Well it's bucketing down with rain and naturally I'm in the middle of town without an umbrella and about to go off to the party for The Edge of Love, which I reviewed in an earlier blog. Mercifully the party is quite central this year so I should actually make it home under my own steam. Being stuck out at the Corn Exchange in previous years is not a pleasant experience at 2am after you've missed all the buses. Even though the venue is in the nether regions of the city suburbs, it's effectively West of Glasgow in terms of walking home.
This year the venue is the labryinthine and potentially grotty Edinburgh University student union building at Teviot where I will instinctively go and queue up at the canteen counter for my full breakfast even though the corrugated hatch is pulled down, followed by a visit to the video games room hoping to find the Asteroids machine again. Ahh, those wasted student years. No doubt the place will be tarted up in some thematic way that resonates with the film.
Take 5 Films
So just in case I end up at the top of Arthurs Seat at 6am
holding court with a posse of Hollywood talent and the Stone of Destiny
under my arm without knowing how it got there I thought I'd give you
the lowdown on some of my anticipated top ten highlights of
the festival.
A Complete History of my Sexual Failures as mentioned in an earlier posting, I suspect will be one of the hit films of the festival, a crowd pleasing picture - a Saturday night after two pints film with some scenes viewed behind fingers.
Errol Morris's documentary Standard Operating Procedure might be an unpleasant experience, but a timely political one in that it deals with the US's treatment of prisoners in the infamous Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, and his accompanying in person talk will be a hot ticket regardless of the film's merits coming after The Thin Blue Line and the now classic The Fog of War, one of the best documentaries ever made I believe.
Terence Davies Of Time and the City will have the press and delegates stampeding to the Filmhouse tomorrow morning to get the limited allocations (see my earlier post) for his paean to the city of Liverpool. I'm sure there will be a few raised voices in the foyer but hey, an ungainly rugby scrum for an arthouse documentary gets headlines - it's an old Miramax tactic - lock the audience out of the first screening and they'll riot in front of news cameras. I'm sure, in reality, it will be a very orderly and polite queue.
Shane Meadows Somers Town (pictured) - another Brit film contending for the Michael Powell award - is bound to be a crowd-pleaser with a loyal fanbase and the re-appearance of Thomas Turgoose - the child star of This is England playing a new role in a more teenage timeframe this time.
And, of course, the Scottish themed Stone of Destiny starring Robert Carlyle and Billy 'Pippin' Boyd in a reconsruction of what happened to the real (or is it?) slab of concrete that Scottish Kings parked their derrieres on from time to time. Both screenings have sold out inevitably. Let's hope it lives up to the hype.
That's half of them. I could add more... but the rain is subsiding and the party beckons. Goodnight, and see you tommorow.
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