Represent!

Every once in a while a track comes along which is straightforwardly great, to the point that as it fades into memory, there is a tendency to assume that it can't have been that good all the way through, there must have been some dull bits in nearly five minutes. Then for some reason you listen to it again and it is fantastic. At the moment that track is Fischerspooner's Emerge, and this is your reminder to go listen to it.

Postal Service in Crisis

In the throes of post-Glastonbury madness I scoured the interweb searching for our new favourite song, the Radio Slave remix of Paul McCartney's "Temporary Secretary". I ordered it from perfectbeat.com on the 5th of July. With no sign of my moderately expensive single-sided import 12" after a few weeks (to allow for our ever-reliable postal service), I tried contacting them a few times by email/customer support form and eventually resorted to transatlantic phone calls. They promised to send me another copy if they could find one (limited edition of 500), or to credit my card. They don’t appear to have done either, which is why they don’t get a link.

But I woke up this morning to find a rather forlorn package with more postmarks than was strictly necessary, and a large stamp saying

EIFF Day 4

"Well the Brittania Yacht costs money but I hear there's a big shopping centre nearby."
"That sounds like fun…"

Today was Indie Soundtrack Day, with Papa M, Will Oldham, and Godspeed You, Black Emperor! all turning up.

Festival fatigue is now widespread: two people lost consciousness within a few seats of me during one film this evening.

Even at four days it looks like I'm spamming Beard. Ten? Ha.

Family Diary (retrospective)
(Valerio Zurlini / Italy / 1962 / 114 min)
"Often cited as Zurlini's masterpiece, and winner of the Gold Lion at the 1962 Venice Film Festival." — EIFF

A man (Marcello Mastroianni) remembers parts of his prematurely deceased younger brother's life in this elegy. Gorgeous cinematography, many scenes looking like paintings, it's an emotive film set across a background of Italian history in the making, ranging from WWI through to '62. I worry that I'm not good at appreciating a lot of "classics" (oftentimes this turns out to have been due to lack of context — seeing something once new but which has been much-aped since, it still looks old until you see its contemporaries), and to some extent that was the case here — felt more distanced from it than I'd like to have been, possibly in reflection of the (variable but often great) distance between family members in the film. Which is arguably a major part of its subject.

Lindsay Anderson Discussion
"I believe every few years I can make a film that changes the world. And if it doesn't, well, it isn't my fault." — Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson died a decade ago next week, so the festival's doing a ten-year celebration which I'm largely missing (only so much you can do &c.). Time constraints resulted in a forced early departure even from this, but I caught almost all of it. A panel of five friends and co-workers, including Graham Crowden, told affectionate anecdotes and tried to build a coherent picture of the man (with help from more friends and co-workers in the audience) and a couple of shorts were shown. Made me want to see more of his work.

Dead Man's Shoes
(Shane Meadows / UK / 2004 / 86 min)
"Fourth feature from one of Britain's best-loved filmmakers; a gritty tale of gangland retribution." — EIFF

Two brothers return to their childhood stomping grounds to exact revenge for some slowly revealed past wrong. Very good, very well acted and pretty violent. Not gonna go into details though. Good sense of place (Peak District) too, and the soundtrack was very good, including tracks by Papa M (or a perfect soundalike: I recognised tone/voice/sound, not the song) and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy — the director, in Q&A, said that the connection with Warp Records (this is a Warp Film) hugely eased the task of getting music rights.

Chain
(Jem Cohen / USA & Germany / 2004 / 99 min)
"Anti-globalisation film poem, produced by members of Fugazi. From the co-director of Benjamin Smoke." — EIFF

