Day Six: "I, for one, am not running around town with Oliver Twist's mum"

Featured review of the day: Better Things.

Black Balloon

Australian coming-of-age drama about a teenage boy growing up with a severely autistic older brother.

Hugely enjoyable coming of age drama, loosely based on writer-director Elissa Down's own experiences of growing up with an autistic brother. Set in a perpetually sunny Australian suburb, the film stars Rhys Wakefield as Thomas, a blonde teenager who's beginning to resent his highly autistic older brother Charlie (Luke Ford), especially now that he's dealing with his first crush (Australian supermodel Gemma Ward as Jackie). Worse, Charlie's parents (Toni Collette and Erik Thomson as Maggie and Simon) have their hands full dealing with a late pregnancy, especially when Maggie is advised to stay in bed, so Thomas has to look after Charlie even more than usual. Luckily, when Charlie accidentally breaks into Jackie's house to use the toilet, Jackie proves remarkably understanding, even if Thomas and Charlie did catch her in the shower. Soon, the three of them are spending the idyllic summer together, hanging out at swimming holes, listening to music and so on. However, Charlie's behaviour constantly threatens to spiral out of control and ruin everything. The performances are exceptional, particuarly Luke Ford, who delivers a boldly physical performance, while Wakefield and Ward have strong chemistry together. There's a lot of cliché-busting going on here – Gemma Ward defies the prettiest-girl-in-school stereotype and her character is full of surprises, while the film also avoids the usual doom-and-gloom final act associated with this kind of movie. The quirky supporting characters are memorable too, especially Erik Thomson (who takes advice from stuffed animals) and the always-excellent Toni Collette, who has seemingly inexhaustible reserves of patience. There are some terrific scenes too: a supermarket freak-out scene is genuinely painful to watch, while the climactic fight sequence at Thomas' birthday party is a brilliantly choreographed scene that feels all too realistic and places you right in the centre of the erupting chaos and violence. This ended up being one of my favourite films of the festival. Four stars.

Incidentally, I also interviewed Elissa Down (right) and she was utterly lovely. I might post the interview at a later date, depending on whether or not the film gets a UK release date.







Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

1930s-set comedy starring Frances McDormand as a down-on-her-luck nanny who becomes "social secretary" to flighty actress Delysia LaFosse(Amy Adams).

Based on a novel by Winifred Watson, this British comedy is set in London in 1939 and stars Frances McDormand as dowdy domestic drudge Guinevere Pettigrew, who keeps getting fired from nannying jobs. When her agency declares they're washing their hands of her, she overhears details of a potential client and rushes over to intercept the job. She soon finds herself working as a maid-slash-personal assistant to ditzy screen siren Delysia La Fosse (Amy Adams) and is thrown in at the deep end as she tries to help Delysia juggle her three boyfriends: penniless songwriter Lee Pace, theatre producer Tom Payne and sleazy nightclub owner Mark Strong. Meanwhile, Miss Pettigrew feels the glimmer of her own romance when she meets the charming Joe (Ciaran Hinds), only to discover that he's engaged to Delysia's bitchy friend Edyth (Shirley Henderson). This is an enjoyably fluffy farce, enlivened by two terrific performances from McDormand and the always-delightful Amy Adams. It also benefits from a strong supporting cast, superb production design and a suitably screwball pace, courtesy of director Bharat Nalluri. It doesn't really add up to much, but it's fun while it lasts and I really enjoyed Amy Adams' singing scene. Three stars.

The Wave

German thriller based on a true story, about a teacher who forms a fascistic movement as part of a school "project week", only for things to get horribly out of hand.

Directed by Dennis Gansel, The Wave is based on a novel, which, in turn, was loosely based on true events (although they happened in California, not in Germany). The opening is great, with spray-painted credits and hip teacher Mr X (Jurgen Vogel) speeding to school and singing along to The Ramones' Rock 'n'Roll High School. It transpires that it's political project week at his school and he wants to switch to anarchy, only to be told that he can't do anarchy because someone else is doing it and besides, “it's been planned for weeks”. (I was the only one who laughed at that joke, for some reason). Instead, he's stuck with autocracy, but he quickly gets fired up when a debate begins in his class over whether or not a dictatorship could still happen in modern day Germany. He then encourages the class to form their own political movement and you can probably guess where things go from there. Needless to say, their movement (dubbed 'The Wave'), with its accompanying white shirt uniform and slogan of 'Discipline through Strength' proves surprisingly popular and soon the whole school is getting in on the act, sticking up for fellow Wave members and giving even the previously outcast students a sense of belonging. This is the film's main strength, because, even though things happen quickly, the excellent script actually allows you to see the appeal of the movement and the various stages of escalation are entirely believable. The sense of inclusion is also brilliantly handled – for example, a reluctant student is doodling and the teacher says, “You're good at drawing – why don't you design a logo?”, prompting another student to suggest that they work together on a website and so on. Gansel maintains a terrific pace throughout (it takes place over the course of a week) and it's incredibly suspenseful in places – the final “rally” sequence, in particular, is genuinely chilling. That's not to say it's without its flaws, however – for example, one of the students is seriously unhinged and it seems odd that no-one says anything about his behaviour. You can just about put down the teacher's dismissal of the student to his own vanity, but it still strikes a wrong note. Still, this was easily one of the best films of the festival for me – look out for it when it gets a cinema release later this year. Four stars.

Shiver

Spanish thriller about a boy suffering from photo-sensitive skin, who discovers something nasty in the woods when he moves to a remote town.

Shiver (or Eskalofrio, original language fans) has a terrific opening sequence in which a young boy is running for his life and then suddenly bursts into flames. That turns out to be a dream, of course, which is a shame, because Shiver doesn't ever really manage to top that moment. The boy turns out to be Santi (Junio Valverde), a young teenager who's suffering from a severe light allergy. In desperation, his mother (Blanca Suarez) moves him to a remote mountain village that gets very little sunlight. However, his arrival coincides with a series of vicious night-time attacks on the local farm animals and it isn't long before Santi finds himself under suspicion. Sadly, the film doesn't really live up to its premise and I lost interest way before the end. It's impressively acted and moderately atmospheric (the shady village is a nice idea), but it's never really scary or suspenseful. Still, there are some nice touches – Santi ends up going out with the only Goth in the village – and things liven up a bit with the arrival of Santi's best friend, but the denouement is disappointing and you immediately end up thinking of several better alternatives. Three stars.

