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22-09-09 / MILANO FILM FESTIVAL
The jury work was interesting as there was much difference of opinion and while things threatened to become heated, a level of democracy prevailed and we got through it without anyone throttling their fellow jurors. Somebody told me after the ceremony that there was a palpable tension when we were on stage together, which I certainly didn't feel, but looking at the photograph (above) there can be no arguing against their assumption. Best film went to Laurence Thrush's Tobira No Muko (Left Handed) from Japan, and a special mention was awarded to Futoko (The Dark Harbour), also from Japan.
Something amazing happened on the closing evening which I feel lucky to have witnessed and been truly touched by. The lion’s share of the work was over for the staff, who could now start to unwind, so everybody was drinking and eating food in the park when the heavens opened. Now, I have been to a ton of festivals and as many of their parties, but this moment was something else. The DJ cranked up the music and MSTRKRFT’s remix of Justice’s D.A.N.C.E will never be the same again. Although the tables were sheltered by huge umbrellas, people leapt out into the rain to dance and became joyfully drenched. And it was good rain too, accompanied by the electrical storm I had smelled coming all day long (the last night of the same festival in 2003 also featured a storm over the castle). Everyone present versus the world. Crunchy beats, thunder, lightning and rain. I was happy to be alive, such was my whimsy, and it was a festival highlight I will never forget. 17-09-09 / PROGRESS IN DUNGENESS
The primary intention of the trip was to untangle the sprawling feature film idea I have been developing for the last seventy-nine years, which threatens to become quite unmanageable for my pudding-like brain. Although we made some progress, the solitude also proved ideal for viewing the feature films in competition at Milan Film Festival this week, where I am on international jury duties. Most gratifying of all was the photography and the successful tests I did for an ambitious short film idea I mentioned in the 01-03-09 entry. Despite being a year or two away from any kind of completion, it's exciting to finally start the ball rolling. May it roll and roll, crushing all baddies in its path. No goodies, though. We like goodies. 02-09-09 / THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND / AVATAR
I have become quite fascinated by the general disappointment surrounding James Cameron’s trailer for Avatar. Having been his only project since Titanic, largely consisting of ten years development and research into “cinema-changing” 3D technology, the first teaser (albeit in standard 2-D) admittedly looks like nothing more than a computer game. I can’t help but fantasise about this being a deliberate ploy, a masterstroke of reverse-marketing genius. Paranoid fantasy and complete rubbish of course, but the suits are always looking for the next marketing gimmick and if any film’s hype is massive enough to take such a risk without damaging its potential box-office, it would have to be this one. Daft conjecture aside, it does amaze me how everyone has decided the film’s fate on the basis of a trailer because, let’s face it, trailers are shit. The fuss has been almost entirely about how it will revolutionise 3-D technology (therefore getting bums on cinema seats AND taking a huge step towards anti-piracy) so let's wait and see. Meanwhile, yet another redux of the much-spoofed scene from Der Untergang (Downfall) sums the whole thing up nicely and is well worth a few minutes of your time, unless you speak German, in which case it won’t be very funny at all. In other news, a bewildering choice of potential projects threatens to confuse me into pursuing none of them. I even had to stop myself from beginning a comic strip while unable to sleep. Still, it’s all exciting and gets me out of bed in the morning. As do the fresh duck eggs from a Derbyshire farm I recently camped in, oh yes. 03-08-09 / PICK OF THE WEEK IN CAMPAIGN MAGAZINE
27-07-09 / CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING 16-07-09 / CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING 05-07-09 / CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING ON YOUTUBE
22-06-09 / HAMBURG / COMMERCIAL MADNESS
While I was at the festival two other things happened back home. First, I made the shortlist for a new short film commission, which I'm very excited about. Second, I got the job directing a commercial, which resulted in constant phone calls asking me to return home prematurely and, when I didn't, an immediate return to London instead of Nottingham. So it was straight onto casting duties after stepping off the plane and one week after that we were shooting. It was easily the toughest shoot of my career, though all of the difficulties were of the unnecessary kind. I certainly won't be the only crew member to be saying "Oh man, once I did this job where..." in years to come. More on the actual commercial in due course. 12-05-09 / RETROSPECTIVE IN ROMANIA
The trip was only a couple of days long, but eventful. My favourite shorts were Ilian Metev's documentary Goleshovo (UK/Bulgaria), Anthony Chen's Haze (Singapore) and Yasmine Novak's Zohar (Israel). The producer of Zohar told me a great story. I was at a festival in Bulgaria a few years ago and I met a filmmaker/actress who is Julia Roberts' doppelganger, and it turns out that she is now acting in a feature film where she is constantly mistaken for the actress. I can't wait to see it as the resemblance is uncanny. One thing that wasn't so brilliant about the trip is the nasty cold that I contracted, which the paranoid gremlin is hoping isn't swine flu now that the aches have started. I was fine one moment, then I walked from one side of the square (pictured above) to the other, and started sneezing. As i'm typing this my red-raw nose is dripping, which is shit. 31-03-09 / PICTURES FROM HAMBURG
14-03-09 / SOFT BOWS OUT WITH FINAL AWARD
It was a colourful trip all round, with moments like falling backwards into a bath while brushing my teeth and landing directly on the unforgiving taps, or walking out of a tourist shop in Barcelona's main train station in such a daze that I didn't realise I was holding a tourist map I hadn't paid for, which now makes me a criminal. Some extremely sad news was one of the festival staff being jumped by three oxygen-thieving boneheads who tried to steal his bag while he walked home from the club on closing night. He allegedly sustained awful head injuries but is okay internally. There are some real bastards in this world. 01-03-09 / FILM INSIDERS TALENT FESTIVAL
The fog prevented us from seeing much at high altitudes but it was a buzz just to stand at the edge of Ullswater and wee on a tree, the clean air being essential compensation for eating nothing but rubbish food and drinking too much alcohol. I wanted to row a boat on Ullswater but they wouldn't let me until Easter. We stayed above a cosy pub where they don't even lock the door at night and inside the celings had loads of low beams for you to twat your head on. Most significantly, it smelled wonderfully nostalgic, like a musty pantry or second-hand bookshop, or my grandma's house when I was but a little scrote.
