This is the 5th time Profoundly Moving has been to the London Film Festival and it’s basically become the high point (forward slash – only good part) of my year. One of the most exciting bits is the glitzy press launch in late September where the festival line-up is revealed and, more importantly, you get given a free LFF bag! The bag is always amazing and becomes my ‘annual bag’ for the next 12 months. Last year it was a funky brown hipster-satchel, the year before a futuristic-looking silver shoulder bag. This year however….. CATASTROPHE!!
The bag was shit!!!!! A flimsy, fabricy, oversized thing with stupid flappy handles and, um… I’m kind of running out of suitable bagjectives here but suffuse to say I hated it, ok? I hated the bag.
Presumably, the lack of bagudget was due to the fact that the UK Film Council, which historically has been a major financial backer of the festival, was abolished last year as part of the austerity measures brought in by the Conservative-led government…. SHIT!!!! Finally, the effects of the global economic crisis are hitting home!! They say it’s always the most vulnerable in society who bear the brunt of a recession and once again it’s the Media Freeloaders who are being made to suffer. All I’m saying is, watch out Cameron – you can only push us so far, yeah. If you thought Occupy Wall Street or the Student Fees Protests were bad, just wait until you see the carnage that can be unleashed by my pallid army of disgruntled film critics… The Daily Mail’s Christopher Tookey is itching for an opportunity to go and smash the fuck out of his local Foot Locker. Give him a reason! Just give him a reason!!!
Fortunately – trbagedies aside – the actual films on show this year were as excellent as ever and I’m sure we’ll be seeing many of them in the Oscar line-ups next February. Here are some of my highlights:
*
The Ides of March
Convention has it that George Clooney will be involved in at least 30% of the entire LFF program and this year was no exception. As well as appearing in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, he also co-wrote, directed and starred in The Ides of March – a glossy political thriller about dirty tricks on the presidential campaign trail.
The film has a few flaws in the storyline but these are more than made up for by the presence in the cast of Ryan Gosling who is scientifically proven to make EVERYTHING AMAZING. Also anything that can help fill the West Wing shaped hole in my life is mightily welcome and the sound of earnest public servants wanging on about Super Tuesday and the Iowa Caucus brought fond memories of Josh, Toby and Donna Moss flooding back.
The Artist
If you’ve ever seen the episode of Family Guy where Peter, Cleveland, Quagmire and Joe go to a Barry Manilow concert, then you’ll have some idea of the ecstatic critical response this love letter to the silent era of cinema has been getting. “It’s a lot like falling in love. You can’t really express what it is you feel, but you feel it so powerfully, you can’t ever imagine not feeling it,” gushed one idiot.
Shot in black and white with no dialogue, this film is both lovingly crafted and perfectly performed and will revive happy memories of the golden era of Hollywood. If you’re a hundred.
W.E.
Directed by Madonna….. lol.
Sarah Palin – You Betcha
One of the slightly annoying things about Sarah Palin’s announcement last month that she wasn’t running for president is we’re now going to have to put up with her for even longer. Had she run and suffered a humiliating defeat, she would pretty much be consigned to obscurity – how much do you hear from Bob Dole or Michael Dukakis nowadays? As it is, she’s going to inevitably dribble on for years and years to come, spouting her personal brand of dipshittery every night on TV for money. The other annoying thing is it kind of buggers up the release of Nick Bloomfield’s new documentary about her campaign. Still worth watching though.
We have a Pope
In Nanni Moretti’s wry and mischievous comedy, Michel Piccoli plays the newly elected Pope who immediately suffers a crippling crisis of confidence and falls into a deep depression. As the official announcement has yet to be made, the conclave of cardinals who elected him remain shut up in the Vatican going slowly stir-crazy until the situation can be resolved. In their desperation, they turn to a skeptical psychotherapist played by Nanni himself. It makes for a very funny skewering of institutional religion and also features possibly the greatest game of Archbishop Volleyball ever committed to film.
Surprise Film
Every year the festival organizes a special screening of a hotly anticipated new release whose identity is kept a closely guarded secret right up until the moment the house lights go down. Historically, I’ve never been good at predicting these – it was neither Marley and Me last year, nor Alvin and Chipmunks: The Squeakquel the year before. So this time I’m playing it safe and going obvious… Human Centipede 2 – Blatantly.
Anonymous
Back when I was at school doing my English Literature GSCE (A* in case you wondering… kaboom!!) one of the ‘disruptive students’ in our class came in one day and announced he’d been using something called ‘The Internet’ (back then we were mainly just rocking Ceefax) and had discovered that William Shakespeare was a fraud and someone else had written all the plays and sonnets that were attributed to him. And so, for that reason, he hadn’t done his homework.
This is the subject of Roland Emmerich’s rollicking new historical conspiracy thriller starring Rhys Ifans which purports to tell the truth about Shakespeare and his work. It’s worth pointing out that the ‘Oxfordian Theory’ is given precisely zero credence by any respected Shakespearian scholar who regard it as being roughly on a par with 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and the Fake Moon Landings. But, you know, whatever Trevor. When Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode or Michel de Montaigne have done something anywhere near as culturally significant as The Day After Tomorrow or 2012, then maybe people will give a fuck what they think.
