The best goat curry in town and NCM heads north

It was back to the future for me today as I was invited out to lunch by the company that got me started in the digital cinema space in the first place. That's right, Screen Digest treated me to lunch to celebrate my appointment at Deluxe, without any hard sell about what reports or services we should be buying from them. The lunch venue near the Screen Digest office in north London's Camden was The Mango Room, which serves 'traditional and modern Caribbean cuisine' (and not a pirate in sight). I could not resist the 'Camden Famous Curry Goat', nor starter or desert, so just as well that we stuck to water for this celebration.

As we swapped notes on Screen Digest and Deluxe it dawned on me that I'm making a habit of leaving companies just as they are taking off. Not only has Screen Digest's incredibly detailed on-line 'business intelligence' database services been a success beyond anyone's expectations. But they also picked up the digital cinema ball after I left and rather than trying something pointless like keeping the E-Cinema Alert going, they have made digital cinema a proper statistical and analytical field of study. Their recent digital cinema report is terrific and still selling well, their digital cinema installation base is the best and most up-to-date one in existance (sorry Elisabeta and Bill) and David Hancock and Charlotte Jones will be putting in appearances at IBC and the Venice Film Festival respectively. Hats off to them, and, yes, I'm ever so slightly miffed that I proved not to be irreplaceable.

Unique is also about to take off big time, though I can't go into detail about it now, so I will have to take some credit for that after the fact. But third time lucky, sticking it out with Deluxe until it has made a success of digital cinema in Europe. If not, I will eat a whole goat, I promise.

Across the Atlantic, there is now a strategic alliance between National CineMedia and Canada's largest exhibitor Cineplex Entertainment. The 130-odd cinemas and 1,300+ screens in Canada will join the digital cinema advertising, testing and ultimately buying power of NCM in the US. Given how closely the US and Canada are release wise for Hollywood films it makes sense for this type of cross-border co-operation. [Mental note, must find out what Deluxe's Toronto branch are doing cinema wise, if anything, at this stage.] No jokes about thawing moose delivered ice-encrusted hard drives, please, I've been Toronto and it is a lovely and warm place. Though I still like Montreal better. Once you too have been to Ex-Centris you too will not forget it in a hurry.