Well of course I'm biased on this subject, but it is extremely good — a fantastically compelling meditation on globalisation, in the form of a (fake) documentary on the lives of two women, one scavenging in and around a mall, the other a Japanese woman trying to do her employer's will (when she can discern it) living out of hotels in the U.S.A. while seeking partners for a business proposal. I'm a bit uneasy with the idea of using fake documentaries to make serious points — treacherous ground &c. — but think Cohen has pretty much succeeded here (although at fractionally excessive length — this is the film two of my near neighbours lost consciousness in, but to be fair I do think that their fatigue was rooted in other things). The stories feel very true — indeed for most of the film I was debating whether this was a documentary or not (portions of it do come from the actor's own lives). The corporate culture stuff was frequently scary too. Still, feeling true isn't the same as being true. Difficult one. Opening titles are accompanied by not-so-well-known-for-their-crass-commercialism GYBE, which is something of an achievement…

Overnight
(Mark Brian Smith, Tony Montana / USA / 2004 / 81 min)
"Rags-to-rags tale of a young filmmaker blowing his big break; a study of hubris that has to be seen to be believed." — EIFF

Documentary about first-time director and famous wannabe Troy Duffy making his self-penned The Boondock Saints (read the wildly inconsistent reviews and wonder) and the first album by "his" band, The Brood. Hubris isn't a strong enough word. The man believes he is The Christ reborn and refuses to acknowledge anybody's contribution to his meteoric rise, with the gratifying result that he has a meteoric fall too. The documentary is unfortunately not terribly coherent, and I found Duffy so unpleasant that it was often not a pleasure to watch. Preferred Comedian for its portrayal of a total prick destroying his future through arrogance while also giving us Jerry Seinfeld's much more positive story as a counter to that.

EIFF Day 3

Way too tired (already!), this'll be short…

On the way to the cinema at one point today I walked past a family who were taking photos of themselves in and around one of those bicycle cab things. The husband, in his best Prince Philip accent, was trying to persuade the cyclist to stand by his cab and "make slitty eyes". Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge hubbie is still alive.

Natural City
(Min Byung-chun / South Korea / 2003 / 112 min)
"Shades of Blade Runner in this stunning futuristic tale of cops on the trail of rogue humanoids." — EIFF

This owes a lot to Blade Runner, and some to Aliens (for its fight scenes) too: less sympathetic to the cyborgs though, and I don't think as atmospheric. Nevertheless, very entertaining and with plenty of polished special effects. After laughing my way through the melodrama (reminiscent of The Killer at points) and a pop video moment near the end I discovered that the woman sitting next to me was a friend of the director. Didn't seem to take it too badly though, think she was laughing too. Phew.

In The Dark (documentary trio)
(Sergei Dvortsevoy / Russia & Finland / 2004 / 41 min)

Preceded by Tom Collinson's Flying People, wherein a champion kite flyer has introduced his blind day-job boss to the joys of kite-flying — interesting, highly specialist stuff — and Julia Daschner's Lormen, a video of a deafblind couple having a conversation using their hands (the "Lormen" tactile hand alphabet apparently). Mikes were attached to (or near?) their hands and amped way up, so there were good thumpy scratchy slidy noises accompanying all the hand movements. This was fascinating to watch, particularly the etiquette of offering your upturned palm to the other person's hand for them to speak, which would get dropped during intense moments of conversation — imagine trying to get a word in edgeways when you have to stop listening in order to speak…

Then there was In The Dark, about a blind man (seemingly recently bereft) living in a Moscow appartment with his cat. Tough mixture of funny (mainly because of the cat) and extraordinarily sad. Winner of the "first tears of the fest" award for me anyway.

Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos)
(Iciar Bollain / Spain / 2003 / 106 min)
"Sensitive treatment of a difficult subject; winner of six Spanish Goya awards, including Best Film of 2004." — EIFF

So who wrote this scheduling program that it followed up a trio of documentaries about blindness with something called "Take My Eyes", huh? I keep thinking Skynet… Rivetingly acted drama about a woman and her abusive husband, this builds traumatising levels of tension with alternating reconciliation and abuse, with blessedly minimal physical violence — its threat more than anything else kept me permanently on edge when the couple were together. The relationship portrayed is convincing and passionate, and both roles are substantial and deep, set against a coherent background of family and friends. The tension is leavened with wonderfully well-observed (and often comic) dialogue and scenes at intervening points. One of the best so far.

