Sight & Sound, Times. LFF 08.

The full title of the event that'll be the talk of the town in London from October 15 through 30 is The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival. And now, both entities are presenting big editorial packages to whip up Vorfreude: the BFI's Sight & Sound and the London Times.

Times editor James Harding: "We at the newspaper love film, in all its parts: the art of it, the glamour of it, the entertainment of it, the business of it, the science of it and the humanity of it. This year, the feeling is mutual. By some happy accident, this year's selection of the world's best films will also excite people with an interest in the news." The paper's also offering a free guide to the festival as a downloadable PDF, while critic James Christopher lists ten must-sees; S&S adds 20 more (in addition to the films covered in features we'll get to in a moment).

Updated through 10/16.

"This year's festival marks the 12th that I've been involved with, and my sixth as artistic director." Sandra Hebron writes up a list of "ten things I've learned since I started." And there's accompanying video.

"What does it take to get your film ready for the festival?" Chris Pambrun asks "Britain's hottest movie-making talents."

Ok, film by film, in alphabetical order:

• Damon Wise talks with Mark Ruffalo about The Brothers Bloom (site), "a conman story directed by 34-year-old California Rian Johnson, director of 2005's high-school noir Brick." (Times)

• Martyn Palmer gets Benicio Del Toro to tell her the story behind Che (NYFF). Plus, Wendy Ide's review from Cannes. (Times)

• Ginette Vincendeau talks with Laurent Cantet about The Class (site; NYFF). (S&S) And Wendy Ide talks with François Bégaudeau, who plays the teacher and who wrote the book the film is based on. Plus, her review from Cannes. (Times)

• Kevin Maher interviews Jessica Biel, who "oes head to head, and emerges unscathed, with national treasure Kristin Scott Thomas in the period comedy Easy Virtue." (Times)

• "Frank Langella didn't expect to reprise his role as the disgraced President Richard Nixon in the big-screen version of Frost/Nixon [site]." That'll be Tim Teeman's interview for the Times.

• "The British director Michael Winterbottom is the latest internationally renowned auteur to recognise [Catherine] Keener's talents by casting her in his new psychological drama, Genova." Stephen Dalton interviews her for the Times.

• James Christopher talks with Alex Gibney about Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S Thompson (site). (Times)

• "La libertad (2001), Los muertos (2004) and Liverpool (2008) constitute one of the most notable trilogies in contemporary film," writes Quintín. And Maria Delgado interviews director Lisandro Alonso. (S&S)

• Kevin Maher talks with Michael Cera about the path to Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (site). (Times)

• "[Terence] Davies laments the approach of death, but his film is a protest against it," writes Ryan Gilbey (S&S). "'The golden moments pass, and leave no trace,' he purrs, quoting Chekhov. Like cinema itself, Of Time and the City [site] suggests otherwise." Also: Wendy Ide's review from Cannes.

• Bruce Dessau talks with Richard Eyre about The Other Man: "Following Eyre's acclaimed Notes on a Scandal, this is based on a short story by German writer Bernhard Schlink and is another intimate master-class in mature cinema." (Times)

• Opening with a description of the scene featuring both Nanni Moretti and Roman Polanski, Geoffrey Macnab talks with the team behind Quiet Chaos (site). (S&S)

• S&S editor Nick James on Rachel Getting Married (site): "Though the film could have fallen for all the Sundance Lab pieties that seem to afflict so many recent American family dramas, [Jenny] Lumet deftly undercuts our most lachrymose expectations."

• Kevin Maher interviews Dakota Blue Richards: "For in the family fantasy The Secret of Moonacre (site), the 14-year-old Brighton-based starlet plays Maria, an orphaned princess who discovers hitherto unexplored magical powers, befriends a fearsome black lion, rides a unicorn, and must ultimately defend the entire planet from a cataclysmic collision with the moon." (Times)

• Danny Boyle's "attraction to Slumdog Millionaire [site] was the complete lack of control it offered him, and the challenge of making it up on the fly," discovers Kevin Maher. (Times)

• "It's not giving away much to reveal that the last line of dialogue spoken in Synecdoche, New York [site] is the lone word 'die.' It does, however, help to illustrate the emotional starkness and the near-mythic intent of this directorial debut from Charlie Kaufman, the 49-year-old absurdist screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Kevin Maher interviews him for the Times.

