Not For The Faintheart(ed)
Posted on Friday June 27, 2008, 14:35 by Damon Wise
 It's Friday afternoon and I'm on the train hurtling back to London. Sadly, I don't have any more reviews to update as I spent the whole day interviewing yesterday, which meant missing the closing film Faintheart. Made by MySpace users, who voted on its director and content, the film will close the 62nd Edinburgh Film Festival tomorrow with an amiable sigh rather than a whimper, if the local chatter is to be believed. Still, it's been a grand ten days, and if there were concerns that moving the event from August to June would be commercial suicide, the figures seem to suggest a cautious success. When I spoke to the festival's managing director Ginnie Atkinson on Monday she told me that ticket sales had already surpassed the figures for the equivalent period in the last festival. Even the obscure Argentinian movies had sold out, although the festival's artistic director Hannah McGill told me shortly after that there were some surprising anomalies: Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, a ... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopThe Transsiberian Connection
Posted on Thursday June 26, 2008, 15:25 by Damon Wise
Apologies for not blogging yesterday, but the pressures of real life sometimes unexpectedly, and rather rudely, intrude when you're in the middle of a film festival. And, hey, that's given me an idea for a theme for today's blog! Real life didn't enter my mind at all yesterday afternoon as I watched the frankly rather absurd Transsiberian, the latest by Brad Anderson, who did the existential thriller The Machinist (which was great) and the haunted asylum horror Session 9 (this one not so much). His latest film is more of a piece with the latter; though it's well made and insanely ambitious – it takes place on a train hurtling from Beijing to Moscow – the story problems that kick in after the intriguing first half just can't be resolved by an overcooked, violent climax. Emily Mortimer stars as Jessie, a recovered alcoholic who's travelling with her staid, religious boyfriend Roy (Woody Harrelson, making an excellent nerd), and on the first leg of the journey they befr... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopRide The Wave And Take The Fall
Posted on Tuesday June 24, 2008, 15:42 by Damon Wise
I saw one of my Dans yesterday – if you remember, he was the first of two Empire readers who'd recognised me from the Cannes blogs – but by that time I'd learned a valuable lesson. Until that very morning, I'd thought it would rather cool to have my own private army of Dans, who would do my bidding and carry me shoulder high wherever I went, but then I saw The Wave, a cautionary German tale in which a well-meaning school project, led by a charismatic teacher who becomes the figurehead of an underground movement, goes spiralling out of control. As Bender once said in Futurama, who'd have thought that playing God could have such terrible consequences? I was taken with it from the outset, as teacher Rainer Wenger (Jurgen Vogel) arrives at school to the strains of The Ramones' 'Rock'n'roll High School'. Wenger's an old punk who wants to teach the kids about anarchy, but he's beaten to it by a stuffy co-worker and has to teach them about autocracy instead. His kids – jocks, hipsters, pr... Continue reading... Comment Now (4 comments)
Back To TopWhen Damo Met Shane Meadows
Posted on Monday June 23, 2008, 14:29 by Damon Wise
 One of my duties while in Edinburgh this year was to present one of Skillset's In Person seminars, which this year featured Shane Meadows, who'd come almost straight from a screening of Somers Town. I'd done a few of these events at the festival last year, and I was particularly proud of the ones I did with Chris Cooper and Stephen Frears. Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, it's just really satisfying when an onstage interview gives a real insight into the subject's personality and working methods. I'd never met Shane properly before, and I knew he was a good sort, but I wasn't prepared for how much he was prepared to give up to the audience on Saturday evening.
I didn't really have anything sketched out, but at the back of my mind I wanted to emphasise that Shane is a true British original: by rights, he shouldn't even be a filmmaker at all, let alone such a good one. ... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopJust Listen To That Serenity...
Posted on Monday June 23, 2008, 10:28 by Sam Toy
I'm continuing to enjoy the serene atmosphere of this year's EIFF - out in the festival's little quadrant of the city, the streets of Edinburgh are positively quiet. Which is a good thing for those who, like my brother, rented an apartment in the Grassmarket district, which is just around the corner from what we have discovered is coloquially referred to as 'the pubic triangle' - a set of strips joints and clubs which becomes even more popular for stag dos and hen nights over the summer months. If the streets had been rammed with the Fringe's usual array of street performers, we could well have found ourselves in the position of me trying to post bail for my brother's murder of various mimes/jugglers/students on the rather flimsy pretense of diminished responsibility through sleep deprevation ("Yes your honour, but it was only a few students...") But no, by day we're getting from one venue to the next, and highlights of the last 24 hours include a screening of Tom McCarthy's The Visitor, w... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopIt's That Guy From That Thing
Posted on Monday June 23, 2008, 10:16 by Damon Wise
 The Visitor, in movie biz terms, has been around the block a bit, starting in Toronto last year and snaking its way to Edinburgh via Sundance. But this is a film with a lot of stamina – and with any luck, perhaps even enough to see it reappear when the Oscar nominations are announced in 2009. It stars Richard Jenkins, a character actor you will definitely know when you see him, as a jaded, faded college professor called Walter Vale, who's coming to terms with the death of his wife and struggling with piano lessons that he's just not cut out for. In his professional life, Vale is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the world, to the extent that he's even become a bit of a fraud, recycling material and taking credit for other people's work on co-authored papers. Under duress from his boss, he is ordered to attend a seminar in New York, where he has a second home that he never goes to. Letting himself it, he finds that the flat his been illegally rented out to an Arab musician named Tarek (Haaz Sle... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopIt's Not All Work Work Work
Posted on Monday June 23, 2008, 10:14 by Damon Wise
