Booking is now open for the Edinburgh International Film Festival, 18-29 June. The move from August and the Edinburgh Festival as a whole marks a rebirth for the world’s longest running film bash. With most of Hollywood heading for Cannes, Edinburgh has opted to fly the flag for British cinema, with both opening and closing galas home grown. There are still plenty of international titles, many of which are receiving a world premiere in Edinburgh, and star appearances. Here’s our guide to the must sees:
Wed, June 18
The Edge of Love. Passion, poetry and tea dresses as Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller compete for the affections of Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys). Thurs 19, Sat 21
A Complete History of My Sexual Failures. Chris Waitt howls at the moon for our amusement.
Fri 20, Sun 22
A holiday in hell laid bare in the thriller Donkey Punch.
Sun 22, Mon 23
Coming of age in the Cotswolds in Duane Hopkin’s debut feature, Better Things, also showing in Cannes.
Thurs 26, Fri 27
Don’t look down in James Marsh’s Man on Wire, a documentary account of Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the Twin Towers.
Fri 20, Sat 21
Teen star Thomas Turgoose, brilliant in This is England, returns as a runaway in the new Shane Meadows’ drama, Somers Town.
Sat 21, Mon 23
Robert Carlyle and Billy Boyd are among those recounting a certain heist from Westminster Abbey in Stone of Destiny.
Thurs 19, Fri 20
A gala premiere for Santosh Sivan’s epic romance Before the Rains.
Thurs 19, Sun 22
Sir Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz attempt to do justice to Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal in Elegy. Kingsley also appears in Jonathan Levine’s New York-set comedy drama The Wackness (Fri 20, Sat 21).
Sun 22
Manhunter, Bourne, Rushmore, Zodiac - hear Brian Cox’s account of them all in an unmissable Bafta interview. Also: Ray Harryhausen, special effects genius, in conversation with Tony Dalton (Wed 25); giants of cinematography Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men) and Seamus McGarvey (Atonement) discuss their craft (Sun 22); and Shane Meadows on making it big in British film (Sat 21).
Sat 21, Wed 25
Horror, Brit style, in Mum and Dad. It all begins, funnily enough, at an airport...
Tues 24
The Surprise Movie. No idea what it is, surprise, surprise, but sure to be a goodie.
Wed 25, Fri 27
Policing Brazilian style in the tough action thriller Elite Squad.
Thurs 26, Fri 27
Laughs of the darkest kind in A Film With Me In It. Dylan Moran and Keith Allen star.
Sat 21, Tues 24
Affairs of the heart take a turn for the wicked in Forties-set drama Married Life, with Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper (Syriana, Breach).
Wed 25, Fri 27
Amy Adams, the bewitching star of Enchanted, weaves another spell in Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day.
Sat 21, Sun 22
The atrocities at Abu Ghraib are laid bare in Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure.
Fri 27, Sat 28
Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer rue the day they go trainspotting in the thriller Transsiberian.
Sat 28
One little robot, a whole lot of heartwarming fun in this year’s big family gala film WALL*E. Pixar, makers of Ratatouille, once again leave the animation competition weeping.
Sat, 28
Straight from Myspace to your screens, British comedy Faintheart.
For full listings, see the programme in print or online (www.edfilmfest.org.uk ). Bookings can be made online or by phone on 0131 623 8030.
Coming soon Next week: Scotland’s Ewan McGregor and Ireland’s Colin Farrell play London brothers under pressure to raise money in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream. www.cassandrasdreammovie.com
June 13: Marianne Faithfull plays a not so glamorous granny taking up a new and, er, unusual career in Irina Palm. www.irinapalm-themovie.com
June 20: Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy are the pretty young things living dangerously in The Edge of Love. Also premiering at the EIFF on June 18.
Pick of the week
Charlie Bartlett - if only for another star turn by Robert Downey Jr.
Malcolm Tucker, the Glaswegian Machiavelli played sublimely by Peter Capaldi in TV’s The Thick of It, gets to scheme his devilish schemes on the big screen in the movie In the Loop, filming for which began recently. Directed by Armando Iannucci, who co-wrote the script with TTOI regulars Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche, In the Loop concerns the strange tale of a US president and a UK prime minister who bumble into war. These krazee film types and their over-active imaginations ...
