Fair Trade comes to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time this year with exhibitors displaying the very best fair trade products from across the globe at the city’s Grassmarket from Friday 28 to Monday 31 August.
With home wares, fashion, jewellery, handbags, food and drink, books, music and much more, Fair Trade on the Fringe will offer visitors to the world’s largest arts festival a unique shopping experience in the heart of the city’s iconic Old Town.
And, for anyone feeling “fringed-out” there will be world music, kids’ activities, free samples and tastings to help lift the spirits and help promote Fair Trade issues in an exciting and inspiring way. Read more »
Silence speaks volumes in Three Monkeys, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s snapshot of a family in freefall following the release of father and husband Eyüp (Yavuz Bingol) from prison.
Eyüp’s decision to take the blame for his employer and local politician Servet’s (Ercan Kesa) hit-and-run accident has unfortunate repercussions for son Ismail (Rifat Sungar) and wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan) as they try to cope with life without the breadwinner’s salary.
When Hacer approaches Servet for an advance on the pay-off agreed for Eyüp’s silence, the pair become involved with each other, leading to problems for all involved.
Rather than spending time on verbal recriminations or clichéd scenarios, Ceylan allows his characters room to breathe. Looks and glances replace dialogue for the most part, the dawning realisation of what has been happening in Eyüp’s world creeping up on him as the camera gets ever closer to its subjects.
Exciting news from Edinburgh’s Cameo cinema this afternoon: cult classics The Toxic Avenger – Uncut (1984) and Class of Nuke ‘Em (1986) will be screened on the evening of Thursday 13 August, complete with an exclusive in-person Q&A with Troma director/producer and company President, Lloyd Kaufman.
Founded in 1974, Troma have since garnered a huge fan following for their gory, low budget and often satirical movies, titles such as Toxic Avenger leading to numerous sequels and imitations.
The Cameo event is thought to be Kaufman’s first visit to Scotland and it’ll be interesting to see if the turnout is quite as enthusiastic (rabid?) as it was for their recent Bruce Campbell event.
Well done once again to the cinema for continuing to offer Scottish film fans something different from the usual mainstream film-going experience.
What do you prefer in your typical action film: style or substance? Usually there’s no debate, flashy visuals and a plot that has been surgically removed at development stage the result of a multi-million dollar budget and the need to appease the 14-25 year old demographics.
Occasionally we’re treated with more respect, films like the Bourne trilogy finding a balance between brains and brawn that makes viewers and critics sit up and take notice again, at least until something like Quantum of Solace pops its head over the parapet and is met with a collective groan.
Thankfully style, substance, brains and a healthy dose of brawn flow through the veins of new thriller Mesrine: Killer Instinct, the first of a two-part biopic of French crime legend and one-time folk hero Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel).
Although its opening scene may be set in the 1970s, the first few minutes recall a film set a decade earlier, as a clever use of split screen evoking memories of Steve McQueen’s classic Bullitt (1968). Cassel is given a classy entrance from director Jean-François Richet, the camera lingering long on his every move.
What can you say that hasn’t been said about North by Northwest, about to return to our screens in a new print? I’ll eschew going into detail and simply state the following:
Mistaken identity. Cary Grant. Auction room. Crop duster. James Mason. Romance. Intrigue. Mount Rushmore. Hitchock. Re-release. Filmhouse. Friday 3 until Thursday 9 July. Must-see.
If that’s not enough, take a look at the following two trailers. Brilliant stuff, especially the second one…
Just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean it never happened. One man’s relationship with alcohol and the consequences his actions have on himself and the people around him are at the centre of David Elliot’s Hangover, being staged this year as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Zoo Venue, Friday 7 – Sunday 31 August.
Danny has the hangover to end all hangovers. However, this is not your typical weekend hangover. For Danny Flynn this has fast become a regular pastime. A mysterious character, conjured from Danny’s imagination, forces him to recall the events of the previous night.
As the memories become clearer and more troubling Danny is drawn closer and closer to a shocking conclusion.
Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker Anders Østergaard brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage in acclaimed film and Sundance favourite Burma VJ (Filmhouse, Friday 17 – Thursday 23 July).
In 2007, after decades of self-imposed silence, Burma became headline news across the globe when peaceful Buddhist monks led a massive rebellion. More than 100,000 people took to the streets protesting a cruel dictatorship that has held the country hostage for more than 40 years.
