Edinburgh International Film Festival primer
Danny lands in Edinburgh, sets up camp in the Hub, and watches lots and lots of films. It's festival time again!
We’re in Edinburgh! Two months earlier than normal!
It’s the second day of the 62nd Edinburgh International Film Festival and after a pretty sleepy first day – vague details of which in a second – things are really kicking off today as the program opens itself up to the public. Last night saw Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley in town to support John Maybury’s new one (and opening night film) The Edge Of Love. I wasn’t able to get into the screening or the after-show party at the nearby student union, but I did walk by the building itself. To my friend’s amazement, there was an actual red carpet laid out on the ground. Yes, red carpets are real. And they’re very carpety.
Really, the first day for me involved getting my press pack together and bumping into old friends also covering the fest, setting up at my friend’s flat and reacquainting myself with the Delegate Centre – basically the hub of the festival (to kinds paraphrase Battlestar Galactica). Hopefully you guys will get to know the delegate centre – as well as my as yet unnamed vintage laptop “bag” – in upcoming posts. My fellow DoG writer Carl England made it through this morning after a late night shift at work in Glasgow and approximately zero hours of sleep. He’s watching films until about one in the morning tonight. That’s professionalism, folks!
As a matter of fact, I’m inbetween films at the moment, currently waiting on a 1345 press screening of Standard Operating Procedure, the new documentary by Errol Morris. I just came out of The Visitor, Thomas McCarthy’s follow up to The Station Agent. It’s good – at points it’s even really good – but I can’t do the film justice with a five-minute write up. Expect a post on both films later on, as well as the evening showings of Milky Way Liberation Front and Blood Car tomorrow.
So, stay tuned.
P.S. A friend of mine went to the press conference for The Edge Of Love yesterday afternoon, telling me that Keira Knightley is absolutely gorgeous and that Sienna Miller is – in her words – “normal looking”. Oh. That’s, erm, the gossip right now…
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