Cinema City

On Wednesday 9th November, our Media Class took a trip to Cimema City in Norwich to attend a short 30 minute lecture and watch Animal Kingdom.
Cinema City is Different from other Mainstream Cinemas such as Vue and Oden, mainly because its a privately owned, independent cinema, which recieves money from the council to run. Cinema City aims to show more independent, low budget or foreign films to offer the public a different sort of experience than a typical cinema. It also aims to give these small films (such as Amelie) more chance to be shown and recommended onwards. However to maintain profits, Cinema City does show a few mainstream films such as The King's Speech and Avatar, which gave then their biggest total revenue last year.

We learnt that there are six main distributors of film that distribute about 85% of films:

Warner Bros.

Paramount Pictures

20th Century Fox

Universal Studios

Buena Vista

Columbia

In our short lecture, we learnt all about the cinema industry. We started off talking about the dramatic the fall in cinema admittances since the late 1940s to now. In 1948, there were 500 million cinema admittances. In 1980, most probably due to the release of VHS, cinema admittances fell to 50 million. In 2008, it has risen though to nowhere near as high as the late 1940s - 164.2 million. The lecturer also pointed out one of the biggest sell out films which people were literally queuing round the block to see – Jaws. In 1975, Jaws was released and in 1984, the first multiplex was opened in Milton Keynes. It was based just outside the city, on cheap land, as the fixed costs were less due to the location; however it was still easily accessible. The multiple screens meant that you could sell more tickets to a larger variety of films and profits expanded. Most cinemas have peak admissions in the summer although the UK are different and usually has its peak from January to March.

The film has grossed US$4,350,187 in Australia. It is the third highest grossing Australian film at the Australian box office for 2010

ANIMAL KINGDOM

Animal Kingdom is a 2010 Australian crime drama written and directed by David Michôd, and starring Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton, Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville. Michôd's script was inspired by the Pettingill family of Melbourne, Australia, who in 1988 saw the acquittal of Trevor Pettingill in the murder of two Victoria police officers.

General Plot...

After his mother dies from an overdose of heroin, 17-year-old Joshua 'J' Cody asks his  grandmother, Janine 'Smurf' Cody, for advice about what he should do. She invites him to move in with her, and he accepts. She is the matriarch of a notorious Melbourne crime family, further consisting of her three sons. Her eldest son is an armed robber named Andrew 'Pope' Cody, and is in hiding from a group of detectives. The middle brother, Craig, is a successful but volatile drug dealer, and youngest brother Darren follows the lead of his older brothers.

J's uncle Craig takes J for a drive and at a traffic light, a car pulls up with two young men, with one making a few hostile remarks followed with a middle finger before taking off, possibly referencing previous altercations. Craig then follows the car, handing J a handgun, to an alley, where the car stops and the man gets out, attempting to provoke a fight between himself and Craig. Instead, Craig prompts J to get out of the car and scare off the assailant. Later, Pope's best friend and partner in crime Barry 'Baz' Brown goes to meet Pope at a shopping center claiming that he wishes to quit the robbery game and settle down with his family, suggesting that Pope join him and the pair take up stock investment. As Baz goes to leave, he is encountered by police. After telling the police that Pope has left, the police shoot Baz dead. Pope and Craig want revenge, and ask J to steal a car and bring it to Darren's place. J complies, although they refuse to tell him the purpose. The car is then planted in the middle of a road. Two policemen are drawn to the scene, where they are ambushed and killed by Pope, Craig and Darren.

The next day, Pope, Darren and J are arrested and taken in for questioning where J meets Detective Senior Sergeant Nathan Leckie (who also leads the armed robbery squad), who takes interest in J's situation and seeks to relieve him from it. The three are later released from custody. Later, Craig has escaped to a friend's house in regional Victoria, where he finds that he is being monitored. Despite an escape attempt, police arrive and kill Craig as he runs away. Meanwhile, J breaks up with his girlfriend Nicky at a bowling alley before Sergeant Leckie arrives and threatens to arrest him for underage drinking. Leckie takes J to a hotel, where he proposes that J be moved to a more permanent witness protection. J turns down the offer.

The situation the intensifies more, While J is in police custody, Pope kills Nicky from an overdose of heroine, as Darren watches because he incorrectly thought she had been talking to the police. When J returns to the house the next morning after spending the night with Leckie, he discovers Nicky's bracelet outside the house. He calls Nicky, and hears her cell phone near the house and realizes that she has been killed. Pope also hears the phone and comes outside. J flees the scene, running to Nicki's parents house to escape Pope. Pope chases after him but is unable to catch J. J calls on Detective Leckie and is taken into witness protection where he presumably implicates Pope and Darren in the police officer's deaths.

This triggers the arrest of Pope and Darren, who are placed in jail. With Craig and Baz dead and Pope and Darren imprisoned, Smurf decides, J needs to go, as he is the star witness in the murder case. Smurf uses her connections to procure J's address and organize a police raid on that address where J is in witness protection so that he can be shot and killed. However, J escapes when he sees armed police heading for the building. J then returns to Smurf's house, saying, "I can't live like this," and that he wishes to help free Pope and Darren from jail. To do this, the family's lawyer sets up J's answers so that a hole can be formed in the case, forcing the release of the pair from prison. Directly following the court session, Leckie visits J, asking him if he had found his place in the world.
After Pope and Darren's release, J returns to Smurf's home asking to stay. After Smurf lets him in, J goes to greet Pope and Darren before going to his room. Pope enters and begins to talk to him, but is cut off when J shoots him in the head. In the final shot of the film, J returns to the living room to embrace Smurf.

Personally, I didn't like the film, I found it very hard to follow and understand. People were carelessly getting shot for no reason, and there was no real emotion behind the characters. It was also very hard to get attached to any one individual character. It was a bit twisted in relation to the relationships within the family. I think it was very ambitious for a low budget film, however i did think that the mise on scene aspects of the film were very good.