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Our Festival writers Anna Bradley and Ross Kinghorn sum up their experiences of the Edinburgh Film Festival and list the award winners... 

THE PRE-CURTAIN MUSIC

A note to the staff of the cinemas housing the festival films: What’s with the choice of music playing in the auditorium before the film starts? Who in the audience is thinking ‘Hmm, nothing will get me more in the mood for this esoteric existential Latvian film than a few tracks of broad earnest splurge from the likes of Coldplay and The Corrs’? Was it just echoing through from the neighboring screens about to show Sex and the City, or does the cinema DJ believe people who appreciate off-stream films only have enough good taste for one art form? Do you think Modeselektor precede their gigs with a screening of Love Actually? This fifteen minute delay seems long enough without Chris Martin satirising my emotions. Next year I want a comprehensive juke-box in the foyer and a bag of loose change in my pocket, or perhaps just some ear-plugs.


WEATHER

It wouldn’t be a thorough Edinburgh festival report without a comment on that trusty staple of awkward talk-filler, the weather. We’re not expecting to surprise you when we say that it’s been torrential rain all the way. It’s said that rain is God crying over the violence happening below to wash the sins away, but we checked the police report; very little violence has occurred in Edinburgh since the festival started, save for the minor incidents of an old man being robbed of his false teeth by an escaped meerkat, and a new-born baby being shot repeatedly in the head with a nail-gun. Now, many say that the rain-as-God’s-tears theory is easily disproved by the fact that the Middle East is the most violent place on earth yet is, of course, drier than an old ladies front bum; but we’re choosing to ignore this theory on the grounds that it stops us being silly. So in regards to Edinburgh’s weather this week, we conclude that either A, God is a big crybaby or 2, he doesn’t exist and the rain is simply due to physical atmospheric circumstance. We’re going with A, God is a big crybaby ‘cause it seems kinda nice.


Finally:

Despite the fact that ending the festival with Faintheart is akin to a classical pianist endding his concert by slamming his ass down on the keys and taking a shit for all to smell, the after taste of the festival feels relatively pleasant. The decision to make EIFF more independent by placing it before the Fringe seems to have worked with the box office boasting full houses even to the lesser known, foreign films and all the awards were about as just as awards get. Other than that, it’s the usual story of the good and crap being the same in the avant-garde as it is in the mainstream. So as long as the good keeps coming with the bad us ugly critics will be returning next year...

AB and RK

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Jonathan Levine is an impressive young and upcoming director. Born and raised in Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side, he always felt like an outsider. He attended a string of prestigious prep schools, where he was considered uncool and disregarded by his snobby, spoiled classmates. While his peers where primarily concerned about the vagaries of their own privileged lifestyles, Levine spent his leisure time creating films.  

Levine pursued this passion at Brown University, studying art semiotics. He developed a narrative style, which was discouraged by the University community but earned him both a spot at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles and recognition in his later films.  He received incredible success on his thesis short film “Shards” about a D.J and graffiti artist who struggles to kick drug addiction after his good friend dies overdosing on crystal-meth. The film won the best short film award at the American Black Film Festival in 2005 and was aired on HBO.  

His latest work, “The Wackness,” which he wrote and directed, comes out in theatres this summer. The film, set in Manhattan during the summer of 1994, is about a troubled high school graduate. The Wackness was an audience award winner at the 2008 Sundance Film festival and is sure to be a hit. Unlike his childhood peers, Levine has always stayed true to his personal beliefs despite society’s pressure. His determination, sincerity, and artistic talent have guided his rise to the top, and now his pathetic social-climber classmates are reaching out to him to catch up on lost time. The tables have surely turned for Jonathan Levine, who is now apparently enjoying the experience of being sought after by those name-dropping cliquesters who previously excluded him…

Read more...

New York Times 

Wackness review in Variety 

Sundance interview with Levine 

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Indy’s back! This time, twenty years on. The world famous archaeologist is donning the hat and cracking the whip for a fourth outing, not only to become entangled with the Soviets, but also to uncover the hidden secrets of...the crystal skull.

I was weaned on Indiana Jones. A fedora was my standard outfit when I was 8 years old. I spent my early life schizophrenically fighting off imaginary Nazis. It was at an impressionable age. Indy was a larger-than-life character, going after hidden treasures in the middle of the Amazon, and I was there with him every minute of the day.

I don’t want to give too much away about this film, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. Indy’s been a naughty boy. Not only did he leave his girlfriend Marian standing at the altar, but unbeknownst to him she’s also conceived his child. And it appears that she’s spent the intervening years fending for herself in a 1-bedroom studio flat in Mongolia, making ends meet by drinking nomads under the table.  

The first three Indiana Jones films were symphonies of perfect composition. Everything worked: the music, the actors, the set pieces were honed and tuned, to harmonise in conjunction with each other. Take the first scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark… it begins with Sallah asking Indiana what his plan is. Indy replies “I don’t have one. I’m making this up as I go along” Music starts. There’s that first tingle down my spine!

He manoeuvers his horse into one of the Nazi trucks he’s chasing. Second tingle. Starts fighting Nazi soldiers whilst trying to get control of the truck. Third tingle. And the whole trilogy was like that as a child, one tingle after another.

You guessed it. I’ve lost the tingle.

I don’t have anything against Harrison Ford getting older. But I’ve got older too, and this is where Harrison Ford misses this point: we were his biggest fans. So if he decides to veer drastically from the character I learnt to love and starts to play a sarcastic, elderly buffoon, it’s hard to do the drum roll in support.

The fault is not Ford’s alone. Spielberg’s franchise has had its day and seems dated. Maybe if he decided to continue nineteen years ago, we would have had an exciting film filled with all of those Indy ingredients. Or maybe, back then, I wouldn’t have noticed the mess and leapt once again for my fedora hat.

But truth be told, Spielberg has made a lazy film. With his track record, however, we can’t dismiss the man just yet. You never know, he still might have his chance of stepping behind the camera for the umpteenth Bond.

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I happened by horrible chance to catch the last three minutes of The Culture Show last night, while waiting for Newsnight to begin (by the way, for one wonderful minute I noticed a striking resemblance between Jeremy Paxman and Robert Mugabe. Something to do with the brow, the self-righteous tone…and those eyes.) Well, if this is Culture, then I hate it.

If this is Culture, then I actually want to stab it. If this is Culture, then I want to stab it until it can no longer stand, then shoot it in the head while it lies on the floor. If this is Culture, then I’m Stalin and Mark Kermode will be the first to die.

Fortunately for Mark Kermode’s plastinated face and unfortunately for me, a troop of simian hipsters gurning their way through some bumhole song by CSS does not constitute Culture, even for the beeb.  It took the soothing voice of Alan Yentob as he walks through the woods of Japan, listening to John Coltrane, in In Search of Haruki, to remind me of that. That, and the disturbing resemblance between Paxman and Mugabe, of course.

Glossary:

Mark Kermode: the worst film critic ever
The Culture Show: a drain on the resources of the nation
Jeremy Paxman: Robert Mugabe