CineSkinny - 21 February 2012

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WHAT’S INSIDE? 2 — TODAY’S PICKS What’s happening at GFF today 2 — INTERVIEW: MARK MILLAR We meet with the writer of Kick-Ass to discuss his past success and his future endeavours 3 — REVIEWS Breathing ★★★★★ Wild Bill ★★★★ Michael ★★★★ 4 — WHAT’S NEW ONLINE The latest news, comments and pictures from the festival 4 — COMPETITION Win tickets to see TILT by answering one simple question

Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival

IN PRAISE OF R-PATTZ

Editor Designer Subeditors

Jamie Dunn Sean Anderson Becky Bartlett David McGinty

Is there more to ROBERT PATTINSON than a brooding look and big hair?

WORDS: NICOLA BALKIND CEDRIC DIGGORY, Edward Cullen, and now Georges Duroy. Twenty-five year-old heart-throb Robert Pattinson – affectionately known as R-Pattz – has landed another role that will have Team Edward alumni going weak at the knees in the screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami. He is stepping out of the sparkling vampiric skin of the chaste Cullen, and into the dapper façade of a man a little more attuned to the ladies’ needs. Already hearts have been set alight in Glasgow, as frenzied fans have been demanding news on his arrival since the GFF programme was revealed. (Tough luck Twihards, he’s staying in LA to sip Cristal from Kristen Stewart’s naval.)

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These Pattz devotees are known for their own particular brand of fervour – one that sees them snooping outside his parents’ estate, riled all the more by news he isn’t home. One thing is certain, there’ll be fireworks at the film festival’s UK premiere this Wednesday (22 Feb).

If the (albeit on screen) presence of Mr Pattinson isn’t enough to make you want to lock up your daughters, Bel Ami is set to encourage further arduous swoons at this week’s screenings – and not only from the teenagers – as his character, Georges Duroy, beds Paris’s finest, played by the likes of Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Ooh la la!

With Pattinson casting off the burden of sullen Cullen, forging ahead as Twilight fans breathlessly await the final chapter later this year, Bel Ami seems an interesting next move. Although Water For Elephants recast him as a more traditional leading man, its focus on forbidden love and dark debarring forces failed to preclude a good long mope. Instead, Bel Ami and an upcoming project with David Cronenberg – who has already pronounced Pattinson as the best actor with whom he’s ever worked – seem certain to turn the ice-cold vampire into a warm-blooded movie star of great repute.

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SCREENING 22 AND 23 FEB AT CINEWORLD OPENS NATIONWIDE 9 MARCH

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TODAY’S PICKS

MARK MILLAR: WANTED We meet with the prolific Glaswegian comic book writer and GFF ambassador, Mark Millar, to discuss his future projects

TUESDAY 21

INTERVIEW: THOM ATKINSON

BRIAN COX

BAFTA IN SCOTLAND EVENT 21.00 @ CCA Dundee-born actor and major Hollywood star Brian Cox (X2, The Bourne Identity) is the special guest, on hand to discuss his varied career.

NO ONE BUT ME 17.00 @ GFT Jazz legend Annie Ross (raised in Glasgow) will be introducing this intimate profile of her seven-decade career. The film’s producer, Gill Parry, will also be in attendance, with both participating in a Q&A after the screening.

PHOTO: STUART CRAWFORD

NO ONE BUT ME

THE DECOY BRIDE 20.30 @ CINEWORLD Screenwriter Sally Phillips, better known as an actress (Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones’s Diary), found inspiration for her latest film in Jennifer Lopez’s ill-fated engagement with Ben Affleck. The film’s director, Sheree Folkson, will be attending with Phillips for a Q&A.

MARK MILLAR AND FRANK QUITELY 16.00 @ CCA The writer and artist will be discussing their first collaboration in ten years, which has been kept secret until this point, as well as detailing how to succeed in the comic book business.

DECOY DREILEBEN BRIDE

A NEW dawn has arrived, the geek has inherited the Earth. Billion-dollar superhero flicks dominate the box office, the Hollywood A-list now rub shoulders with trekkers (not trekkies, please) at conventions and the success of the superhero continues to rise up, up and away. Leading the charge is one of the best-selling comic book writers of the last decade and ambassador for the Kapow! strand of the Glasgow Film Festival, local boy done good, Mark Millar.

