LFF midway.

For the Independent, Kaleem Aftab tracks the London Film Festival so far, finds it's going well and notes a running motif: Africa. James Christopher has another half-time report in the London Times, very upbeat as well. There, too, Richard Owen enthusiastically previews Shane Meadows's This is England.

"Shane Meadows is Britain's greatest living filmmaker," declares Tom Huddleston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "This is England marks some sort of culmination, drawing together disparate threads from throughout Meadows' filmography and weaving them into something brave, distinctive and powerfully personal." Also, Paul Verhoeven's Black Book (more from Kira-Anne Pelican, blogging for the London Times) and Anders Gustafsson's Percy, Buffalo Bill & I.

More praise for England from Time Out's Chris Tilly.

Screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg knew RFK and, as Bobby screens in London, he recalls a few conversations for the Times: "'Bobby, if you don't make it here in Washington, I think I may be able to get you a job as a screenwriter in Hollywood,' I told him. 'I hear you have to be a pretty good politician for that,' he said. I found he had an understated and delightful sense of humour. Self-deprecating. Of all the negatives I had heard about Bobby Kennedy, I was finding not one of them to be true."

James Christopher quite likes the film, by the way. Good thing, too, because the Times has a big gala screening tie-in package.

For the Guardian, Will Hodgkinson talks with Mike Figgis about A Portrait of London, "the latest in his series of attempts to prove that cinema need not be a costly, lumbering beast. Only this time, he's also setting out to see whether a movie can be fused with theatre and turned into a live show." Also, Katrina Onstad meets an entertaining talker, Kenneth Anger: "All totaled, his oeuvre amounts to less than three hours of footage, and his films can be hard to find, but UCLA Film and Television Archive recently completed 35mm restorations of four Anger shorts, set to screen at the London film festival."

Posted by dwhudson at October 27, 2006 3:21 PM