• The Times reruns Wendy Ide's review of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (site) from Cannes.

• Chris Ayres finds that W. (site) is "a disappointment and might have been better off on cable television as a mini-series.". Ayres also talks with Oliver Stone, while Kevin Maher talks with Josh Brolin about getting to know George W Bush and Nicola Graydon asks Thandie Newton about becoming Condoleezza Rice. (Times)

• The Times reruns Wendy Ide's review of Waltz with Bashir (site; NYFF) from Cannes. But here's what's new: Ide's interview with director Ari Folman; and video.

And what else is in the new issue of Sight & Sound? Fortunately, Tim Lucas's DVD column is not only a regular feature of the magazine but appears online every month as well: "[Luigi] Scattini's mondo movies - such as Sweden, Heaven and Hell (1968), a fascinatingly twisted investigation into then contemporary life in Sweden, and the putative black-magic exposé Witchcraft '70 (1970) - have become more interesting with the passage of time. Rife with staged scenes and misrepresentation galore, they at once underscore the ability of the documentary form to distort the truth at the filmmaker's whim (a subject that seems especially relevant today given the rise of the internet, where anyone can say anything and lend it the same weight as newspaper print) and inhabit a fascinating twilight area which, though scandalous in the licence it takes in twisting the facts, yet is also plausibly heroic, in an anarchic sense, in its tacit condemnation of a world that accepts whatever information it's fed at face value."

"Released to coincide with the 75th anniversaries of both the BFI (restorer/compiler/distributor) and the GPO Film Unit (production company), Love Letters and Live Wires is a delightful eight-film compilation showcasing the Unit's considerable range and peculiar virtues," writes Michael Brooke.

Kate Stables takes on The Women, Diane English's remake of George Cukor's 1939 classic: "Shorn of its barbed attack on the parasitic manicure-and-malice lifestyle of rich wives and gay divorcees, and with Rosalind Russell's false friend and rattling rumour-mill Sylvie transformed into Annette Bening's tediously gutsy go-getter, this de-clawed reincarnation feels superficial and self-satisfied."

Updates, 10/10: Sono Viva (I Am Alive) is "the sort of film which is probably only to be seen at festivals; unlikely to get a conventional UK cinema release," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "In some ways, brooding about whether or not it is any good is secondary to savouring its contemporary-archival value as a snapshot of the Italian or European mindset."

"It's easy to focus on the big names and the red-carpet wow factor at The Times BFI London Film Festival, but audiences shouldn't overlook the smaller films – there are plenty of delights and discoveries to keep the adventurous cinephile happy." A list from Wendy Ide.

The Telegraph's David Gritten talks with Terence Davies; so, too, does Wally Hammond for Time Out.

Update, 10/12: Jason Solomons on the British films in the festival: "[C]an it be true that, after years of stops, starts and stutters, we are experiencing the flourishing of a new screen generation? Has the new wave of production schemes, regional film funds and a widening of the feature film talent pool finally borne fruit?" Also in the Observer, "Five to see."

Update, 10/13: "There's an integrity you can't argue with about a Liverpool film that not only doesn't take kindly to the Beatles, but actively sticks its fingers in it ears at the mention of their very name." For the Guardian, Scott Anthony talks with Terence Davies about Of Time and the City; more conversation from the London Times' James Christopher, while the Telegraph's David Grittin has a review, reminding us, "In Cannes, half the audience, including several hardened British film critics, were in tears."

Updates, 10/16: Online listening tip. The Observer's Film Weekly podcast is all about the festival.

For the Guardian, Matt Mueller has a long talk with Spike Lee about Miracle at St Anna.

Posted by dwhudson at October 9, 2008 1:28 PM