As is often the way with bad news, climate change has always been presented to us with rays of hope dancing round the edges, and one of the biggest of those was that if we acted hard and fast we could limit warming to just an additional 2 degrees; limiting wild weather, perhaps just barely saving the ice caps and some recognisable status quo on our planet.

But that time is past, at a major science conference in Copenhagen the consensus is that we'll be lucky to scrape 4 degrees and it could just keep on going.

Of course, there's karma attached to this, I shed no tears for humanity, we deserve everything we've got coming to us, we deserve a big punch in the face for decades of twats saying "global warming, bring it on, I always wanted to live in the Mediterranean" and "it's all a government conspiracy"; to do what exactly Sherlock? Make us spend less money on high tax items such as oil and utilities? Yes I'm sure.

So, the ice-caps will melt, the polar bear will go extinct, the penguin might too, thousands of species and habitats will just disappear, unable to adapt or evolve quickly enough. Lush farmlands will turn to deserts, glaciers to bare rocks, much of the west coast of the USA will suffer droughts in epidemic proportions killing millions, while the east coast and over a billion other people will be displaced and killed by rising sea levels, Holland will be gone entirely as will colossal chunks of island nations like Indonesia or the Caribbean. As season after season in crops fail much of the third world will starve to death and there will be rioting in western cities for food and water as societies collapse and bankrupt under the pressure. Oil will be running out around the same time collapsing the economy and making it impossible to fertilise farms or distribute produce; our ugly civilisation will fall and be consigned to history to shock future generations with it's unbelievable stupidity.

Who's going to survive? All us dumb hippy tree huggers who have learned to get by without cars, or by growing our own food, or by doing some living in nature, or by not getting addicted to consumption and easy living. As for the rest digging their mobile phones, supermarkets, alcopops, chavving about, suburban 4x4s, rain forest loo roll and Heat magazines? Well, they're a bit fucked to be honest.

If it were just these effects I'd welcome it on, a world freed of billions of selfish individuals and forced back into an agricultural state maybe free of international politics and money markets is pretty awesome really, nature will be god and there's barely any oil left to do it all over again. The tragedy for me is the loss of animal life, the loss of nature that had thousands and millions of years left on it's due date which we've brought crashing forward, the loss of something as beautiful and inspiring as a polar bear to be just a memory of grandparents and dusty books. I like polar bears, now one day I'll have to look my child in the eye and explain why they will never see one.

We have an interesting couple of decades ahead of us, and with the acceleration of events it really is our problem. This week marks a reality check in time; we fucked it up, billions of us are going to die, and if we continue to ignore the warnings it could be even more, we're past the point of no return and still running further, but not for much longer.

Full story at Canberra Times

Hey friends,

We're pleased to say with absolute certainty our Last of the Scottish Wildcats DVD will be out and about from October; pre-sales are already open and any orders prior to October will get a limited edition numbered copy signed by director Steve Piper!

The DVD is packed with extras and detail on the shoot, the wildcats and wildlife generally so if nature is your bag drop by the website to check out the full preview trailer and details; coffeefilms.com/scottishwildcats and order yourself a copy via Paypal!

I finally got around to watching This is England the other night. Although Shane Meadow's name has been inescapable in the Brit scene I admit to not being at all familiar with his work so I came to this wanting to know more about that too; quite often with these "wunderkind" directors that pop up you find yourself just detesting them, I wondered if this was some deep seated jealousy, like although Guy Ritchie is the biggest one trick pony in the history of filmmaking maybe I was just missing something and blinded by the fact my short film didn't land me an amazing producer to ge me loads of money to make exactly the same film for the rest of my career.

Shane though, I had absolutely none of this resentment for, and having digested some of his work I'm pleased to report that I do only hate the talentless directors and am thrilled to see the UK is still producing some genuine talent.

