The first International Icelandic Film Festival is upon us and has YT all fired up. I love love love film festivals! The only downside to the next three weeks is how on earth will I see all the movies I want to see?
The operating word here is international. We’ve had film fests before, on a regular basis even, and there has been a plethora of excellent films on offer, but never of this calibre: 50 premieres in three weeks; 70 films in total being screened. This is set to be a yearly event and I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. Even though we get a reasonable selection of ‘alternative’ films up here, most of the fare we’re supplied with is – you know it – Hollywood fluff and stupid teenage flicks.
Here are YT’s must-see picks:
LA MALA EDUCATION (BAD EDUCATION)
Huge Almodóvar fan, me. All About My Mother and Talk To Her are among my favourite films. I’ll go see this one without hesitation despite it being about child abuse [which always makes me queasy] – because it’s Almodóvar and I know he’ll bring his amazing class and vision to it. Plus it stars dreamy Gael García Bernal who is actually coming to Iceland today to spend the weekend. Trouper!
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
Che Guevara travels through the US on his motorbike before becoming a hero. More of dreamy Gael García Bernal. Director Walter Salles is here for the weekend also and I caught an interview with him on telly last night. Looks great. [The film I mean. And him, too.]
HOTEL RWANDA
S’posed to be good.
MARIA FULL OF GRACE
I’ve been seeing trailers for this one every time I’ve been to the movies lately and it looks really intense. About a girl who becomes a drug mule. Just hope all the good moments aren’t in the trailer, as was the case with The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, which we saw last weekend – boo!
DON’T MOVE
Saw a clip from this on Jay Leno the other night. Penelope Cruz speaks in flawless Italian and tries to do ugly. But fails.
VERA DRAKE
Love Mike Leigh. Imogen Stubbs does ugly and succeeds. And performs lots of abortions in the process.
KINSEY
Everything you wanted to know about sex. Or, rather, everything they wanted to know about sex.
Maybe:
THE WOODSMAN
Another one about pedophilia and this one I’m pretty sure will make me queasy so I don’t know. But definitely intriguing.
DOWNFALL
The one about Hitler that I wrote about after my UK trip in January. I don’t really want to subject myself to it again but I wouldn’t mind going with EPI and watching him watch it. So I can talk to him about it afterwards.
GARDEN STATE
I can’t remember why I wanted to see this one but I saw a trailer and decided I did.
MELINDA AND MELINDA
Woody’s latest. I dunno – his recent ouvres have been soso and not sure about this one. Will hold off until I know more.
MEANWHILE, THE WEATHER
Consists of rain. Which is cool – a helluva lot better than the wretched cold and wind we had to put up with in the last two days. Went out for a run between the raindrops and am now like a newly-slapped two-shilling piece.* The mbl website has the temperature as ° which means YT will have to guess and I would guess it’s… about… 4. degrees. Centigrade. Meanwhile, it started getting light at 5.29 this morning and if all goes according to plan it will be dark at 21.33.
*Icelandic expression.