Glasgow Film Festival Blog

All Hail the King

2010-09-21T09:40:00.000+01:00

Toronto Film Festival audiences are legendary for their enthusiasm. They roar their approval, applaud to the rafters, swoon at the glimpse of a celebrity and generally behave with all the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning . That's often before they have actually seen the film. The more cynical tend to suggest that their exuberance does equate with a startling lack of discrimination. On the other hand, it does mean that the winner of the Festival's Cadillac People's Choice Awards have to be taken seriously. They may like everything but if they really, really like one particular thing that it must be pretty special.

In 2008 the winner of the People's Choice was Slumdog Millionaire. In 2009 it was Precious. The 2010 Choice and winner of $15,000 prize money was The King's Speech which now seems to make it a sure thing for Oscar nominations. Everyone you spoke to at the Festival cited The King's Speech as one of their favourites. It tells the story of King George VI (Colin Firth) and his crippling travails with both a stammer and the need to become a very public figure in the wake of the 1936 abdication of his brother-the man who should have been King instead of him. Geoffrey Rush is the untrained speech therapist whose unorthodox methods include the insistence that the King treat him as an equal. The temerity of the man. The film is witty, touching, tells a great story and opens in Britain on January 7th.

The People's Choice Midnight Madness Award went to Jim Mickle's Stake Land, a grisly little tale charting the aftermath of a vampire epidemic in America and marking the big screen return of Kelly (Top Gun) McGillis. The People's Choice Documentary Award went to Sturla Gunnarsson's Force Of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie charting the irrepressible energy and commitment of the seventy-five year-old Canadian environmentalist.

A handful of other prizes included the International Critics award for Pierre Thoretton's L'Amour Fou, a fascinating glimpse into the life of Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion house he built and his life with Pierre Berge.

Most, if not all of these films will make an appearance in Britain, some of them at the 2011 Glasgow Film Festival which is being planned, plotted, organised and arranged as I write.

Toronto is a fantastic source of films and of inspiration. Highlights from the last few days include the screen version of the play Rabbit Hole with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart on top form as grieving parents coming to terms with the death of their four year-old son and The Promise: The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, a gripping documentary on the creation of a seminal Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band album that includes some amazing footage of the rehearsals and recording of the album in the 1970s. That has definitely gone on the "must have" list for GFF 2011.

Allan Hunter, GFF Co-director

Home for Christmas

2010-09-16T10:02:00.001+01:00

No Festival could want a better guest than John Sayles. When he and producer/partner Maggie Renzi came to Glasgow in 2008 they were gracious, undemanding, good companion and generous with their time for audiences and for young filmmakers in Scotland. You might just recall that there was a Hollywood writer's strike at the time. In most cases that probably would have meant a chance to catch up on mail, do some paperwork, mow the lawn, go fishing or just provide the perfect excuse to do nothing. In the case of John Sayles it meant that he started writing an epic novel on the colonialist misadventures of America during their occupation of the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century. I'm not sure if Sayles ever found a publisher for his novel but he all his research has not gone to waste as Toronto has played host to the world premiere of his new film Amigo which concerns itself with those very same events.

Amigo is a typically intelligent, even-handed work from Sayles charting all that flows from the moment a squad of American soldiers start to occupy a small rural village. Their aim is to win hearts and minds, imposing hazy notions of democracy on the local population. Inevitably this little remembered conflict has all kinds of contemporary resonances in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hopefully some committed distributor will acquire this for the UK, as long as they wait until next year to release it so we have a chance of screening it at GFF 2011.

Sayles isn't the only Glasgow favourite with a new film at Toronto. A couple of years back our surprise film was Bent Hamer's lovely O'Horten. Hamer's latest is called Home For Christmas and is a cross between Love, Actually and Short Cuts that takes place in a small Norwegian town on Christmas Eve. Sparkling snow covers the ground beneath steely blues skies, bright lights twinkle from cosy family homes and there is a sense of a community wrapped up in the bleak mid-winter. A bittersweet but tender-hearted seasonal ensemble Home For Christmas delicately interweaves tales of love and longing, new life, fresh hope and sad farewells. It is delightful.

Films like Amigo, Home For Christmas and the jaunty Africa United prove that Toronto isn't just about big Hollywood studio titles, blockbuster mainstream movies and stars although stars are mighty important here. Celebrity gazing went into overdrive yesterday with the arrival in town of Bruce Springsteen for a screening of the documentary The Promise: The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of The Town which includes previously unseen footage shot between 1976 and 1978 during the rehearsals and recording of a pivotal album in the career of Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Celebrity truly is ubiquitous in Toronto. Drifting through the department store Sears a loud speaker announcement invites you to "Join Eva Mendes this Friday as she launches her new range of bedding. She will be signing autographs". Sounds like an offer you can refuse and a sign that it might be time to leave town.

Allan Hunter, GFF Co-director

Drowning in Celebrity

2010-09-15T10:17:00.005+01:00

The Toronto Film Festival is currently drowning in celebrity. Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Rachel Weisz, Catherine Deneuve, Ben Stiller, Ben Affleck... The list is endless and a testimony to the power and influence of what feels like the biggest film event on the planet. There are a good number of Scots who are also making a big impression in a Festival that has something of a reputation as a launching pad for Oscar contenders.

Ewan McGregor has one of his best American roles in Beginners, a wistful, touching romantic drama in which he plays a lonely graphic designer desperately striving to find reasons to be cheerful. A heavily autobiographical tale from Thumbsucker director Mike Mills also features a delightful performance from Canadian veteran Christopher Plummer as McGregor's elderly father. Following forty years of devoted marriage and the death of his wife, Plummer's character finally comes out as gay and starts to embrace the life he has always wanted, including finding himself a boyfriend played by ER veteran Goran Visnjic. His example may be all that McGregor needs to make the best of a relationship he starts with French actress Melanie Lauren in the wake of his father's death.

James McAvoy has always impressed by the shrewd career choices he has made. In Robert Redford's The Conspirator, McAvoy stars as a true hero of the American Civil War. In the wake of Lincoln's assassination, he is called upon to defend the one woman accused of participating in the conspiracy to bring about Lincoln's death. He shares the nation's disgust that her boarding house provided sanctuary for the conspirators but gradually finds himself at odds with a government that is more intent on a quick trial and a certain verdict than the pursuit of justice or the belief in innocence until proved otherwise. Although The Conspirator starts off feeling like a staid history channel-style documentary it develops into a compelling tale of injustice that resonates with contemporary parallels. Ironically, McAvoy's impassioned character wound up becoming the first city editor of the Washington Post, the journal that would one day hire Woodward and Bernstein and that gave Redford one of his biggest 1970s hits in All The President's Men.

Toronto has been full of crowd-pleasers, not least The King's Speech in which Colin Firth seems a likely Oscar candidate once again as King George VI, a man whose chronic stammer was tackled by the unlikely and unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue, played to perfection by Geoffrey Rush. His character has the temerity to ask that the King treats him as an equal in a splendidly entertaining and moving true story. A surefire audience favourite has been Potiche, the latest delight from French director Francois Ozon in which Catherine Deneuve is on top form as a trophy housewife in 1970s France who suddenly finds a sense of empowerment when she wrestles control of the family business back from her astonishingly sexist husband Frabrice Luchini. Gerard Depardieu co-stars in a film that is light, witty but fully of substance and might even secure Deneuve a rare Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Allan Hunter, GFF Co-director

Neds On The Streets Of Toronto

2010-09-14T12:24:00.003+01:00

It seems strange to travel all the way to Canada to watch a Scottish film but when the film is as good as Peter Mullan's Neds then no journey is too long. Neds received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend and is a blistering portrait of a teenager coming of age in the Glasgow of the 1970s.

