It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it…
The festival day is falling neatly into two halves now. There’s the 9-5 day job of seeing movies and scouting out what parties are going to be on later (it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it), and then the evening job of attending said parties and working the room like a Kennedy.
Yesterday the 9-5 was Szabadsag, Szerelem, followed by the diappointing WΔZ, a rookie cop, psychological/philosophical, torture porn thriller that wants to be Se7en but comes across more like InSawmnia (you see what I did there?). The cops on the street scenes look weak and unconvincing next to TV series like The Wire, and the mystery of the formula carved into the victims’ bodies doesn’t engage in the same way as the 7 deadly sins. The other problem I’ve noticed is no one knows how to pronounce the title. Is it was, as in ‘it was okay in parts then went off the rails at the end’? Or is it waz, as in ‘I spent the latter half of it needing a waz but stuck it out to the disappointing finale’?
As Robert Townsend pointed out in Hollywood Shuffle, how can a brother ask his girl out to a movie if he can’t pronunciate the damn title?
Seriously, though, it’s gritty and bleak and the second act is gripping. But the more it veers into torture porn territory, the less it grips.
So it was off to the evening job and the 1 Minute Wonder party to celebrate Scotland’s next generation of up and coming filmmakers. Alas, it was too crowded to see the screen so we agreed to settle for grabbing the DVD before the festival ends and retreated to the rooftop garden overlooking the city.
Our posse began to form. The three Shooters (me, Mullighan and Tamsin) were joined by Paul Green (NFTS talent spotter) and Tamsin’s mate Kate Taylor from Halloween Film Festival. I then got approached by Ben, a strapping lad who’s moving from Edinburgh to London and wants to meet some Shooters to ease the transition. Another one for our growing army that shall soon take over the world!
I liked that fact that he seemed reticent about tagging along with us, not realising that we’d all barely been introduced. Anyway, he was bringing the lovely Vicky with him, so who would refuse?
We hit an Italian to stock up on carbs before crashing the EIFF and Skillset Trailblazers launch party, which was in full swing and totally rammed and had a free bar, all night. I met lots of interesting people (including a divine woman with a script development fund. NB. All people, male or female, with access to a script development fund, are divine) and shouted at them above the music and then got dragged up to dance by the girls.
We work in a visual medium, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.
(If you click on them they get bigger and that.)
L to R : Mullighan feels the vibe / Paul Green looks on astounded / Tamsin and new recruit to our army of darkness Ben / Kate Taylor and Vicky working dat thing.