TIE is everything you'd expect it to be, from scanning the net it seems a lot of Americans don't really get it and it is incredibly rooted in British culture, but speaking as a Brit this is beyond  a doubt the best film I have seen in many years. The acting, writing, dialogue, everything was so beautifully played and and so true to life, I didn't grow up on a shitty estate in Nottingham but this was still a trip down memory lane of key 80's events, politics, music, styles, shit like the scene in the shoe shop was just priceless.

The story is of course a personal and semi bigraphical one and tells the viewer a lot about growing up working class in the north during Thatcherism; I'm no big fan of "it's grim up north" filmmaking, for all his talents Mike Leigh films often leave me feeling disconnected and like I'm meant to feel sorry for a lot of unlikeable people, I think Meadows really got it right though, this was like a documentary rather than a film, this really is England in the 80's.

I need to ruminate longer on it to feel sure about parallels with todays England or overriding messages, we're at a time of heavy immigration and rising racism once again, fighting another war so many of us feel disconnected to (personally I don't see the Falklands as a pointless war, that's a bit like France invading Kent and us saying "oh lets just let it go, it's just a few farms and fields"), but the middle east is something else altogether, mired in politics and agendas that reach a long way beyond "getting the oil money".

What does the film tell us to think about all this? In a way the film itself feels torn in what the "right" answer is; throughout the film the Falkland's rages and we hear the rising racist and anti Thatcher cry along with that; war is bad, immigration is bad, England is dying, but at the end the lead skinhead is shown to be a hippocrite or a nut or just not in control of himself and we see the Falkland's war ending and the cheering crowds welcoming the soldiers home, so perhaps we should see the war through and accept immigrants with open arms even though one is helping cause the other? It just doesn't quite add up to a clearly definable view.

Perhaps, much like South Park's more meaningful episodes, the message is that there is no right answer, no clear cut solution, society will always be a harried confusion no matter what colour or religion or status the individuals are; the film lets us take a step back in time to our younger selves when solutions were so much more simple and come down to little more than wanting ourselves to be happy, and our friends and family to be safe, and for all this adult society bullshit to just go away (interesting that people find that perceptive in a child but naiive in an environmentalist).

Like I said, it's one to make you think for a bit, especially if you grew up in 80's England, it is a little bit like American History X, it does bring the expected anti-racist message but it delivers a lot more about people and society on top of that.

Next time you feel like watching a real film, watch This is England, and know that British film really does have a future even if it lies entirely in the hands of Shane Meadows.

Hey friends,

In our seemingly endless search  to discover social networks to make friends on, we came across a new start up recently well worth exploring by any fellow filmmakers or indeed musicians; www.vusiq.com is catered directly towards independent media and has a bunch of the regular music and film uploads and networking facilities, as well as some cool new ideas like the battle raps feature which lets you battle rap or record music virtually over the web, check them out they're lovely people;

www.vusiq.com

And just so you don't feel like I dragged you here just to advertise to you, why not watch a film too; here's one we just uploaded of the Jake Stigers band tearing up a rock song on one of their tours we filmed, enjoy;

Awesome guitar solo from rock guitarist Nunzio Signore

Hey friends,

Our long awaited Last of the Scottish Wildcats DVD is finally available for pre-orders via our website at coffeefilms.com/scottishwildcats, the DVD includes the full one hour film, a making of featurette, extended interviews and DVD ROM stuff, all in recycled packaging and with 50% of all profits being donated to the Scottish Wildcat Association, check out the all new preview trailer below (it's also on Metacafe, YouTube, Myspace TV etc. etc...), hope you dig it!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we also put up a new video of our friends Sound Sanctuary performing live at the recent Coffee Artists Presents... night here in the UK, they;re a really awesome band so I highly recommend checking it out, they sound a bit like Zero 7 / Air / Gomez, watch below or on our page;

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Acoustic Electronica Band Sound Sanctuary Perform Dust Live

The next Coffee Artists Presents is being held in Maidstone at Pizza Express on Friday 13th June, check out the website at www.coffeeartists.com/presents for full details, tickets etc. hope we see you there!

