London’s premiere festival devoted to Japanese cinema announces its much anticipated first ever programme. During the sold‐out Japanese Halloween Shlockfest Double Bill of RoboGeisha and Big Tits Zombie 3D at London’s Barbican Centre on October 29th, festival director Jasper Sharp will be announcing the full lineup of the inaugural Zipangu Fest, to be held at various venues across the East End of London from November 23rd to 28th.Zipangu Fest begins on Tuesday November 23rd wi...
This past 3 days, 29th till today the 31st, I have attended the 1st ever edition of the London Screenwriters' Festival at Regents' Park. (http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/)Organised by Chris Jones (of "Guerrilla Film Makers' Handbook" fame) and David Chamberlain, it's a festival with every imaginable aspect of screenwriting in mind. It is interesting to see so many writers in the same place, because they are different with being a film festival - quieter, I think. I ...
SAWAKO DECIDES is all about Sawako, a country girl who eloped to Tokyo when she was young and stupid. Five years on, she is working her fifth crap job and on her fifth boyfriend. She sees herself as a "middling woman looking for a middling man". With no great ambitions, she goes from humiliating situation to humiliating situation. Her uncle begs her to return home as her father, who runs a freshwater clam business, is seriously ill in hospital. She is reluctant to return and be reprima...
You can watch the press conference for BLACK SWAN here: http://www.vimeo.com/16113779...
Another of Raindance's shorts programmes - Absense Sense - in order of screening:LATITUDE CHASE dir Mark Wilkins {1 min} - The winner of Latitude 2010, a young girl runs through Latitude Festival away from something; it ends up being her mother, I think. I didn't get the sense that she was running away from anything, I thought she was running towards something. She ends up running towards a tent and going to sleep. If this was the winner, I wander what the contender's were like. SIGN LANGUAGE d...
BUDDHA MOUNTAIN now completes the competition line-up of the 23rd edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival ((東京国際映画祭) which will take place from the 23rd to 31st of October. BUDDHA MOUNTAIN is Li Yu's already nominated feature in Taiwan; set in the mountainous region around Chengdu, it tells the story of a retired opera singer and her boarding tenants, a rock singer and a student who has run away from home after a fight with his father. Tokyo Competition LineupAnd Peace o...
ABSTRACT NOTIONS was made up of six shorts (in screening order):
THE OPERA SINGER [2010] dir Nadaav Soudry {2 mins} - This short is a satire of an opera singer giving her best performance whilst selling out. I found it funny and truthful, short and sweet. Soudry has managed to make a statement with a 2 minute short mainly mostly made up of a slow zoom of the title character's face.
FROG IN THE WELL [2010] dir Ken Ochiai {15 mins} - A man who just lost his mother, who ...
The BFI has added the latest award-winning feature by Sofia Coppola - SOMEWHERE - having won the Golden Lion for Best Film in Venice, now it will have it's UK premiere at the LFF.
SOMEWHERE is the story of Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess (frenzied girls, booze and cars) at the Chateau Marmont Hotel, totally disconnected from the real life. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning), Johnny ...
EVERYTHING MUST GO is based on a Raymond Carver short story about a middle-aged man, Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell), who in the space of one day become jobless, wifeless and homeless, in his front lawn, all due to an alcohol relapse. Feeling miserable, he has five days to vacate his front yard, but has to hold a yard sale in order to be able to stay those five days. A new neighbour moves in, Samantha (Rebecca Hall), he makes friends and employs a local kid, Kenny and visits an old high s...
HEARTBEATS is a story of longing and love lost. Francis and Marie are friends, in Montreal, who meet Nicolas, a real life Adonis with no clear sexual preference. With no time lost, they both fall in love with Nicolas. Nicolas does not show preference for either, being ambiguous throughout. Soon, tension begins to rise between Francis and Marie as they try to be closer to Nicolas and things literally come to blows, after which incident Nicolas loses interest in both Francis and Marie. Francis a...
IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY is most probably the best example of the culmination of every Hollywood studio's "indie film branch" teenage crisis movie ever made. It tells the story of Craig (Keir Gilchrist), a 16-year old teenager who is engulfed by depression and when is on the way to attempt suicide, decides to go check himself into a psych ward of the local hospital instead. He then is committed for a minimum of five days and guided by the seemingly normal Bobby (Zach Galifianak...
YELLOW KID tells the story of Tamura, a young man who inspired by the "Yellow Kid" comic character decides to become a boxer. We are then introduced to Hattori, a mangaka who is looking to make a sequel to the original "Yellow Kid" and insinuates his way into a boxing gym to find his inspiration. Add to this a violent young thug, Enomoto, the middleweight boxing champion, Mikuni, who is engaged to Hattori's ex-girlfriend and just a few comic book sequences, that's Yellow Ki...
LIVING ON LOVE ALONE is an interesting film; it follows Julie as she goes from a bad job in PR to a bad one in sales to a love affair. Julie is seeking employment in the hippest PR agency in Paris and when she finally gets it, we can watch disappointment creeping slowly, as she fails from task to task, the job being a complete let down for her. Next, she tries sales. A panel of judges whom she has a job interview with tell her that she must demonstrate selling potential and to go next door to ...