The director's presence was welcome, fractionally marred by a festival interviewer who was too anxious to ask her own questions.

Los Muertos
Lisandro Alonso / Argentina / 2004 / 78 min)
"New Argentine cinema finds its poet and master in Lisandro Alonso" — Variety

Utterly gorgeous film about a man leaving twenty-five-odd years of prison and travelling up a river to find his daughter. Peaceful, beautiful, very straight and unsentimental, there's a darker undercurrent it's easy to lose in the sheer wonder of watching. The journey involves meeting a number of people and fending for himself as he travels. It's just unlike anything else I've seen in a long time. (Warning: an animal was most certainly killed in the making of this film)

During the director's Q&A afterwards I felt he hadn't quite successfully communicated the subject's darkness since I was so taken with the film's loveliness that I didn't really feel the underlying threat/ambiguity/disconnectedness of the central character until the end (that's not a spoiler: I'm not saying that something happens, just that the dark mood became a little clearer to me at the end).

Skinned Deep
(Gabriel Bartalos / USA / 2003 / 97 min)
"Why DO people drive in the woods, anyway? Don't they know that it never ends well?" — EIFF

Up there with Street Trash (They Melt!) and Spontaneous Combustion for low-budget silliness, this slashery horrory romp features apple pie Americans and geriatric Hell's Angels being gleefully murdered by all kinds of freaks and weirdos including the bastard offspring of Oddjob and Mini-Me. Scores lots of points for 1) having Sean Connery voice its archvillain (uh, well, it sounds like him), 2) the director throwing plastic plates at the audience while it was showing, and 3) the inspired closing credits soundtrack, which had the audience in hysterics. Worth waiting for, as the satanic adexec would say.

EIFF Day 2

Mainly shorts today, some very "artistic" (in good and bad ways). My main question is how did Edinburgh City Council get planning permission for this without my receiving at least a letter?

Scottish Shorts

And "Bob" rears his head again, this time in Original Bob by Zam Salim, a pretty good little time travel tale about going back to try and get young you to fix your Big Mistake. A little predictable but good fun. Sandro Jandieri's Edinburgh-set Timekode is a bit opaque, but entertaining for all that, featuring lots of food, and a dining experience that makes your average spouse-swapping party pale in comparison. Rather excellent presentation of dialogue too. Caffalic Educashun (Bronagh Keegan) is also great fun, schoolgirl seeking some peace from bullying visits local church on lunchbreak & has a new take on the whole Jesus business. Return (Benjamin Kracun), Dansette (Rosie Toner), and Dead Man Falls (Simon Miller) all offer more conventional short fare, with DMF boasting good childrens' performances and scoring points for its presentation of Falklands War-era Britain (including Sinclair Spectrum!). Paper Anniversary (Joern Utkilen) encounters a somewhat monomaniacal woman on her first wedding anniversary trying to persuade her reluctant husband to "make babies". Her persuasive technique (including "Step outside. If I win …" during dinner) is interesting to say the least. Excellent stuff. Final piece is The Perpetual Twilight Of Gregor Black (Nigel Atkinson & Huw Davies), a wonderfully moody black-and-white vignette set in a world reminiscent of, I don't know, maybe a slightly raunchier Lanark against a background of a working couple (but what jobs!) at low-level war. Destined to become a shoe fetishist cult classic.

Gotta say that audiences at this festival are wildly variable: some are hugely enthusiastic and great fun to be a part of (such as the presumably largely home crowd at this session), while others are sheep (will clap if somebody gives them a lead) and others are just dead. Aside from anything else, if the directors are present I kindof feel that it's at the least polite to give a little applause, and some absolutely kick-arse pieces later today just got deathly silence at the end. I mean it's possible that the audience were stunned or in awed contemplation, but the slack jaws and richly sicksweet scent of decaying flesh tells me otherwise. At least they managed to suppress their otherwise incessant groaning of "brains" while the films were showing.