Mullan has described the film as "personal but not autobiographical" but there is the sting of truth in his account of a shy, bookish, Catholic Boy bullied and seduced into embracing the culture of violence and tribalism that surrounds him and starts to define his expectations of life.

The film is violent, foul-mouthed and filled with painfully funny moments, moving from chilling menace to raucous hilarity in a heartbeat. Mullan and his ace production team achieve a spot-on recreation of the way we were from the wallpaper to the facial hair, the clothes and the pop culture references-T. Rex on the soundtrack, Robinson Crusoe on the tea time television. It never feels obtrusive but does feels true to the memory. The centre of the film is a charismatic, star-making performance from Conor McCarron as the young man suffocated by an education system unable to nurture him, a household living in the shadow of his alcoholic father and a culture more likely to celebrate a throbbing knife scar than a glowing school report.

Exploring class prejudice, religion, peer pressure and so much more, Neds is a brilliantly compelling piece of drama from Peter Mullan that is currently scheduled to open in Britain at the beginning of January 2011. Make a note in the diary now.

There are more than 100 high profile, irresistible world premieres at Toronto prompting impossible choices for even the most insatiable cineaste. It is an important year for the Festival as it moves into a shining new headquarters at the Bell Lightbox complete with state of the art screens, offices, archive space and the kind of facilities that cash-strapped Scottish organisations can only dream about. Private donations have played a vital part in the creation of this enviable building with Ivan (Ghostbusters) Reitman and his family making a staggering donation of $22million to the costs. There must be plenty of wealthy Scots who might like to support the cultural wealth of their nation in the same way.

Neds has been one of the highlights of Toronto thus far alongside a haunting, melancholy adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, a tale of impossible love in an imagined dystopian version of Britain's recent past starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield and the wonderful Sally Hawkins who really shines in Toronto world premiere Made In Dagenham which screens at the GFT later this month.

Low point of the Festival thus far? Stone-a tawdry, misguided morality tale pitting guilt-ridden parole officer Robert De Niro against wily convict Edward Norton giving such a mannered and actorly performance that he never for a moment encourages you to suspend your disbelief. He should watch the impeccable larger non-professional cast of Neds who earn your belief in every chilling taunt and feral act.

Allan Hunter, GFF Co-director

Cannes -The Winners, The Losers and The In-Betweeners

2010-05-24T11:02:00.006+01:00

By common consent it was not a vintage Cannes. Last year we all returned from the South of France with a spring in our steps, brimming with enthusiasm for A Prophet, Bright Star, The White Ribbon, Up, Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank, I Killed My Mother and a host of other titles. This year most people were probably just glad to get home and may have struggled to regale friends and loved ones with any thrilling films that they should look forward to. This year some of the titles will be lucky to see a British screen.

Mike Leigh's Another Year was an early favourite to win the top prize of the Palme D'Or but left town empty-handed after Tim Burton and his jury made some very unexpected choices in their awards. Over more than forty years Leigh has found the extraordinary drama in ordinary lives. Another Year hardly represents a departure for him but it is a warm, perceptive and quietly beguiling focus on a contented couple (Jim Broadbent and the luminous Ruth Sheen) and the hand of friendship they extend to needy friends and family members over the course of a year.

The Palme D'Or went to Apichatpong Weerasethkul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a typically painterly, dream-like tale from the Thai director that follows Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Salsaymar) who is dying from acute liver failure. He spend his final days in the countryside surrounded by loved ones, a group that grows to include the ghost of his dead wife and his long lost son who now looks like Chewbacca from Star Wars with the addition of piercing red eyes that glow like embers in a fire. Lush locations, flights of fantasy and a fairytale make this a film to please the director's fans and leave everyone else completely bewildered. Let's call it an acquired taste.

The Grand Prix went to Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods And Men (Des Hommes et des Dieux), a slow-moving and ponderous account of a small group of monks living in the Algerian monastery of Tibhirine where they share medicine, compassion and friendship with the local Muslim community. The clear and present danger from local terrorist forces prompts a crisis of conscience played out in earnest conversations and gloomy soul-searching that some felt was imbued with real spiritual weight.

Mathieu Amalric's Best Director prize for Tournee (On Tour) was even more of a surprise. This Cassavetes-style tale of a promoter touring France with a team of American burlesque artists was a film of lovely little moments that didn't readily add up to a convincing or compelling whole.

Many of the big hitters this year simply failed to deliver the goods. Alejandro Inarritu's Biutiful may have won Best Actor for Javier Bardem (shared with Elio Germano for Our Life) but it is a maudlin, overlong portrait of a dying man and his relations with those around him. Although it generated a considerable amount of controversy in French newspapers Hors La Loi (Outside The Law) was a disappointment from Indigenes director Rachid Bouchared. Tackling the history of the Algerian Liberation movement through the lives of one family, he wound up making a film that merely revisists all the cliches of the gangster genre (cf. The Godfather) rather than anything with more gravitas or steel.

There were films to like. Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy was one of the few titles that grew in the memory. Kiarostami's first family outside of his native Iran, Certified Copy is set in a picturesque vision of Italy and focuses on an art historian (William Shimell) whose new book argues that copies have just as much artistic worth as originals and that any art object is changed by the perspective of the admirer. The historian is then invited to meet gallery owner Juliette Binoche (a Best Actress winner on luminous form) and they head for a trip in which they are mistaken for a married couple. They do not correct the mistake and become so adept at their roles that seem to be experiencing all the emotional drama of a long-married couple . There are strong echoes of Rossellini's My Voyage In Italy (Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders) and even Vertigo in a film that seems like a slight trifle but leaves you with much more to ponder.

Other highlights include Michelangelo Framartino's beautiful Le Quattro Volte and Blue Valentine, a compelling portrait of a marriage gone sour that contrasts the current bitterness and frustration of the central couple with all the promise and romance of their earliest meetings. Ryan Gosling is outstanding as the husband.

Cannes is always a good place to meet old friends and among the hustling Scots on the Croisette this year was producer Chris Young. Chris has been lost to the film world for the past couple of years producing the hugely successful tv series The In-Betweeners. The first series sold a million units on dvd and it just goes from strength to strength. Series three is in the can and now the attention is inevitably turning to The In-Betweeners The Movie.

Everyone knows a money-spinner when they see it and as he rushed from meeting to meeting Chris may have been the most popular British producer in town.

As the circus moves on and Cannes 2010 fades into the sunset, it it time to head to the garden, plan for a holiday, prepare for the World Cup or surrender to the season of Summer blockbusters like Sex And The City 2, Inception and Knight And Day. It's also the start of rising expectations for the big autumn Film Festivals in Venice and Toronto when we might expect to see Peter Mullan's keenly-awaited Neds, new films from Peter Weir and Terrence Malick and much more.

On a final sunny day in Cannes it felt like time to abandon the films and chill out. A little time in the swimming pool seemed in order. The only trouble was that our pool was not in use. It was empty of water and rather forlorn looking. Cannes was a bit like that this year.

Blogger: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter in Cannes
Image: Another Year

Allan's Latest Highlights from Cannes...

