I've just returned from a multiplex in Leicester where, for four packed days, I sat in the dark with colleagues from all across the UK and watched sneak previews of an array of new films.
Cinema Days has been running for 20 years. During that time it has been responsible for unveiling everything from Jurassic Park to The Full Monty and, in 1995, even a 20-minute preview of GoldenEye to the regional press.
In January, it will mark
its 60th weekend. It's become a fixture in my calendar. Three times a year, I can experience some of the best, eagerly anticipated movies due for release. I'm an old hand now, having attended my first weekend exactly 16 years ago. It took place in Coventry and among the talent supporting the films on show were Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Attenborough and a newcomer called Ralph Fiennes. They were there to promote a line-up that included the good, the bad and the indifferent. Caine had turned producer to make Blue Ice. Branagh was plugging Peter's Friends. Attenborough was fulfilling a promise to screen Chaplin to regional writers before anyone else. And Fiennes, an excruciatingly shy young actor, had just played Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which films were considered hits and which were misses. An exclusive gathering, Cinema Days is run by the Film Distributors Association to give critics and reviewers access to pictures and stars without the need to travel to London. It's become an accepted part of the industry's release strategy.
Last Friday Danny Boyle presented his newest project, Slumdog Millionaire, a collaboration with Keighley-born screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.
Last week's previews boasted an adaptation of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue, the Coens' Burn After Reading, the gripping terrorist biopic The Baader-Meinhof Complex and a portrait of "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Perhaps the most illuminating film on show was Anvil, a documentary about a forgotten '80s American heavy metal band whose members, now in their fifties, still yearn for stardom and success.
Quite simply, it was tremendous.
Such a cross-section is typical of the Cinema Days experience. It might be work, but it's still a thrill to be part of it.
The reviews will follow in due course. If they inspire you to seek out the films, remember that you read them within these pages – and where they came from.
Roll on Cinema Days 60.
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