US Shorts

Slightly more mixed work in the US section (I'm perhaps going to be a little savage on the less-than-outstanding stuff for brevity's sake); Junebug and Hurricane (James Ponsoldt) is a single-mum-with-daughter tale, some lovely moments but a bit wistful in the end; The Dock (Nina Martinek) just didn't do it for me, some possibly dying, possibly suicidal, woman gets followed by a hick and then kills him, yay; Strangers (Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor) pits a Jew against an Arab and then together against some Nazis in a heavy-handed homily set in what has to be the best subway in the world (Haifa? I couldn't work it out), everything's slanted at an angle — platform, trains, everything (well just those both then); 9:30 (Mun Chee Yong) covers the running-away-from-the-one-you-love/homesickness/traveller thing, just not engagingly enough; Luke (Michael Jackson Chaney) is, oh, I don't know, some sickly moral good-Samaritan Arabs-can-be-lovely thing set presumably in the Iraq war. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I saw it refer to some passage in the bible in the credits (Luke x:y-z), but didn't see it tell us what the verses in question said (I'll take a guess that it's about The Good Samaritan hm?). If I could remember the numbers I might even look, but for god's sake if you wanna shove the bible down our throats you can at least tell us the fucking words rather than smugly quoting numbers, I mean Jesus.

On to the good, which was very, very good. Cavities (Hope Dickson Leach) left me with probably the strongest sense of unease yet this festival, with its coverage of "weight issues" for a teenage girl. Keep Right (Tim Godsall), featuring Lance "Bishop" Henriksen if my brain's working properly, is great fun but I can't really say more for spoiling its crunchy goodness. Gowanus, Brooklyn (Ryan Fleck) twists the poor neighbourhood school childhood story interestingly and well. Shock Act (Seth Grossman) is a very good piece which looks initially like it's gonna be the old prison electric shock experiment thing and then turns out to be for real — they want people to be able to press the button all the way: specifically, they're looking to see if female prison officers can do same and are employing actors to test this. Works extremely well and finishes with the obligatory protest note against the death penalty.

Black Box 2: Time Regained
"Film as memory, as reliquary of the past, as record: all these works — however different in style and technique — share this common aim." — EIFF

Much more arty stuff in the Black Box, and too much of it demonstrated how persistent is the pernicious idea that to make Great Art all you need do is induce epileptic fits in your audience (even if I was sympathetic to the whole zombie theme of the worst offender, reMi's seciron_RA). That said, the two recovered film works, Johannes Hammel's The Bathers (Die Badenden) and Bill Decasia Morrison's Light is Calling were ravishingly gorgeous — LiC particularly so, leaving me wanting to see Decasia all over again: I tend to get depressed reading centuries-old stuff which demonstrates that in many ways we haven't learned to deal any better with shit than we used to hundreds of years back (Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists anybody? — only one hundred, yes, but …), and Light is Calling, for all its cancerously decayed celluloloid is just so crisply beautiful, the fragments of smiling faces and people just being human kindof restores my faith a bit.

Found medical-themed Out Of The Ether (Kerry A. Laitala) pretty entertaining, particularly the flying bedpans and scissors. Restored Weekend (Gerd Gockell & Kirsten Winter), a fake film "reconstructed" around the first sound collage was also engaging; imagery ranged from the industrial to the abstract, with spots of Decasia-like stuff too. Moira Tierney took on 9/11 in American Dreams #3, and kindof lost: there's been so much on this subject that I'm becoming numb to it, and while at least this take isn't a thoughtless polemic, its clouds of smoke and distant views of people on Brooklyn Bridge weren't enough — my main sense of connection with it was from seeing the same views myself when visiting my brother. Compare Aljandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's gut-wrenching piece in 11'09"01 <shiver>.

