The year is 1975 and I’m 13 years old, I don’t remember much about being 13 years old, probably blotted most of it out, 1970’s comprehensive schools weren’t the most exciting places to be, but I do remember my obsession with Jaws.

As a voracious reader I had devoured the book, and the prospect of a film was almost too much to bear. However, in those days we had to wait, and wait and wait.

Jaws was a phenomenon, becoming the first mega summer blockbuster when it opened across the United States in June 1975. I looked on with envy at the reports of queues round the block and their strange obsession with anything shark related. Americans were not only buying tickets to the film, they were also buying anything shark related, books, posters, even teeth. But here in dull grey old England we would have to wait until after Christmas. After Christmas? I could barely contain myself.

I read the book again, then I read the poster magazine that came out, with articles about the film and the stunning and now iconic one sheet poster on the reverse which quickly went up on my bedroom wall. So, I dug in and waited for Christmas to arrive. Having a dad who owns a cinema was going to give me all the access I could possibly want on Boxing Day when the film was due to be released in UK cinemas.

Then, disaster. CIC, who released Universal films in the UK were asking for a minimum of four weeks playing time (which would be illegal today) and 80% film hire. All of which was an anathema to my dad. As we were only a one screen cinema at the time, he really didn’t feel inclined to commit everything for a month to one film and at such outrageous film hire terms.

I was distraught. The grown up me understands it better, although four weeks of mega business surely would have outperformed a rerun of The Incredible Journey (1963) coupled with Song of The South (1946, which would be illegal today). He followed that with Peter Pan (1953) and then a week of The Towering Inferno (a relatively recent 1974). I love 70’s disaster movies almost as much as I love Jaws, but, come on!

There was no budging him, and I had to watch as pretty much every other cinema apart from our own started playing Jaws. My mum took pity and in early January, she took me and my brother to a packed out screening at the now closed ABC cinema in Eastbourne.

It was everything I had hoped and dreamed it would be. Exciting, scary and funny in equal measure. 500 people all jumping at once to Ben Gardner’s head, 500 jumping at once to the shark leaping up at Chief Brody chumming some of this shit. I was seduced by the charm of Mr. Hooper, like Ellen Brody was in the book, although Carl Gottlieb’s script had cut out all of those shenanigans. It was perfect in every way and I needed to see it again immediately.

Sadly, at 13 years old in early 1976 my options were limited and dad was showing no signs of caving on CIC’s terms. Sad times indeed.

It was my annual trip to my Nan’s that came to my rescue, she lived in Eastbourne and as luck would have it the ABC was still running Jaws. I’m not clear whether it was an uninterrupted run since January, but Eastbourne still had a strong summer season in those days and it was still packing in the locals and tourists. I would always go and stay with my Nan for two weeks in August and that is when I seized the opportunity to go and see Jaws every day, for two weeks.

You have to remember back then the chance to see a film multiple times was limited. No VHS or home entertainment, perhaps it would come on the telly in a few years, but that was it. Obviously, I had been born lucky and grew up with the opportunity to see many films in the cinema most of my contemporaries did not. (To be honest they probably didn’t care.) I saw all the greats of the American new wave in the cinema, Cuckoo’s Nest, Taxi Driver, Network and so on. They were mostly played to empty auditoriums, which really got up my dad’s nose. Except Cuckoo’s Nest, that always took money.

But for two weeks in Eastbourne in the summer of 1976 I went to see Jaws every day and it just got better every time I saw it. Each time I would see something new, and would start watching all the little details. The obvious stuff like the shooting stars or odd stuff like the way we can see through Mrs Kitner’s glasses when she confronts Chief Brody on the dock after her boy is gobbled up by the shark, the way there are several repeated shots of the same family in the water fleeing from the shark at different times. There were references that meant nothing, The Late Show, Cape Cod, Rhode Island?

I have to put my hand up and say that my uncle was a manager at the ABC, so I didn’t always have to pay, but all my spending money disappeared very quickly.

A glorious and unforgettable two weeks, and something, with the onward rush of puberty, I would never repeat.

Jaws however stayed with me in all sorts of ways. It became one of the first films I showed when I was learning to be a projectionist in the summer of 1977, also in Eastbourne at the now also defunct Tivoli cinema. I was putting it back in its cans one Thursday and went down to put reel 7 in the transit case and transport had already been. Somewhere out there is a 35mm print of Jaws with the last reel missing. Almost two years after its release, Jaws was still running in cinemas.

