10 days of Doom 3

So I had a choice: buy Doom 3, or go to the Edinburgh Film Festival. I sublimated the computer use thing into writing a program which would suck all of the festival details from their website (including what's sold out, by pretenting to buy stuff) and then (using preferences I set) choose the timetable of films which maximised my utility. Or something like that, whatever it is that economists think we should spend our time doing. And I'm now going to watch those films for the next 10/11/12 days, with breaks for 2 Many DJs and LCD Soundsystem and my cousin's (desperately poorly timed - the last two days of the festival, I mean...!) wedding.

Day 1

Dunno whether I'll do these daily. This took a lot longer than I thought it would.

The Girls of San Frediano (retrospective)
(Valerio Zurlini / Italy / 1955 / 114 min)
"Zurlini's acclaimed debut: a smart, funny dissection of the Italian male psyche." - EIFF

Pretty entertaining 50s comedy about a lothario trying to cope with the dozen women he's got on the go. Felt quite modern, particularly in visual style and some shots, plenty to laugh at although it's got a slightly darker undercurrent. Left with smile on face. The main character is called "Bob", which seems to be a bit like Ned in that it's a generic name, although since Bobs are smooth-talking guys with "velvet eyes" they're a bit different from Neds. And "Bob" brings back memories of Blackadder for me.

World Animation 1
(Various shorts)

Some real gems in here. First, Instinct in plasticene by Rao Heidmets, in which two characters bearing strong resemblances to god and the devil are doing the creative thing on a discworld. Clever, fun, and very well realised, particularly the slightly odd world they inhabit. Also outstanding is The Way, where Qing Huang takes classical Chinese painting styles and animates them, occasionally breathtakingly beautifully. Andreas Bokder Jorgensen's For Dog & Country stood out for its 2.3:1 widescreenness with vast flat-coloured spaces, very simple surfaces, nicely minimalist geometric/architectural visual structure. Had a story too, in fact a nightmarish situation where someone had some kind of PDA telling him what to do every 5 seconds. Eek. (Yes I appreciate that since I've just set up my computer to do exactly that wrt the festival, there's some kind of irony going on here. Now go away.) David Russo sets Robert Frost's poem to modified and animated photography in Pan With Us, to great effect - really beatifully done stuff of individuals or hands blurring about still or slower-moving nonreal animated fragments. The other five were all good, but not quite as striking, except for Dear Sweet Emma, which I saw at the horror festival earlier this year (why are EIFF calling this its "Scottish Premiere"?) - it didn't do it for me then either: standard evil granny stuff done on a computer.

Control Room
(Jehane Noujaim / USA / 2003 / 86 min)
"An insider's look at the workings of the Al Jazeera network, by the maker of Startup.com. One screening only before its network premiere on BBC Storyville!" - EIFF

Possibly today's highlight, a documentary on Al-Jazeera by a filmmaker who was "embedded" with Al-Jazeera at CentCom for the duration of the initial invasion of Iraq. Very interesting and engaging humane stuff, and (bonus) you can watch it this weekend on BBC2! Seemed to really touch audience members who watched a lot of TV coverage of the war.

Calvaire (The Ordeal)
(Fabrice Du Welz / France, Belgium & Luxembourg / 2004 / 90 min)
"Deliverance meets The League of Gentlemen in this chiller from the Low Countries." - EIFF

Pretty apt description really. Contains the most disturbing rave I have ever seen. Plus other moderately disturbing stuff. Very good fun if you like sick twisted black funny bloody evil bad stuff. With bad things happening. Usual story, guy's car breaks down in remote wooded area, goes for help, the locals turn out to be helpful everyday rural folk, he's back on the road in no time and lives happily ever after.