Loretta (Jeanne Liotta) was IIRC (and that's not a certainty; my memory is collapsing under the strain of identifying some of the twenty-seven shorts I saw today) was a very pretty abstract film. Not the same thing at all, Violette (Violet) (Jean-Phillipe Farber) mixed women (naked), women (lingerie), women (chador), women (guns, various items of clothing) mainly running around in a pastoral setting. A bit of a Chicks With Guns (or whatever it is) for the confused Islamic bucolic. The headshots in the orchard grass (reminding me of nothing so much as My Bloody Valentine's You Made Me Realise cover art) were pretty — in fact it was generally pretty — but I wasn't comfortable that this was anything other than wank. I mean the French filmmakers I've heard speak have had very intellectual approaches to their work, with very definite ideas of what they are trying to say, so I'm sure that something is being said here (it was an orchard, I'm sure of it), but I'm not entirely sure I'd be happy even if I knew what it was.

Finally, there was a (for me) surprise showing of a new Bèla Tarr short, Prologus (Prologue). I could probably watch a Tarr film of a brick wall (arguably frequently do) until kingdom come and be happy. This was just a single long tracking shot (I'm sure you've heard me rave about Werckmeister Harmonies' 11-minute opening shot) along a queue to a soup kitchen window, along with the first few people actually getting served. But what faces, what photography, and more Mihaly Vig soundtrack goodness too. Happy happy.

Kenny Does Dougal
"Dougal Wilson was recently described as being ON FIRE — winning Best Video Director at this year's Music Vision Awards. Seems he can't put a foot wrong." — EIFF

Live interview chaired by Richard Kenworthy of Shynola, including lots of Wilson's advertising and music video work. The two of them are obviously on very good terms and this led to a very relaxed, occasionally pally, interview with them trading insults and plenty of entertainment provided. Not a lot to say otherwise (tiredness perhaps); the ads and videos were all good, we got to see one he did for Irn Bru which apparently only got shown once in Scotland's cinemas — featuring Teletubbies with babboon bottoms and a vengeful Mr Cloud I can guess why :) Interesting bit on IP, in that he seemed happy to admit a debt to Amelie for a series of gnome-centred Virgin travel ads he did, and not terribly disturbed by other "creatives" incurring similar debts to his own work. Also discovered that Mike Streets Skinner had a previous existence as something called Grafitti, which is recognisably him (in faux-protest-video What is the Problem?), so that was interesting.

Old Boy
(Park Chan-wook / South Korea / 2004 / 120 min)
"The most eagerly-awaited thriller of the year, from the director of Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance." — EIFF

I don't know whether the advertorial will claim that this film has a twist or not — was the first thing that popped into my head as the plot got underway — but it's a great film nonetheless, and the way it moves on from the revelation-thing is fairly brilliant. Central character is kidnapped and held for reasons unknown in a kind of prison-hotel-room for fifteen years before being, just, well, released. What-the-hell-next…? Often brutal and extremely violent (but in a good way) (um, his weapon of choice is a clawhammer), this'll be two hours spent on the edge of your seat. Hugely visually appealing and with stunningly mad hair too.

How are you doing?

All right to be honest, but easily confused. Vis me wandering into work, past a sign for Bill Hicks' gig in Vicar Street, thinking "That'll be nice, I never saw him live, and I always meant to". After careful perusal it turns out that it is some shitweasel (in tiny letters) "covering" Bill Hicks (in enormous letters) with a big photo of Beardy Bill as the sole non-textual element of the poster. Someone's due a sueing, I hope.

I still haven't figred out what's up with the poster that claims that Blue are playing in the Phoenix Park, supported by Aslan, but I'm working on it.

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.

Real Gone Kids

Are The Thrills the next Deacon Blue?

(warning: The Thrills website has a very small stop the noise button.)

YOU FUCKIN' KNOWS IT

GLC game from Popbitch for Eamonn

The virtue of idleness

From the Bible on, moralists and nags have promoted the benefits of hard work and early rising. They are mistaken, argues Tom Hodgkinson. For breathing space to create and time to reflect, indolence is essential. He offers a guide to easy living, pleasurable illness, and effortless sex

Read on in the Guardian. Working from home, having proven myself too idle to subscribe to The Idler, and living with a firm believer in the protestant work ethic, this strikes a couple of chords, not least the one about not doing something not being the same as not thinking about something, which in my case frequently means that I'm working hard while lying in.

Allegedly.