishes. Gerty, an emoticon-faced Kevin Spacey voiced robot on ceiling rails is nicely judged. Part essay on solitude and loneliness, the search for identity and our limited uniqueness in an increasingly shared world, part musing on corporate unscrupulousness and part conspiracy thriller, the film’s integrity is assured by Rockwell’s rock solid performance. Clint Mansell’s subtle and effective score keeps things keenly gripping and we really enjoyed the miniature model work too. In-store to Rent now! Ben Lee

Have some fun...

THE GAY BED AND BREAKFAST OF TERROR...

 Available to watch now!

A leather daddy, a closeted drag queen, a fag-hag, lipstick lesbians, pink pound yuppies, a sugar daddy and his twink and a country singer and her baby-dyke girlfriend all check in to the creepy hotel, oblivious to the peril that lurks. 

A hilarious grindhouse splat-fest in the spirit of Benny Hill and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’

New Site!

Yes we know its time we had a revamp so its on the way sometime in November! Brand new site with more emphasis on all things digital. An additional Flash option and lots more films on the way. We'll also be going multi-territory and offering films to locations outside the UK, depending on licensing and geo-filtering agreements etc. So apologies to all eager viewers from outside the UK who keep asking why why why, but its happening slowly but surely.

And as we are completely in-house, we've improved our back end infrastructure as we move up into the clouds, with new load balanced virtualized servers and cutting edge technology straight from the valley of Silicon!

So any potential content partners... get in touch. Remember we distribute content to other sites as well via our sister company Filmed Media.

Big thankyou to those of you who've given us help, support and feedback over the past year and who've stuck with us through teething periods, especially with regard to DivX which is now all-systems-go!

 

Tips for Downloaders...

As we've had an enourmous upturn in subscribers recently, we thought we'd give all you frustrated movie lovers some tips to get watching/downloading our films. Especially DivX, which although great once you get going, does take a little tweaking to set you off! So DON'T PANIC - first make sure you read our 'How It Works' 

Remember you can try one of our Free Films to get going! Common support issues seem to range from not having the player installed, not registering a DivX account, not having a fast enough connection, not having enough system RAM, or trying to download from outside the UK & Ireland. The latest player, version 7, has improved performance... films should start playing once the download has reached 5%! Another useful tip is if the film should hang and stop downloading then simply close the player and re-open it whereupon you can click the download mananger, highlight the film, right click and retry the download... it'll resume automatically otherwise anyway. There's a new version of the DivX player which may involve you having to re-login to your account once installed. And there's a whole range of great Video tutorials you can check out... like how to configure your PS3 or transfer media to any DivX certified device. Or how to watch on your TV.           

London Film Festival

Yes the festival's about to commence again and this year looks like being a goodie. Check out the Line-up... As usual, various staffers from Channel Films will be hobnobbing, hoodwinking and galavanting their way between South Bank and Soho over the coming weeks. Hopefully they'll find the time to share some moments with the rest of us!

Indie British Art House...

Helen - Available to Watch or Download now! "Remarkable... moving... triumphs beyond all expectation" - Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard
Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

MADMEN

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