The Cool World

Part of the Shirley Clarke retrospective, about a young man trying to gain some street cred by acquiring a gun.

I probably shouldn't have gone to this, as I was quite tired and I ended up not enjoying it as much as I might have otherwise. After seeing The Connection the other night, I thought I knew what I was in for, but the style and content were completely different, in surprisingly modern ways - occasionally, it reminded me of watching the young black kids in The Wire. Set in the 1960s and adapted from a novel by Warren Miller, the film follows two black teenagers as they wander around the streets of Harlem, trying to get hold of a gun. The film often feels like a documentary, to the point where the dialogue is so naturalistic that it actually got quite boring to listen to. The film also has a great jazz soundtrack and features a brief appearance by the legendary Dizzy Gillespie. Unfortunately, my tiredness meant that I couldn't really engage with it and I was struggling to stay awake by the end, gun or no gun. Still, it was impressively photographed and Clarke gets impressively naturalistic performances from her two leads. It's a mystery that the film isn't better known, because it's easy to see that it's been hugely influential over the years. Three stars.

Day Five: "Next stop: Edinburgh - the Athens of the North!"

Featured review of the day: Donkey Punch

Death Defying Acts

Okay, so I'm a sucker for many genres, but apart from being a sucker for time-travel movies, Scandinavian coming-of-age movies and competition documentaries, I'm also a sucker for films about escapologists / illusionists and films set in the 1920s. (I will be first in line if they ever make Carter Beats the Devil). Anyway, I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. Set in 1920s Edinburgh, Death Defying Acts stars Guy Pierce as legendary escapologist Harry Houdini, who offers $10,000 to any so-called psychic who can tell him his dead mother's final words. When Houdini announces Edinburgh ("the Athens of the North!") as the next stop on his tour, his offer piques the interest of sexy con artist Mary (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who makes her living as the scantily-clad psychic "Princess Kali" with her daughter Benji (Atonement's Saoirse Ronan) posing as her "Dusky Assistant". However, when Mary accepts Houdini's challenge, she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to him, even as she and Benji scheme to somehow find out the final words by trickery. Similarly, Houdini is charmed by Benji and captivated by Mary, not least because of her resemblance to his dear departed mother. Directed by Gillian Armstrong (which reminds me that I STILL haven't watched My Brilliant Career, despite buying the DVD months ago) does an excellent job of capturing period Edinburgh and some of the set design work (the elaborate stage acts; the luxury hotels) is superb. Guy Pierce is excellent as Houdini, brilliantly hinting at the tortured man beneath the bravado (although, in one scene, he does look disturbingly like Mark Wahlberg). There's also genuine chemistry between Pierce and a sensational-looking Catherine Zeta-Jones - I found myself actually holding my breath during a scene where they almost kiss. Apart from looking stunning in a series of fabulous frocks, Zeta-Jones also pulls off an extremely impressive Edinburgh accent and it's great to see her in a decent role for once. Someone please cast her in some more decent movies, because she's the closest thing we have to proper old-school Hollywood glamour these days. There's also terrific support from Saoirse Ronan, who almost steals the entire movie with a series of delightful little moments (e.g. handing someone a half-eaten toffee apple), though her voiceover begins to grate after a while. She also does a fabulous job of conveying the fact that Benji is jealous of her mother, without even properly understanding where her jealousy comes from. Begrudgingly, I will also admit that Timothy Spall was pretty good as Houdini's right-hand man and that the Spallness Factorwas low. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this, thanks to Armstrong's impressive direction (there are several striking scenes, notably one set high above Princes Street), superb performances from the leads and an emotionally engaging script. Terrific final scene too. Four stars.

Goodnight Irene

Portugese drama starring Robert Pugh as an ageing English actor who joins forces with a young Portugese man when their mutual friend disappears.

Robert Pugh stars as Alexander Corless, an misanthropic English ex-pat actor living a largely lonely life in Lisbon, who records travelogues for American tourists in a sound booth in his own apartment. However, when a beautiful artist (Rita Loureiro as Irene) moves into his building, she insinuates herself into his life by demanding that he let her paint his portrait and he gradually finds himself opening up to her. Then, without warning, she disappears and Alex is forced to join forces with a weird Portugese man (Nuno Lopes as Bruno) to try and find her. Directed by Paolo Marinou-Blanco, Goodnight Irene is beautifully shot throughout, to the point that it will have people booking holidays to Lisbon, assuming it receives a general release. It's nice to see one of our best character actors (see Master and Commander) in a lead role and Pugh really throws himself into it, though at times he overdoes it and is clearly channelling both Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, espcecially during the travelogue readings. The problem is that Irene is a much more interesting character than Bruno (and the relationship between Irene and Alex is infinitely more compelling than that between Alex and Bruno) so it's hard not to feel short-changed when her character disappears. Similarly, Nuno Lopes makes very little impact as Bruno, to the point where, two days later, I'm struggling to remember his face. Essentially, despite Pugh's superb performance, the film is occasionally pretentious, occasionally overwritten and not as moving or as emotionally engaging as it thinks it is, thanks to the wrong character disappearing. Two stars.

The Kreutzer Sonata

Danny Huston reunites with Ivansxtc director Bernard Rose for another Tolstoy adaptation, in which Huston plays a philanthropist who becomes maniacally possessive of his beautiful wife (Elisabeth Röhm).

The Kreutzer Sonata reunites director Bernard Rose with his Ivansxtc actor, Danny Huston, for yet another Tolstoy adaptation, this time adapted from a scandalous story that Tolstoy wrote in response to the titular Beethoven piece. Huston plays wealthy philanthropist Edgar, who becomes insanely, pathologically jealous of his beautiful wife, concert pianist Abby (Elisabeth Röhm, from Angel). Huston is perfectly cast in the lead role and his delivery of the voiceover (most of which is direct from Tolstoy's story) is so good that you'd happily listen to him read War and Peace. There's also strong support from Elisabeth Röhm and a delightful cameo from Angelica Huston as Edgar's sister. The film is brilliantly directed throughout and it often feels as if Rose is letting the Beethoven soundtrack dictate what we see on screen. Certainly, the soundtrack is used brilliantly throughout, particularly during scenes involving sex (of which there is an awful lot) and violence - indeed, the sequence of Abby and would-be lover (Matthew Yang King) playing the Kreutzer Sonata is the most sexualised music scene since Elisha Cook Jnr's drum solo in Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady. There are some extraordinary scenes here: the sex scenes are both powerful and extremely intimate, yet seem more naturalistic (Röhm is flushed with a convincing post-coital glow) than any Hollywood sex scene I can recall. Similarly, the violence -which you spend the whole film dreading- is utterly shocking when it finally happens - one moment in particular made the entire audience jump. However, perhaps the most shocking thing about the film is Tolstoy's own writing (the book was an instant scandal and banned for many years), not just because of the sexual jealousy and violence but because it dares to voice ideas such as the fact that children are not necessarily a blessing (Abby has severe post-natal depression; Edgar denounces the idea that children are automatically wonderful as "a fucking lie") and that even sex itself isn't all it's cracked up to be. I really want to see this again. Four stars.

