So that’s it for another year. All that remains of the Edinburgh Film Festival is the lingering damage to the feet caused by too many hills, cobbles, and speed walks between venues.


Congratulations to Duncan Jones for winning the Michael Powell award for best new British feature film with Moon. Richly deserved. It might have been thought the prize would go to Andrea Arnold for Fish Tank, to add to her Cannes glories, but the jury - Atonement director Joe Wright, film critic Claudia Puig, actress Sacha Horler (My Year Without Sex), writer and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter and actor Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) wisely decided to honour an emerging talent. That’s what film festivals should be about, after all.


As for the rest, the opening and closing galas, Away We Go and Adam, were disappointingly downbeat. Every festival needs to start and end with a bang but these were decidedly damp squibs. The rest of the line-up was so-so to excellent (not a bad range) with the likes of animated drama Mary and Max world class offerings. As for Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, the counselling sessions start next week...

The reception given to Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, his return to horror after a long stint with the Spider-Man movies, has some wondering if he shouldn’t stay in the genre rather than do another Peter Parker caper.

Raimi is signed up to Spidey for a long time to come. IMDB has him scheduled to direct number 4, due for release in 2011, with number 5 said to be in development.

The temporary dip in Raimi’s standing was the result of Spider-Man 3, which was too long, too hyped, and too reliant on SFX rather than character. The third in any franchise always carries a sense of the studio pushing their luck, which doesn’t bode well for 4 and 5. Where, after all, can Peter Parker go next? He was among the first to reveal his darker side, but with every other Tom, Dick and Harry comic book character doing the same, it's hardly going to be novel to see him doing more of the same.

Even so, one set of numbers the studio will be watching are the box office receipts for the Drag Me to Hell. If that does as well as expected, the next Spider-Man in an increasingly capricious series could be a genuine surprise.

Coming soon
Next week: The acclaimed French thriller, Anything for Her, hopes for British box office success.
June 12: An SOS call for the oceans’ inhabitants in fishing documentary The End of the Line
June 19: Romantic blue notes in the Mexican drama Blue Eyelids
June 26: An all star cast, including Alan Arkin and Winona Ryder, unveil The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
July 3: Johnny Depp and Christian Bale star, with Michael Mann directing, in a tale of Thirties gangsters. Excited?

Cannes has fallen in love with 3D after seeing the power of the new technology at its height in Pixar’s spectacular UP. Having been so long on the fringes of cinema, 3D seems to have finally arrived in the mainstream.

Previously it’s been concert movies that have been leading the 3D trend, not always successfully. There was U2’s effort last year, Hannah Montana’s offering, and, next week, the Jonas Brothers’ movie. None of the performers quite know what to do with the new technology though, other than throw sunglasses at the camera or run towards the lens. Not exactly overwhelming.

Then there’s the problem of the glasses themselves. Mega millions have been invested in 3D, yet the means of accessing it remain a pair of chunky specs that grow uncomfortable within five minutes. No point paying extra for that super comfy cinema seat if you are wearing irritating plastic glasses throughout. It’s wasteful, too. How many people keep their glasses till the next time?


Coming soon
Next week: Julia Roberts stars in the up close and personal family drama, Fireflies in the Garden.
June 3: The second of the mega blockbusters after Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, arrives.
June 12: Richard Jobson cries havoc in Scotland’s capital in New Town Killers.
June 19: The toys are back in town in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
June 26: Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin in saviour sibling drama My Sister’s Keeper.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is determined not to cut back this year on either the number of premieres, or its strong indie traditions. Some 23 world premieres and 16 international premieres will be screened from June 17-28, many of them sure to sell out fast.

Among the hot tickets:

- Sam Mendes’ gentle road movie comedy Away We Go (June 17)

- A rom-com with a difference in Adam (June 27)

- Adventureland, the new comedy from Greg “Superbad” Mottola (June 21, 26)

- Bill Forsyth: In Person (June 23)

- Gillian Anderson and Alan Cumming in Brit art world drama, Boogie Woogie (June 26-27)

- Brenda Blethyn as a nun in The Calling (June 21, 22)

- Sneak previews of HBO series In Treatment and True Blood (June 21, 23)

- Flamingos a go-go in Disney’s spectacular nature documentary The Crimson Wing. (June 25, 26)

- Hear Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) in an in-person session (June 22).

- Edinburgh regular Shane Meadows returns with Le Donk, a rockumentary. (June 23)

- Andrea Arnold (Red Road) is in the running for the Michael Powell award with her drama Fish Tank (June 21, 24).

- An all-star Hollywood cast, including Jennifer Hudson and Dakota Fanning, in the drama Fragments (June 23, 24).

- Adrien Brody gets bearded and mysterious in the horror Giallo (June 25).

- Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, set in the world of escort girls, is sure to be a talking point. (June 24-27)

- Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days) takes aim at war in all-action thriller The Hurt Locker. (June 19, 25)

- More don’t look now thrills in survival drama Long Weekend (June 20, 27).

- Siblings come undone in the comedy Mad, Sad & Bad (June 22, 27).

- Morgan Freeman and William H Macy star in take their museum jobs too seriously in the caper The Maiden Heist. (June 25, 27)

- Vincent “Eastern Promises” Cassell, the Mr Cool of French cinema, takes a walk on the criminal side of life in the two parter Mesrine (20, 21, 22 June).