I remember well the first time it was on television in 1981, a full 6 years after its first release. I was working in the cinema in Uckfield and we were showing Escape to Victory, not the strongest title in the world, but that night nobody turned up at all because Jaws was on the telly. Amazing. There was a good deal of schadenfreude when we discovered TVS (the local ITV station) had lost sound for the first 20 minutes. Hilarious. Also, pan and scan with advert breaks? This is no way to watch one of the greatest films of all time.

We endured Jaws 2, and then Jaws 3D (ugh) and the final indignity of Jaws: The Revenge, but as soon as the sell through VHS became available, I bought it, and then again on DVD and then again on Blu Ray and now I have just bought it again on 4K blu ray. I know every creak and every line of dialogue, I know where every change over, or end of reel is, I could show it with my eyes shut. (I wish they would leave change over cues on the discs.)  I will never tire of it.

Even at 13, it was the film that made me understand how important pacing is, I loved how it would be loud and then quiet, how after the hysteria of the Tiger shark scene, Spielberg slows it right down all the way to the dinner scene in Brody’s house. The best example being the incredible single barrel chase followed by the eerie and quiet delivery of Quint’s now famous Indianapolis monologue, immediately followed by the shark thumping into the side of the Orca.

Maybe it’s my age, but this seems like a lost art, as the new Jurassic films demonstrate, start on 11 and just keep shouting until the end.

So, did we ever play Jaws in Uckfield? Yes, it finally played in September 1976, 9 months off date. It did well for the first week, because CIC were still insisting on at least two weeks, and it tanked the second week. I guess everyone in Uckfield had seen it.

Incredibly, we have been playing Jaws again this summer to packed houses in both Uckfield and Birmingham. I have just seen a performance through, and it’s so good to see it again with an audience after all these years. From the strange squally undersea sounds over the Universal logo all the way to the serene end credit music it still has the power to captivate. Its absolute proof of why cinema is the greatest invention of all time.

50 Years Ago, this week at The Picture House. Week commencing Sunday Aug 15^th 1971

Things were a bit different in the olden days. We booked one week at a time, meaning there were no such things as holdovers, a film now runs as long as it needs to, sometimes longer if there is sod all else to replace it with, but back then a week was a week. So despite having a huge previous seven days with the first run of The Aristocats, it was not held for another week. If a film warranted further playing time it could always come back, as the pressure from TV and home video in 1971 was pretty non-existent.

Cinemas in 1971 were Sunday change, not Friday’s as they are now. This presented its own challenge, particularly when the film wasn’t delivered overnight on Saturday. I can bore you to death with the way films were delivered in the aforementioned olden days another time.

The 2129 admissions Aug 15^th week was by no means a disaster, but it was 1200 less admissions than the week before, which is a lot. 1200 less Orange Maid’s, 1200 less luke warm plastic containers of Kia-Ora and 1200 less little red boxes of Payne’s Toffets.

Ironically we were clearly scratching for films as my dad put together what he called one of his rep weeks. He liked those, not least because the film hire was cheaper. The Sunday programme was often a flat rate and that would usually be the most successful day.

This week though, the emphasis was on family films, being in the middle of the summer holidays as it was.

Sunday programmes were mostly horror or sex or both, however Sun Aug 15^th for two days he put on an A certificate (the equivalent of PG now) double feature. Carry On Again Doctor (1969) or Carry On 18 as it would be called now, with the second Morecambe and Wise film That Riviera Touch (1966) as the second feature.

Chances are it was raining, the admissions for the two days were very strong under the circumstances. Remember, these films were old.

Two days on the Disney live action adventure In Search of the Castaways, which was from 1962. Although to see an old Disney film in the cinema was not unusual right up to the late 80’s, when they sold the family silver to home video. Hayley Mills surrounded by a cast of old buffers, including Maurice Chevalier, George Sanders and Wilfred Hyde White. Based on a Jules Verne story, I honestly can’t ever remember sitting through it.

The clever bit was adding Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day to the programme. Families would come in just for that and lots of them would leave all through the more grown up feature. The Winnie the Pooh shorts were only two reelers and lasted 25 minutes. He still managed to pad out the programme with his usual addition of a Look at Life short. He loved those, a 15 minute slice of Britishness. He must have had a stack of them in the cupboard or a rolling deal with Rank, because, and correct me if I’m wrong, Disney films were distributed by Universal at the time. Or possibly Fox. Someone out there knows.

