Times. S&S. LFF @ 50.

The full title of the festival opening tonight and running through November 2 is The Times BFI London Film Festival, so it's only natural that the Times has an elaborate special section devoted to the fest and that the November issue of the BFI's Sight & Sound offers its recommendations and a few related pieces. Let's start there.

• Hannah McGill: "Red Road doesn't just team the social-realist douleur of the Dardennes with the convoluted plotting of the girl-on-top revenge thriller. At times the relationship between Jackie and Clyde steers the film towards such classic melodramas as Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession... If Red Road sometimes seems generically jumbled, this may reflect its unusual development process." Related: Stephen Dalton talks with Kate Dickie, who plays Jackie, for the Times and Danny Leigh talks with director Andrea Arnold for the Guardian.

• Nick James on Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako: "it's the trial that provides the real drama and the glimpsed shards of lifestyle only illustrate, even if they're filmed with all the quiet attention of a Kiarostami."

• McGill on Times and Winds: "If the fourth feature from Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem covers some not-unfamiliar territory - rural families misalign, local conflicts flare and die, and children wrestle with the mysteries of puberty while goat bells clamour and seasons slip by - it does so with sufficient grace and forthrightness to render its content breathtakingly fresh."

The Last King of Scotland opens the 50th LFF tonight and Times reviewer James Christopher greets it with four out of five stars. More from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. Related in the Times: Kevin Maher talks with Forest Whitaker and a profile of James McAvoy.

The festival "is hosting the world's largest surprise screening to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year," reports Amber Cowan. "On the evening of Sunday, October 29, 50 cinemas and venues across all boroughs of the capital will be unveiling a mystery film, which could be a movie from the Festival itself, or simply a classic."

"Is Austria the new Denmark?" asks Ian Johns. Features at the fest in which Austrians have a hand at least if they haven't directed them: Falling, Fräulein, Esma's Secret, Taxidermia, Babooska, Our Daily Bread and Slumming.

More profiles and pieces:

• Christopher sees Abbie Cornish (Candy) going places; meets Emilio Estevez (Bobby).

• Tom Charity talks with Juliette Binoche about Breaking and Entering.

• Stephen Dalton talks with Day Night Day Night filmmaker Julia Loktev.

• Maher recommends Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.

• James Bone talks with Mira Nair (The Namesake).

• Wendy Ide recommends Shortbus.

• Burhan Wazir on Lewis Milestone on A Walk in the Sun and Of Mice and Men.

The paper also looks back on the highlights of 50 years, offers eleven trailers, a chat with artistic director Sandra Hebron, recommendations from Christopher and Ben Hoyle and a blog.

Non-LFF-related pieces in this month's Sight & Sound:

• James Bell looks back on the highlights of the Venice Film Festival.

• Mark Sinker: "For all its promise, [Brothers of the Head] becomes a trudge through unrealised ideas, and is strangely afraid of enjoying its own extremism, let alone its hypocrisy."

• Tim Lucas on 49 Up: "[T]his series has become increasingly about the impact of the program on its participants."

• Henry K Miller finds that Lukas Moodysson's Container's "74-minute run-time feels arbitrary: you could walk in at any point and get the gist of the thing. For all that, it shares with Persona the central theme of the fragmented self in a violent, godless world."

• Ryan Gilbey: "Should Peter Greenaway ever film a script by Bruno Dumont featuring characters conceived by Mike Leigh, the result might resemble The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael."

Posted by dwhudson at October 18, 2006 2:48 PM