2010-05-17T12:08:00.008+01:00

Just when you thought you'd seen it all along comes a film like Rubber. Films about the threat from inanimate objects are nothing new-think of Steven Spielberg's classic Duel or the various incarnations of the killer doll Chucky. Rubber takes things one step further by presenting us with a serial killer tyre that possesses telekinetic powers. Sounds like a dream night at the movies for Stephen King. Rubber may be a shameless B-movie but it boasts a knowing, unpredictable humour and an unexpected visual polish with scenes of the California desert that wouldn't seem out of place in Gus Van Sant's Gerry. Just in case you are thinking it could be a little too arty the telekinetic tyre uses its lethal powers to blow up rabbits and a growing number of humans. Plenty of exploding heads to keep the gore fans happy and giggles for the rest of us. After a rowdy premiere at the Semaine De La Critique section of the Cannes, Rubber looks like a cult hit in the making.

At the more respectable end of Cannes, attention is beginning to focus on what could be the possible contenders for the top prize of the Palme D'Or. Mike Leigh's Another Year has won the hearts of critics and offers a typically warm, unfussy portrait of ordinary people and the everyday human experiences that give us comfort and joy. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are the contented couple that we follow over the course of a year that includes a birth, a death, a possible wedding and the many travails of their lonely and needy friend, played by Lesley Manville in a mannered but ultimately touching performance that could make her a Best Actress contender.
Highlights over the weekend included the new Woody Allen, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, a rather wan and only vaguely amusing ensemble piece looking at love and death through a group of London characters beset by cruel coincidences and unexpected twists of fate. Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts head a stellar cast that also includes Scotland's very own Ewen Bremner (who was also in Woody's Match Point) but even as a long time Woody Allen admirer I am forced to concede that this has none of the vibrancy or invention of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Scott Graham's short Native Son also screened at the weekend and the director looked very fetching in his kilt as he introduced the film to a packed cinema on a wet and windy afternoon. Scott's third short is a beautifully composed and daring tale of a man driven to desperate acts by an aching sense of loneliness. Sean Harris stars in a film from an emerging Scottish talent who deserves to make the move to feature films.

Xavier Dolan impressed at Cannes last year with his award-winning debut feature I Killed My My Mother which we screened at the Glasgow Film Festival (thanks to each and every member of the small but perfectly formed audience that came to see it!). Dolan is just 21 this year (don't you hate him already ?) and was back this year with his second feature Les Amours Imaginaires; a stylish but slightly self-indulgent variation on Jules Et Jim with Dolan and his gal pal both besotted by the blonde and beautiful charms of the same dream boy. A stunning soundtrack and vibrant use of colour and composition mean that this is drenched with the same doomed romanticism that Wong Kar-Wai brings to his best films but as the last film of a long and tiring day it left you feeling that a little goes a long way. If people want to see this at the 2011 Glasgow Film Festival then start e-mailing now!

Blogger: GFF Co-Director, Allan Hunter in Cannes
image: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Allan in Cannes - Day 2

2010-05-14T13:32:00.003+01:00

In most parts of the world they say you are never less than a few feet from a rat. In Cannes you are never more than a few feet from a celebrity. The bearded, bewildered chap at the door to the Majestic hotel is Mathieu Amalric. The impeccably attired young man with the dazzling white teeth and the seriously cool glasses is Gael Garcia Bernal, here as President of the Jury deciding the Camera D'Or for best first feature. The old lady on the street with the two-tone tea cosy of a hair-do is in fact nouvelle vague veteran Agnes Varda on her way to receiving a lifetime achievement award from the French equivalent of the director's guild. And those are just the people you notice in the great circus of Cannes along with the people you do know like Carol McGregor who is here trying to raise funds for a film called Between Weathers which she hopes to shoot in Shetland later this year.

The film screenings have grown more intense with interest today focused on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps where Michael Douglas returns to his Oscar-winning role of Gordon Gekko, the disgraced trader who has served his time and is back in New York predicting an economic catastrophe that nobody wants to hear about.

A modern morality tale that is so much better than you might have imagined, Oliver Stone's sequel melds torn-from-the-headlines storytelling with elements of classic Hollywood melodrama. It is beautifully made with original music from Craig Armstrong and some plaintive songs from David Byrne. It boasts an amazing ensemble cast-Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Susan Sarandon and the 94 year-old Eli Wallach and will open in Britain in September.

Highlights from the last day include Benda Bilili! a crowd-pleasing documentary charting the fortunes of a band of musicians from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many of them are handicapped, all of them are living in extreme poverty and desperate to find a way to provide food and shelter for their families. The band's journey from life on the streets to triumph at European music festivals is humbling, stirring and had the audience at its Quinzaine screening on their feet and roaring their applause. The band are appearing at Glastonbury this year and the buzz about the film is only likely to grow over the coming year. In fact it might be perfect for next year's Glasgow Film Festival. Watch this space as they say.

GFF Co-Director, Allan Hunter in Cannes
image: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Let The Games Begin

2010-05-13T13:13:00.004+01:00

The forecast threatened rain and storms but the skies are clear and the sun is shining. The plane was supposed to arrive at lunchtime on Tuesday but was delayed by three hours and that had nothing to do with volcanic ash. Everyone had suggested that Robin Hood was just a long-winded bore and yet it proved to be much better than anticipated. It's only the first day of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and already it is full of surprises.

Robin Hood was something of a strange choice for the Cannes opening night not least because it contains such a virulent dislike of the French who are all scheming, devious, power-hungry fiends desperate to get their hands on the English crown. The other surprise is that you could have seen it in cinemas all across Britain before its official red carpet "world premiere" in the evening.

Like Casino Royale and the last Star Trek epic, Robin Hood goes back to basics, telling the events of how Robin Longstride was forged into the people's champion of Robin Hood. Given that the film is directed by Ridley Scott, it could have been dubbed Gladiator in tights but these macho chaps will have little truck with hosiery of any kind and Maid Marion is no blushing damsel in distress but a feisty woman played by Cate Blanchett as if she were still Queen Elizabeth.

There are acres of back story in Robin Hood as Robin opens his eyes to injustices in the land and seeks to create a world where fairness prevails and all men and women are treated equally. It's all very Braveheart in a-they-can-take-our-crops-but-they'll-never-take-our-freedom kind of way. Scott makes all the pageantry and spectacle look effortless, especially during a final skirmish on the shores of Dover that is reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan as the Channel seas turn red with French blood, bodies tumble into the churning waves and arrows rip through the surface calm to maim the unwary.

Russell Crowe makes a sturdy hero even if his accent strays into Jim Bowen territory at times but the film's best performance comes from veteran actor Max Von Sydow who plays Sir Walter Loxley and invests his scenes with an incredible degree of emotion. Don't believe all the sniffy reviews this film is going to receive and just judge it for yourself.

If Robin Hood is full of anti-French sentiment then Imogene McCarthery is almost racist in its intense dislike of the English. Adapted from a series of popular 1960s novels, Imogene is a retro Cold War spy romp with elements of The Pink Panther and the 0SS117 comedies. Catherine Frot stars as a character who is part Miss Marple, part Jessica Fletcher and part rabid Scottish Nationalist. Imogene is so proud of her Scottish heritage that she is a haggis-eating, whisky swilling, rugby loving patriot. In 1962 she is dispatched to her native Falkland on a top secret mission involving hush hush papers, Soviet spies and her old flame played by Lambert Wilson. It's all incredibly silly and ends with a musical number but the Scottish locations do look lovely.
The final film viewed on this first day was Mathieu Almaric's directorial debut Tournee (On Tour), a rambling, agreeable drama with an echo of John Cassavetes style. Almaric stars as a small time promoter touring France with a troupe of American burlesque players who all adhere to the belief that the show must go on. It is a small film, actorly, quite self-indulgent but nicely observed and very watchable. Sometimes in Cannes you are happy to settle for that.