A couple of nights ago I saw I Am Legend for the first time. It's worth mentioning that I can't stand Will Smith or the movies he's in (I haven't seen Pursuit of Happyness yet which I hear is unusually fairly decent), especially after he butchered the character of Ali; the trailers looked pretty cool though, always quite like post apocalyptic things and it seemed that was going to make up more of the film than the no doubt mindless zombie vampire element.

So anyway, I watched it, and for whatever reason just haven't been able to get it clear of my mind since. All told it was a fairly enjoyable Hollywood flick, the last third was a pretty crappy missed opportunity (and I don't think the alternate/original ending was really any better apart from the anti-vivisectionist subtext), there were plenty of little plot holes the web is probably littered with references to and so on, but the first two thirds have really stuck in my head.

I'm a hopeless softy with animals and maybe the canine character Sam (fine performance throughout) had a lot to do with that, ridiculous as it sounds there was a pretty solid and enjoyable on screen chemistry between Sam and Will who are pretty much the only characters you see throughout the first hour apart from flashbacks; and though I could never believe WS to be a brilliant army scientist colonel I was surprised to enjoy his performance and watching his life in this world.

And maybe that's at the heart of it; post apocalypse-virus New York is full of foreboding looming empty decaying city blocks being reclaimed by nature, and I saw numerous reviews talking about how shocking this was or how ominous hearing that birdsong was somehow, and I just didn't get that, psycho zombies and crushing loneliness aside watching that first hour left me feeling pretty good about killer viruses, watching one man and his faithful dog roam the silent streets hunting deer and getting chased by lions (escapees from the Bronx Zoo) the way we evolved to live, whilst all around the artificiality (background posters of Legally Blonde in particular) is slowly being reclaimed by nature with "ominous" birdsong like twittering choirs of angels, it was an awesome looking place.

Since learning about Peak Oil (for those of you unable to believe in peak oil just discount it as some hippy nut job crap I'm into, like the whole "Melting ice caps" thing; as if, right?) I've felt conflicted about my environmental standpoint, it's inevitable we'll use up all the oil so it makes me wonder if the smart move environmentally is to encourage everyone to go oil crazy and just get rid of it all as quickly as possible, see cars off the roads, some societal collapse and a least a few billion of our ugly species removed from the picture asap and get on with allowing nature to put things right, I think I've lost a little hope in terms of ever convincing even a small percentage of our fellow humans to take the necessary steps to save species and the planet and whatever else, people are just too fucking selfish for it to ever happen, so maybe the smart move is to hasten the point where it has to end; which without doubt is the end of fossil fuels, our whole world depends on them.

Watching I Am Legend was a bit like seeing that future; people gone and the world getting back to what it should be, with Will and dog fortunate survivors lucky enough to get to watch it happen before shuffling off their own mortal coils (it reminded me of the book Moobli by Mike Tomkies as well, massively recommended for anyone who forces themself insanely to read utterly heartbreaking stories of nature and animals). So I'd definitely recommend it, though probably not for many of the reasons you're supposed to, but anyone who doesn't mind sitting through the occasional commercial movie will certainly enjoy it too, it's pretty spectacular visually.

And for all my doubts we are continuing to be green, fear not for now at least, at our new address we've allowed our gardens to grow wild (much to the distress of our middle England neighbours) and enjoy seeing literally hundreds of endangered bumblebees and all kinds of other birds and bugs hanging out in our garden whilst the sterile lawns around us sit, well, sterile, having a wild garden is totally cool, watching the ivy and leaves slowly cover up the ugly new build estate fences and too-red brick walls.

We've started growing our own veg in the corner (no pesticides of course) first batch of potatoes on the way, got our recycling up to about 80-90% of all our waste (there are no local facilities for some plastics unfortunately), barely use the car, switch stuff off, energy saving lightbulbs in everywhere, all our paper is recycled, we're still running a variety of websites and myspaces for free for animal charities and looking forward to giving Scottish wildcats half the profits from the DVD coming out; I wish bigger companies would do the same, shit like pedigree offering 1 penny from every can of dog food sold (not including ROI of course) for dog charities; well wow, you big spenders you, generosity knowing no bounds there, still better than all the others who donate 0 pennies I guess.

