Upcoming events

Who's Online

We have 1367 guests and 1 member online

Latest Comments

simon_pegg_1Fresh back from a whistle top promotional tour where he faced a grilling by hundreds of journalists, Simon Pegg stepped straight into his latest role – playing a celebrity obsessed magazine writer who has a terrible knack of upsetting everyone including the people he’s sent to interview. In How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, Pegg plays British hack Sidney Young who lands a highly coveted job on an upscale Manhattan based glossy called Sharps. But his dream of finding himself on the inside the glamorous world of premiers, parties and rubbing shoulders with beautiful starlets goes disastrously, hilariously wrong thanks to a series of spectacular gaffs.

“It was interesting because I started the film directly after doing a big block of press for Hot Fuzz so I had literally just been in contact with about 600 journalists,” says Pegg.

“So it was fascinating and funny and not as weird as you might think it was. I didn’t suddenly think ‘oh I’m on the other side of it now and now I understand them.’ I think journalists are individuals and I wouldn’t presume to say they are all the same.

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is loosely based on British journalist Toby Young’s memoir of his time working on Vanity Fair magazine. But, as Pegg points out, although the book is the inspiration, the film is vastly different.

“The film is very much an adaptation of the book and I’m keen to stress that,” says Pegg. “The book doesn’t really lend itself to being a film in a sense, because it’s very anecdotal and it’s filled with huge tracts about philosophy and it’s very much a book and an enjoyable one, but in order to make it into a film Peter (Straughan, screenwriter) had to shape it as such so it is pretty different.”

Read more...

africa_yeelenFor the second year, Edinburgh's Africa in Motion (AiM) film festival is inviting African filmmakers to submit short films of up to 30 minutes for the festival's short film competition. In order to target the competition specifically towards young and emerging African film talent, filmmakers who enter a film for consideration must not have completed a feature-length film previously. Films entered must have been completed in 2006 or after.

A shortlist from all the entries will be selected in July and announced by the end of August 2009. From this shortlist, the competition winner will be chosen by a high profile jury and announced at an awards ceremony at the Africa in Motion festival in October 2009. The jury will consist of local and international film specialists and established African filmmakers.

Read more...

teza_01In the heat of Bollywoods' renewal, it is interesting to read of the Fespaco Film Awards In Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, where Ethiopian Haile Gerima has continued the film's awards success, nabbing the top African film prize, for his feature Teza. It tells of the disillusionment of a young Ethiopian who returns from his studies in Germany to question his beliefs amidst a country under the brutal rule of Haile Mariam Mengistu.

(from BBC online) At the end of the week-long Fespaco film awards in hot, dusty Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, the BBC's James Copnall looks back at the films on show, and the delights and gripes of participants, at the event sometimes described as Africa's answer to the Oscars.

Teza, by the Ethiopian Haile Gerima, was an extremely popular winner of the Golden Yennenga Stallion - African film's top prize. A roar went around the 4th August Stadium in Ouagadougou when the prize was announced at the closing ceremony.

The film's main character, Anberber, heads to Germany to pursue his studies.

Read more...

7still.jpg

Short film lovers Noah and the Whale will be joined by Future Shorts on their upcoming ‘Club Silencio' Tour. The tour sees the band re-inventing some of their songs in real time to Future Shorts films.

After the huge success of the recent Guillemots rescore tour, Future Shorts are thrilled to be on board with Noah and the Whale, bringing another awe inspiring live music / short film experience to selected venues across the UK. The band are also welcoming entries for a competition to screen a winner's short film every night of tour.

A sneaky peek of what to expect, Future Shorts current screenings tour Dances with Love launched in style last Friday with Noah and the Whale performing a surprise set to specially selected shorts to an enthralled sell-out audience at Brixton's Ritzy cinema. Dances with Love UK tour and features Jeff Keen's Marvo Movie in association with the BFI alongside a programme of some the worlds finest short films including Sundance 2009 winner Lies, Kaige Chen's BAFTA and Golden Palm winning Zhanxiou Village and Grimur Hakonarson's love story about Icelandic gay wrestlers - Wrestling.

Read more...

india2.jpgI've been searching around trying to find a feed of the Oscars. Finally find an unofficial one on Justin.tv and arrive just as Heath Ledger's name is announced. There's wet eyes all over the place and for once it seems genuine.

