London 08, week 2.

The London Film Festival opened last week and runs through to the end of the month. How's it been going so far? The Observer's Jason Solomons hits a few of the highlights, while the Guardian's Xan Brooks looks ahead, with recommendations for the second week: "Might I recommend Tony Manero...?"

Updated through 10/25.

James Dennis at Twitch on Mike Figgis's new film: "A one page treatment formed the basis of the shoot, the bare bones of a plot, allowing the dialogue to be improvised on location with the lead actors cast just two days prior to the off. On returning to London Figgis wasn't really sure what he had; a documentary, a love story, or something else completely. On watching Love Live Long, the answer is all of the above and much more." Related online viewing: Figgis talks about camera phones for the London Times.

Also in the Times, Igor Toronyi-Lalic talks with Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones's Diary) about Incendiary: "Based on a novel by Chris Cleave, it tells the story of a working-class London mother played by Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) who loses her husband and child in a terrorist attack on the Arsenal football stadium. A far cry from rom-com froth, you may think - though there is a bit of rumpy-pumpy with Williams's suitor, Jasper Black (Ewan McGregor). But, as with Bridget Jones, Incendiary plugs straight into the zeitgeist: in 2001 it was sexual neurosis, today it's terrorism." More from Sheila Johnston in the Telegraph.

Back in the Times, Ed Potton talks with Nick Moran about Telstar, the film he's directed and co-written about Joe Meek.

Flame & Citron "is a reminder that the Nazi rampage through Europe left the continent with a horrible legacy of destruction and waste, and also with a horrible, and not entirely suppressible memory of collaboration," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "It could even be argued that the urgent need for ever closer European union that followed the war, particularly driven by the French and the Germans, was partly explained by a kind of denial, the need to explain away the ineluctable fact of collaboration."

"It was inevitable that Australian actor-writer-director Matthew Newton would end up in show business," writes Stuart O'Connor in the Guardian. "As the son of Australian television royalty Bert and Patti Newton, Matt is a household name in Australia, but still relatively unknown outside his home country. That's set to change if he keeps making films of the calibre of Three Blind Mice, which is screening at the London film festival this month."

Jonathan Rosenbaum recommends Terence Davies's Of Time and the City (site).

Update, 10/23: Online listening tip. The current edition of Film Weekly comes from the festival.

Updates, 10/25: The Guardian's Xan Brooks previews the final week.

James Mottram in the London Times on James Gray's Two Lovers: "With [Gwyneth] Paltrow at her most alluring, it barely matters that the premise is pure soap opera; a dry cleaner caught in a love triangle."

Posted by dwhudson at October 20, 2008 12:00 PM