Blogger: GFF Co-Director, Allan Hunter in Cannes
image: Tournee (On Tour)

Here Comes Cannes!

2010-04-15T12:33:00.003+01:00

Today is a day to brighten the heart of any film buff. After weeks of speculation, idle gossip and some reasonably accurate rumours, Thierry Fremaux and his team have announced the full line-up of competition titles for this year's Cannes Film Festival. So is Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn finally going to see the light of day or will Peter Weir step back into the limelight with a world premiere for his wartime drama The Way Back? The answer to both those questions appears to be no but there are plenty of other things to get excited about.

We already knew that Ridley Scott's blockbuster Robin Hood would open the Festival on May 12 and that Tim Burton would preside over a Jury that includes Benicio Del Toro, Victor Erice, Shekhar Kapur and Kate Beckinsale. Now we know the rest of the goodies. Britain seems reasonably well represented with competition titles including the new Mike Leigh film Another Year starring Imelda Staunton and Jim Broadbent. There are also screenings of Stephen Frears comedy Tamara Drewe co-starring Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper and the new London-set Woody Allen comedy You WIll Meet A Tall Dark Stranger starring Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and, further down the cast list, our very own Ewen Bremner.

Hopes for a number of Scottish titles appear to have been dashed although the Festival's Director's Fortnight have yet to announce their programme so all it not entirely lost. Peter Mullan's Neds, David Mackenzie's The Last Word and Kevin Macdonald's Eagle Of The Ninth might all have had reasonable expectations of making it into the Festival but there is always the possibility that some of them are just not finished or may be waiting for the appealing double whammy launch of Venice and Toronto in September.

There are an abundance of enticing titles that did make it into the final programme including Biutiful from Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu which stars Javier Bardem, the latest Takeshi Kitano Outrage, Tournee, the directorial debut of actor Mathieu Almaric, Doug Liman political thriller Fair Game with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts and period drama La Princesses De Montpensier from Betrand Tavernier.

Out of competition screenings include Oliver Stone's eagerly awaited Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps sequel in which Michael Douglas returns to his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko alongside Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan.

The Festival's Un Certain Regard section is reserved for more challenging fare and fields a particularly appealing mix this year including Les Amours Imaginaires from Canadian Xavier Dolan (whose I Killed My Mother was a GFF highlight this year), indefatigable centenarian Manoel De Oliviera's latest Angelica, Blue Valentine, a gruelling portrait of a marriage in crisis with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams alongside new films from Lodge Kerrigan (Rebecca), Radu Muntean (Tuesday After Christmas) Cristi Pui (Aurora) and the mighty nouvelle vague maestro Jean-Luc Godard who seems destined to bamboozle with Socialisme. Let the games begin!

GFF Official Artist Jules Gay's film of Thomas Truax

2010-03-05T15:19:00.003Z

Paul Greenwood's favourite five from GFF10

2010-03-05T11:37:00.003Z

Paul Greenwood has been the film critic for the Evening Times since 2008. He has been a film writer for eight years and has been in love with movies since he first saw The Jungle Book as a three year old. He counts The Godfather and Raiders of the Lost Ark among his favourite films and believes everyone's opinion is just as valid as the next person's. Except when everyone else is wrong.

With GFF 10, the wonderful people at the Glasgow Film Festival have proven once again that it’s probably the friendliest, most welcoming film festival in the world. They even manage to find the time to show dozens upon dozens of fantastic films, but sadly there are only so many hours in the day. But while I wished I was able to see everything, some tough choices had to be made, so here are the five films that I enjoyed the most, the ones I'll be recommending to everyone, and the reason I can’t wait for GFF 2011.

1. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The dream team of Werner Herzog and an unhinged Nicolas Cage come together for this hilariously over the top police thriller that revels in its own lunacy and provides top notch entertainment.

2. I Am Love
Operatic and lush, this fine Italian drama centring on the less than happy lives of a rich Milan dynasty is layered and compelling, anchored by a superb Tilda Swinton.

3. American: The Bill Hicks Story
This documentary account of the life and career of one of the most celebrated stand-up comics of all time is hilarious and moving and presents his rise to stardom with taste and vigour.

4. That Evening Sun
Hal Holbrook continues his wonderful late-career renaissance as an elderly farmer who’ll go to any lengths to keep his home - sort of like Up without the balloons and almost as touching.

5. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The first of Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s multi-million selling Millennium trilogy is brought to the screen in visceral, uncompromising style in this superb, densely plotted thriller.

Official Artist 2: Jules Gay

2010-02-22T14:41:00.002Z

Here's our second official artist who will be bringing you alternative coverage of the festival. We're giving our artists the freedom to roam around the festival, create work and we'll then showcase it online. We asked them each to send us a biography of themselves so we could introduce them. Here's Jules Gay:

I'm an Aberdonian lass (though you can't tell by looking, my ma is Filipina) who escaped to Glasgow the minute she could (more fun, less grey). I've never used a movie camera in my life, so it feels a bit strange to say I'm a filmmaker but that's what I am. Every single frame of my films is shot individually on my wee SLR, combining animation with real life images. On average, it takes around 1200 photos for one minute of film. Sometimes I wonder if it would be worth getting a proper movie camera one day, but for the time being, it's a lot of fun. I take a very DIY approach, so I'm free to be influenced by everything, what I love - Svankmejer's films, Russian Literature, whisky; and what I hate - grated cheese, racism, Sondheim musicals... Last year, my latest short was shown in the CCA, Glasgow University and was nominated for Best Film at the Half Cut Film Festival. I'll be floating around, making a few short films throughout the festival, so if you see me, say hi!

Official Artist 1: Jefrus

2010-02-19T16:41:00.006Z

GFF will be bringing you all sorts of coverage over the next 10 days. We'll have official photographs and video coverage (brought to you by Stow College's Film and Television Production course). We've also recruited two official artists to bring you alternative coverage of the festival. We're giving them the freedom to roam around the festival, create work and we'll then showcase it online. We asked them each to send us a biography of themselves so we could introduce them. Here's Jefrus:

I was born in the rain soaked city of Glasgow on the West coast of Scotland where summer usually lasts for about one afternoon in May. I am an artist who likes to use a variety of different media from collage to painting and recently my work has moved to wards photography and digital art. I often mix elements of the absurd and things seemingly out of place within the rational. I like this disharmony which is simply a reflection of how I see the world and my own unease in it. This tends to be a re-current theme in my work, as is my fascination with the human condition and the big questions of existence. I'm interested in poetry and I love the work of Bukowski Egon Sheille, Charles Bukowski, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt, and contemporaries such as David Lynch, Antony Gormley, Anselm Keifer, Julian Schnabel, Gail McLintock, Marcel Dzama, and Nathan Oliveira. I have work in private collections in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Zagreb, Berlin, Vienna, Leicester, London, Krakow, Antwerp, Villers, Turin, Milan, Naples and New York.. I see art as a kind of poem, you take what you can from it and find your own meaning, I like that.

www.jefrus.co.uk

Interview with Thomas Truax

2010-02-19T16:20:00.003Z

He's done something that many fans would kill for: singer/songwriter Thomas Truax talks to Rosie Davies about meeting the "very nice and friendly" Mr David Lynch. Truax brings his assortment of homemade instruments to Mono on Tues 23rd to perform from his album Songs From The Films Of David Lynch.

How did you first meet Lynch, and what's he like?