Iannucci has secured a double coup - casting James “Tony Soprano” Gandolfini as a US general, and getting backing to make a satirical comedy in the first place (in this case, BBC Films, the UK Film Council and media investment fund Aramid Entertainment are stumping up). Satires are generally tough sells in a business that gets nervous around too much dialogue. Action, not words, is assumed to be what modern audiences, with their ever-shortening attention spans, want. It’s hard to imagine the magnificently loquacious Dr Strangelove being greenlighted now. Even the full title, Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, would have the studios in a cold sweat over the number of words on the posters.
Satire thrives in strange, dangerous, what the ancient curse calls “interesting” times, and periods of conflict are particularly fertile grounds. Kubrick’s classic was built around the Cold War. MASH was set during the Korean War but spoke to the generation fighting in Vietnam. Michael Moore skewered the Bush administration’s response to September 11 in Fahrenheit 9/11. This week in cinemas, Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, attempts to do the same with the so-called war on terror.
Michael Moore is unusual in that he takes an issue that has been bubbling away for years, makes it personal, and transforms it into a cause for national and international concern. He did it with America’s gun culture (Bowling for Columbine), and most recently the iniquities of the US private healthcare system (Sicko). In each case, his instinct, that audiences want to hear about such subjects if the information is provided in an entertaining way, has paid off. Bowling for Columbine, made for $4 million, has to date earned $58 million worldwide (Box Office Mojo). Sicko came in at $9 million and has taken $36 million in the US and overseas.
Satire is not dead, it just has to be packaged in a smarter, more subtle fashion than of old. Charlie Wilson’s War, the true tale of a US congressman who helped aid anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, was blisteringly relevant to today’s wars as well as being a slick piece of entertainment. Between them, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman mined sparkling drama from harsh geopolitics.
With British stars such as Capaldi and Steve Coogan on board, In the Loop should do well at home, among the BBC 2 and 4 crowd especially. For success in America, Iannucci is relying on Gandolfini’s pulling power. If the box office failure of other Iraq war-related movies is any guide, even Big T might not be enough. But cometh the impossible sell, cometh Malcom Tucker. Expect strong language when the film emerges next year.
Coming soon
Next week: Martin Lawrence(Bad Boys I & II) plays the big shot TV star son returning to the bosom of his not so easily impressed family in the comedy Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins. www.welcomehomeroscoejenkins.com
May 23: Writer-director Jeff Nichols’, one of the many new talents to have their work showcased at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, sees his revenge drama Shotgun Stories going on wider release. www.shotgunstories.com
May 30: Emmanuel Mouret’s romantic comedy Change of Address ships to these shores after a tender reception in its native France.
June 6: War as diplomacy by other means in the Oscar-nominated Mongol - The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan.
June 13: M Night Shyamalan tries to erase all bad memories of Lady in the Water with The Happening.
Pick of the week
Emotions run high but the acting stays impressively low-key in the Argentinian family drama XXY.
To Claridge's last week for the launch of Iron Man, the first of the superhero movies tearing towards multiplexes this summer.
There’s generally a rhythm to these events. Days beforehand you see the stars in the papers, popping up in Berlin, Paris and other cities, slowly making their way towards the UK like an exotic weather front. By the time they get here they’ve been riding the publicity train for what must seem like forever. Wonder if they’ll look slightly frazzled, you muse. No chance. Gwyneth Paltrow walked into the press conference looking like she’d just emerged from the most fabulous spa session. She probably had. I looked like I’d slept on a lumpy sofa bed the previous night. I had.
Also on the podium were Robert Downey Jr, who plays the man in the iron suit, director Jon Favreau, and Terrence Howard, who stars as the superhero’s buddy. Favreau came across as very much like his character from Swingers - relaxed, funny, rather anoraky about comic books but in an endearing way. Downey Jr, still looking ballet dancer fit as he does in the movie, was asked what it was like to play a flawed superbeing. The Zodiac and Chaplin star must wonder if he is ever going to leave those old headlines behind. At first seeming wearied by the inquiry, he dutifully gave everyone the soundbite they needed by calling the movie a “$165 million catharsis”.