Extremely good might be a better adjective. Millar, the author of such hits as Kick-Ass and Wanted, still can’t believe just how much momentum his projects are gaining. “I pretty much know what I’m doing each week for the next two years, its crazy, absolutely crazy,” says Millar. The Glaswegian is talking about his highly impressive production rate that will see upcoming comic book collaborations with Dave Gibbons on Secret Service, Leinil Francis Yu on Supercrooks, a sequel to the critically acclaimed Nemesis with Steve McNiven, another follow up in the ongoing Kick-Ass 2, as well as a ‘Hit Girl’ spin off with John Romita Jr. In addition, there’s also a colossal

new project with long time friend and fellow Glasgow resident, All-Star Superman artist, Frank Quitely.

The two will be giving a joint talk at GFF this year as they discuss their collaboration, and Millar, for one, is looking forward to it. “My whole life I think I have been building towards this project with Frank. We both realise it is going to be the biggest project of our careers.”

With such huge projects on the horizon Millar is, perhaps, the perfect person to give an insight into the creation of a comic book from idea to notes, from pencil to ink and, if lucky, to screen in the big budget movie adaptation that could follow. But Millar isn’t the only voice of authority at this year’s festival, having helped to bring other experts in the comic book field.

“This year we have [Marvel’s Ultimates artist] Bryan Hitch in Conversation and [The Walking Dead illustrator] Charlie Adlard in Conversation.” The latter is likely to be a big draw thanks to the major success of the American TV adaptation of the indie comic book series, which screens in the UK on Channel 5. And he didn’t stop with rounding up the talent. Millar also

mused over just what to bring to the big screen at this, the second year of Kapow!@GFF. “I love the fact that they let me choose the movies, too. I want to see Flash Gordon on the big screen again because I haven’t since I was ten, and Superman, I think I was eight the last time I saw that on the big screen.

The GFF managed to get a cut of Superman that has never been shown theatrically in this country before.”

For Millar the collaboration between comic books and GFF is a natural coming together of mediums. He aims to give the UK the conventions it deserves; the kind he would like to attend. “I love comic conventions and I love movie conventions. These things feed into each other, it’s how I would like to spend my spare time anyway.

My girlfriend runs Kapow! (Millar’s London Comic-Con) where we are trying to build a big event in this country.

I mean, America has a big convention somewhere almost every weekend so Kapow! is something we are building up. And the Glasgow strand is a part of that.”

KAPOW! IS A STRAND AT GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2012 - GLASGOWFILM.ORG/FESTIVAL

Be the star in your own movie

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REVIEWS WILD BILL DIRECTOR: DEXTER FLETCHER STARRING: CHARLIE CREED-MILES, WILL POULTER, LIZ WHITE

★★★★ Treading the line between gritty social realism and slick gangster action, Wild Bill brings drugs, guns and family drama to Stratford, London. This directorial debut from actor Dexter Fletcher follows “Wild” Bill Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles) upon his return to the East End after eight-years in prison. Arriving at his former home, he finds his wife has eloped, leaving his two young sons, Jimmy and Dean, to fend for themselves. What follows is smarter than your average workingclass family drama as the contentious

relationship between father and sons escalates – lashed together as they are in a case of social work intervention.

Bill must play dad while Dean attempts to rebuild his life and Jimmy diverges onto the trail his father formerly blazed.

Muted, oaky tones and crisp shadows give cinematic depth to a realistic yet classically dramatic storyline. Fletcher successfully weaves a tale of redemption without traversing into schmaltz – a Hollywood home for low-income family drama. [Nicola Balkind] SCREENING 20 FEB AND 21 FEB AT GFT

MICHAEL DIRECTOR: MARKUS SCHLEINZER STARRING: MICHAEL FUITH, DAVID RAUCHENBERGER, CHRISTINE KAIN

★★★★ Avoid basements – that’s what cinema has taught us. It is the room of the house reserved for horror, and that’s its function in Michael, Markus Schleinzer’s formally masterful directorial debut. Our eponymous protagonist is a thirty-something man – a plainlooking chap, hollow behind the eyes – who keeps a pre-pubescent boy called Wolfgang captive in a cellar behind a sound-proof door. Using a locked off image (a technique borrowed from his mentor Michael Haneke), Schleinzer immerses us in the pair’s banal routine: Michael works an average nine to five, Wolfgang sits in his cell writing letters to his parents that will never be posted; they eat dinner and watch TV in icy silence. Sexual abuse is implied using elliptical editing, but this tasteful approach is all the more harrowing – a cut from the cellar door closing to Michael washing his genitals in a sink is the most distressing edit you’ll see all year. This chilly, matter-of-fact approach to pedophilia is as hard hitting as any tabloid hysteria. No solutions or explanations are offered, but sometimes nightmares are beyond comprehension. [Jamie Dunn] SCREENED 19 FEB AND 20 FEB

