Orange Film to Go nabs you free iTunes movies every Thursday

In an unlikely -- and potentially extremely fruity -- coupling, Orange is teaming up with Apple to bless Orange customers with a free iTunes movie rental every Thursday.

The service is called Film to Go, and is a bit like a trendy, digital, one-day-later version of the popular Orange Wednesdays service, which scores you two-for-one cinema tickets every Wednesday.

Here's how it works. First text 'filmtogo' to 85060 from your SIM d'Orange. Texts cost a rather pricey 35p (so it's not free then is it, eh?), but you'll get sent a code to use on Thursday on the Orange Film to Go site, or Orange Film Club Facebook page. This will open iTunes for you.

Once the great, shuddering, bellowing behemoth that is iTunes has successfully started up, you can download the movie. Once downloaded it's available for 30 days, and once you start playing the movie you've got 48 hours to finish watching before it unceremoniously deletes itself.

What's the catch? Well, you can't choose any movie you want, you have to go with whatever Orange has chosen that week. Orange says its selections will cover a "mix of recent iTunes releases and cinema classics, covering a variety of genres".

That's a little disappointing. Still, if you're anything like us you spend most of your time on iTunes scrolling forlornly through lists of titles, paralysed by the sheer breadth of choice. Being restricted to just one film might finally stop us faffing about.

This week's movie is something called My Blueberry Nights and features Jude Law, a twinkly soundtrack and Norah Jones making a journey across America. Uh, we might be headed to the pub that night.

One definite bonus is that you can watch your rental on other Apple devices. If you download it to a PC or Mac, you can sync the film to your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone. If you download it to an iOS device in the first instance though, the movie will stay there. 

Are you keen? Let us know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.