Foreign news crews were banned, the internet was shut down, and Burma was closed to the outside world.
The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), aka the Burma VJs, used pocket-sized video cameras to face down death to expose the repressive regime controlling their country.
The closing film of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival was rom-com with a difference, Adam, starring Hugh Dancy as Adam and Rose Byrne as love interest Beth.
I wrote a short review of the film for last Friday’s Edinburgh Evening News which is now up on their website. Adam is released in the UK on 31 July.
Little known here in the UK but huge over in America, HBO’s half-hour drama In Treatment is starting to get a bit of a reputation as the next “must-watch” show. This week I spoke to series creator Hagai Levi at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival and he dropped hints about the mooted third season.
Each episode of In Treatment focuses on one psychotherapy session held by Dr Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne). The series is stripped over a week, with Monday following one patient’s treatment, Tuesday another patient and so on through the days until Friday’s episode covers Weston’s own visits to his therapist to discuss the traumas of his week.
The next week we go back to Monday’s patient on the first day of the week and the cycle repeats itself.
If it sounds confusing then it isn’t, though it does offer a new take on TV drama and demands a loyalty from viewers perhaps more used to dipping their toe into a drama and returning for the odd hit.
Last night, as part of the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival, low-budget/high-concept movie legend Roger Corman took part in a talk covering his career at the city’s Cineworld cinema.
While Corman made for a fascinating interviewee, someone who seems to be a genuinely decent guy in a business known for it’s cut throat nature, he dropped some new information into the discussion about his future plans, which I first wrote about over in my Reel Time blog for the Edinburgh Evening News.
As director Joe Dante slipped quietly into the auditorium to hear the last 45 minutes of the talk, Corman mentioned that the pair are soon to start work on a new project after being approached by US online DVD rental and streaming company Netflix (similar to the UK’s Lovefilm).
Director Sam Mendes once again turns his spotlight on relationships in new film Away We Go, this time bringing things up-to-date in modern day America rather than the 1950s suburbs of 2008’s Revolutionary Road.
Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are a thirty-something unmarried couple who are about to have their first child, the plan being to allow the baby’s grandparents to help raise her in the first few years.
When granny and grandpa announce they’re going to be moving abroad a month before the baby’s birth, Burt and Verona decide to take a road trip around America to meet friends and relations who could make up a new family unit for the new arrival.
The first thing that’s refreshing about Away We Go is the high level of humour running through it. Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida’s script is packed with one liners and clever asides on the complexities of modern life, none of them feeling forced or out of place.
Expectations can be a terrible thing. When I heard that Wide Open Spaces, a new film written by one of the co-creators of TV’s Father Ted and starring Father Dougal himself, was coming to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, it’s fair to say I was looking forward to it. Throw in some clever mockumentary-style teaser clips and I was sold.
Sadly, now I’ve seen the film I know to be more careful what I hope for.
Opening in the living room of two friends, Myles (O’Hanlon) and Austin (Ewen Bremner) as they drunkenly watch a George Best DVD, the film then throws them into the back of beyonds to work on the creation of a famine theme park for entrepreneur Gerry (Owen Roe).
When Gerry announces that neither of the men will be paid until his cashflow problems are solved, they must become debt collectors, all the while trying to build the foundations of the theme park using the limited tools supplied.
What is it that holds relationships, and in particular marriages, together? Love? Devotion? Routine? For Pippa Lee, the heroine at the centre of Rebecca Miller’s life-affirming new film The Private Lives of Pippa Lee the answer would seem to be “all of the above, with a side helping of luck.”
Opening in present-day America, somewhere in the suburbs of a genteel retirement community, Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) and her older husband Herb (Alan Arkin) appear to be the perfect couple.
With Pippa happily agreeing to her husband’s decision to sell their city property and move to their new location, it takes a chance comment to trigger Pippa’s memories of her troubled past, leading her to wonder quite how she ended up in her current role of doting wife and mother.
Flashing back to Pippa’s birth and the horrified reaction from her mother Suky (a blisteringly good Maria Bello) to her baby’s “fur”, the young girl’s upbringing is detailed over the course of the film.
The next film to look out for at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is actually two films, two halves of a story about real-life French criminal Jacques Mesrine: Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One.
Covering the early life of the man who would go on to become notorious figure in the French underworld, Vincent Cassel stars alongside Gerard Depardieu and Mathieu Almaric.