Maybe watching IAL and feeling OK about it is something to do with knowing we're doing everything we can afford to do and probably quite a bit we can't really afford to do, knowing we did our bit and tried to encourage others to do theirs, even when most of what you get back are the words of morons, maybe I just hate people, I think Sartre said "hell is other people", if he didn't I'd like to claim it because it's totally true, just watch the news tonight if you don't believe me...

 

Hello friends!
Well if you've passed by our page today you'll probably have noticed the new header and graphics; our wildcats DVD is finally ready (pretty much!) and we're going to risk announcing release dates!

Pre-orders of the DVD will be available online via Paypal on our site www.coffeefilms.com and also on the Scottish Wildcat Association website www.scottishwildcats.co.uk from June. The actual DVD is expected to be available in early August, the price is going to be around £15 which will include post and packaging.

50% of our profits from the DVD will be donated to the Scottish Wildcat Association; the only charity dedicated to these special creatures.

Of course, all the DVD packaging will be 100% recycled and biodegradeable, no gooey carbon footprints here baby!

The film has been completely remastered for DVD release which means we've cleaned up everything and even recut a few portions, the DVD will include the full 62 minute film as well as a making-of featurette, extended interviews and DVD ROM features.

So, learn about Scottish wildcats and help save them at the same time, we'll be letting you know about pre-order availability the second it's here, go tell all your friends that dig cats, wildlife or Scotland, the cover artwork can be seen below!


We also have great pleasure in announcing the reprint of the book "Wildcat Haven"; one of the first pieces of media to really focus on the wildcat we interviewed author Mike Tomkies for the film and are pleased to hear his publisher has decided to put the wildcat books back in print. Mike lived out the Grizzly Adams thing in the Scottish Highlands for years and looked after wildcats for over a decade, the book traces that whole experience absolutely beautifully, we can't speak highly enough of them, copies are available from; http://moo.whittlespublishing.com/whittles/item/4666 check it out!

Another protracted absence but as always with good reason, we're just about launching our new web channel Coffee Shorts and want to invite you all over!

Coffee Shorts was inspired by how few views most serious short films get on the web, too many filmmakers get crowded out by home movies and people who want to watch shorts have to trawl through pages of search results; at Coffee Shorts every film is hand picked for quality by our team across a range of genres so that every film is worth checking out.

Our main website www.coffeeshorts.co.uk is just getting finished off but by all means check it out, and we have a profile at www.myspace.com/coffeeshorts where you can see the latest films added.

And if you're a filmmaker with a good short, or a band with a cool music video, get in touch and maybe we'll screen it; all our filmmakers also get paid!

Hope you can stop by, here's a sample of the material, a very dark animation from our good friend Wolfram Gruss, better known as electronica artist PNFA;

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So a quick update as we've been pretty absent lately...

We're working hard on our Scottish wildcat DVD and pre-orders should be available in early May with the film out around July, 50% of profits will be donated to wildcat conservation in Scotland!

Also still working on our www.coffeeshorts.co.uk project, we're having trouble finding strong comedy shorts; any suggestions let us know!

A huge bundle of shorts are in various stages of development and pre-production, more on them soon.

Finally, my occasional commentary on films other than ours I finally watched the LOTR trilogy extended editions the other weekend. Whilst I generally can't stand fantasy stuff this totally transported me and I think I completely got what so many people love about it. Technically of course it's just the most exceptional thing I've ever seen withbeautiful attention to detail and integration of CGI that makes stuff like Harry Potter look like a bunch of kids made it. Of course LOTR is a great story and I enjoyed most of the acting performances as well, even the rather twee golden sunlight many men hugging moments were bearable. So, absolute two thumbs up and if anyone hasn't seen the extended versions I totally recommend it, it really really doesn't feel like you're sitting there for four hours or whatver each film, it;s just pure visual spectacle and New Zealand just looks amazing throughout.

Got five minutes free? Stop by and watch a film, we know a lot of you haven't!