Never Let Me Go

I saw Never Let Me Go at the London Film Festival back in October, and in an oversight almost as bad as the Death Star builders forgetting to fit the Thermal Exhaust Port Anti-Proton Torpedo Cover, I spectacularly failed to write a review at the time, and now I can't remember anything about it.

Fortunately I took copious and detailed notes, so this post won't be a complete disaster after all (shut up).

OK, so what can we deduce from that?

1. Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield get two ticks. This either means that they're both very good, or that I was guessing who would be in the film and got them both right.

2. The next line looks like "Knightley not bad but less (tick)". I think I'm making the point that Keira Knightley is not as good as Mulligan or Garfield. I don't know why I bothered to write that down, my Mum could probably have told me that would be the case.

3. The words "slow, mysterious, unease, tragic" lead me to the conclusion that I felt the film had elements of slowness, mysteriousness, uneasiness and tragicness. I bet this is exacty how Barry Norman used to work.

4. I've written a number 7 in a circle in the corner, so I suppose I must have given it 7 out of 10. Alternatively I was working on a new, revolutionary '007' logo to sell to the Broccoli family for millions so I could retire and live the life I so richly deserve.

So there you have it: Never Let Me Go in eleven words, three symbols and a number. Makes you wonder why Robbie Collin gets paid so much.

Film Poster In 'Accurately Reflects Tone Of Film It Advertises' Shocker

This new poster for Gregg Araki's absolutely mentile sexfest Kaboom might look like the Planet Orgasmia just exploded after every inhabitant simultaneously climaxed while having it off with a giant tube of Smarties, but having seen it at the London Film Festival I can at least confirm that this is a pretty accurate representation of the movie.

Which is more can be said for the previous one:

Sorry, I mean this one:

Sorry, I mean this one:

Sorry, I mean this one:

Silly me.

The London Film Festival Starts Today!

The Opening Night Gala screening of Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go "kicks off" the 54th BFI London Film Festival at 7.00 tonight. Unless you've already got tickets you won't be getting in. Even I won't be getting in and I'm The Incredible Suit.

Nevertheless I have already seen a bundle of stuff from this year's festival, and I'll be barfing my opinions all over your internets over the next couple of weeks so you can decide what to go and see, either between now and October 28th or when each film gets its own release, if indeed it does and doesn't sit on a shelf in a lonely cupboard somewhere gathering dust until the inevitable apocalypse.

I'm aware that many of you are weirdos and have no intention whatsoever of attending the London Film Festival, so I'm happy for you to enjoy it vicariously through this blog. Make my eyes and ears your own, but keep my hands to myself.

Let's Festivalise!

Movie-Con III: Day 1

My new regular Saturday feature has already been shunted out of the way because this weekend I'm spending unhealthy amounts of time surrounded by like-minded geeks in obscure movie-referencing t-shirts at London's BFI, wherein Empire magazine's third annual Movie-Con is being held. If you're unaware of the intricacies of the event, imagine 500 nerds in a room watching random bits of footage of unfinished films. Sounds tremendous doesn't it?

Oh and the Con in Movie-Con is short for "confiscated", as in "your phone will be, to prevent you from posting wobbly footage of trailers that are already online or will be in a matter of days".

Day 1 started yesterday evening with Empire's Chris Hewitt carpet bombing us with excruciating jokes until we couldn't take any more and the first bit of footage was shown: an exclusive trailer for Danny Boyle's new movie and this year's London Film Festival closer, 127 Hours, starring James Franco.

127 Hours is a true story about a man who literally gets stuck between a rock and a hard place (for about 127 hours, I'm guessing) and has to resort to desperate measures to extricate himself. The trailer doesn't tell you much more than that and I'm not about to start describing trailers because that's been proven to be the least exciting thing anyone can do on the internet.

Danny Boyle turned up for a quick Q&A, was very funny, relaxed and charming, spoiled the end of his film and expressed a desire to do a musical or animated film next. SCOOP.

Following that the rather excellent director-producer team of Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith showed up to promote a film they had nothing to do with, utterly mentile Belgian animation A Town Called Panic. They showed some clips and a trailer that have already been on YouTube for months, and which were projected at the wrong aspect ratio so we couldn't read the subtitles. Fortunately they won us over with a clip of Adam Buxton pretending to be a belligerent Belgian animator, so we forgave them.



Next was the LFF's opening film Never Let Me Go's trailer, which everyone has also seen already. There was another quick Q&A with two of its producers, Andrew Macdonald and some other bloke, which was a bit dull until Macdonald started talking about his next project, Judge Dredd, at which point the audience woke up and got excited when he announced that it would be (surprise) a gritty, R-rated version of the comic, and that Dredd - played by Karl Urban - would keep his helmet on this time. Everyone was very happy about that, except Karl Urban presumably.



The main event was a screening of The Expendables, during which everybody clapped and cheered whenever anyone got shot (which was quite frequently), and then there was a party but by that time I was on a tube home surrounded by Australians in togas.

More tomorrow!

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