WHAT I LOVE THE MOST is an assured debut by former assistant/editor Delfina Castanigno. Assured because of the risks she takes; the sort of story the film tells, the way it was structured and the way she chose to shoot it all. The film is about two unnamed friends, one lives in the South of Argentina and just lost her father, the other comes visit from Buenos Aires taking a break from her boyfriend of 4 years. The film's structure seems to be chronological, but there is no way of knowing ...
A SCREAMING MAN is most definitely a very beautifully shot piece of cinema. It tells the story of Adam, a former swimming champion and now pool attendant at a hotel taken over by the Chinese (personified through Mrs Wang), who thinks of the pool side as his life. His 20-year old son, Abdel, is his assistant and loves taking pictures of everything around him. However, war is raging outside of N'Djamena and when Adam is not able to contribute to the war effort with money, he is threatened wi...
PINK SARIS is easily one of the most interesting, relevant and fascinating documentaries I have ever seen. Kim Longinotto has pretty much raised the bar for all the documentaries that will be screening at the London Film Festival this year. Also, it is no wonder that it has been nominated for a few awards.
The film documents and celebrates Sampat Pal, a woman fighting social injustices towards women and girls in Northern India. And Sampat is more than deserving of th...
This year's London Film Festival jury has finally been announced along with the shortlist of the films up for Best Film Award, Best British Newcomer, Sutherland Award and the Grierson Award for Best Documentary. The Best Film Award jury will be chaired by American actress Patricia Clarkson (Green Mile, The Pledge, Shutter Island) and includes Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing), Sandy Powell (costume designer in The Departed, The Aviator and pretty much all Scorsese/DiCaprio c...
"Autumn Adagio" is Tsuki Inoue's first feature, made with the money she won for the Grand Prize in Yubari the previous with "The Woman Who is Beating the Earth" (more on this film later).
It tells the story of a repressed 40-year old nun, who through three encounters with different men, reflects on her femininity and her life. She meets a tedious middle aged man who cannot stop bothering her, a ballet dancer who advises her to play...
Hi! Otsuka Drugstore’s beginning is misleading; it doesn’t hint at the emotional heart that underpins the film.The story revolves around the unlikely friendship between Otsuka, middle-aged woman owner of Otsuka drugstore (seen above) and a high school girl, Nakasaku Emi (also seen above). Otsuka tries to advise the girl with her crazy approach that actually hides some good advice and her similar experience in the past – of which we are informed throughout the film through flashback.I...
Miyake's film is exactly what it says on the tagline - "Something that is once lost but is found again."The characters in this film bump into each other by losing and finding things around a nameless train station. It is film dependent on causality and it is a rather affecting film. You begin to reflect on what you lost and what you have found. Ultimately, it is all about life. Life is all about losing and finding, being at a place and time, somewhere. And those are the best films - th...
"Boys on the Run" (ボーイズ・オン・ザ・ラン) is most definitely a strange beast. The debut feature of successful theatre director, Daisuke Miura and starring Kazunobu Mineta (The Shonen Merickensack, Oh My Buddha) in the main role. Based on a manga of the same name, as many Japanese films are. The description attached to it does not even come near to describing what this film really is - "A dementedly hilarious sex-comedy about a 29-year-old virgin obsessed...
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the DVD launch of the award-winning documentary "Sons of Cuba". We got the opportunity to watch the film. As I had not heard of it, but had seen the poster laden with crowns of laurel from film festivals, I was quite curious to find out what it was all about. Needless to say, I was more than a little impressed by the film. Especially as I had a chance to chat to film director, Andrew Lang, who told me that he had no previous experience in ...
Ben Miller's first delivery as a film director is just as amateur as it sounds. Miller, of British comedy duo Armstrong & Miller, should be able to tackle the subject of his first film better than anyone else: the nature of a comedy duo. However, the story of the film feels old, too predictable and doesn't add anything new to the "comedian film". The story basically tells the story of Warren and Clark, a would-be comedy duo who have more in common with an old couple tha...
The 18th Edition of the Raindance Film Festival has officially been announced. The festival's opening film will be "JACKBOOTS IN WHITEHALL" dir. Edward & Rory McHenry and starring Ewan McGregor, Rosamunde Pike, Richard E. Grant, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Alan Cumming, Richard Griffiths, Stephen Merchant and Richard O'Brien - a satirical animation presenting the possibility, back in WWII, what would have happened had the Nazis invaded England. The closing film will be &...
This morning, the press launch for the 54th BFI London Film Festival took place in Leicester Square. As usual, Amanda Nevill, the director of the BFI gave a thank you speech for all the sponsors, old and new, volunteers and benefactors of the festival. She also pointed out that, although the world is not in the best of financial situations, this year we will have a great selection of films demonstrating the importance of the continual of the survival of this industry in the world. Sand...