I was introduced to David by my friend Chris Saunders who was doing photos of us both. He was very nice and friendly. I brought along some CDs of my own and passed them on. Mr. Lynch pointed out that a man by the name Truax was also an incidental character in the pilot of Twin Peaks. Anyway, Chris and I and our friend Dave were having a pub conversation later and the obvious back-of-your-mind thing came up: how great it would be if he chose to use a track of mine in one of his films one day. We were all talking about how great the songs and soundtracks always were and how my music's been described as 'Lynchian' or something directly referential like that more than a few times, and suddenly came the idea to do the opposite: an album of my own reinterpretations of some of the songs already featured in his films.

You've said it a few times now (apologies), but, for the sake of your new fans: why David Lynch covers?

Partly because I love that he gravitates to this sparse 50's-ish reverb-drenched mystery sound quite often. There's something dream-like about the feel of that particular breed of old songs that has always attracted me, and that has influenced my original work. Another element, though, is that in choosing music for his films he doesn't limit it to one genre or period of sound, he just almost always chooses striking, great songs and within that catalogue of work there are many more works that I'd have loved to have sunk my teeth into than a span of one album would allow.
What are your favourite Lynch works?

Well, hard to say favourite but Eraserhead had a seminal influence on me in that when I first saw it (and it was the first of his films I saw). I had just never seen anything remotely like it. Yet it resonated weirdly familiar to me, and I think one of Lynch's gifts is that he cuts straight to this subliminal world - very much like dreams - so that when you leave the theatre you feel almost as if you've awakened from a strange dream. Most of his films have this effect: Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and The Elephant Man. But then there's his sense of humour, which is also brilliant. I love Wild At Heart and Twin Peaks for that. See, I obviously can't really choose a favourite.

You've mentioned before that you already felt an affinity to many of the songs, and that covers are "a traditional part of a music person's life". Did you question whether you had the 'authority' to cover the tracks? Do you think you add something new to them?

The goal wasn't to try and outdo or imitate them. If a song is really good, it's got a spirit that can shine through different bodies and voices, and not only survive but perhaps glow in new ways through different interpretations.

I approached each one as a separate entity, and I would have abandoned any that I felt I couldn't do something a little different with, or any I felt would have done the song itself injustice. For example, the Bowie/Eno song I'm Deranged [from Lost Highway] is one I wasn't sure about at first, but I was looking at the melody and the chords the piece was built on, and it became apparent right away that underneath all the busy instrumentation, in fact almost buried in it, is another one of those beautiful chord progressions that Bowie has such a talent for. So, I decided to take the less-is-more approach. There's a loneliness and alienation and a kind of sad resignation that is almost trapped inside the claustrophobic feeling the Bowie/Eno version conveys. So what I've done, you could say, is to kind of take the shell off and hang the naked centre up to glow in the dark of an empty space. It's a really simple, strong song that can also shine on its own without much dressing.

Your background is in film [educated at NYU Film School, with a background in stop motion animation]. What types of film are you into, and will this be reflected in the show?

I would say film's probably had as much an influence on my life as music. There are a vast amount of fantastic filmmakers out there who I appreciate, but high on the list would be Hitchcock, Fellini, Jaques Tati. There's a strong visual element to my live shows but, to be honest, while at NYU I made one of those crucial life decisions based on the fact that waking up early is pretty much a necessary evil of a filmmaker's life - and I hate waking up early - whereas usually waking up (and staying up) late is the world of the musician's life.

Do you have anything special planned in terms of visuals?

In music you make your films by combining little stories with the atmosphere of an accompanying soundtrack in the listener's mind's eye, rather than on a screen. But for restless eyes there's my homemade instruments which you'll ask me about in the next question and my tendency to not be able to stand still while I'm performing.

Will the Hornicator, Sister Spinster et al be accompanying you to Glasgow? I heard (via the Hornicator on Twitter) that a new instrument has been stealing the show recently. Is this the new mini-spinster?

There's my usual 'bandmates' yes, they'll all be along, as will a special FBI briefcase of Lynch-song specific devices. The instrument you heard about on Twitter is something that the Hornicator is a little jealous of. They all tend to get overly antsy when there's a new kid on the block - but that one's got a bit of developing to go yet before he's truly road-worthy.

Tickets for the event available from http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/films/416

Interview with Pere Ubu

2010-02-17T19:11:00.003Z

Legendary expressionist band Pere Ubu bring their new concert/radio play/spectacle, "Long Live Pere Ubu! The Spectacle", to the Classic Grand on Sat 20th Feb. Rosie Davies talks to the enigmatic David Thomas about ridiculous ambitions, his hatred of high art and how, really, The Spectacle is just like a giant sandwich...

You've described your play adaptation, Bring Me The Head of Ubu Roi, as "ridiculously ambitious". What was your year like when you were making this?

"Well it was more like two years. First was the adaptation of Jarry's play while considering which parts should become songs, how to handle the dramatic sections, etc. Then because it came down to me first and foremost, working out much of the initial music with my rudimentary musical skills which ended up musically insane because I allowed the words and voice and dramatic voices to dictate time signatures and structures. I have long been an advocate of organic time. When my musicians came to analyze what I had written they were often flummoxed at the illogicality of it. Excited but often flummoxed.

"Then, there was putting the radio play version together in bits and pieces and marrying the different sonic ambiences into a seamless and unified whole. On and on. Mind-numbing detail work as an engineer while also striving to keep the drama and literary sense of it all. Minutiae of detail and unremitting concentration on things most people would never hear. For example, at one point I had the idea that Pere Ubu's voice should sound as if recorded by a microphone in his vast bilious belly. Me and my engineer spent a long time experimenting with various techniques to achieve this. In the end I gave up on it as being more distracting than useful. A little of it can still be heard in "Banquet Of The Butchers" buried in the background. (Can I stop now?) By the end of the road I was DESPERATE to be finished and yet that end line always looked just out of reach..."

I've found it difficult to explain to people exactly what Long Live Pere Ubu! The Spectacle is, in itself and in relation to Bring Me The Head. Can you help me at all? Or will that ruin the effect?

"The Spectacle is really much closer to my initial conception than BMTH. I wanted to turn on its head expectations of what a (rock) band is / should be capable of. The entire project started out with two goals even before I decided on the Jarry adaptation. I wanted to deal with the "gaps" between songs both in concert and on record. The beads on a string paradigm has long irritated me and been an encouragement to push in various directions. The other goal was to come up with a vehicle that would serve my desire to allow sound itself take a greater role as a narrative voice. Also important to understand is our lack of patience as musicians with "high art." We despise it and those who pursue it. We are musicians. Just get on with it. Don't talk about it, theorize, yak, conceptualize - just shut up and put up. If you were Americans I could explain it very easily. There was a series of movies in the 30s called The Little Rascals / Our Gang. A bunch of depression-era kids would have adventures. One of the iconic episodes was them deciding to put on a show in a barn, something like Macbeth(!). The resonant line was, "Hey, let's put on a show!"

So in answer to your question, how to describe The Spectacle... you can't. It's never been done. It's everything all mixed up together. Down in Brighton there's something called the Everything Sandwich. It is distinguished by the fact that EVERYTHING is in it. Well, The Spectacle has everything in it - and the band do it all. Play the music. Act the dramatic roles. Devise and perform the choreography. Devise and design the costumes. Devise and design the lights and staging. And every day in the truck after a show we revise and re-work the script. The only thing we didn't do is the Quays' animations. But we have to solve all the technical problems involved in the projection - software and hardware. We load the equipment in. We load it out. We even sell the merchandise from the stage. We put on a show and you have never seen anything like it. It's one glorious messy Everything Sandwich - no haute cuisine. No sir! A gooey oozy sandwich that can change your life. There. How's that for ridiculous ambition?