With the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival just a few days away, there’s still time for a few short previews of some of the films I think are worth searching out: The Hurt Locker from director Kathryn Bigelow is one of the more populist ones.
The film is set in Iraq and revolves around the work of a bomb disposal team led by Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) as they deal not only with bombs but with the psychological problems that occur as a result. Guy Pearce and Ralph Feinnes co-star.
Described as a war movie for people who don’t like war movies, this could be a popular festival choice. The film premieres on Friday 19 June at 8.15pm, visit the EIFF site for details.
In February 2009 I reviewed the DVD release of 2006 British film, The Gigolos, for this site, writing how I enjoyed the film for the way it told a story about relationships in modern society in a unique way.
Soon after I received an email from the film’s producer, Tony Bracewell, who thankfully liked what I’d written. This led to correspondence about various topics, including his upcoming picture, Cuckoo, once again directed by his brother, Richard.
The following interview was carried out via email with both Tony and Richard in June 2009.
Jonathan Melville: Can you tell me a bit about both your backgrounds?
Richard: I was the tedious kid at school who wrote sketches for assemblies, volunteered to do speeches, that sort of thing. And I loved movies. Back then, the closest thing to a DVD box set was an all-day screening of Rocky I, II & III back-to-back at Aylesbury Odeon.
But I didn’t put the writing and the movies together until I was in my mid-20s, when I realised that directing didn’t necessarily have to be something which other people did.
I worked for one day as a runner – painting floors white on a Julio Iglesias video – before promoting myself to director (on my own shorts). I reckoned the only way to learn directing was by directing. I taught myself technical elements from old BBC training manuals.
Tony: I ran PR agencies for 10 years. 10 years of failing to persuade people to be interested in uninteresting things (aka ‘PR’) was more than enough. Richard decided to make his first feature film at just the right time. How could I turn that down? Although some friends still think I do PR – for gigolos. (I don’t by the way, unless the price is right.)
With plots revolving around rising unemployment, a deepening recession and families struggling to make ends meet, ITV’s Shelley seems almost prescient when viewed a quarter of a century on from its original transmission.
Or perhaps it’s more a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Hywel Bennett returns as work shy James Shelley in the latest release from Network, a season which saw our hero living in his bedsit with partner Fran (Belinda Sinclair), baby Emma and the regular visitor Mrs Hawkins (Judith Tewson) while being threatened with work and responsibility.
When researching the background to any TV show or film, it’s often worth going straight to the horses mouth for stories on its production. In the case of Napoleon and Love starring Ian Holm as the title character, who better to look to than Mr Holm himself?
In his excellent 2004 autobiography, Acting My Life, Holm reflects on his career circa the mid-1970s and recalls the programme thusly: “For television I did the disastrous Napoleon and Love, from which I survived more or less unscathed.
“I seem to remember the original project was to follow the whole of Napoleon’s life, though lack of money only allowed it to focus on his romantic exploits.
“It was rather like a series on Churchill concentrating on his contribution to oil painting.”
Harsh words from the man who would go onto play the character again in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, though in watching these nine episodes today it’s hard not to disagree with Holm’s appraisal of the series.
Were you around for the first ever Edinburgh International Film Festival? Did you see ET: The Extra Terrestrial for the first time at the EIFF? Did you witness Sigourney Weaver hiding in the Cineworld toilets when too many fans chased her through the building?
Head over to my latest Reel Time column in the Edinburgh Evening News for more EIFF memories.
Gay. For such a small word it’s amazing how much hate it can generate, controversy it can lead to and pain it can inflict: though it only contains three characters, you’d sometimes be forgiven for thinking it’s a four letter word.
While modern society prides itself on its liberal attitude to homosexuality and an understanding of gay issues, hate crimes and gay bashing still occur and form the basis for Liam Rudden’s revival of 1980’s play, A Cock and Bull Story.
Up-and-coming amateur boxer Travis (Stuart Ryan) is about to enter the ring once more to fight for a crucial title which will result in fame and glory, while his mate Jacko (David Elliot) encourages him.
When it becomes clear that the homophobic jibes of local youths might have some substance to them following an occurrence during one of Travis’s fights, the pair’s friendship is strained to breaking point as they try to understand their true feelings for each other.
With the perfunctory set placed in the confines of Kitsch Coffee Bar, a simple black cloth forming the backdrop and a poster of Rocky adding a touch of colour to proceedings, the small audience were more uncomfortable eavesdroppers than detached observers to on-stage events.