The last three days were a strong end to the week. Ring of Bright Water always did good business in Uckfield. Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna were very popular at the time particularly in Born Free, which was another regular booking.

The story of a city man who finds himself with an Otter called Mij and decides to move to a remote cottage in the west of Scotland. I think the film traumatised a generation of children who were taken to see it, it certainly freaked me out at the time. I can’t imagine it getting made today, at least not with the same shocking ending.

All in all a pretty solid week, although you can’t help wondering how much better another week on The Aristocats would have done. Because as we all know, everybody wants to be a cat.

If you would like to hear more about cinema in the 1970’s and how it played out in Uckfield with particular reference to my growing up, listen to this series of podcasts I did for Uckfield FM. I promise it’s worth it.   

It was all going so well. Somehow it felt like we had cracked it. Restaurant doing better than ever and the cinema, while still prey to the ups and downs of product supply, remained busy too. The added bonus of event cinema meant cash flow was steady and we were looking forward to the now rather ironically titled No time To Die.

In all honesty, that last statement is with 20/20 hindsight after four months sitting at home in my pants.

I’ve been fairly busy podcasting and recording shows for local radio, if it’s not oversharing I’ve also been doing that in my pants. Stopping the business took a few weeks. It was like coming out of hyperspace and a lot of stuff needed shutting down, not least dealing with the many thousands of pounds of refunds for events up to a year in advance. Large numbers of our audience have been lovely, happy to accept a credit for when things return to normal.

Normal? What that will be, I, or you, have no idea. You certainly don’t need my take on it. There are plenty of experts on the news with bad internet and show off bookcases to tell you what’s coming.

The cinema industry has not been immune to this endless conjecture both internally and externally. A large number of trade articles and seminars entitled “What Next For Cinema?” and the usual cinema industry bashing from the likes of The Guardian who seem to revel in the notion that cinema may be finished for good. It’s a baffling line of attack, normally cheered on in the comments section by blokes with big tellys shouting about how they haven’t been to the cinema for 30 years because it’s shit. You may well wonder how they know it’s shit if they haven’t been for 30 years? There is little point in engaging them in an argument though.

We have no doubt been saved by the governments furlough scheme and the rates grant as well as having a bit in the tank from such a stonking start to the year. 1917, Jo Jo Rabbit, Little Women et al. Oh, happy days.

So after months of seminars and meetings and snarky newspaper columns we are finally back open. I would be lying if I said it has been a massive success. The combination of Covid fear, weak or old films and hot weather have conspired to make our opening weekend rather anemic.

I chose this date as it was a week before Warner Brothers had rescheduled the release of Christopher Nolan’s big new film Tenet, giving us time to blow out the cobwebs and have all of our Covid procedures in place for the optimistically expected onslaught. Then, as we sort of expected deep down, they went and took it off the calendar.

Many of my fellow independents decided that opening now remained the move of the insane and cancelled their plans. For reasons I can’t entirely justify, I decided to soldier on. It may simply have been an emotional decision, wandering around my empty cinema for four months, even in the comfort of my pants, was a depressing affair. If I say so myself, it’s lovely, one of the best cinemas you will ever go to, a life’s work to get it that way and it felt like a ship wreck without the sound of people and movies.

I do have business nous, honestly. It seems to me you need a bit of the hard headed and the emotional, but that’s a different discussion.

So open we did, at the same time Warner Bros fixed a date for Tenet at the end of August.

Some cause for optimism perhaps, but then everyone else took a powder as my dad would have said. Is that a real phrase? Does anyone else say that? It means went away, disappeared.

Paramount buggered off to next year taking all their films with them and Studio Canal have sold a film we were relying on to Sky. The final insult has been Disney deciding to bypass cinemas and put Mulan on Disney plus.

Whether people will be prepared to pay the premium is also a discussion for another time, but it really feels like a kick in the teeth. A tweet I sent out went a little bit viral, I hope that doesn’t signal any kind of payback as that would be unnecessarily harsh and I only spoke the truth. Whoops.

So here we are in Never-Never land, with the very lifeblood of our cinema, the films, being denied us and taken from us on an almost daily basis. It seems pointless to explain what an impoverished world it would be without cinemas and I have no power to influence events. I just have to sit here and even if I finally put trousers on I can’t be sure how it’s all going to end.

