WELL it is official – it must be, it was in the Sunday Times – The Palace Cinema is “a fantastic independent cinema”. Oh yes and it is part of Malton, which must include Norton, being the 49th best place to live out of the top 101.

I did the sound for the Yorkshire Cajun Zydeco Festival over the weekend. I know I have mentioned this at least twice before, but I absolutely loved it. There were 200 people at the festival from all over Britain, Germany, Belgium, France and Holland.

The bands were from Holland (Front Row Zydeco, who were absolutely barking mad) – playing in the audience and bouncing around the stage)and the UK.

On Sunday there was a Mardi Gras theme and many were dressed for a Louisiana Mardi Gras. The sound was the best I have got in the Milton Rooms, in Malton, for a large band – there is a difference. The music was absolutely brilliant. At the end I was really moved as there was such appreciation for the part the sound team played in the event, as well as appreciation for the organisers. It seems very likely it will go ahead next year as well – a great event hosted by Malton and Norton with local guest houses, hotels and holiday cottages full.

BeerTown is at the Milton Rooms this weekend and I am doing the sound for this as well for the great musical acts they have planned on the Musician’s Gallery, including The Lumberjack Cowboys, The Patron Saints and The Shiznits. They have a bar with a tower of beer kegs and a fantastic range of beers to taste and include those that are good with food in a way that wine has been accepted for so long.

Well on to the films at the fantastic Palace cinema – I will stop saying that now – soon anyway

We have brought in Grand Budapest Hotel and Long Way Down from Friday this week. Non Stop is staying for another week at least, as are 12 Years a Slave and The Book Thief.

For families, we have kept Escape from Planet Earth, Lego and Tinkerbell and the Pirate Fairy. A new one for families is The Muppets Most Wanted, which previews this weekend – getting ready for the Easter holiday. The Muppets always attract the young and old.

I haven’t managed to see any of our recent films yet– been organising the march against Wentworth Street and the Cajun Festival – so I can only report back other patron’s views.

Escape from Planet Earth (U) – children have loved it with “the blue one” getting special mention. All have come out from the film having enjoyed it.

Non Stop (12A) has split the audience with generally more men having loved it. Some women didn’t like it much, but others really enjoyed it.

“It is gripping from the start in a similar way that with Captain Philips was - you knew something was about to happen and then it starts”; “Liam Neeson was great as usual” “kept you guessing until the end”. I hope to catch up this week.

The Book Thief (12A) – still going down well as a great quality film and strong story. Really recommended.

12 Years a Slave (15) seems to gain even more interest as we have kept it and have the frustrating experience of turning people away when we are full.

 

Stage productions

War Horse, the second of the encores, was busy as usual. We actually had some seats left. The next is on Sunday, March 30 and is sold-out. There are some seats left for the last show on April 9.

Peter Gabriel’s Back To Front Show is on Saturday, March 22, and there is space available for what promises to be a great show. If I wasn’t doing sound again at Beer Town Festival I would love to watch it myself.

Since opening the booking of the Live Concert From Maastricht of Andre Rieu on Saturday, July 19, ticket sales have sold well, but we still have seats available. This isn’t a surprise as Andre Rieu is phenomenally popular.

We had a slight problem with a Ransomeware Trojan Horse getting through our computer security. These work by locking your files and giving you so long to pay up and get a release code. To save your embarrassment – don’t open any files that have compressed attachments and take regular backups of all your files on an external hard drive and disconnect it from your computer.

Have a process where you have incremental backups each day so that it doesn’t have a chance to corrupt your back up.

There is no way to unlock this virus so we were lucky – it could have been much worse, but I am still going to review our backup procedures.