Be clear. This is not "rock opera." As rock was something new, so The Spectacle is something new. We are musicians. Art is an elitist pursuit. It is masonic. It is a pyramid. Musicians occupy the apex. Way down the slopes looking like teeny ants are all the rest: writers, painters, sculptors, actors. Etc.

The Brothers Quay animations seem to match the music well. How did they come about? Did you give them any artistic direction, or is it all their own ideas?

"We gave the Quays early recordings of the songs. They did the animations to those mixes. In fact, this led to a bit of a difficult situation in that the recordings we gave them had click tracks at the beginning to cue in over-dubs. The Qs actually started the animations over the intro clicks so when it came time to play the songs in time with the animations, our on-stage live cues from the drummer had to become byzantine weird abominations. When I met the Qs I realized right away they were perfectly in sync with the way we do things. They are, at heart, musicians. I said to them, we don't have to talk to each other, do we? They said, No. I said, Good, let me know when you're finished."

Judging by the podcasts, the project is both amazingly original, and pretty brave. Has anyone else done a similar project which inspired you/which you admire?

"Nope. The inspiration is the inadequacy of theater, the inadequacy of rock music. We set out in 1975 with a mission to "fix" rock. Starting with "Mirror Man" back in 1998 and after my stint in London's West End, it came within my remit to "fix" theater. See? I've already fixed the spelling... I am toying with the idea that the next project will "fix" ballet."

As you state on your website, "this thing is our Waterloo..." What has the response been so far from critics, fans, and friends?

"Those who've seen it are blown away. Those who haven't sometimes are 'worried'. In the end, I don't care. It had to be done. Our corporate motto, translated from Latin, is: Art is forever, the audience comes and goes. Ars longa, spectatores fugaces. But the underlying meaning according to the four Latin scholars we relied on in Cambridge, Oxford, Canada and America is: Art is forever, the audience runs away."
Have you got any similar large-scale projects planned for the future?

"As I noted, fixing ballet."

Park Circus' top five picks...

2010-02-17T13:32:00.002Z

These recommendations have been put together by the team at Glasgow-based Park Circus, the leading international distributor of classic and back catalogue films for theatrical exhibition.

1. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
GFT 1, Saturday 20 February, 16:00
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES has been restored and is showing in an exclusive preview at Glasgow Film Festival ahead of its re-release on Friday 26 February. Starring Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Coburn, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is one of the most charming, entertaining musicals of the 1950s. Including the legendary musical number 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' (which later inspired Madonna's 'Material Girl' video) - this is a real treat for eyes and ears!

2. GREGORY'S GIRL: 30th Anniversary School Reunion
GFT 1, Sunday 28 February, 15:30
One of the most loved Scottish films ever, we look forward to seeing GREGORY'S GIRL back on the big screen. This might also be a chance to meet your favourite stars, as cast and crew have been invited to celebrate the film's 30th Anniversary.

3. HIS GIRL FRIDAY
GFT 1, Sunday 21 February, 13:30, Monday 22 February, 11:00
Another classic from Howard Hawks, HIS GIRL FRIDAY stars Cary Grant as a ruthless Chicago newspaper editor who conspires to keep his star reporter and ex-wife from quitting work to marry a mild-mannered insurance salesman. This hilarious screwball comedy is part of Glasgow Film Festival's Cary Grant strand, paying tribute to one of Hollywoods most elegant and charismatic actors.

4. SCOTTISH PRODUCTION ARCHIVE: PETER MULLAN
GFT 2, Friday 26 February, 18:30
We are often being asked to license screenings of contemporary Scottish classics ORPHANS and MY NAME IS JOE. This in-person appearance is a great opportunity to find out more about the multi-talented Scottish director, writer and actor Peter Mullan.

5. NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU
GFT 1, Wednesday 24 February, 15:45, Thursday 25 February 18:15
If you liked Paris je t’aime - you will love this film. We watched this heart-warming account on love and relationships at Cannes International Film Festival this year and would strongly recommend it to Festival goers. A series of shorts from established and new directors including Fatih Akin, Mira Nair and Natalie Portman, featuring an all-star cast list with names such as Julie Christie and James Caan, this is a feel-good gem not to be missed.

Interview with Cosmic Neman (Zombie Zombie)

2010-02-16T17:54:00.007Z

Rosie Davies, the Arches' Online Officer, talks to Cosmic Neman from Parisian electro duo Zombie Zombie - currently residing "in outer space" - ahead of their hotly anticipated John Carpenter tribute on this Thursday.

This is a specially commissioned event. Whose idea was it to choose John Carpenter music, and why?
"This idea came from the Glasgow Film Festival. We've always been big Carpenter fans, and horror movies fans, easy to guess with our band name! Our music is very influenced by horror movies scores, so to cover John Carpenter's music was too obvious if the idea came from us. The Film Festival gave us a good excuse to do it without feeling guilty."

It's billed as an a/v show. What sort of visuals can we expect?
"There must have been a misunderstanding, it's not gonna be an a/v show! I think the festival would have liked it, but we'll focus on the music. We do not want to distract the audience with images from movies that people know by heart already. We think there is enough stuff happening on stage to get people's attention - we don't want to hide behind images, like you see in most electronic music shows now. Musicians behind laptops are pretty boring. Our music is not digital but analogue; we use old keyboards and drums and we promise there won't be any boring laptops on stage. The movie is gonna be us fighting these old machines on stage!"

You are famously inspired by horror movie soundtracks. How does this come across in your music?
"We use the same instruments that a lot of movies scores have been made with, like analogue delay pedals. Most sounds in horror scores go through effect pedals to make them sound bigger - this is how you make a scream sound really frightening. Using sound effects like in horror movies soundtracks, we try to make the listener go through a lot of different emotional states and travel with the music."

Aside from Carpenter, which other horror movies/directors have particularly inspired you?
"Our taste in horror movies is very classic. Aside from Carpenter, Romero and Dario Argento are the other two horror masters who we would put in our top three. Goblin's work on their movies was obviouly very inspiring too."

What can the crowd expect from the gig on Thursday?
"We'll play our favorites, like themes from Halloween, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, but we made it our way, so we don't wanna tell you more now to keep the surprise for the show. But, we think it's gonna be very exciting."

You've said that you like to improvise when recording music. Is improvisation a big part of your live show?
"Yes, it is! And Carpenter's music goes well with this idea, because most of his tunes are just a basic line. There's no complex structure, so you can do what you want and play around the theme as we do with our music."

Your influences include Kraftwerk, Neu and Harmonia. Is any new music inspiring you right now?
"We've always liked repetitive music where the beat is the heart of the music, and you're right - German krautrock masters were the pioneers of it, along with contemporary music composers like Steve Reich or John Cage. Now we also listen to a lot of electronic, minimal or club music, like some of Atom's or Ricardo Villalobos' tracks. And, by the way, my band mate Etienne Jaumet just released his solo album mixed by the Detroit techno master Carl Craig on Versatile and Domino records...

What are you currently working on as Zombie Zombie?
"We're working on a new record. The idea was not to play the horror movie card again, but this Carpenter covers project slowed us down a bit. But in a good way - it's such a pleasure to play these perfect tracks! We also made a new soundtrack for Potemkin Battleship [the Eisenstein film] for the Paris Music Institute and will tour with this project too - a performance is planned in London in June, I think."

