Paul Dale

Beyond Borders film season promotes small nation cultures

Highlights include Mugabe and the White African and The Other Bank

10 Aug 2010

Taking its name from a Scottish organisation that’s involved in promoting small nation cultures around the world, this film season presents some very fine recent films from Georgia, Palestine and Zimbabwe. Highlights include a screening and Q&A of Lucy…

Gruff Rhys’ Seperado! documentary traces South American family roots

Super Furry Animal frontman's film discovers Welsh diaspora

10 Aug 2010

We didn’t have room to mention it in our review pages but also out this week is Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys’ fascinating and funny documentary in which he attempts to trace the South American strand of his family and in the process discover a Welsh…

Chris Rock's Good Hair examines African-American hair styling

US comedian's take on this cultural phenomenon

10 Aug 2010

Last chance to catch comedian, writer and actor Chris Rock’s fascinating documentary about the crazy world of African-American hair styling at the cinema. GFT, Glasgow, Mon 16-Wed 18 Aug.

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky

Other film releases, August 2010

4 Aug 2010

(15) 118min Nuanced and exquisitely detailed but passionless drama about the romance between the queen of couture and the father of modern classical music. Dutch writer/director Jan Kounan (Blueberry, Dobermann) keeps things a little too minimal and…

Javier Fuente - León's Undertow

3 Aug 2010

Talk about having your cake and eating it. Impossibly good looking Peruvian fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) has an adoring pregnant wife (Tatiana Astengo) and a hot male lover in the shape of visiting artist Santiago (Manolo Cardona). It’s all…

My Night With Maud

Other film releases, August 2010

3 Aug 2010

(U) 110min New digitally restored print of quintessential bourgeois 1969 drama by late great French New waver Eric Rohmer. The mighty Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as a religious engineer whose belief that he will marry a woman (Françoise Fabian) he has…

Five Great Serge Gainsbourg film soundtracks

A round-up of great film work by the French singer-songwriter

23 Jul 2010

L’eau à la bouche Gainsbourg’s first work as a composer for cinema was on this minor New Wave romantic comedy of familial dysfunction, contested wills and lecherous intent. Gainsbourg’s languorous, yet risqué score, which includes the title track, set…

Splice

23 Jul 2010

(15) 103min James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein comes face to face with one of David Cronenberg’s body horrors by way of John Milton’s angels in director Vincenzo Cube Natali’s latest immersion into the world of scientific paranoia.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

23 Jul 2010

(12) 106min (Network) Gifted and celebrated Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly) threw caution to the wind and hung his reputation on the line in the making of this freewheeling semi-documentary about…

Profile: Anne Consigny of Wild Grass

7 Jul 2010

Born 25 May 1963 in Alençon, Orne, France Background One of five children, Consigny grew up in the French capital, where he father was a high-ranking civil servant. She attended Paris’ National Conservatory for Drama aged 16 and two years later…

Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage)

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 72min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Previously unavailable on DVD, René Laloux’s 1973 animated sci-fi feature is a startling rediscovery. Based on Stefan Wul’s 1957 novel Oms by the Dozen, Laloux’s extraordinary film is a kind of Swiftian…

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People

7 Jul 2010

(18) 94min (Peccadillo) A new film from Bruce La Bruce – queer cinema’s very own Andreas Baader – is always something to celebrate and Otto, his first foray proper into the horror genre, doesn’t disappoint. Amnesiac zombie Otto (Jey Crisfar) hitches…

The Unpolished

7 Jul 2010

(15) 95min (Second Run) Overdue DVD release of Pia Marais’ hot 2007 festival film, which never found a home, until now, on UK screens, large or small. A sensitive and thought-provoking re-evaluation of the counter cultural dream, Pia Marais…

On Stage, On Screen brings Porgy & Me and Meredith Monk doc to Filmhouse

7 Jul 2010

Short season of films reflecting the diversity of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Solid gold theatre-to-screen transitions Porgy & Me and A Streetcar Named Desire are showing alongside last year’s fascinating documentary Meredith Monk…

Skeletons

7 Jul 2010

(15) 94min Inventive British black comedy about a couple of closet skeleton-chasing exorcists and the secrets that lie beneath their curious profession. Jason Issacs, Ed Gaughan, Andrew Buckley and the lovely Paprika Steen star. Winner of the…

Brick and The Brothers Bloom

7 Jul 2010

The small oeuvre of young American writer/director Rian Johnson is given a Sunday afternoon airing in this double bill. His 2004 high school noir Brick is a treat and his recent confidence trickster caper The Brothers Bloom certainly deserves your…

Family Fun Day - Free screenings of The Red Balloon, The Jungle Book and The General

7 Jul 2010

Hurry, free movies! Three great films – The Red Balloon, The Jungle Book and The General showing back to back in the open air from 11am-4pm – absolutely gratis. The reason? Filmhouse is 25 years old. Festival Square, Edinburgh on Sat 17 Jul.

Inception

7 Jul 2010

(12A) 146min Christopher Nolan’s brain power sci-fi starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Review to follow. General release from Fri 16 Jul.

Alex Marsh - Sex & Bowls & Rock & Roll

5 Jul 2010

(The Friday Project) Pooterish internet celebrity Alex Marsh (privatesecretdiary.com) features the adultescent concerns of that modern publishing anomaly, the hobbyist’s memoir (yeah, thanks Mr Hornby), in this book about rock’n’roll dreams being…

One Continuous Take/The Kay Mader Story

24 Jun 2010

(E) 253min (Panamint) This fascinating two disc set revisits and attempts to revive interest in pioneering and innovative documentarian Kay Mander. The first disc is taken up with Dr Adele Carroll’s 2001 film One Continuous Take featuring Kay…

The Garden

21 Jun 2010

(E) 77min (Dogwoof) Possibly the first film about guerilla gardening, Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s engrossing 2008 film tells a remarkable true story about born out of insurrection. In the aftermath of the 1992 LA riots, there suddenly appeared a…

Dennis Hopper - 1936-2010

10 Jun 2010

Actor, director, writer, photographer and artist Dennis Hopper died on 29 May at the age of 74. Here, fans and old friends pay tribute

EIFF launches its 2010 programme

1 Jun 2010

On the miserable wet morning of Tue 1 June at Filmhouse in Edinburgh, the good the bad and the ugly of Scottish media gathered in surprising numbers for the later-than-usual-launch of the Edinburgh International Film Festival's 2010 programme. In…

24 City (Er Shi Si Cheng Ji)

28 May 2010

(U) 112min How does that Chinese proverb go? ‘If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.’ Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Zhang-ke Jia has been standing straight and telling it like it is for years. This brave and frequently brilliant…

Lizard In A Woman’s Skin

28 May 2010

(18) 103min (Optimum) After years of neglect and abuse, Italian horror puck Lucio Fulci’s controversial 1971 Freudian horror returns fully restored on a lovely new print and transfer. Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (which was butchered and released in…