BREATHING DIRECTOR: KARL MARKOVICS STARRING: THOMAS SCHUBERT, KARIN LISCHKA, GERHARD LIEBMANN

★★★★★ Non-professional actor Thomas Schubert excells as Roman Kogler, a sullen youth in a juvenile detention centre who must succeed in his new day-release job as an undertaker in order to win parole. Having spent his life in care, Kogler is unused to the outside world and finds the experience intense, not least when hauling bodies to the city morgue. It’s hard to say who

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exercises greater restraint – Schubert, whose performance is all the more engrossing for its economy, or actorturned-director Karl Markovics (The Counterfeiters), whose observational direction makes a little go a very long way.

A story that could have been bleak or full of clichéd philosophising on the meaning of life is, in Markovics’ hands,

a captivating and tender human drama.

What really elevates it above mere beauty, though, is a scene in which Kogler unexpectedly has to assist with the washing and dressing of the deceased: perhaps one of the last taboos in both film and life, death can still be shocking. [Jac Mantle] SCREENING 20 FEB AND 21 FEB AT CINEWORLD

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PREMIERE OF IRVINE WELSH’S ECSTASY

PHOTO: STUART CRAWFORD

WHAT’S NEW ONLINE QUIZ TIME EYE FOR FILM Jennie Kermode interviews Zam Salim, director of Up There, a dark comedy set in the afterlife shot in and around Glasgow. http://bit.ly/ZamSalim

PLANET OF SNAIL GFF's resident blogger Sean Welsh waxes lyrical about this Korean documentary, which he describes as “a sublime experience.” http://bit.ly/PlanetOfSnail

JO NESBO’S HEADHUNTERS STV's Michael MacLennan continues his coverage of GFF with a review of the “great crowd pleaser,” Jo Nesbo's Headhunters, Norway’s biggest ever box-office hit. http://bit.ly/JoNesbosHeadhunters

CURIOUS JOE Focusing predominantly on art, this blog has covered several GFF films, including Unfinished Spaces and Sing Your Song. http://bit.ly/curiousjo CINESKINNY You can find all our reviews, previews, and interviews online at theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny

Win Tickets to TILT Young love unfolds amid political upheavals of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in this massive homegrown hit that has become Bulgaria’s Oscar submission for 2012. The story begins in the Sofia of 1989 where handsome Stash and his friends scrape a living from the illegal distribution of German porn videos. He starts to date the free-spirited Becky but is warned off by her policeman father.

We have a pair of tickets to give away for the 18.45 screening on Thursday 23 Feb at Cineworld. To enter, head to www.theskinny.co.uk/competitions and answer the following question: Q. Which American singer allegedly rocked so hard the Berlin Wall fell down?

Competition closes: 10am Thursday 23 Feb. Winners will be notified on Thursday morning. For full terms and conditions theskinny.co.uk/about/terms

When the Berlin Wall tumbles, Stash and the gang head to Germany but the news of Bulgaria’s Velvet Revolution brings them home to a population and a country that have undergone radical change. A personal story that captures the sweeping changes of Europe in transition.

DID ❝ WHAT ❞ YOU THINK?

SIX OF THE BEST FROM TWITTER TWEET US @SKINNYFILM

VANESSA COLLINS @VEECOLLINS Just seen Hunky Dory @ glasgowfilmfest, and it was.

Shaping up as a fab 3 film day. @skinnyfilm

NICOLA BALKIND @ROBOTNIC If you’re in Glasgow today I recommend you head over to @glasgowfilmfest to watch Wild Bill. And say hello to @ Dexfletch for me! #GFF12

NICHOLAS BROWN @OBOE29 @glasgowfilmfest Had a fantastic time at the festival this weekend. Highlights were many. Standout was Berlin Symphony of a great city.

CHITRA RAMASWAMY @CHITGRRL Off to Glasgow Film Festival this afternoon to see two ladyloving films: Cloudburst and Elles #hurrah

@MRMARKMILLAR 2nd Nacho quote from yesterday: “My sperm is like the alien blood test in The Thing. My sperm is what healed Sean Connery of Last Crusade.”

GARRY MCCONNACHIE @THEGMCCONNACHIE Folks, @glasgowfilmfest is screening Rampart as part of the festival tomorrow at 6.30pm. I highly recommend it #GFF12

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