The trip also rekindled the urge to begin a short film in the area this spring. It's an ambitous project that marries my night photography background to film and it will take years to complete, involving lots of trial and error, the invention of a bespoke camera mount, and many hours sitting next to mountains through the night with a blanket and a pot noodle. The best-case scenario will be that I have an IMAX masterpiece on my hands. The worst-case scenario is that I will be found dead in a stream at the bottom of the valley like the dead zombie at the end of 28 Days Later (which was actually filmed there). 25-02-09 / DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Saw a whole bunch of other films too, my favourite being Andreas Dresen's Cloud 9. Anvil's appearance at the screening of Anvil! The Story of Anvil was memorable enough, as it's not every day you get to see a metal band perform in a cinema after a screening. Oh, and my smart-arse predictions for the BAFTA and Oscar winning shorts were fantastically wrong. 03-02-09 / ROTTERDAM PRESS
There are also a couple of rather unflattering pictures that were taken the morning after a heavy night. Nothing like crawling out of bed with eyes like atoms for a photocall. The paper even reveals how I slept through my scheduled appointment (I ignored it), only for the hotel staff to walk into my room and offer a rude awakening. Now call me miserable but you can't just tell someone at short notice that you want to photograph them in their shared room when there are pants, socks, beer bottles and a composer laying around. My escape plan didn't quite work out and after regaining unconsciousness almost immediately I had to gimp myself two hours later. The photographer had this 'theme' where he was capturing directors in their hotel rooms doing something 'interesting', so after a bleary shot in the hotel reception we headed upstairs and I opted to hide down in between the twin beds with only my arm visible, thrusting an apple into the air. The apple was shit. Golden delicious, which are everything but. A shot at fame while held aloft in the boy-room atmosphere, turning yellow, was more than it deserved. Filmmakers at festivals and early mornings just don't mix.
The scan above just means that we were the most viewed, proving that word-of-mouth was effective, maybe because of the success of Soft or maybe because of the title, but I like the way that a canny bit of cropping suggests that the film was the most popular in the festival (snicker). 31-01-09 / THOUGHTS AFTER ROTTERDAM
There was little time to catch any of the other films between three screenings of my own, interviews and Q&A sessions, which was something of a skiddy bummer. A couple of critics have responded as expected so no real surprises there. Compared to somewhere like Sundance I thought the festival itself was great and the technical side of things was top-notch so I'm well pleased to have premiered there, even if I saw nothing of the city. I bumped into many familiar faces from other festival jaunts and I was even grown-up enough to get an early night on the final evening. Shameful, that. The only terrible, terrible thing was discovering a mistake in the opening credits. It's too late to fix this for the cinema release but it will be corrected for the DVD. I could have died. Massive apologies to Production Designer Sami Khan, who is erroneously credited as Costume Designer for the time being. When I called to tell him he followed his "thanks for ruining my weekend" with a hearty laugh, which was really bloody gracious, I thought.
I feel the need to bring some attention to a festival report by a David Jenkins who, by some miracle I cannot fathom, ‘writes’ for Time Out (and I use inverted commas in honour of his own apparent obsession with them, to be, y'know, 'ironic'). In prose better suited to red-top newspapers, he refers to Singaporian director Royston Tan as the “Singaporese underachiever”. Apart from unintentionally inventing a new word in the first half of that two-word statement, the second is nothing short of ludicrous and factually inaccurate. Having completed four feature films by the age of thirty-two, you would be hard-pressed to find someone as prolific as Mr Tan, who seemed close to exhaustion when I last met him. I very much doubt the same can be said of someone who spends his career scribbling, it would seem, about other peoples' work. Would Jenkins say the same about others of similarly unstoppable output? Shane Meadows, for example? Makes my piss boil. Mr Jenkins, remember to a) research, and b) write with even a little flair. It’s the very least you can do. 25-01-09 / DOGGING IN ROTTERDAM AND DUBLIN / OSCAR NOMINATIONS Apologies to those who booked tickets to Dublin International Film Festival for Dogging: A Love Story before the infuriating change of screening date at the eleventh hour. Well, there are only two of you who were organised enough to book before the switch, but it doesn't hurt to exaggerate one's popularity if the mood fits. Right now I'm in a fairly vacant mood. A brain of broken biscuits. Held together by cheap jam. I'm having a spaz of a time trying to write a new feature film, spending more hours researching than actual writing, in the hope that when my cup runneth over with knowledge it will just shoom out of my fingertips onto the page. Yeah, right. 13-01-09 / DOGGING IN ROTTERDAM |
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