 Time for a bit of recapping. Friday was quite a hectic day, starting off with an interview with Thomas Turgoose, aka Tomo, star of Shane Meadows's Somers Town, and his Polish co-star Piotr Jagiello, who's every bit as adorable in real life as he is in the movie. Turgoose is really coming along as an actor; I think he's 16 now but he's pretty confident for his age and somewhat surprised me by admiring my tattoo (it's an old-fashioned sailor-type) in front of his dad and telling me of his plans to get one on his shoulder. “Don't worry, he's got loads,” Thomas assured me, gesturing towards his old man. As I think I've said elsewhere, Somers Town is a great little movie; it's about two boys, one a runaway, the other a loner, who become unlikely friends in the shadow of the Eurostar. Thomas was effusive in his praise for Shane, recalled (with a shudder) the amount of violence they saw while shooting in one of London's scuzzier housing estates, and told a fantastic story about the scene in which Perr... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopThe Dopeness Of The Wackness
Posted on Sunday June 22, 2008, 12:14 by Damon Wise
 Well, now you'll be wanting to know what some of these here films are like, and the first weekend's line-up is pretty strong. First up is the Brian Cox thriller Red, which I believe I've described elsewhere as The Straight Story Meets A History Of Violence, and if I haven't then I can't for the life of me think why not. Cox, the great and underrated British actor, stars as Avery Ludlow, a humble country boy who runs into some upstart youths while on a fishing trip with his trusty dog Red. The boys rob him and kill his dog, and Avary begins a quest for justice that pits him against the ringleader's father, a rich local businessman with the sheriff in his back pocket. It's written by a horror writer (Jack Ketchum) and directed by a horror helmer (May's Lucky McKee) but it's more a gothic western than anything, with Cox on terrific form as the grizzled veteran who just wants to see right be done. It won't rock your world, necessarily, but Red is a film that will look good to you late at night, with a splashy ... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopBusy, busy, busy...
Posted on Sunday June 22, 2008, 12:06 by Damon Wise
 Apologies for being slack! There's been a lot to do today, and none of it involving seeing films. Sad to report that yesterday afternoon's session resulted in the disappointing Standard Operating Procedure, about the Abu Ghraib scandal involving photographs of scandalously ill-treated Iraqis. Though the film does an admirable job of humanising the US army individuals involved, it's a long and flawed essay on the subject that raises more issues than it answers. I can understand that certain forms of duress don't strictly count as torture: sleep deprivation, for one. But why, for example, would anyone want to pile naked men on top of each other? Or make them wear women's undies on their heads? And the billion dollar question remains: what kind of sick fuck would take a picture of the results anyway? It's all very well to bleat about scapegoatism, but, honestly, these people weren't out in the jungle or on a snowy mountain eating each other, they were in a secure prison unit, and the war-makes-people-a-bit-fu... Continue reading... Comment Now (3 comments)
Back To TopAn Australian In Edinburgh
Posted on Sunday June 22, 2008, 10:23 by Sam Toy
 Damon Wise hasn't been left to brave twelve days of films, panels, interviews and sideways rain on his own. For a few days at least, I'm here as Damo's deputy, his back-up; the sort of supporting character who, if this were a Walter Hill-esque post-modern western, would ask Damo to join him in putting a local injustice to rights, but he would decline, causing me to be conveniently killed at the end of the second act, enabling Damo to open up a highly stylised can of whupass and avenge me.
So let's hope it doesn't come to that.
This is my first EIFF, and I'm also in a different capacity: normally, I'm Chris Hewitt's faithful cameraman, editor, director, person who mops up tears of joy after we've run into Michelle Ryan. This time, I'm a regular, down-home journalist, it's already proving a very different experience. For one thing, I'm actually getting to see films - normally I'd spend 10 hours a day lugging the camera around, and another ten sat at a computer, cutting footage. Here I've ... Continue reading... Comment Now (3 comments)
Back To TopPoncey Drinks, Torture Porn And Fairy Cakes
Posted on Thursday June 19, 2008, 14:21 by Damon Wise
 So far, the best thing about the Edinburgh International Film Festival being in June is that you get to see places you don't normally get to see. For instance, the venue for last night's opening party was just great, a multi-layered event space with several bars, a roof terrace and actual proper sort of library with books in it and everything. The wine was free but some of the lager wasn't. There was stout brown beery drink with a white head, probably from Ireland or somewhere, which was free too, but I don't drink that, so there's a pointless sponsorship deal for you. So why not think lovely, refreshing thoughts of Stella Artois or Fosters or Carlsberg and maybe there'll be a party tonight with some of that for free, now that I've promoted it and all. The party itself was themed (“40s glamour” I think is what it said on the ticket I never actually got, which I why I can'...
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Back To TopIn Pictures: Keira And Sienna At The Festival
Posted on Thursday June 19, 2008, 11:38 by Amar Vijay
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Back To TopFrom Scotland With Love
Posted on Thursday June 19, 2008, 11:23 by Damon Wise
Today it is, it must be said, eerily calm in Edinburgh. Normally, this place is a veritable feast of visual arts, most of it unsolicited and a fair percentage of that actually, certifiably rubbish. But that's because the Edinburgh International Film Festival is going it alone this year. Jumping forward two full months, it no longer competes with the actual Edinburgh Festival itself, a full 31 days or so of pipers piping, jugglers juggling, silver-plated mimes miming and performance artists performing 'difficult' performance pieces involving a dead dog, a crumpled bongo mag and a mouldy orange. Instead, the EIFF has the streets to itself, and the relative peace now surrounding it is quite unsettling. Conveniently, discomfort may be actually one of the themes of this year's festival, with several films – the animated Fear(s) Of The Dark, the Britflick shocker Donkey Punch and a nasty British movie called Mum And Dad, which we're simply dying to see, to name just three &ndash... Continue reading... Comment Now
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