- Sam Rockwell is the space worker falling back to earth in the sci-fi comedy Moon. (June 20, 23)

- Romeo & Julie vs The Living Dead. Says it all, really. (June 26)

- Gael Garcia Bernal dreams of football stardom in Mexican drama Rudo y Cursi. (June 21, 24)

- Sam Mendes: In Person (June 18)

- This year’s family gala is the animated fairytale The Secret of Kells (June 20, 22)

- It’s Prada bags at dawn in the fashion documentary The September Issue (June 22, 24)

- Many happy returns for a digitally restored Shallow Grave (June 19)

- Ashton Kutcher is the pretty boy forced to do some growing up in Spread (June 22, 24)

- Father Ted-style comedy in Wide Open Spaces (June 20-21)

BOOK ONLINE: www.edfilmfest.org.uk
PHONE: 0131 623 8030
IN PERSON: Filmhouse, 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh

Coming soon
Next week: classy French thriller Mark of An Angel hopes to repeat the word of mouth success of Tell No One.
March 29: Beware of old ladies muttering curses is the lesson of the Raimi brothers’ horrors Drag Me to Hell.
June 3: Up from the ashes of a post-apocalyptic world, Terminator Salvation with Christian Bale as John Connor.
June 12: Ooh, ah, it’s Cantona in Ken Loach’s drama Looking for Eric.
June 19: Action, drama, history and spears aplenty in John Woo’s Red Cliff.

The recent London press conference for the Star Trek movie had a cast the size of a Starfleet crew. Joining director JJ Abrams on the podium were Chris Pine (James T Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Karl Urban (Bones), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), John Cho (Sulu) and Eric Bana (Nero).


First thing to notice was how young the main actors were. The television series is older than most of them. No surprise, then, that some had come to Star Trek late.


Abrams said that helped in making a movie that would appeal to fans and absolute beginners alike.

"I was never a huge Star Trek fan when I started working on this so I didn’t have that feeling of it being a sacred text that I couldn’t make creative decisions that would make for a better movie. The risk there obviously was alienating fans of the original Star Trek and I didn’t want to do that, but I also felt that if we did our job and we made a movie that was entertaining it would include Star Trek fans.

“Things like the exact look of a certain species – that’s changed in the history of Star Trek anyway. You can even look at the original series and find inconsistencies that they had, but it’s part of the charm and the reality of an ongoing series – it’s fiction. You know, at a certain point, you have to make the right choice for the right movie and if we had only gone after pleasing the original Trek fans I think our movie would have been a very different film, so things like that were really a question of: ‘What feels right for now, what feels interesting?’”

It helped, however, that one of the writers, Roberto Orci, is a long-time fan, so he was given the job of being keeper of the Star Trek flame. And Abrams has ended up something of a Trekkie too.

“I’ve become a lover of Star Trek, which I can’t even believe, but it’s out of examining these characters, and getting under the skin of these characters. I never knew why I should care about Kirk. Now I do and it’s not because I directed it; it’s because I appreciate now what Gene Roddenberry created. He was amazing and the dynamic of the characters, we didn’t change that, we just brought them back to life by casting amazing actors and luckily had a script that they were able to turn to.”

As for the future of the franchise, Abrams was careful not to count his spaceships too soon.

“Nothing would be more fun than to work with them again,” he said, indicating the massed ranks of actors beside him, “but... it is insanely presumptuous to be talking about it. The good news is that if people like it and there’s demand for another one, the actors and the writers and I will be back. But we don’t have a story, we don’t have a script, we don’t have an outline or a thought. We just have this movie.”

Coming soon
Next week: Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) takes another walk on the unconventional side with Synecdoche, New York.
May 21: A grieving mother struggles to let go of the past in the French thriller Mark of An Angel.
May 28: Squeaky clean and never mean, it’s the Jonas Brothers, in 3D no less.
June 4: Romance rears its hopeful head in Last Chance Harvey, starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson.
June 11: Headaches aplenty as the groom goes missing after a stag night in Vegas in the comedy The Hangover.

Bill Milner, the 14-year-old star of Is Anybody There? is having a charmed start to his acting career. In the John Crowley-directed drama, out this week, his co-star is none other than double Oscar winner Sir Michael Caine.


It’s not the first time Milner has acted opposite a British screen legend. In Son of Rambow, his breakthrough hit of last year, the teenager appeared alongside Eric Sykes. The retro Brit coolness doesn’t stop there. Milner is about to start filming the Ian Dury biopic, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Milner plays the young Dury, Ray Winstone his father, with Andy Serkis as the singer, songwriter and actor.


Milner seems at ease with all this going back to the future. When he was doing the publicity rounds for Son of Rambow last year, he cheerfully admitted not having heard of the original Sly Stallone movie to which the Brit comedy paid affectionate homage. He did, though, reveal an impressive knowledge of the Eighties music used in Son of Rambow, so Dury’s back catalogue might be an old pal already. If not, it soon will be.




Coming soon
Next week: Visual treat time as animated family adventure Coraline twirls on to the screen.
May 15: It’s bare knuckles at dawn in Dito Montiel’s action drama Fighting. Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard star.
May 22: More football hooligan aggro in Pat Holden’s Eighties-set British drama, Awaydays.
May 29: Having done good business on its US release, bunny boiler thriller Obsessed, starring Beyonce, finds its way to the UK.
June 5: Terminator: Salvation is unleashed.