There was also an excellent Q&A afterwards, which I'll post later, along with some rubbish photos.

The Connection (Shirley Clarke)

Part of the excellent Shirley Clarke retrospective, The Connection is a one-set drama about a group of New York junkies waiting around for their dealer to show up.

First, a confession: since I was 14, I've been obsessively ticking off films in a book called Danny Peary's Guide for the Film Fanatic. Normally, I forget to go through the book and look up the films in Edinburgh's retrospective seasons, only to kick myself when I get back and find that I've missed something crucial. This year, however, I remembered in time, so I'll also be seeing Clarke's The Cool World and three of the Jeanne Moreau films. However, the confession is that I probably wouldn't have gone to see The Connection if it wasn't for Peary's book and I'm so glad that I did, as it was excellent. The plot is simplicity itself - adapted from a play by Jack Gelber, it features a group of New York junkies as they sit around an apartment building, improvising jazz and waiting for their dealer (Carl Lee as "Cowboy") to show up. However, the film is also presented as a documentary, with a director and cameraman present at all times and the cameraman (Roscoe Lee Brown, the only actor I recognised) only occasionally coming out from behind the camera. This was astonishing on several levels: the language (surprisingly frank for 1962), the onscreen depictions of drug use (so thisis what "underground film-making" really means), the superb camerawork and the impressive performances. However, what really stood out for me was Warren Finnerty as Leach, who was the spitting image of Steve Buscemi and spoke and behaved in exactly the same way as Buscemi does. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a) Finnerty turned out to be Buscemi's dad or b) Buscemi had based his entire career on Finnerty's performance here. Honestly, it's uncanny. On top of some terrifically twitchy performances and some great "beat" dialogue (the programmer called The Connection the first truly "beat" movie and it's hard to disagree), the film also has a fabulous jazz score, courtesy of Blue Note legends Jackie McLean and Freddie Redd. I really want to see this again.

Day Four: "I wouldn't recommend a vacation to Iraq anytime soon"

Featured review of the day (and the best film of the festival): The Visitor

Earlier today I interviewed the director and stars of The Visitor: Tom McCarthy, Hiam Abbass and one of my favourite actors, Richard Jenkins. The interviews will be up on ViewEdinburgh and ViewLondon (see links, right) as soon as I type them up...



Standard Operating Procedure

Documentary by Errol Morris, investigating the truth behind the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but my first thought as I sat down to watch Standard Operating Procedure was "Wow, what a great Danny Elfman score - I wonder if the soundtrack is out yet?" That said, once the credits were over, I quickly settled into the required position of outrage, shock and horror. Acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Gates of Heaven) tackles the 2004 scandal surrounding the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The majority of the story is told in the words of the soldiers themselves, including the infamous Lynndie England, who featured in some of the most shocking photographs (holding a leash with a naked prisoner on the end of it; pointing at a hooded prisoner's naked genitals and doing a thumbs up sign, etc). Other voices include: General Janis Karpinski (scape-goated, despite voicing concerns); Army Investigator Brent Pack (who looks a lot like Bill Bailey and whose job it was to establish a time-line from all the different photographs and determine which incidents were crimes and which were Standard Operating Procedure (a climactic scene where dozens of photos of clear human rights violations are all stamped "Standard Operating Procedure" -or "S.O.P."- is devastating); Private Javal Davis (who first found out he was being scapegoated when he watched the news and was disturbed to discover the media had used a photo of him pulling an angry, mean-looking face from when he was winning a track event in high school); Sabrina Harman (the pretty, smiling woman from some of the most shocking photographs, who, despite her apparent complicity, voiced her own concerns in her letters home and took many photos herself as evidence of what was going on); and Civilian Interrogator Tim Dugan, who expresses his profound disillusionment with the War on Terror as a result of his findings. The film makes it abundantly clear that the soldiers were scape-goated as "rotten apples" and received unjust sentences as a result. England clearly says that "The example was already set when we got there" and Davis remembers his first question: "Why is everyone naked?" Shockingly, no-one higher than a staff sergeant was ever prosecuted. To be fair, none of this is really all that surprising if you follow the news, but I found the following things really shocking and I hadn't heard them before: 1) far from being known criminals, many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were simply rounded up in the dead of night because they were "of fighting age". 2) As well as taking "fighting age" young men, the soldiers also imprisoned children and used them as bargaining tools ("If you want your children back, tell us where Saddam is") - as Davis points out, "I call that kidnapping"). 3) The sandbags you see on the heads of the prisoners were frequently soaked in hot sauce. 4) Far from being used purely to scare the prisoners, attack dogs actually attacked them on a regular basis. In short, then, this is a powerful, superbly made documentary that demands to be seen. Ideally, it should be seen in a double-bill with Alex Gibney's recent Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. Four stars.

Incidentally, Errol Morris gave an excellent 40+ minute Q&A afterwards, which I recorded and will put up if I can figure out how to upload an mp3. He spoke verrrrry slooooowly though, so 40 minutes of questions was akin to 20 minutes of normal questions. The most interesting thing he said -in response to a question about the film not showing the prisoner's side- was that he'd tried to find the actual prisoners in the photos but had been unsuccessful.

Time Crimes

Spanish time-travel thriller starring Kara Elejalde as a middle-aged man who investigates a crime, only to find that he committed it.