Read more and book tickets here. Tickets also available from Mono - 0141 553 2400

Everybody's Fine

2010-02-16T15:13:00.003Z

Kirk Jones may not be Britain 's most prolific director but he is becoming one of the country's most successful filmmakers. The Bristol-born Jones made his feature debut with the delightful comedy Waking Ned (1998) which gave the much loved Ian Bannen one of his best screen roles. Jones's second feature was the equally beguiling Nanny McPhee (2005) with Emma Thompson as the no nonsense nanny and an amazing cast that included Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald and Angela Lansbury making a big screen return after a twenty year absence.

Jones has now made his American debut with Everybody's Fine which has its British premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival this Friday. Robert De Niro stars as a lonely widower trying to reconnect with a family who have scattered to the four corners of America. His decision to visit all four of his children is the basis of a road movie steeped in the stunning landscapes of the American heartland and featuring a classy ensemble cast that also includes Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Melissa Leo. If the film doesn't bring a tear to the eye or make you want to call a beloved relative then you must have a heart of stone.

Determined to get under the skin of America, Jones undertook his own road trip travelling across the country from New York to Las Vegas by greyhound bus and Amtrak trains. He took more than 2,000 photographs and met more than 100 people, some of whom wound up playing small but vital roles in Everybody's Fine as the real people that De Niro's Frank meets on his journey.

In a recent interview Jones revealed: "on a daily basis I was inspired with ideas that I saw out of the window of the bus and the train and they went directly into the script. Things like Frank's occupation. I knew it was important. I knew I wanted it to have some relevance. I kept looking at truck stops and factories, trying to work out what he could do. Literally, I was traveling from St. Louis to Kansas on an Amtrak train. I looked out the window and my focus shifted to the telephone wires, and I just thought how beautiful and elegant they were and I looked at the wire and I thought, "Someone has to cut that wire and someone has to protect it from the elements." And what a beautiful irony it would be if Frank had helped all these people communicate and protected the line of communication but was struggling to communicate with his own family."

If you want to hear more about the creation of the film, working with Robert De Niro, the challenge of remaking Tornatore's Italian classic and much more then come along to the screening this Friday February 19, Glasgow Film Theatre, 8.15pm. Kirk Jones will be there to introduce the film and take questions afterwards. Click here for trailer and tickets.

Blogger: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter

Image: Kirk Jones on the set of Everybody's Fine.

Jackie Shearer's top five...

2010-02-16T15:01:00.002Z

Jackie Shearer is Arts Manager for Glasgow East Arts Company, running Platform at The Bridge in Easterhouse. The company also delivers an extensive arts programme across Glasgow East and is a partner in the Youth Film Festival.

I am always fascinated by different aspects of Japanese culture, so Bare Essence of Life, with it's rural Japanese backdrop (including organic vegetable plots) is right up my street. Also, as part of the festival's 'departures' strand is Kurosawa's Ran, an oscar winner that I've somehow managed to miss till now, so am really excited about that. The Greatest and I am Love, both featuring as part of the 'gala' strand, appeal to me because of the spirited women in them - Susan Sarandon and Tilda Swinton. Last but not least is Bergfest, a low budget German film which I'm sure will handsomely illustrate that great things don't need big budgets. I've also just realised that my selection here seems to be about fraught and tangled relationships!

Sambrooke Scott's top five...

2010-02-15T15:54:00.005Z

Sambrooke Scott, Market Development Executive for Scottish Screen sent us his top five...

1. NORTH BY NORTHWEST - Watching Hitchcock on the big-screen is always a pleasure and, by the time he made this, he truly was such as master of his art form. Nothing feels wasted. It's got everything you want from a thriller; danger, thrills, mistaken identity, sex and an innocent man thrust into circumstances beyond his control played pitch-perfectly by the greatest leading man every to grace the silver screen. From the masterclass in how to ratchet-up tension that is the iconic scene in the cornfield, to the throwaway Freudian gag at the very end - it's perfect cinema.

2. AKIRA - When I watched Akira as a young teenager in the early 90s it left scorch-marks across my brain. I'd grown up on animation diet almost exclusively comprised of Warner Bros.' Loony Toons but nothing had prepared me for the lunacy of these Japanese cartoons. Post-apocalyptic near-futures, troubled teens and body-horror were the trademarks of the genre, but Akira was different. It was epic and yet painfully intimate at the same time, it was grime, rain and dirt rendered in beautiful, elegant, flowing animation. It was visionary and hallucinogenic, repellent yet absorbing. To a young man it was like peeking into Pandora's Box and being enveloped in new worlds never before imagined. And it's got a kick-ass motorbike.

3. THE FIRST MOVIE - Cinema is not 3D, surround-sound, senso-o-rama popcorn fests. It's food for the soul and the uniting power of tales. It's the sheet hung between two trees and a projector run off a car battery that opens a door to other worlds, other people, other dreams. This film shows the wonderful power of cinema and stories which survives no matter (or perhaps because?) of hardship. Its an uplifting and touching film which shows the simple joy film brings to a country that has become defined by conflict.

4. COMPETITION 4: LEARNING TO BREATHE - I could chose any the Magic Lantern's brilliant Glasgow Short Film Festival programme as their collections of unique short film work are always worth watching. However this particular section includes one of my favourite recent short films, Please Say Something. I can't begin to do the film justice but it's a isometric 8-bit experimental time-sliding domestic drama played out between a cat and mouse. How can you not want to watch that?

5. SONGS FOR AN AIRLESS ROOM (2009-2010) - Sometimes you have to just jump in, feet first, without reading too much about something. To experience it in the raw, unadulterated by preconceptions and other people's opinions. All I know is what's written in the brief blurb in the programme. I'm going in with my eyes, ears and imagination open. It may be brilliant, it may be turgid, but half the fun is in finding out and making up my own mind. That's what festivals are all about though, isn't it?

Do you have a top 5 (wish list/picks/old favourites?) from the film festival programme? If so, send them to digital@gft.org.uk along with the reasons you selected them and a picture and a few words about yourself and we'll publish the best online.

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter's top 5 recommendations...

2010-02-15T14:10:00.002Z

Everyone always asks what you would really really recommend in the Festival and you always want to say everything but if threatened with a locked room and a neverending reel of Martin Lawrence films I would offer the following five recommendations:

1. City Of Life And Death (Nanjing Nanjing)
Passed over by many major festivals, City Of Life And Death finally found its spot in the limelight when it won the top prize at San Sebastian. It is a majestic piece of storytelling on what has been described as the forgotten Holocaust of World War Two. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 was marked by acts of appalling atrocity and thousands upon thousands of deaths. The events are shown from both sides of the divide in Lu Chuan's stunning black and white labour of love. Hailed by Finn Halligan from Screen International as one of the best foreign films of the past year and who am I to disagree?
(Cineworld, Wednesday Feb 24, 6pm, Thursday Feb 25 1pm)

2. I Killed My Mother (J'Ai Tue Ma Mere)
Writer/director/producer star Xavier Dolan was barely out of his teens when he became the toast of Cannes for this semi-autobiographical tour de force. He casts himself as a petulant, floppy-haired gay sixteen year old at odds with the mother he both loves and detests. They argue like some Oedipal George and Martha but the film is not some adolescent whine but an engaging, screamingly funny depiction of a complex relationship revealed in terms both hilarious and heartbreaking.
(GFT, Tuesday Feb 23, 3.45pm, CCA, Wednesday Feb 24, 8.30pm)

