Paul Gallagher

The Quay Brothers' Maska plus film without images - HP Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

25 Jun 2010

Wednesday 23rd June. While EIFF’s programme focuses mainly on conventional feature-films, there are several one-off events scattered throughout the Festival’s 10 days, so I decided to investigate a couple of the more adventurous ones. The first was a…

Up close with Cherry Tree Lane, Skeletons and Ollie Kepler's Expanding Purple World

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

23 Jun 2010

Tuesday 22 Jun Paul Andrew Williams’ Cherry Tree Lane was one of the first films I saw here this year, and I did not like it. No sir. As I watched the London to Brighton director’s brutal tale of suburban home invasion playing out in real time, I…

Pixar make Brave move with Reese Witherspoon and Billy Connolly after Toy Story 3

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

22 Jun 2010

Sunday 20 June Edinburgh calls itself a festival of discovery, and it’s true, the majority of films playing here are by first- or second-time filmmakers, and you go into each screening hoping to discover the next great moviemaking talent. But, as…

Monsters director Gareth Edwards and producer Graham King at EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

20 Jun 2010

Saturday 19 June The days, as Calvin & Hobbes astutely observed, are just packed. Saturday began with two great things: the first was Toy Story 3, which was possibly the best threequel I’ve ever seen (I’m meeting its two chief animators later today…

Ben Miller - Huge respect for the nicest man at the EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

18 Jun 2010

Friday 18th June. It’s my first day at Edinburgh Film Festival 2010; the opening party is a thing of blurry half-memory and the real business of movie-watching has properly begun, but the atmosphere is a joyous one: the sun is shining, and the weather…

A history of the con man in cinema

28 May 2010

Con artists, sharks, flimflammers and hustlers have an honourable history on the silver screen. Paul Gallagher goes in search of the best

Tamsin Egerton of 4.3.2.1

28 May 2010

Born 26 November 1988, Hampshire, England Background Having followed her older sister to a BBC audition at their local youth theatre as a child, Egerton started to get TV parts immediately, traveling the world for various productions before she…

The Brothers Bloom

28 May 2010

(12A) 113min In 2005, writer/director Rian Johnson transplanted ‘40s film noir to the modern high school and came up with Brick, an exhilarating debut that announced his arrival as a filmmaker of singular vision in no uncertain terms. For his…

4.3.2.1

28 May 2010

(15) 116min The shadow of Quentin Tarantino looms large over Noel ‘Adulthood’ Clarke’s ambitious second film, in which four girls (Emma Roberts, Tamsin Egerton, Ophelia Lovibond and Shanika Warren-Markland) have the weekend from hell. Clarke and his…

Whip It - Let the good times roll

31 Mar 2010

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, is the high-octane story of indie-rock misfit Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) who escapes small town family life by joining the US roller derby circuit. But does the film get close to capturing the real…

Trucker

19 Mar 2010

(15) 92min An interesting little drama that’s light on incident but big on character, Trucker is a welcome showcase for the acting talents of Michelle Monaghan. Having been a solid support player in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone, here…

The Scouting Book For Boys

10 Mar 2010

(15) 93min One hazy summer in a sleepy Norfolk holiday park, David (This is England’s Thomas Turgoose) and Emily (Holliday Grainger), constant companions by default of being the only teenagers there, spend the days mucking about under the permissive…

Gregory's Girl, Mogwai's Burning and Legacy bring Glasgow Film Festival 2010 to a close

Glasgow Film Festival blog

2 Mar 2010

I returned to GFF for the closing day yesterday and discovered it had been an eventful weekend: Neil Marshall turned up at FrightFest to show off 20 minutes of Centurion, his forthcoming historical actioner featuring a naked Michael Fassbender in the…

Restored Pandora and the Flying Dutchman among the GFF highlights

Glasgow Film Festival blog

26 Feb 2010

So last night didn’t quite work out as planned. It was a toss-up between Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant or the Comrade Couture documentary, showing in Glasgow’s hippest warehouse, SWG3. Much as I’m keen to see Nic Cage getting his crazy on, I decided the…

Young stars of 1234 dispel myths of film industry

Glasgow Film Festival blog

25 Feb 2010

It seems to be a pre-requisite of my typical film festival experience that I will inevitably end up in a conversation about the value (or not) of film criticism with a filmmaker who clearly isn’t a fan of critics. Such was the case yesterday, as myself…

Julian Fellowes' From Time to Time a really satisfying family film

Glasgow Film Festival blog

24 Feb 2010

Cary Grant would, I think, have approved of some of the goings-on at the party held in his name last night. As an iconic figure of class, cool and control he took many opportunities to puncture that image in some of the all-time-classic screwball…

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Boys and Big Fan among film festival highlights

Glasgow Film Festival blog

23 Feb 2010

Paul Gallagher. Photo: Dan Mayers Monday 23 Feb After the busy opening weekend, Monday felt like a bit of a breather – no big parties, no blockbusting events – so I took it as a chance to watch a few movies, and I thought I would use this space…

Screen legend James Earl Jones master of good conversation

Glasgow Film Festival blog

22 Feb 2010

The festival buzz has definitely been building over the weekend, and on Sunday I felt its full effect as I walked, a few minutes late (for shame!), into a jam-packed GFT Cinema 1 for the sold-out In Coversation with James Earl Jones event. The place was…

Court 13 Collective among highlights of the GFF Short Film Festival programme

Glasgow Film Festival blog

21 Feb 2010

Early yesterday afternoon I was back at the CCA Courtyard, the scene of Friday night’s party, but it was now home to a much more relaxed and clear-eyed clientele, downing their brunches and reading the papers. I wondered for a moment if I had dreamed…

Kristin Scott Thomas and LuckyMe on day one of the Glasgow Film Festival

Glasgow Film Festival blog

20 Feb 2010

Mellow greetings, fair reader. It was the first full day of the festival yesterday, and while it was a little quiet in some of the earlier screenings, by the time evening came around the ticket queues were swelling and the GFT could rightly be referred…

Glasgow Film Festival: Opening night party

Glasgow Film Festival blog

19 Feb 2010

List festival correspondent Paul Gallagher's daily festival reports from the 2010 Glasgow Film Festival.

Paul Gallagher meets the great French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Glasgow Film Festival blog

19 Feb 2010

I had heard from a few people that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was in a bit of a grumpy mood before the screening of his film Mic Macs last night, but even if that was the case there were no signs of such moodiness when I got the chance to interview him this…

A strange brew prior to Glasgow Film Festival opening night gala

Glasgow Film Festival blog

18 Feb 2010

I’m sitting in the GFT’s Café Cosmo, and there’s more than tea brewing. There’s a definite atmosphere, a sense that much is yet to come, a bit like that feeling you get at the end of every Harry Potter film. It’s not a ‘buzz’ yet; that will kick in once…

Leap Year

17 Feb 2010

(PG) 100min Imagine the classic 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert road movie romance It Happened One Night with all the wit, spontaneity and charm sucked out of it. That’s Leap Year. Director Anand Tucker (Red Riding: 1983, And When Did You Last See…

Profile: Katie Jarvis of Fish Tank

3 Sep 2009

Name Katie Jarvis Born 22 June 1991, Dagenham, Essex Background You won’t recognise the star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but you won’t soon forget her. Cast with no acting experience after being spotted arguing with her boyfriend at…