I'm a sucker for time-travel movies (my other favourite genre) so I was really looking forward to this. Karra Elejalde plays middle-aged businessman Hector, who lives in a country house with his loving wife Clara (Candela Fernandez). One day, he spies a naked woman (Barbara Goenaga) in the forest behind his house and is compelled to investigate, but as he approaches the woman he is attacked by a mysterious assailant clad in blood-soaked Invisible Man-style bandages. Seeking refuge in a scientific compound, Hector meets a nervous scientist (played by director Nacho Vigalondo), who stuffs him into a giant tank filled with white liquid...and when he gets out, seconds later, he discovers that it's about 12 hours earlier in the day and the scientist has no idea who he is... This was a lot of fun to watch and the performances were excellent (particularly the oddly impassive Elejalde), but I have to confess that I spotted every single twist well in advance. (If you've seen the vaguely similar Primer, you'll probably guess them too). I kept hoping all the way through for it to pull one final killer twist out of the bag and actually surprise me, but it didn't. Shame. It probably didn't help that one of the twists is the twist from my favourite film of all time. It was fun to watch though and fun trying to work out how all the players got into position, even when you knew what was coming next. It's already being remade though (by David Cronenberg?), so maybe the American version will have a more satisfying ending - I do actually have a better ending for it myself, but it's SPOILERIFIC, so I'll put it in the comments below after the public screenings. Love the Spanish poster (above, right) too - the tag-line says "The crime is only a matter of time". Three stars.

By the way, those of you paying close attention (both of you) will have noted that there's no review of Mum and Dad as promised yesterday. This is because Time Crimes overran and I decided to skip the screening of Mum and Dad rather than miss the first 15 minutes. I'll try and catch up with it in the videotheque though.

Day Three: "And I woke up, naked, under a pool table and clad only in a milkman's coat..."

Featured review of the day: The Wackness

Dummy

British drama about two brothers coping with the death of their mother.

British film set in Brighton, starring Thomas Grant and Aaron Johnson as Jack and Danny, two brothers who are forced to cope with the death of their mother. By an astonishing coincidence, the boys are independently wealthy and Danny has just turned 18 so he's awarded custody of pre-teen Jack. Meanwhile, Jack's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic (including keeping a dummy of his mother in the bedroom and talking to it, Norman Bates-style), while Jack throws himself into his new DJ career and a burgeoning relationship with local girl Zoe (Emma Catherwood). I wanted to like this more than I did. To my mind, as a study of the traumatic effects of grief, it doesn't do anything that Lars and the Real Girl didn't do ten times better - for one thing, the premise is never really explored as Jack creates the dummy fairly early on and nothing else really happens until the final twenty minutes or so. Also, I'm not quite convinced of Aaron Johnson's acting skillz (having seen him in both this and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging recently) though his teen heart-throb status seems assured, if the number of shirtless or clad-only-in-pants scenes here is anything to go by. That said, it was perfectly watchable and Thomas Grant was excellent as Jack. Beautifully shot too, plus -speaking as an ex-Sussex university student- it's always good to see Brighton on screen. Three stars.

Summer

British drama starring Robert Carlyle as a man trying to atone for the mistakes of his past.

Superb British drama starring Robert Carlyle as Shaun, who spends his days looking after his wheelchair-bound best friend Daz. When Daz is given just a few weeks to live, Shaun thinks back to the summer when everything began to go wrong: labelled a bully at school, his learning disability was ignored and he was expelled, eventually destroying his future through an act of destruction. At the same time, Shaun recalls that same summer as the best time of his life, when he and Daz (Sean Kelly and Jo Doherty) spent a blissful time hanging around with Shaun's girlfriend Katy (Joanna Tulej), who Shaun still thinks of as the love of his life. And when Daz goes into hospital and his teenage son Daniel (Michael Socha) goes off the rails, Shaun decides to see if he can reconnect with Katy (now played by Rachel Blake)... Directed by Kenny Glenaan (who made 2004's Yasmin), this is a powerfully emotional drama with Carlyle on top form and a potentially career-making performance from young Sean Kelly (who reminded me a lot of Shameless's Jody Latham) as the teenaged Shaun. As well as getting powerful performances from his actors, Glenaan brilliantly captures the feel of carefree summers in small towns and orchestrates some astonishing sequences, such as a shocking and heart-breaking scene in which Shaun deliberately crushes his hand in a vice out of frustration with his dyslexia. Powerful, beautifully shot and emotionally devastating, this marks Glenaan out as a talent to watch. Four stars.

Better Things

British drama directed by Duane Hopkins, about a series of fractured relationships unfolding in a community where a beautiful teenager has just died of a drugs overdose.

Quite possibly the festival's most depressing film (and as you can imagine, it's up against some pretty stiff competition), Better Things is directed by Duane Hopkins and features several unknown actors as members of a smalltown community in the Cotswolds, where a beautiful local teenager has just died of a drugs overdose (the film opens with a shot of her corpse with a needle in her arm and it's all downhill from there, emotionally speaking). Other characters include: the dead girl's boyfriend, Rob, who feels guilty about her death and seeks solace in -yes!- heroin; an old woman who can't understand why her just-released-from-hospital husband is so furious with her; an agoraphobic and depressed young woman caring for her bedridden grandmother; Rob's best friend, David, who's visited by his ex-addict girlfriend and decides to apply for methadone treatment; and, in the film's most compelling segment, a young teenager called Larry who only finds out his girlfriend Rachel has dumped him when he sees her making out with a motorcycle-riding older boy. Hopkins eschews traditional narrative in favour of a series of character snapshots and the accumulative effect is nothing short of extraordinary as the recurring theme of love's power to hurt us emerges. It's also beautifully shot, courtesy of cinematographer Lol Crawley, but what really stands out is the stunning sound design work. At one point, two characters are talking in a car and all the background noise is removed, leaving just the conversation and creating a dreamlike, surreal effect that works brilliantly. Similarly, there's very little in the way of traditional dialogue, but the few conversations that we do hear (the old couple eventually discussing their problems; Larry's angry phonecall with Rachel) are utterly devastating. An unforgettable film. Four stars.

The King of Ping-Pong

Swedish coming-of-age drama about an overweight teenager who overhears some distressing news about his paternity.


