QUOTE OF THE WEEK

At 4DVD itself, the company itself believes that A Field In England will continue to harvest for some time (do you see what we did there?). As 4DVD’s David Root said: “"At 4DVD, we're delighted to have been a part of such an ambitious experiment and we have no doubt that the ground-breaking release strategy has allowed the film to secure far more marketing support and a much higher profile than we could have aspired to if a more traditional approach had been adopted. This, in turn, means we are certainly selling more DVDs and BluRays than we could have hoped to do if a low-key theatrical release had been followed several months later by the DVD/BD release and I am sure that sales will continue to be impressive. I am looking forward to us playing our part in other innovative release strategies in the future." Talking of HMV, we’d like to this week welcome store managers across the chain to The Raygun newsletter. Our website, and by dint, our newsletter, are now linked to its Intranet site and stores are this week being pointed in our general direction by head office. We’re witnessing the chain’s rebirth first hand and are now in close communication with many of its stores through Twitter – we’re following almost all of them and many are following us, and clicking through to our newsletter when we announce its arrival on our Twitter feed. They’ve been won round to our delights and we look forward to them coming on board to the newsletter. HMV’s Andy Anderson said: "We're recommending our stores use The Raygun, it's a great way of keeping them up to date with what's going on in the industry, gossip, news about forthcoming releases and also it highlights the titles that the industry are promoting." The BBFC unveiled its annual report and rarely has so much been written about one complaint – just see the acres to coverage given to a single complaint in today’s newspapers and elsewhere online (we’re talking The Railway Children, in case you didn’t notice and the fact that one person has complained about kids on railway tracks drew one complaint is mentioned in passing in the report, but become the most talked bout item in every report). As ever, the BBFC report always draws plenty of column inches, but there’s some fascinating, important figures for the trade in there too. It’s interesting to note, for example, that online classifications grew by a whopping 40 per cent, while the number of companies using its Watch & Rate service doubled. The report shows that the decline in DVD classifications has slowed, with some 9,500 titles – that’s right, a whopping 9,500 – being classified, a slight increase on the previous year. Meanwhile, a record 850 films were classified for theatrical release, the highest for almost 50 years. The biggest change in recent months is the forthcoming amendment to the Video Recordings Act which will rule that any content potentially harmful to children in exempt videos will result in them losing that exemption. Breaking news as The Raygun went to press and the forces of anti-piracy had a result this week as a Lancashire man was jailed for a total of three year and 10 months after admitting the supply and sale of counterfeit DVDs and other goods. Lester Hawkes, of Scarisbrick, was given the sentence after admitting two charges of copyright theft, two of money laundering and five of benefit fraud. He and his wife Pauline, who ha received a 21 month sentence for money laundering and benefit fraud charges, ran a website called Flying Warlocks and sub-domains Witch and Misty. They made an estimated £460,000 over seven years, with 22,000 transactions, all the while living in a four-bedroom house and claiming and benefits and income support. Hawks is also subject to a proceeds of crime order. FACT director general Kieron Sharp said: “"It is clear that Lester and Pauline Hawkes were running a criminal business empire funded by stealing the creative works of others. Increasingly FACT is evidencing large scale online criminal operations where substantial profits are being made and, crucially, they threaten the livelihoods of the two million people who work in the UK's creative industries." This week’s look at a forthcoming title from the ever-busy eOne stable is Dark Skies, one of the year’s most acclaimed higher profile horror flicks and one the company is certain will follow the likes of Insidious into the charts. The company’s Stephanie Don said: “We're pleased to be supporting Dark Skies with a strong multimedia campaign that encompasses a heavyweight media presence and creative social media activity, along with standout lenticular packaging." Meanwhile, sticking with Eureka, it’s interesting to note that the company is still upping its game in the theatrical sector, with another high profile release due for August at cinemas, ahead of a later home entertainment arrival. More Than Honey looks at the world’s collapsing bee population, its causes and what can be done. It’s narrated by John Hurt, giving it an added commercial pull. Commenting on the release, Eureka’s sales directors Ian Sadler said: ““Globally, Sticking with the Asian film sector and it’s good to see the fiercely independent Third Window operation continuing to pick up releases due to hit stores well into 2014. It has unveiled another two acquisitions this week, the wonderfully named How To Use Guys With Secret tips and Boomerang Family, joining a busy slate. Third Window’s Adam Torei said: “It’s been a while since we’ve handled a Korean title as we felt Korean cinema has become a little too repetitive of late, but both of these two titles, How to Use Guys with Secret Tips and Boomerang Family (both of which were just selected to play at the Fantasia Film Festival), bring back the good old days of Korea’s golden period of comedies (2001-2003) with very fun and interesting characters and styles that remind me of why Korean comedy stuck out so well back during its peak. We think that these titles fit really well in with our upcoming releases of See You Tomorrow Everyone, The Story Of Yonosuke, Shady and The Land Of Hope as well as our upcoming remasters of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Bullet Ballet and Tokyo Fist – all titles which represent a certain  aspect of Asian cinema that shows a different side of the Far East with unique, relatively unknown and independent films which aim to explore and not exploit cinema and culture from Asia.” QUOTE OF THE WEEK