In a first for Vista Group International, its companies Vista Entertainment Solutions and Movio have won a joint proposal to provide their cinema software to Ster-Kinekor Theatres, the largest cinema exhibitor on the African continent.
George’s Lorcan Finnegan has directed a new campaign for Electronic Arts and Team One that offers a whimsical take on the life-altering power of the new match-3 game Bejeweled Stars. In one of four spots, a man finds escape from his wife’s boring television show in a game of Bejeweled Stars. He matches a set of tiles and suddenly everything around him changes. His gauche apartment is transformed into curling arena, lit like a disco dance hall. His wife and dog furiously sweep the ice as he rides a giant curling stone toward a goal. The campaign tagline is Go to your Shiny Place.
The Independent Filmmaker Project has announced the ten narratives selected for the 2016 IFP Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual yearlong fellowship for first-time feature directors. The creative teams of the selected films are currently attending the first week’s sessions – The Time Warner Foundation Completion Labs – taking place May 23-27 in New York City.
Futuresource Consulting recently hosted its latest New Content Horizons event, #Newcontent2016, in Hollywood. There, a group of entertainment industry executives explored business opportunities across the home entertainment and broadcast arena. The importance of content was discussed together with cutting edge services, platforms, hardware and technologies, with the goal of projecting a collective vision of the future digital entertainment landscape.
Kanye West was honored at last week’s 20th Annual Webbys with the Artist Of The Year award, in recognition of the social media phenomenon’s pioneering use of the internet and his impact on the music landscape. The ceremony’s rules limit the winners’ acceptance speeches to five words, presenting West, who’s known for his lengthy orations, with a challenge. Houses in Motion, the Brooklyn-based animation and production studio, crafted an animation-driven retrospective of the artist’s year, with a video montage that includes abstract design elements, graphics, skewed images, and samplings of the artist’s tweets.
At the start of National CineMedia’s fifth annual upfront event at the AMC Lincoln Square movie theater on Wednesday, the company’s new CEO, Andy England, posed a rhetorical question: “Why do Millennials love the movies?” The answer, he said, is that “opening weekend for movies are, by definition, culturally relevant. Millennials want to see films as they are released because it puts them in the know. It gives them social currency. Having a point of view on Deadpool or the Jungle Book, or being excited about Bad Moms, is to be part of the narrative or to be woven into the fabric of popular culture.”
Christie will be providing all the projection for Spain’s first permanent dome to showcase 360° and other immersive environments including a second dome dedicated to virtual reality. Held in Madrid, the Immersive Festival Madrid 2016 is running from May 18-21 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and is free to attend.
Vista Group has signed Jinyi International Cinemas following a project piloting Vista Entertainment Solutions software in 19 of its cinemas over the past several months. Jinyi is the third largest cinema exhibition chain in China with 138 cinema sites across southern and eastern China. For VES, Jinyi is the second large-scale chain that the company has secured in China in the last 18 months following Dadi Digital Cinema in 2014.
Located in Xi’an, the capital city of Shaanxi Province, in the recently opened CityOn Xi’an shopping mall in the heart of the city’s new Central Business District and administrative center, the Xi’an Oscar CityOn International Cinema has nine halls, including a premium large screen auditorium fitted with a 24.2-meter wide screen – the largest in Xi’an. It is the first cinema in central China to be equipped with the Christie CP42LH 3DLP 4K RGB laser projection system.
CJ 4DPlex has installed its immersive seating technology in the east European market, available for the first time in Slovakia through a partnership with Cineworld Plc, Europe’s number two multiplex chain. CJ 4DPlex brought the first 4DX theatre to Slovakia on May 11, and the first screening presented was Captain America: Civil War, beginning May 12. Cineworld’s Cinema City is operating three multiplexes and 29 screens in Slovakia and the first 4DX theatre is located in Cinema City Aupark, the biggest residential area with easy access from any point in Bratislava, the central city of Slovakia. Cinema City Aupark, operating 12 screens and 2313 seats, is situated in Aupark Mall, the most famous culture complex shopping center in Slovakia, including lots of restaurants, sports centers, cafes, and shops.