Downey Jr’s Tony Stark character pops up in the summer’s next big superhero movie, The Incredible Hulk. Like Iron Man, TIH has attracted attention for its almost too cool for school cast. With Ed Norton (Fight Club, The Illusionist) starring and co-writing the screenplay, fans are expecting something out of this universe. The real excitement is being reserved for Batman returning in The Dark Knight on July 25. Judging by the footage I saw just before Christmas, Heath Ledger, in what was to be his last appearance on screen, gives an unforgettable performance as The Joker. It was only a seven minute clip, but hundreds of press came from all over Europe to the IMAX on the South Bank to see it. Worth another night on Torquemada's sofa bed? Definitely.
Coming soon
Next week: horror stalks Scotland in Neil Marshall’s sci-fi thriller Doomsday.
May 16: Ellen Page, fresh from her triumph as pregnant teen Juno, stars in the Noam Murro dramedy Smart People.
May 23: Peter Howitt lives dangerously by releasing his Dangerous Parking in the same week as Indie cracks the whip again.
May 30: Old Europe stages a cultural clash with a US-led Nato force in California Dreamin.
June 6: Casey Affleck stars while brother Ben directs in critically acclaimed kidnap drama Gone Baby Gone.
Pick of the week Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division. The legend lives on. And on. And on.
Visit the cinema this week and there are no fewer than eight new titles vying for your business. And this is a relatively quiet week. Sometimes there are more than a dozen pictures released, many with massive marketing campaigns behind them and big name stars on the posters, keen to tempt you inside to buy a ticket. Cinemagoers have never had it so good. Granted you won’t feel that way if you’ve just endured Paris Hilton being out-acted by her hairdo in The Hottie and the Nottie, but let’s not intrude too far into private grief.
Gone are the days when one or two blockbusters would lumber into the local cinema and stay there for months. Now the multiplexes and arthouses are quick turnaround businesses, keen to get punters visiting as often as possible.
Scheduling films for release is a complicated business. Or at least that’s what you’d think given the amount of date shuffling that goes on. The big releases - Indiana Jones, for instance, or Iron Man - have opening dates set in quick drying cement. There’s too much spent on marketing, and the stars’ calendars are so busy, that the date, once chosen, is pretty much untouchable.
Distributors of other titles have to look at the calendar and guesstimate when their ideal window of opportunity will open. For kids films it’s easy - any of the school holidays, Christmas or summer in general. Family movies do best at Christmas, when several generations are gathered in one place and want to see something that will appeal to all. The student market is flush with cash at the start of term, when all that lovely loot is still in the bank and thoughts of loan repayments are buried in with the dirty laundry. Otherwise, distributors look at what else is on that week and decide if their title fits into the mix.
The blockbusters usually send everyone else fleeing. Hardly anyone, so far, is taking on Sex and the City when it arrives on May 28. It’s not always the case, though. Sometimes, a batch of big titles will open against each other if they’re different enough to appeal to separate audiences. On the June 13 week, for instance, The Hulk (teen market, family, men) goes on release alongside M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (sub arthouse, Mark Wahlberg watchers), In Search of a Midnight Kiss (indie romance) and Priceless (chick flick, first date, or pretty much anyone over 40 who holidays in France).
Whatever you think of the quality of the films, you have to admire the width of interests they represent. In any major city there’s usually something for everyone any night of the week. Judging by the increase in attendances, ticket sales and multiplex profits, audiences like the freedom of choice. Last month, Cineworld reported a £12.4 million pre-tax profit in place of a £7 million loss the previous year. Harry Potter had a lot to do with working that magic. Can Indie achieve a similar feat in May?