There's so much I would like to say about Slumdog Millionaire, but like all my thoughts relating to India since getting back in March last year, I've not been able to put them down. Other than the few bits I wrote here that ended up in the Goa Herald (and these pics), it's something I guess I'll express when the time is right. In the meantime it's tempting to just talk about the more easy (but rarely discussed) subject of the business issues around Slumdog.

I mean, forget Shane Meadow's Eurostar bankrolled Somers Town, the 'three muskateers' of director Boyle, writer Beufoy and exec producer (and Celador chair) Paul Smith have pulled off the remarkable whammy of taking a multi billion dollar entertainment franchise and its cash, and building an Oscar winner around it. For those, like me, who question how much sponsor funded movies will erode the quality of feature films, a bag of shiny awards makes a pretty strong argument about what is possible.

india1.jpgTho it seems more likely that it's the film's combination of internationalism and hope in the face of poverty - which chimes with both the economic mood and Obama's 'new era of international dialogue and intelligence'  - than the film itself which is a little stereotyped and simplistic - and quite heavily criticised in India. Rumour has it Fox planned to send the film straight to video. Nevertheless, to see the country and her people again on the big screen, shot brilliantly, in a format that is accesible and entertaining to lots of people, and to know this is the Academy's film of the year does, ultimately, feel good and right. And Celedor backing or not, it's still a remarkable success for a film that was funded and produced by the UK yet never sets foot here.

Watching Resul Pookutty pick up one of India's five Oscars of the night (for Sound Mixing) just now was also rather special.

 

Read more...

tde As ever, there will be spoilers

 

Elite Squad has its UK DVD release tomorrow

Rio de Janeiro, 1997. The Pope is about to visit. Some doofus has put him up right next door to a notorious favela. The Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE) have to clean it up before he gets there. So we get to take a look at a Brazilian slum through the eyes of the supposed law enforcers.

Where City of God, despite the bloodshed and endless vendettas, is essentially a nostalgic, sometimes humorous, look back by a boy made good, Elite Squad is an unflinching morality tale from which no one emerges unscathed, least of all the average middle-class viewer with an "occasional use only" attitude to drugs. Unlike City of God's Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the narrator of Elite Squad continues to contend with the favela's problems, and is far more cynical. He has reason to be.

Read more...

abc_poster_web.jpg

SHORT FILMS ARE EVERYWHERE NOW!

In metros, airports, shopping centres, trains…

ART BY CHANCE is the brand new “Ultra Short Film Festival” that will be aired in May 2009 all around the world. Films will meet with us un expectedly  in 6 countries; US,UK, Canada, Turkey, Netherlands, Germany and 26 cities. New ones adding to the list everyday.

Besides its global dimension, ART BY CHANCE is also unique because the selected short movies will be presented to the public through the advertising screens instead of movie theatres. ART BY CHANCE will present urban dwellers with stimulating content thus colouring the time slices that are usually considered dead. 

 

Read more...

Guy Ben Shetrit writes in with details of the music video he directed, animated and composed. The visuals look like nothing else. Some really nice lighting and cell shading.

"Sci-Fi Fantasy journey of a little girl with a special pet friend, a huge toad. Once the girl loses her pet, which drifts in the sky in a form of a balloon, she is going through different adventurous scenarios by chasing it. This is a full 3D animation music video for the song 'Hey' by Eatliz band."

 

Read more...

Cannes Winner gives masterclass at ECA
Sergey Dvortsevoy Comes to
Edinburgh: Fri 20 Feb 2009

Scottish Documentary Institute is thrilled to host multi-award winning Kazakh filmmaker Sergey Dvortsevoy in Edinburgh to talk about his work! This really is a one-off masterclass that is not to be missed.

Read more...

zebra_crossings.jpgThis month Raindance brings you a free screening of Zebra Crossings. Zebra Crossings premiered in last years Raindance Film Festival and also won an award at the 2008 BIFAs.

Set amongst the towering, concrete-clad estates of south London ‘Zebra Crossings’ blends a mixture of characters that all share onething in common: The incredible loneliness of living alongside 7 million other people.

 ‘Hard-hitting’ would be an appropriate phrase to describe this tale of four south London lads from writer and director Sam Holland. Not only because their lives are depicted completely without compromise but also because these boys solve most problems with their fists. They are the children ofthe council estates, urban thugs with little chance of release from the concrete coliseum that surrounds them.