The only thing I can say is that they will have to drag me screaming from the place, I’m not convinced you or I are the target of the government arts fund, there are some rather ridiculous strings attached and the chances are the same people will get funded that always do, but we can give it a go.

If the covid situation worsens and we have to close again, then I don’t know. We can survive a while, don’t worry. Better wash all my pants if I’m going to be at home again.

Me, over-egging it earlier.

2018 is dead. Long live 2019. It’s been quite a year for us lot, it started with a Darkest Hour and ended in the most practically perfect way.

The high point for me (see above) was winning Cinema of the Year (24 screens and under) at the Screen awards in December. That’s it, put a fork in me, I’ve peaked.

I realise we shouldn’t covet this sort of thing, but we’ve worked long and hard to get where we are and the approval of our peers was really thrilling to receive.

In November we swept the board at the Uckfield Business Awards too, winning Business of the Year, Male Business Person of the Year and an Outstanding Achievement award. Go team, and all that.

I also completed a season of shows on Uckfield FM about the 1970’s that has proved popular. It’s a year by year look at what it was like keeping a cinema like ours afloat during a period of shocking decline, with music and daft opinions of films that I encountered as a child. You can podcast them here, or wherever you download your favourite podcasts.

We installed new projectors too, brand new Sony 4K beasts, which throw a great picture but support from the distributors in supplying 4K content is appalling. It’s frustrating to invest in giving audiences the best picture and sound technology we can and not get any backing from the other side of the business.

Sony 4K projectors being delivered earlier.

The other two seismic events were the launch of a £125K brand new website. anyone who has ever launched a brand new site this complex, will know how stressy and thankless that can be.

There was a big refurb of the restaurant. It looks fabulous even if I say so myself, and it’s given me more opportunities to show off the poster archive.

The restaurant earlier.

This post is starting to sound like one of those insufferable Christmas cards  listing the perfect family’s staggering achievements over the previous year, so I’ll stop now.

What did the good people of Uckfield come and see this year? Here is our top 10 for 2018. with the national chart position in brackets.

1. (2) Mama Mia: Here We Go again.
2. (13) Darkest Hour
3. (5) Bohemian Rhapsody
4. (7) Peter Rabbit
5. (3) Incredibles 2
6. (-) Mary Poppins Returns *
7. (1) Avengers: Infinity War
8. (8) The Greatest Showman
9. (11) A Star is Born
10. (25) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

* The Screen chart runs from Jan to Dec 13th so Mary Poppins doesn’t appear. If we followed their dates everything would move up one and Fantastic Beasts would appear at number 10.

Not way off the rest of the world as we are some years. Darkest Hour stands out as performing better for us than most and Avengers stands out for performing less well than most. Honorable mentions should also go to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Finding Your Feet which came in at number 12 & 13 respectively but didn’t even make the UK top 50.

Event Cinema is still as big as ever, but there is a definite shift in the types of shows that are topping the charts. Here is the event cinema top 10 in Uckfield.

1. The King & I
2. Andre Rieu Maastricht 2018
3. My Generation with Q&A
4. Cliff Richard Anniversary Tour
5. Spitfire – World Premiere
6. An American in Paris
7. Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella
8. Lady Windermere’s Fan
9. Nutcracker (ROH)
10. Macbeth (RSC)

Nationally, as you have probably seen in the press, cinema admissions are now the highest since 1971. We showed a smaller growth than nationally, I surmise that is because our growth last year was miles ahead of the UK overall, and some of the films that hit big highs nationally were a tad limp. Titles like Black Panther and Jurassic World, were not big hits here.

So all in all a rather splendid time was had by all. Looking forward to more bonkers projects in 2019 and working with my great team.

What were your favourite films of 2018?

The Last Picture Show, which plays as part of my Cinephile Sunday strand on Sunday 24^th March, is a bona fide masterpiece of western cinema. It was Director Peter Bogdanovich’s first major film as director and was right at the beginning of the now legendary era of American cinema of the 1970’s that had exploded into life with Easy Rider in 1969 and gave us the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Rafelson and Hal Ashby (of whom more in May).

Bogadanovich was a film critic and cinephile from New York who moved to Los Angeles in 1966 with the specific intention of breaking into movies. After catching a break with low budget schlockmeister Roger Corman and directing Boris Karloff in Targets (1968), Bogdanovich put together The Last Picture Show, released in 1971 and based on the book by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and Texan Larry McMurtry.