I love Scandinavian coming-of-age movies. They're probably my favourite festival genre, right up there with wacky competition documentaries (Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling, Air Guitar Nationetc). In the past few years, I've seen several delightful ones at Edinburgh, including Just Bea and Fourteen Sucks so I was really looking forward to The King of Ping-Pong. I have to say that it wasn't quite the movie I was hoping for (after the triple-bill of depression above I was really in the mood for a feelgood coming-of-age comedy) but I still enjoyed it. Jerry Johansson stars as overweight teen Rille, who lives for ping-pong because it's the only thing he's really good at and the only place where his stewardship of the ping-pong cupboard allows him to lord it over the younger kids, instead of regularly getting beaten up or bullied once he leaves the sports hall. He's also jealous of his popular younger brother Erik (the delightfully named Hampus Johansson), but when he overhears some distressing news about his paternity, Rille suddenly realises why he and his brother are so different. Johansson is superb as Rille (think Row-land from 1980s-era Grange Hill) and there was strong support from Hampus Johnansson and from tiny Alicia Stewen as Anja, a young girl who secretly likes Rille. This was much darker than I was expecting, plus the ping-pong wasn't as crucual to the plot as I was hoping, either (clearly, my dream film is one that combines Scandinavian coming-of-age stuff with sports competition docu-dramas). There were some striking scenes though (Rille's ice-throne; his drunken father unexpectedly jumping into an ice-hole; his fights with Erik) and one lovely sequence involving a truck, a car and a bridge, when Rille is driving with Anja in the passenger seat and they both break into delightful smiles. (I'd have been more than happy for the film to end at that point, actually). Also, a very weird coincidence: both King of Ping-Pong and Blood Car have the same gag, when an otherwise innocent-looking girl (Anja here, Anna Chlumsky's Lorraine in Blood Car) are revealed to be drawing extremely obscene pictures. Three stars.

Tiramisu

Dutch drama about an ageing actress who suddenly finds her riverboat home at risk because of her overspending.

This turned out to be the perfect end to a day of pretty miserable films. Directed by Paula van der Oest, Tiramisu stars Anneke Blok as Anne, an ageing theatre actress struggling with her ex-husband's remarriage to a younger, prettier actress. Hungover after a closing-night party, she receives an unexpected visitor at her riverboat home in the shape of book-keeper Jacob (Jacob Derwig), who informs her that she's hugely in debt and risks losing her lovely riverboat home unless she comes up with some money. What follows is a heart-warming culture-clash comedy-drama (uptight accountant vs free-spirited flighty actress) that takes ideas from backstage drama movies (Blok is physically similar to Gena Rowlands), Altman-esque ensemble dramas (the 20 minute climactic party scene could have come from an Altman movie) and, as some clever-clogs in the audience correctly pointed out, the works of Chekhov, particularly The Cherry Orchard, from which it lifts its entire structure. (The director awarded the audience member 10 points at the Q&A). Blok and Derwig spark off each other well and the supporting cast are delightfully quirky without ever becoming irritating. A solid three stars.

Day Two: "Deadly tarantulas. For sale. In vending machines."

Featured review of the day: A Complete History of My Sexual Failures.

Good Dick

Offbeat indie romcom starring Jason Ritter as a video store clerk who becomes obsessed with one of his erotica-renting customers (writer-director Marianna Palka).

Written and directed by Marianna Palka (who looks like she could be Sigourney Weaver's daughter), Good Dick stars Jason (son of John) Ritter as an unnamed video store clerk in Santa Monica who becomes obsessed with an attractive customer (Palka) who rents erotica (not to be confused with hardcore porn) every day. Ritter's not quite your usual obsessive though: first he follows her home, then he pretends his aunt lives in the building and has recently died and then he ends up moving into her apartment, even though she doesn't really like him all that much. To give much else away would spoil the pleasures of the sheer weirdness of this film. Suffice it to say that it's the total opposite of any romcom you've ever seen: everything takes place in the wrong order; characters say one thing and do the opposite; sexually charged scenes unfold in completely unexpected ways and so on. Ritter and Palka are terrific together, even if it takes you a while to work out just how much of a nutter Ritter is at the beginning. There are also weird little cameos from the likes of Charles Durning and Bryce Dallas Howard, while there's strong support from Eric Edelstein, Martin Starr and Mark Weber as Ritter's colleagues. This is quite possibly my favourite film of the festival so far. Terrific final shot too. Four stars.

Mancora

Spanish-Peruvian co-production starring Jason Day as depressed slacker who goes on a roadtrip with his step-sister (Elsa Pataky) and her husband (Enrique Murciano) following his father's suicide.

Co-produced by co-star Enrique Murciano (aka Danny from TV's Without A Trace), Mancora stars Jason Day as Santiago, a depressed slacker who goes on a roadtrip to Mancora in Northern Peru with his step-sister Ximena (the gorgeous Elsa Pataky) and her husband Inigo (the not-exactly-beaten-with-the-ugly-stick Enrique Murciano) following his father's suicide. The film has drawn comparisons to Y Tu Mama Tambien, because of the one-woman-two-men road trip plot and the fact that there's quite a lot of sex in it, but it lacks the heart and the depth of Cuaron's film. Part of the problem is Jason Day as Santiago - sure, he's really, really good-looking (as Zoolander might say) but he barely even speaks and we don't really care about him all that much. Similarly, Inigo is a bit of a shit and it's also hard to sympathise with Ximena, cute as she is. Still, the scenery is lovely and there are a handful of good scenes, but overall it's slow-moving and light on plot. Three stars.

Of Time and the City

Terence Davies' heartfelt documentary about his personal history of Liverpool.

A stunningly beautiful film. Davies (together with a loyal team of researchers) has assembled a wealth of gorgeous archive footage of Liverpool from the 1940s onwards and its overlaid with pieces of classical music, Davies himself quoting poetry and reading famous quotations, as well as giving his own recollections about growing up in Liverpool, going to the cinema for the first time and, in one particularly enjoyable sequence, ranting about the monarchy. It's beautifully edited and flows together seamlessly, so that it's almost dreamlike in places, especially in the way it shifts topic so easily. Four stars. Davies also gave a highly entertaining Q&A afterwards. Someone please give this man money to make his next film. I for one can't wait to see his "romcom with a happy ending".

Blood Car

Black comedy horror about a man who invents a car that runs on blood, with predictably grusome results.

