Hello and welcome to Quiet of the Matinee, a new website dedicated to film and the visual arts. In case you’re wondering, yes the title is inspired by the Franz Ferdinand song Dark of the Matinee – in fact, that verbatim was going to be the title at one point, until I decided to be (slightly) less obvious. Silence in the Dark (too depressing), The Light in the Dark (taken) and simply The Matinee (also taken) were also possibilities, but they were all variations on the song. I can’t say I’m a particularly big fan of the band, but I do like that track and it evokes everything I love about going to the cinema – the calmness, the quiet, the possibility of losing yourself in another world. It was an obvious choice really, so why not go for it?

This is the third incarnation of this site, following the blogs Hey Man, Slow Down (2009-2011) and Astonishing Adventures (June 2011-December 2011), both of which were focused on the cinema and other visual media. That’s going to be very much the order of the day on Quiet of the Matinee too, but I’m keen to avoid repetition. There are many, many (many) film websites kicking around the internet, covering news and reviews of movies, and they do that an awful lot better than I can. So instead of the kind of thing you can find on those sites, I’m looking to make Quiet of the Matinee a little different – a site for film analysis rather than film reviews. So prepare for lots of pretentious comments on camera angles, set design and usages of colour. And mentions of the term mise-en-scène. Lots and lots of mentions of mise-en-scène. It’ll be fun. Trust me!

So, without further ado, may I welcome you to Quiet of the Matinee. Take your seat, turn your phone off and – please – do stop rustling that popcorn.

Paul Bullock
Quiet of the Matinee Editor