The film would go on and garner eight Oscar nominations, winning two supporting statuettes for Cloris Leachman’s perfect performance as the lonely wife of the football coach and for Ben Johnson’s tired, disillusioned Sam the Lion. It was a critical and commercial success and Bogdanovich would go on and make two more box office hits in succession, the wildly funny What’s Up Doc? (1972), sadly mostly forgotten now, and the sublime Paper Moon (1973).

The Last Picture Show, however, is no Easy Rider, it’s not in itself trying to storm the Hollywood barricades, it doesn’t pretend to speak to a new dynamic youthful renaissance. It tells the tale of a small hot dusty town in Texas miles from anywhere, far from the urban sophistication of New York or San Francisco, populated by a handful of bored restless teenagers and anaesthetised adults leading lives of quiet desperation.

It’s 1951 and the towns teenagers played by a very young Jeff Bridges, Tim Bottoms and Cybil Shepherd live in a world just before Elvis and revolution is not on their minds, just getting laid and trying to find something to do.

Whatever is going on in the wider world is unlikely to ever impact Anarene as it slowly dies. Sam is closing the town’s cinema, the town folk don’t come anymore, they sit mesmerised in front of their TV’s.

Sam is still showing old westerns, films that show a mythical time of American heroes that is long gone, if it ever even existed.

The relationships in this film are brilliantly represented, and anyone who has grown up in a small town will recognise how true much of it is. For my money the most affecting storyline is that of the boy, Bottoms, who has an affair with the wife of the football coach, Leechman.

There is something so achingly true about their need for human contact that moves me to tears every time.

Bridges continues to have a vibrant film career, but it’s a real thrill to see him as the cocky, but ultimately conflicted young boy about to go to fight in Korea, surely an unimaginative way to get out of town, but the only one he can think of.

Sheppard would go on to fame in the TV show Moonlighting with Bruce Willis, her performance in this film is the perfect representation of the child/adult embodied in being a teenage girl.

Shot in black and white CinemaScope, Bogdanovich is already in full control of the tools of cinema despite it being his first major feature. The use of country music hits is masterful and he is not given the credit that would go to his contemporaries such as Scorsese for using culturally specific hits.

Bogdanovich claims the film is greatly influenced by Orson Welles, which is more difficult to see thematically, however his respect for John Ford is clearly apparent. Ford was a very straightforward film maker who claimed his films had no particular subtext, a self analysis that was self evidently disingenuous and so The Last Picture Show is like the anti John Ford. It’s wide open spaces are suffocating and it’s big skies represent a horizon that can never be seen let alone reached.

It’s a beautiful film that really deserves to be seen in the cinema and will stay with you long after the last reel finishes.

You can book tickets here: Booking Link

Apologies for the rather lame teaser of a title. What I actually mean is I’ve been to the Toronto International Film Festival or TIFF as cool industry insiders such as myself call it.

Of all the festivals around the world Toronto is the most useful for exhibitors, particularly for a cinema such as mine, TIFF always has a strong awards baiting line up aimed at the upper end of the cinema market. In past years they have premiered American Beauty, The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire, all very much our kind of thing.

Most Sundance films rarely get out of Sundance, at least not over to the UK. In fact a Sundance film seems to be a genre in itself. Cannes shows a high proportion of die hard art house along with a few commercial titbits. The winner at Cannes is rarely a commercial proposition.

On the surface then it’s a mainstream festival, but that’s not strictly true. This year there was a total of 296 feature films to choose from including 138 world premiers from 83 countries, and I thought I was doing well seeing 30 of them.

Outside of the gala presentations there is a wealth of first features and some very die hard art house indeed as evidenced by the having sex with an alien octopus movie I saw called The Untamed. Unlikely to play Uckfield if I’m honest.

As my wife, proving she has missed something quite fundamental about me over the last 30 years famously pointed out, “it seems a long way to go JUST to watch films”.  While that may be true for most people, most people don’t own a cinema and Toronto is extremely useful for seeing what’s coming up over the next few months, the few months that are usually the best of the year for my theatre. It’s also quite useful for knowing what to avoid. Not that having sex with an alien octopus films were ever high on our must play list.

So what did I see? Some very fine films indeed actually. My personal favourites included Kenneth Lonergan’s heartbreaking Manchester by the Sea and Tom Ford’s gripping Nocturnal Animals, proving A Single Man was no fluke.