This was a huge amount of fun. It's in extraordinarily bad taste but I laughed like a drain throughout. There was also a hilarious short beforehand called "Web Site Story: An Internet Paedophile Musical", with the songs set to the music from West Side Story ("Luvhorses! I just met a girl named Luvhorses!" etc), which you can watch here). Blood Car was written and directed by Alex Orr. Set in a future where petrol is incredibly expensive (ring any bells?), it stars Mike Brune as Archie Andrews, a vegan primary school teacher who is trying to invent a car that will run on wheatgrass. Instead he accidentally invents one that runs on human blood (not, unfortunately, animal blood, which he only discovers after he's slaughtered a sackful of cute puppies). Even more unfortunately, the car tends to run out of fuel pretty quick, so he's constantly topping up, in order to impress slutty Meat Stand employee Denise (Orr's real-life girlfriend Katie Rowlett). The script is very funny with several extremely rude and outrageous gags, plus sex scenes that are, shall we say, a little more risque than perhaps we're used to seeing. Orr (a self-confessed film geek) told me in the bar afterwards that he'd never seen a Russ Meyer movie before making the film but frankly I find that hard to believe - the busty hitch-hiker sequence alone is straight out of a Russ Meyer movie. He also amusingly revealed that all the girls who bare their breasts for the movie were recruited from Craig's List. I'm dying to spoil the film's most shocking gag, but I can't really do it. Suffice it to say that Orr succeeds in getting laughs from situations that you would never expect to find yourself laughing at. I hope he gets to make his next project, Black Hand, a film about a white supremacist who loses his hand and gets a black hand. Four stars. No distributor yet either...

The excellent Blood Car poster:



















Director Alex Orr, giving out post-screening Blood Car t-shirts (and yes, I got one and have already worn it with pride):

Day One: "If you need to stretch your legs, buy a blow-job off a Lithuanian"

Featured review of the day: The Edge of Love.

Red

Smalltown thriller based on a novel by Jack Ketchum, starring Brian Cox as a storeowner seeking justice against the thugs who killed his dog.

I really enjoyed The Lost two years ago, so when I read that Red was also based on a Jack Ketchum novel, I was really excited about seeing it. Brian Cox plays semi-retired store-owner Avery Ludlow, who seeks justice against three local teens when one of them (Noel Fisher from "The Riches") kills his dog (Red) for no reason. Unfortunately it turns out that the boy's father (a slimmed-down Tom Sizemore, still playing bastards) is something of a local bigwig so justice looks unlikely. However, things quickly get out of hand after a local TV reporter (Kim Dickens) does a news story on Avery. This was brilliant from start to finish. Cox is superb - he's not as angry here as he often is in other films, which made for some interesting slow-burning tension. Sizemore, of course, is one of the screen's all-time great bastards and he's as good as you'd expect, but there's also strong work from Dickens, Fisher and Kyle Gallner as Sizemore's more sensitive son. Needless to say though, you might want to avoid this if you're a dog-lover. Four stars.

Just Another Love Story

Danish film noir starring Anders W Bertelsen as a married man who becomes obsessed with a coma victim and allows her family to believe he's her boyfriend, even after she wakes up.

This was very much like a Danish film noir version of While You Were Sleeping. Anders W Bertelsen (you'll know the face – he's in practically every Danish film I've ever seen) plays married photographer Jonas, who witnesses a car accident and becomes obsessed with the victim (Rebecka Hemse), who ends up in a coma. Visiting her in hospital, he allows her concerned family to believe that he's her boyfriend Sebastien, a deception he continues even after she wakes up (with apparent -and convenient- memory loss). But then the real Sebastien (Nikolaj Lie Kaas – also in every Danish film) turns up and things take a nasty turn... To be honest, this wasn't quite as good as I was hoping it would be, despite good performances from Bertelsen and particularly from Kaas. It definitely had its moments, but the whole lying-bleeding-in-the-rain beginning / ending thing has been done to death over the years and I didn't think the script did enough to sell Jonas's sudden obsession. There were some nice touches though, such as all the scenes with Dejan Cukic as Jonas's weird best friend Frank who, like Dennis Hopper in Elegy yesterday, gives really bad relationship advice. Also, it was brilliantly edited, particularly during the scenes where Jonas is starting to lose it and mixing up his two relationships in his head. Three stars.

Somers Town

Shane Meadows reunites with Thomas Turgoose for this low-budget black and white tale of the friendship between a lonely Polish teenager and a young runaway.

Partly funded by Eurostar, thanks to a rather spectacular bit of product placement, Shane Meadows' latest film stars his This Is England discovery Thomas Turgoose as Tomo, a young runaway who comes to London and is promptly mugged. A chance meeting in a cafe leads to a developing friendship with bored Polish teenager Marek (Piotr Jagiello) as the two attempt a few rubbish money-making schemes, steal Tomo some clothes (leading to him wearing a woman's blouse for most of the film) and try to woo the French waitress (Elisa Lasowski as Maria) that Marek has a crush on. Turgoose and Jagiello are both excellent and the charming script brims with witty, naturalistic dialogue that works well. The film paints an interesting picture of the Somers Town area of London, with its Polish immigrant workers (Marek's father is building the new St Pancras station) and local cafes and apartment blocks. There are several great scenes, but the highlight is Tomo and Marek treating Maria to their “special taxi service”. Four stars.

Three Miles North of Molkom

Swedish documentary about a New Age healing festival and a young rugby-playing Australian who wonders what the hell he's doing there.

Three Miles North of Molkom is a Swedish documentary about a New Age healing festival that's held annually in the woods, er, three miles north of Molkom. It begins with a bunch of half-naked tree-hugging hippies rolling around together in a scene that reminded me of The Shunting in Society. Anyway, we're quickly introduced to various tree-hugging types including solid-looking Siddhartha (who's kind of like the Eric Thal character in Mouth-to-Mouth, only not as manipulative), blonde children's care worker Marit, Hawaiian hippie Ljus (who says he was raised by goats and does actually look a lot like a goat) and middle-aged retired careers advisor Mervi. And then there's Nick, a no-nonsense Australian rugby teacher who wound up at the festival because a friend recommended it and who cheerfully announces to the group that his first thoughts were “Oh fuck, it's a cult”. He doesn't really see the point in “all that tree-hugging shit” and doesn't care who knows it. However, over the course of several different exercises including Fire-walking, Tantric Sex workshops (at least, I think that's what they were doing), Finding Your Inner Power Animal, Primal Screaming and actual, literal tree-hugging, Nick gradually starts to come around and eventually gives his own mini-class called The No-Worries Workshop, where the group learn phrases like “No, you're alright” and “We're not here to fuck spiders”. The only problem is that the movie doesn't sell us on Nick's conversion – whatever it is that he gets out of it, we don't see it, so the effect is kind of like watching someone getting brainwashed. Also, it's at least 20 minutes too long and some of the New Age sessions go on far too long. That said, there are some great scenes, particularly when Nick's group have a session with someone who teaches them about channelling power as self-defence who then ends up knocking Mervi to the ground (“Where the fuck were you guys? Why didn't you channel your power to stop me?”). And then faces rugby player Nick... Not bad, but not the documentary of the festival either. Three stars.