Coming soon Next week: a young cast, led by director Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry) try to lift the box office curse hanging over Iraq-related movies in Stop-Loss. www.stoplossmovie.com May 2: Fantasy adventure in Nim’s Island, starring Little Miss Sunshine Abigail Breslin. www.nimsisland.com May 9:Anton Yelchin and Robert Downey Jr clash in the Ferris Bueller-style comedy, Charlie Bartlett. charliebartlett-themovie.com May 16: Hair waxing and manicures at dawn in the Beirut-set chick flick Caramel. May 22: Book your tickets now to see a certain Mr Jones ride again in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. www.indianajones.com
Pick of the week Happy-Go-Lucky. Like its heroine, Mike Leigh’s comedy drama is a love or loathe affair. A superb performance from Sally Hawkins won this cynic over.
There were no celebs, paparazzi, or autograph hunters at last week’s networked premiere of Shine A Light in Glasgow. There was, however, a Stones T-shirt included in the £12.50 ticket price. Nothing says glamour, after all, like an XL piece of cotton.
It was a strange event all round. Glasgow was one of several cities in Britain to get first sight of Martin Scorsese’s film. The deal was this: the premiere proper would take place in London’s Leicester Square (I know you know where Leicester Square is, but it’s compulsory to precede it with the word London, just as it’s against the law to write anything about Britney Spears without using the adjective “troubled”.) The great unwashed in the regions would be able to watch the traffic on the red carpet, then see the film more than a week before everyone else. Hence the ticket price.
Polite to a fault as Glaswegians are, the audience turned up on time at Cineworld in Renfrew Street, but it took a while for London to come calling. Suddenly, there she was, all dressed up for the evening, glowing, magnificent, and a little bit kerazee. And that was just our hostess, Scots DJ Edith Bowman.
It was Bowman’s job to interview Mick, Keef, Charlie and Ronnie when they got to the end of the red carpet. Before they reached Edith, however, there were ranks of other interviewers to plough through. They weren’t part of the broadcast we were seeing, meaning we were treated to the sight of lots of animated conversations but no sound.
Bowman’s interviews bordered on the surreal at times, with Keef telling her at one point that Scorsese’s film “could’ve been about rats” - eh? - and closing the chat by handing her one of his cards. The camera couldn’t get close enough to see what was written on it, but I thought I spied a logo for a double glazing firm. You can never have too big a pension, even if you’re one of the richest acts in music history.
Back in Glasgow the atmosphere was warm but hardly rock and roll. That’s the trouble with concert movies: they try to convey what it’s like to “be there” but they can’t. No matter how much the audience might have been in the mood to dance, as at a concert, there was no question of anyone getting up and doing it, either out of self-consciousness or consideration for the people sitting behind them. So there we sat, for two long hours, watching people in New York’s Beacon Theatre watch the Stones.
With the music industry ever keen to find new ways to prise money out of fans, concert films are making a comeback. These are meant to be the new, improved versions of the rock doc, some shot in 3-D, all with great sound, but unless the studios can find some way of generating more of an atmosphere at screenings I can’t see many people, outside of diehard fans, going along.
There was more of a party atmosphere at the Hannah Montana 3D concert movie - much of it fuelled by the E-numbers the tweenage crowd were wolfing down. Maybe that’s the secret to the future success of concert movies - more nachos, fewer T-shirts.
Competition
The blog has six posters for Shine A Light to give away. To win one, answer the following question: on which Stones album did Gimme Shelter first appear? Please send your answer, with your name and address, to Sam Boyd, Stones Poster Competition, The Herald, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB. The first six correct entries picked out of the film critic’s beret win.
Coming soon
Next week: Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson are the warring couple in search of lost treasure and rekindled love in the comedy Fool’s Gold. Ewen Bremner, finding a sunnier gig than Transpotting ever was, co-stars. Fools Gold website April 25: another Trainspotting alumnus, Ewan McGregor, turns up in the dark thriller Deception. Hugh Jackman (The X Men) plays the lawyer who involves his pal in sleazy dealings with regrets all round. May 2: Spring wedding fever continues to rage with the rom-com Made of Honour. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) are the best of friends who look set to part after she falls in love with a handsome Scot. Made of Honour website May 16: Thai horror Shutter returns to life in an American remake with Masayuki Ochiai (Infection) at the helm. Shutter-Movie website
Pick of the week
Hardly a newie but definitely a goodie - The 39 Steps.
