It’s been so long since the film festival that I keep on forgetting half the good films I saw there when talking to people about it, so for the record here’s a brief list of my personal highlights:
Encounters at the End of the World: Werner Hertzog goes to Antarctica, making a film more about the [...]
One of the best films that I saw at the EIFF this year was Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure about Abu Ghraib. It takes his usual approach: a series of interviews with those involved with limited narration. Here the most prominent interviewees are Lynndie England and Sabrina Harmann, together others who were either directly [...]
One of the things I keep noticing in Q&A sessions for documentary films is that some people seem to have a hard time relating to the people they see on screen as being actual people.
Today I watched The Order of Myths at the EIFF. The film is a documentary about the Mardi Gras celebrations in [...]
I saw Wong Kar Wai’s new film My Blueberry Nights a week or two back. It has had fairly poor reviews, mostly criticising the film for being insubstantial but pretty. This is fair comment but the reviews seem much harsher than is deserved - the film really is gorgeous and it never felt like it [...]
I’ve not written up anything from the film festival properly as I meant to and at this rate I’ll never get round to it so here goes…
It was a good year for fun late night movies, Teeth especially. It’s a very simple idea and they’ve hit it bang on; it’s hard to add anything to [...]
It’s new year’s eve in Los Angeles; Wilson and Vivian have met as a result of a craigslist advert posted earlier in the day. He’s had a terrible year - his attempts to pursue his dreams started to go wrong before he even reached the city - and as we find out during the film [...]
Usually seeing a film at the film festival means seeing it in the most favorable circumstances - all the technical stuff will usually be done well, sometimes the filmmakers will often be there to talk about the film and there is usually a large, appreciative audience which helps the atmosphere no end. Unfortunately that doesn’t [...]
Some reviews I’ve twittered of things I’ve seen appear below (I may update). It’s not txt speak but it’s very noticeable how hard I’m finding it to write these quickly in the small space Twitter gives you.
I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK: madcap fantasy. From the director of Oldboy. Scary under the surface but [...]
I saw Tell No One a week or so ago. It a very good film - a nice thriller, very well put together. I recommend it.
That’s not the thing that makes me happiest about the film, though. The thing that makes me happiest is that two of the characters are gay and in a long [...]
Erich blogged that most TV these days is still shot in 4:3 rather than 16:9. At least in the English speaking world this is normally the case, especially for things intended for export. 4:3 would be a deliberate choice rather than the path of least resistance. TV stations can choose to buy and screen 4:3 [...]