3. The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story
If you love musicals in general and Mary Poppins in particular then this is essential viewing as it tells of the creative collaboration between the composers Robert and Richard Sherman and the professional differences that mean they can no longer stand to be in the same room as each other. The documentary features fresh interviews and archive footage of a who's who of Hollywood that includes Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Dick Van Dyke, Jim Dale, Debbie Reynolds, Hayley Mills and many others. & Glasgow has the UK premiere!
(GFT, Friday Feb 19, 3.45pm. Grosvenor, Saturday Feb 20 6pm)

4. Vacation (Kyuka)
The Japanese focus Departures runs the gamut from a blockbuster crowdpleaser like Rookies to the bonkers anime adaptation Yatterman. Vacation is a film straight from the heart addressing the issue of capital punishment and telling the story of a model prisoner awaiting his execution and the middle-aged prison guard assigned to accompany him through his last hours on earth.
(GFT, Monday Feb 22, 8.45pm. Cineworld, Tuesday Feb 23, 6.15pm, Grosvenor Wednesday Feb 24m 6pm)

5. Holiday
The Cary Grant retrospective is full of beloved old classics like Bringing Up Baby and North By Northwest but I'd love people to strike out and see this utterly delightful romantic comedy that is a little less well known. The witty play was a Broadway smash. The co-star is Katharine Hepburn. The director is George Cukor who would direct them both in The Philadelphia Story and Holiday is just a wonderfully sophisticated charmer on the bumpy road to love.
(GFT, Friday Feb 19, 1.30pm, Saturday Feb 20, 11am)

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

Angela Freeman's top 7...

2010-02-15T13:51:00.003Z

GFT Front of House Manager Angela Freeman's top 7 (she couldn't narrow it down to five so we're letting her have an extra two...) have just come in...

The films I want to catch (if time allows!) during the film festival are:

1. L'Affaire Farewell - a gripping French spy thriller set during the cold war in 1980's Moscow.

2. Leaving - Kirsten Scott Thomas plays a wife in this French drama. Thomas' marriage breaks down when she has an affair. I really love her films generally!

3. Ran - Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece based on King Lear. I have never seen this on the big screen and am really looking forward to it.

4. Wake in Fright - this once lost Australian thriller looks taut and terrifying. It is now shown in a re-mastered print and promises to be a cinematic treat.

5. That Evening Sun - This looks like a gentle drama but one I would like to catch as the main star Hal Holbrook is a favourite actor if mine and has been for some years now.

6. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman - this romantic tale stars James Mason and Ava Gardner and has been likened to a Powell and Pressberger movie.

7. I Am Love - this Italian film stars Tilda Swinton and promises a great deal in terms of plot, cinematography and mood.

Basically I need a week off to enjoy these and so much more from the varied and imaginative selection of new and classic films at this year's Glasgow Film Festival!

Do you have a top 5 (wish list/picks/old favourites?) from the film festival programme? If so, send them to digital@gft.org.uk along with the reasons you selected them and a few words about yourself and we'll publish the best online.

Cash And Cary

2010-02-15T09:52:00.003Z

Everyone celebrates Bringing Up Baby as one of the finest comedies from the golden era of Hollywood studio filmmaking in the 1930s. It is the very definition of a beloved all-time favourite and yet it is also one of those films that went from being a box-office flop to an undisputed classic without ever becoming a financial success. In that respect it shares the same fate as It's Wonderful Life which lost money when it first came out in 1946 but is now as essential a part of Christmas as mince pies and plum puddings-especially at the Glasgow Film Theatre.

Bringing Up Baby was based on a short story that had appeared in Collier's magazine and developed as a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn who plays a stubborn, independent, free spirited rich girl not a million miles away from the woman she was in real life. The male character is a mild-mannered palaentologist whose entire life seems to be focused on the construction of a dinosaur. The role was said to have been offered to Fredric March, Ronald Colman and Robert Montgomery before director Howard Hawks made the inspired choice of Cary Grant.

Hepburn and Grant were one of the screen's best comedy couple and the madness in Bringing Up Baby spreads to include a leopard called Baby, a missing bone and a frisky dog. Everyone connected with the film recalled what fun it was to make with Hepburn insisting that tea be served every afternoon and Hawks insisting that they stop shooting and head to the races when the weather was fine. Shooting stretched from September 1937 to January 1938 as Hawks went 40% over budget on a film that wound up costing over a $1million.

The early reviews were good, the audience reactions were strong and yet the film grossed just over $700,000 in America-a flop by anyone's reckoning. At the time people thought that maybe audiences found the pace too fast, the tone too manic, the humour too sophisticated-all of the qualities that make it seem so fresh and alive today. Hepburn found herself labelled box-office poison alongside other no-hopers like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. She left Hollywood shortly afterwards and returned to Broadway in triumph with The Philadelphia Story.

Years later, Bringing Up Baby started to receive the attention it deserved especially after Peter Bogdanovich made his homage What's Up Doc ? (1972) with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal and everyone could see just how magical Hepburn and Grant were. Now, it seems like a peerless example of the screwball comedy and the best possible way to begin our celebration of the career of Cary Grant.

Bringing Up Baby screens at the GFT on Thursday February 18 at 1pm and on Friday February 19 at 11am and also at the Grosvenor on Sunday February 21 at 6pm. Click here for info and tickets.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

Bernard MacLaverty's top 5...

2010-02-15T09:26:00.004Z

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast but now lives in Glasgow. He has published five collections of short stories, (the latest is ‘Matters of Life & Death’) and four novels – Lamb, Cal, Grace Notes and The Anatomy School. He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio plays, television plays, screenplays (for Lamb & Cal) and libretti. He wrote and directed a short film ‘Bye-Child’ which won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best First Director and a BAFTA nomination for Best Short Film. He is a member of Aosdana in Ireland.

I thought to choose five films would be easy but there were nine on my first trawl through the programme. Part of the problem is that you always want to see new movies. They could turn out to be clunkers, even though they’re made by good people. So I had to be ruthless and cut four from my list. The five things I want to go and see are:

1. Director’s Cut Kevin MacDonald. (Because of ‘Touching the Void’)

2. The First Movie Mark Cousins (Because of Mark Cousins)

3. Gregory’s Girl (Because it can’t be bettered)

4. Life during Wartime (Because of Ciaran Hinds & Charlotte Rampling)

5. North by Northwest (Because it’s a double bill - Hitchcock and a blue suit)

Bernard MacLaverty

Jason Edwards' Top 5...

2010-02-12T16:40:00.004Z

Jason Edwards is Music Programme Officer at the The Arches and one of the men behind the Glasgow Music and Film Festival programme. Here are his top 5 picks of the festival programme:

1. Zombie Zombie performing the music of John Carpenter
This is literally a one-of-a-kind performance that we have specially commissioned and as a music lover the idea of Zombie Zombie (one of my favourite production duos) re-interpreting the work of John Carpenter is almost too much to handle! It’s going to be a hugely memorable show.

2. Thomas Truax performing ‘Songs From the Films of David Lynch’
David Lynch’s choice of music for his films and for Twin Peaks has always been impeccable and Thomas Truax is sufficiently weird and unique to give a Lynchian edge to them and create something fun and a little bit different from your average gig experience.

3. Until The Light Takes Us
I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for ages. The Norwegian metal scene is a seriously scary and crazy thing – it’s riddled with Satanic worship, murder and church burning and the music is just beyond brutal: post-brutal, if you will. I’m just generally intrigued.

4. Gentlemen Broncos
Greg from Filght Of The Conchords in the lead role – is there much more to say?

5. The UK premiere of Mogwai’s Burning (sold out)
This film is going to be beautiful – simple as. A black and white, Vincent Moon directed, Mogwai live concert film – lush.