Naomi Watts explored the murkier realms of London and the Russian mafia in Eastern Promises. Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, released this week, finds her going further into the dark side in a tale of civilisation meets savagery.
The story: Watts, screen husband Tim Roth and their young son have travelled to Long Island for a break. Everything is picture perfect, until two oddball teenagers arrive on the doorstep.
The 2008 film is a near shot-by-shot remake of Haneke’s movie of a decade ago. Controversial then for its attacks on movie violence while seeming to exploit the same devices, the German-language original was a hit on the arthouse circuit but didn’t play to the kind of huge audiences the director felt it deserved.
Watts, whose cv includes King Kong, The Painted Veil, 21 Grams and Mulholland Drive, admits to thinking long and hard before signing up to the English-language remake.
“It wasn’t an instant decision, I struggled about whether or not to do it,“ she says. “I got a phone call that Michael Haneke wanted to do something with me, they told me the film and I wasn’t familiar with it. But I was familiar with Michael’s work. I’d seen Caché and The Piano Teacher, and Alejandro González Iñárritu screened Code: Unknown to us as a source of inspiration (for 21 Grams). So I knew and very much admired his work.”
A screening of the 1997 movie left her impressed and disturbed in equal measure. “I saw it at home with a girlfriend and was utterly shocked by it because it was so damn creepy and difficult. It’s not like you can say ‘I loved the film,’, but you can have a really extreme reaction, and what makes it worthy to me is that you think about it and talk about it for hours and days afterwards. It still wasn’t like I made my mind up there and then, but what he was doing, it was landing with me. That he was speaking to us as an audience, that we’ve got blood on our hands, that we are culpable for this thing about violence in films. He really messes with you, he sets everything up in that genre way and then totally toys with you.”
Haneke always felt his film merited going into the multiplexes, and an American remake, with an A-lister such as Watts in the lead, was the ideal way to do that. Looking back at the original, he felt it needed only minor changes to get across the same message about the portrayal of violence. It’s a lesson he feels bears repeating today. “In fact I think it is more relevant than ever because the pornography of violence in the media has increased.”
His next film, Das Weise Band, due in 2009, focuses on the generation that came of age in Germany in the 1930s. No more remakes of his own movies then? “Definitely not. I’ve already been approached regarding Caché and my response was: I’m not going to do it. Apparently Ron Howard wants to and I’ve said fine, if they pay properly they can do it. They can rewrite it and do what they want with it. But then it has nothing to do with me.”
East goes west
At the New Europe Film Festival, opening tomorrow, April 4, director Jan Naszewski and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse cinema will be showcasing works from the 12 new members of the EU club. The 10-day event opens with California Dreamin, the last movie of acclaimed young director Cristian Nemescu. Set in Romania during the Kosovo war of 1999, it’s a biting comedy-drama about the clash of cultures that takes place when a US-led Nato convoy tries to bypass the wrong station-master. Other highlights include the Polish box office hit Reserve and the Estonian coming of age tale, Class. The festival wraps on April 13 with mother-daughter drama from Hungary, Fresh Air.
Pick of the week
To bring on a smile, Son of Rambow. To provide a talking point afterwards, Funny Games.
Coming soon
Next week: Hitchcock’s classic The 39 Steps is given a digital polish ready for the big screen once more.
April 18: Craig, Daniel “007” Craig , stars in reminiscence-heavy drama Flashbacks of a Fool .
April 25: Russell Brand struts his acting stuff in the rom-com Forgetting Sarah Marshall. www.forgettingsarahmarshall.com/
May 2: arriving in the back beat of last year’s Control is Joy Division , Grant Gee’s documentary on one of Manchester’s finest.
May 9: Scourge of fast food manufacturers Morgan Spurlock takes fresh aim in Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden ?
Going Out