Read more...

hush.jpgIn Anatomy Of A Reel, director Mark Tonderai and his key heads of department breakdown the first reel of the thriller Hush (Generalrelease: 13 March 2009) from idea to final cut. The reel will be pulled apartand looked at from the perspective of the Writer, Director, DOP, Composer andEditor in their singular effort to create a low budget suspense story with abig budget look. A must see event for anyone interested in the mechanics andart of filmmaking!

Tired and irritable, Zakes (Will Ash) and Beth (Christine Bottomley) drive home along the M1, a familiar journey full of harshly lit service stations and bad coffee. When a white truck narrowly avoids hitting them, its back doors open to reveal a woman terrified and screaming caged up inside. Unsure if what he has seen is real, Zakes calls the police but drives on. Beth is furious that he hasn’t done more to help and at the next petrol station storms off. When she doesn’t return, Zakes slowly realises that she too has been snatched by the white truck driver and is forced into a vicious game of cat and mouse with a ruthless killer who has terrifying plans for his human cargo.

*DUE TO LIMITED AVAILABILITY TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED PRIOR TO THIS EVENT*

Date: 11 March 2009, Start time: 18h30, Venue: Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue/13 CoventrySt/London/W1D 7DH. Book tickets: £10.00 Go to www.raindance.co.uk or call 0207 287 3833


72 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}

Future Shorts dances with love this February with the launch of an exclusive selection of short films inspired by love, sex, happiness and everything in between. Premiering at the Brixton Ritzy on Valentines weekend, the programme will then tour the UK.

Films include the beautiful and haunting 'Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: Come Wander With Me' - part of a fascinating project inspired by a surreal parlour game, ‘Wrestling,' Grímur Hákonarson's love story about two gay wrestlers living in rural Iceland and ‘Top Girl' a tender truthful and brutally comic tale set in Brixton.  Love and happiness in all its twisted forms will be explored in a cinema experience like no other.

In association with the BFI, Future Shorts are also proud to present a rarely seen short from Jeff Keen, a leading light of the British experimental film scene, which will be shown ahead of the main programme.

Each venue will be adding its own unique touch to the Dances with Love experience, bringing together local film-makers, musicians and especially dancing under one roof for an unforgettable night. Tickets on sale from www.futureshorts.com/tickets

Read more...

French-based video sharing site Dailymotion is continuing its short-run free streams of independent British films with the Online World Premiere of the new feature One Day Removals, directed by Scottish filmmaker Mark Stirton. The 88-minute film will be available online from 12pm GMT on Friday 30th January, until midnight on Monday 2nd February.

{dmotion}x86rbx{/dmotion}

[the ALLVideos embed link doesn't seem to be working, so best view it on Daily Motion (def worth a look)]

As one of the Daily Motion commenters, stepgib says:

"I was expecting an amateur movie with dodgy acting and mismatched scenes, yet I intended to be positive about it to support Scottish talent. But after watching it, I can honestly say that it was a joy to watch.

It was incredibly funny watching these two unlucky guys attempting to get themselves out of a mess but making it worse along the way. There was not one point in the movie I thought to myself "Yeah, right. THAT'S gonna happen", even though the situations themselves were a freak of nature.

That was the beauty of the film, it did not feel contrived or made me feel I was watching something that I had seen done many times before, it developed with some "common sense" which is lacking in most UK movies these days. The ending alone was priceless. How unlucky can you get?
 
‘One Day Removals’ follows the adventures of two unremarkable Scottish removal men in Aberdeen, Andy and Ronnie. They have been running their business for several years and nothing interesting has ever happened. But it just takes one bad day to change everything, and suddenly no one is safe. See trailers, clips and cast and crew interviews on Dailymotion here

edfilmfestlogo.jpgThe 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is open for submissions. You can submit online through the EIFF website or download a form and mail it to them or submit through withoutabox.

The 63rd EIFF will take place from 17 – 28 June in Edinburgh.  The Festival is internationally regarded as a focus for discovery, a celebration of cinema, a centre of debate and a catalyst for new films.  EIFF is committed to screening high quality new film and video work in all genres from around the world.

All submitted films should be no more than 12 months old by June 2009 and EIFF requires at least UK premiere status.

Submission deadlines:
Regular: Monday 2 February 2009
Late: Monday 16 February 2009

Read more...