Day Zero: "Even our adulteries can't compare - yours plays the oboe"

Directed by Santosh Sivan, Before the Rains is a lush melodrama with a hint of Merchant-Ivory. Set in 1930s colonial India, it stars Linus Roache as spice-grower Henry Moores, who's engaged in building an important road and is desperate to finish before Monsoon season begins. He's also engaged in a passionate affair with his young house-keeper, Sanjani (Nandita Das), which he has to hide from the local villagers because of her arranged marriage to the vicious Rajat (Lal Paul). However, Henry's bliss is short-lived, first because his wife Laura (Jennifer Ehle, as lovely as ever) arrives from England with their young son in tow, and secondly because Rajat's discovery of Sanjani's affair puts everyone's lives in danger. Seeking refuge, Sanjani turns to Henry for help, but he's desperate to hide the affair from Laura, so he asks his right-hand man, T.K. (Rahul Bose) to help Sanjani get to safety. However, Sanjani isn't ready to leave without the man she loves... This is the sort of film where one character gives another a gun as a present in the second scene, so you pretty much know where it's going right from the start. Also, given the scandalous subject matter, it's a remarkably chaste affair - sex scenes take place behind rocks, bathtub scenes involve too much foam and even the shootings and beatings occur offscreen. The cast do their best (Bose and Das are particularly good, though Ehle's rather wasted as Laura) but the end result is rather underwhelming and a racier director might have spiced it up a bit. Watchable enough, though and the scenery is fantastic. Three stars.

Time to Die

Polish drama about an old woman and her dog.

Crisply shot in black and white, Time to Die stars Polish screen legend Danuta Szaflarska as 92-year-old Aniela, who lives in a large-but-rickety old house that's far too big for her, with only her faithful dog, Phila (short for Philadelphia) for company. Her good-for-nothing son visits every so often (bringing her overweight and deeply uninterested granddaughter with him) but Daniela correctly senses that he's only waiting for her to die so he can sell the house to the property developer next door. However, when her son decides to go behind her back and make a deal with the neighbour anyway, Aniela decides that she's not going to go down without a fight. My knowledge of Polish (or, more accurately, Polish swearing) was good enough for me to realise that Aniela's actually a lot more abrasive and coarse than the rather tame subtitles suggest (and, while we're at it, WHY do subtitlers still persist in using white subtitles on white backgrounds?), so this was robbed of some of its impact but it was still enjoyable, if a little slow. Szaflarska is excellent throughout (the constant twinkle in her eye leaves you in no doubt as to whether or not she's entirely compos mentis) but the film really belongs to the dog, who gives the best canine performance of the year and would be a shoo-in for the Canine D'Or at Cannes (a real award). In fact, during the film's slower moments, it's fun to pretend that the film is actually all about Phila and her daily adventures as she opens doors, answers the phone, chases off property developers, cracks and eats walnuts and delivers note-perfect comedy reactions on demand. There are some other good scenes too (Aniela enjoying a thunderstorm, for example, or her interaction with a young “rascal” nick-named Dostoyevsky) but this is worth seeing for the dog alone. Three stars.


Elegy

Classy drama based on a novel by Philip Roth, starring Ben Kingsley as a lecturer who falls head-over-heels for one of his grad students (Penelope Cruz).

What is it with Ben Kingsley lately? How come he's suddenly getting the sort of onscreen relationships you usually see in Woody Allen movies? In the last few months he's bedded (onscreen, I hasten to add) Tea Leoni (in You Kill Me), Mary-Kate Olsen (in The Wackness) and Famke Janssen (also in The Wackness) and now there's a whole movie about his relationship with Penelope Cruz? Kingsley must have the best agent in the world. Either that or compromising photographs of every casting director in Hollywood. Anyway, I digress. I freely admit that Kingsley's not my favourite actor but his two recent performances (in The Wackness and Elegy) have brought me round somewhat. Here he plays David Kepesh, an author and college professor who walked out on his wife and child many years ago, something his “father-hating son” (Peter Sarsgaard) still hasn't forgiven him for. Since then, the closest thing David has to a meaningful relationship is his monthly hook-up with self-made businesswoman Caroline (Patricia Clarkson), an arrangement that seems to suit them both perfectly. However, when David falls head-over-heels for one of his students (Penelope Cruz, looking fabulous) and begins a relationship with her, his jealousy threatens to destroy everything because he's convinced she'll eventually leave him for a younger man. Given a set-up like that, it should surprise precisely no-one that all this is adapted from a novel by Philip Roth. Kingsley and Cruz are both excellent and I have to begrudgingly admit that there is decent chemistry between them, even though it was all I could do not to shout “GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER, KINGSLEY!” during Penelope's nude scenes. However, the film is stolen by a superb supporting performance from Dennis Hopper as David's best friend and confidante, a -wait for it- Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet (stop laughing at the back there) who offers terrible relationship advice and still has affairs, even though he's married to DEBBIE FREAKING HARRY. Hopper's terrific though – he lights up every scene he's in, plus, I won't forget the image of him feeding a depressed Kingsley with the old “Here comes the choo-choo train” routine in a hurry. I hadn't checked the director before the film started (it's one of those 'all the credits are at the end' jobs) but it didn't surprise me at all to discover that it was directed by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, whose last film I really enjoyed. She should probably ditch her Woody Allen obsession though – a shot of Kingsley and Cruz on the beach in long-shot, seen through a gap in a fence is directly stolen from either, September, Another Woman or Interiors (one of Allen's really boring films, anyway). All in all, this is a classy, beautifully photographed and superbly acted drama, though it's not quite as emotionally engaging as it ought to be and it could have used a) a bit more humour and b) less voiceover. Three stars.