Like everyone else it seems, I was powerless to resist Damien Chazelle’s cute musical La La Land which went on to win the audience award, surely a sign of impending Oscar glory?

Also look out for Dennis Villeneuve’s arty sci fi, Arrival with Amy Adams. Far more accessible than the extraordinary Under the Skin but it certainly owes it a nod of thanks. Jackie was quite something, not least because of Natalie Portman’s amazing portrayal of Jackie Kennedy leaving the White House and Mica Levi’s fantastic score.

The films my audience are going to love the most were the world war II comedy/drama Their Finest featuring Bill Nighy at his most Bill Nighy and a strong central performance from Gemma Arterton. Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom Kingdom should appeal, the true love story with Rosumund Pike and David Oyelowo as the white girl from London who marries an African king, much to everyone’s chagrin.

Lion will make even the hardest heart melt, another true story, Dev Patel plays an adopted boy from India trying to find his way back home.

From the UK I particularly enjoyed Ben Wheatley’s everybody kills everybody else retro thriller Free Fire and Alice Lowe’s magnificently dark horror comedy Prevenge.

So when I wasn’t busy attending show business parties, which was never, I also sat and watched many films so you don’t have to. However, as I still hope one day to be invited to at least one showbizz party, I shall refrain from naming them.

I dd have a nice chat with Noah Taylor on the plane from Gatwick though. Which was as showbizz as my week got.

Second Best Marigold didn’t let us down.

Incredibly we are already half way through year we’ve all agreed here in the west to call 2015.

So what are the ten top performing films of the year so far? Nobody who reads this blog regularly will be surprised to learn it bears only a passing resemblance to the national top ten.

I’ve put the national placing in brackets.

1.The Second Best Marigold Hotel (10)
Another massive success for the old ducks in India, more of the same of course, but crowd pleasing colourful stuff. Please get a move on and make number three, just saying.

2. The Theory of Everything (5)
An Oscar for Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and good work all round bringing a complex story to a mainstream audience.

3. Far From The Madding Crowd (21)
Wonderful looking and affecting adaptation of old happy chops Hardy’s novel. Still hanging on.

4. Shaun the Sheep (12)
Tremendous, inventive fun from Aardman animation.

5. Paddington (1 – in 2014)
So massive in Uckfield that despite starting in November 2014, it has still made the half year top 10. Incredible.

6. Cinderella (6)
Rather anodyne take on the traditional fairytale. Desperate not to offend or upset anyone.

7. Home (4)
I quite literally have nothing to say about this film. You lot seemed to like it.

8. Testament of Youth (35!)
Solid if slightly passionless take on Vera Brittain’s classic tale of a generation lost to war.

9. Fifty Shades of Grey (3)
There was a film. Lots of ladies came to see it.

10. Big Hero 6 (7)
Agreeable and painfully right on animated adventure.

I suppose the notable absences are Avengers: Age of Ultron, the number one film in the UK so far this year comes in 12th us. Furious 7 the number 2 picture is  our number 27!

For what it’s worth the films I’ve enjoyed most so far this year, bearing in mind I’m a bit behind having been looking after the restaurant for the early months of the year. In the mainstream, Mad Max was bonkers fun and as a big Sondheim fan I was always going to enjoy Into The Woods. A Most Violent Year and Taxi have been my favourites otherwise. My biggest personal disappointment has to be Inherent Vice.

The second half of the year is going to be all about James Bond and Star Wars of course, but look out for Suffragette, Bridge of Spies and the startling looking adaptation of Macbeth with Michael Fassbender. The summer’s biggest hits for the family are bound to be Minions and new Pixar, Inside Out.

NT Live continues to be hugely popular with Uckfield audiences.

Live opera, ballet, theatre and all the like are now a huge part of our core programming, and these are the top performing events.

1. View From The Bridge (NT Live)
2. Pirates of Penzance (ENO)
3. Merry Widow (MET)
4. Cavalleria Rusticana (MET)
5. La Boheme (ROH)

Obviously the opening of the restaurant has been a seismic event and so far very successful, we also continue to refurbish, admittedly at a slower rate than I would have liked, but we’re getting there. Screen two will reopen on July 10th and trust me it’s going to be as sexy as the previous two refurbished screens. Then we move on to the foyer, at last.

So all in all a pretty groovy half year, with potentially the best half to come. Well done everybody!

Ah, Mr Bond, we’ve been expecting you.