Helen

Low-key drama about a young woman who begins to identify with a murdered girl after standing in for her during a police reconstruction for TV.

I'd heard good things about this, but, to be honest, I was a little underwhelmed (which, now that I think about it, has been the case all day – I'm struggling to pick a Film of the Day from this lot, so I think I'll skip it). Anyway, I liked the premise a lot: when local teenager Joy disappears and is presumed murdered, loner Helen (Annie Townsend) agrees to play her in a police reconstruction for TV. As she takes to wearing the Joy's distinctive yellow leather jacket (how she gets to keep it is never explained), she becomes increasingly obsessed with the dead girl, befriending her parents and even getting Joy's ex-boyfriend to deflower her. Slowly, it becomes clear that Helen knows nothing about her own background – she's grown up in care and her case file was sealed until she turned 18 – and is filling in her own gaps with details from Joy's life. There's a superb central idea here, but the film ends just as it's getting interesting. Similarly, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's joint directorial style is extremely distancing (it reminded me of The Last Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, only not as horrible), with an ever-present discordant soundtrack and long takes and close-ups of nothing happening. It also doesn't help that all the dialogue in the film is delivered in the same measured, precise and oddly patronising tone: for example, the first scene involving speech is when a detective is asking Joy's parents to identify her things and speaking to them slowly and deliberately because they're in shock...and then everyone else in the film speaks the same way. There are also odd moments where side characters (police officers, a drama teacher) deliver inappropriate motivational speeches that don't quite work. I was also confused by the setting, as characters either spoke with Irish accents, Newcastle accents, Birmingham accents or Liverpool accents - it turned out that the film had been funded jointly by film boards in all four places, so that cleared that up, but it detracted from the film. That said, Helen grew on me towards the end and I really liked Annie Townsend's performance, even if she does bear an unfortunate resemblance to Lou Taylor Pucci. There were also several striking images, such as an early shot of a line of police combing the forest and a follow-up shot from behind with their emblazoned jackets reading “POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE”. I liked the final line a lot too. Three stars.

What if they held a Festival and nobody came?

Well, I'm here. I even managed to watch a film on the train (Sandrine Bonnaire's Her Name Is Sabine, which had me surreptitiously wiping away tears) and go through the programme marking up my schedule. I've identified 52 films that I really want to see, so that's the goal this year: 52 films in 11 days.

Some random thoughts:

1) Hardly anyone is here so far. Okay, so the festival doesn't officially start till Wednesday but the press deskers looked a little spooked that no-one had turned up yet, as if they were wondering whether they'd got the dates wrong and had turned up early by mistake. I would imagine there's a lot of anxiety this year about whether people (both journalists and audiences) will turn up in sufficient numbers, given the controversial decision to move the Festival away from August.

2) Sadly, I can't stay with my friend this year, so I'm staying here instead, for 11 nights. It's alright so far. Very friendly staff. Few too many Gemermans for my liking, mind.

3) What the bloody hell is the point of making a big deal about your "Free Wi-Fi" if you're going to block all the FUCKING power outlets? The FilmHouse and the Cameo, I am looking at YOU. Grrr.

4) One delightful difference this year - they've changed the system for requesting public screening tickets. Previously, us lowly green pass holders had to fill out a lengthy form and hope for the best, while smug gold pass types (you know who you are) queued up in the morning and got whatever their hearts desired, just like that. However, THIS year, it's a veritable free-for-all (perhaps, again, because they're worried about bums on seats) so, to all intents and purposes, green = gold. Brilliant.

5) And finally, a bit of pedantry. Normally, I would call the first day of press screenings "Day One", but that's confusing when the festival actually starts a day later. This year, my first day of screenings will be "Day Zero", which should clarify things a bit. I think I may have stolen this from the Empire Cannes Blog, but I'm not sure.

Edinburgh Festival 2008

There are two big changes this year. The first, obviously, is that the festival has moved to June, away from the larger, all-powerful festival in August. I am actually quite pleased because it means I'll get to go to Frightfest this year. The second change is that I'll actually be getting paid this year - as well as my reviews here, I'll be covering the festival for our newly launched sister site, ViewEdinburgh. The current plan is to do a daily review on ViewEdinburgh and review everything else here. Also, there'll be a couple of ViewEdinburgh Film Blog entries, but they'll be more towards the end of the festival.

Some Notes About Last Year

It wouldn't be fair to just leave last year unfinished without a few notes, so here are a few things about last year's EIFF.

I ended up seeing 40 films in 13 days, which wasn't nearly as impressive as the previous year's 60 films in 10 days, but was still pretty good.

The top ten films I saw at the Festival last year were:

1) In Search of a Midnight Kiss
2) Paranoid Park
3) Control
4) Billy the Kid (still unreleased, though it'll be on More4 soon)
5) Stardust
6) The Counterfeiters
7) Crazy Love
8) Teeth
9) Ex-Drummer
10) I Served the King of England

Special mentions to: Razzle Dazzle, The Waiting Room, John Waters: This Filthy World, The New Man, Run Granny Run, The Interpreter, Auftauchen, Skills Like This, Special People and Joshua for pure camp value.

Highlight of the festival: Landing an incredibly jammy 25 minute interview with the lovely Olga Kurylenko, in the cafe of her hotel, just as she was about to leave. Pictures are here:



and here:



Basically, at that point, I seriously considered just going home, because there was no way I was going to top that.

Disappointment of the festival: Not getting to meet John Waters.

Party of the festival: Probably the Knocked Up party, purely because I briefly spoke to both Seth Rogen and Natalie Press. Nothing as good as last year's Air Guitar Nation parties though.

Another apology

Talk about an Ode to Procrastination. I’ve put off finishing off last year’s Edinburgh Blog for an entire year now and here we are at Edinburgh time again. Well, sort of - it is in June this year, after all. It's still shocking though. I am, literally, crimson with shame. Still, onwards and upwards. I hereby solemnly swear to complete this year’s blog if it kills me, even though I swore the same thing last year and still didn't finish it. I did get one day further along last year than in 2006 though, so that's something. Maybe I'll just attempt to get one day further along each year and that way, I'll actually complete one in 2011.

Okay, so I reposted the apology from last year. Again. But THIS year is going to be different, oh yes. Just wait and see.

"Hmmm. When the bloody hell is he going to get around to finishing last year's blog?"