Some movies were good, some were downright awful, but all of it was so much fun that I didn’t really mind. There’s nothing like being caught up in the whirl of a festival. My routine for the festival has become worryingly efficient. Every morning, I a down a can of Red Bull (a tried and tested method from my days at the Galway Film Fleadh), and trudge up the hill towards the Filmhouse. Then I grab press tickets for any evening screenings (before the rush later on) and depending on the day of the week, either run to work to or to catch the first screening of the day.

The cinemas are hot, too hot really, but Scotland has never really been sure what to do with itself for the week of summer it gets every year, so it is understandable that the air conditioning isn’t up too scratch. Most of the press seem old beyond their years at this point, and the conversation has centred mostly around weather, what films to catch before their run ends and how much they would like to have another shower. Or a fan.

I watched three movies on Saturday, then dashed off to a friend’s housewarming. Sunday I packed in three more and then liveblogged from the Central Station event ‘Sound: Image: Art’ at Inspace with co-blogger king Ben. Today, I had work, so I caught most of Patrick Stewart and then got all rowdy from watching The Runaways.

Reviews are forthcoming, once I get enough time to sit in one place and write all the thoughts in my head down.

However, so I don’t keep you good folks waiting, here’s a quickfire blow by blow of the movies:

Toy Story 3 ‘Nuff said.

The Boy Who Turned Yellow is a Michael Powell film, and part of the retrospective strand. It’s completely mad and was punctuated by very enthusiastic audience members.

Boy One of my picks of the festival. This films is adorable and really damn funny. Taika Waititi has a real gift for writing about children, and this hits all the right notes. Also, Taika Waititi is a handsome man. I recommend checking out the promo for the film on Youtube here. Some hilarious extra videos available.

Skeletons An artfully made little British production. It’s about the supernatural, features an EPIC soundtrack and has Jason Isaacs being appropriately evil. It keeps you guessing and is nice and eerie throughout. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves themselves a bit of mystery wrapped in science fiction/fantasy (Buffy, not Zelda) coat.

Donkeys Recommended to me by the lovely boys over at Reel Scotland, this is the latest production from Sigma Films and the Denmark-Scotland team up that brought us Red Road. It’s clever, funny and sad as hell. I was disappointed to see it didn’t make Best of the Fest, even though Jackboots on Whitehall did. Which brings me to…

Jackboots on Whitehall I am not sure if I am the only one who thought this was really really bad. Stop motion is hard medium to work with. With it, you have make sure the script and the animation balance themselves out. Either you have a standout script, and average animation, or beautiful graphics, and less of a need for a story. Jackbootshas neither. I have as much of a twisted sense of humour as any other person, but the jokes in this seemed forced, the story dragged on for ever and as the stop-motion was laughably bad (though this may have been what they were going for). I hate to be so cruel, but after seeing a run of such strong films, Jackboots let me down.

Patrick Stewart is very charming, and elicited many swoons from the female audience at Cineworld today.

The Runaways just made me want to wear lots of eyeliner and drink whisky. Oh, and maybe make Dakota Fanning wear some pants. Is that a bad thing? It was enjoyable though, and ticked all the boxes of a good solid music biopic. I’d buy the soundtrack.

Okay, I am going to sleep now.  See you all tomorrow!

 I wandered over at my leisure to the Cineworld at Fountainbridge, in order to watch Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World (after a brief stop in Tea Tree Tea, my pick of the festival for delicious and unusual drinks, hot or cold). Ollie Kepler  is Viv Fongenie’s second feature film, and stars Edward Hogg of Bunny and the Bull fame and Jodie Whitaker, who wowed us all a couple of years ago in Venus, but has since kept a relatively low profile.

The programme didn’t give much a way except that it was independently-produced, and featured a geek, Ollie, in love with a beautiful girl, Noreen. I must say that, with the recent raft of awkward indie pictures with not-quite love stories, I was expecting something in the same vein. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

 Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World is in fact quite a dark story of mental illness and loss, charting one man’s breakdown following the death of his fiancée.  This breakdown and our experience of it is enhanced by clever editing, claustrophobic camerawork and Hogg’s performance. The unease that runs throughout the film is very well managed and several scenes had me actively squirming in my seat, however, it seems like the film doesn’t take it far enough at points.

The story starts strongly and builds well, so that by the time Noreen is killed suddenly by a blood clot, we really feel for the characters, and yet, it is this steady progression of narrative that is the film’s weakest point. Hogg’s character has a background in astrophysics, is writing a book on string theory and is undergoing some serious mental trauma but his story is told in a simple chronological narrative.  I wouldn’t claim that every film tackling mental illness should automatically slot into the expanding category of non-linear narrative films, however, I feel that Fongenie could have done something more interesting with the structure, that more accurately expressed the Ollie’s collapsing (or rather, expanding) world.

Recent films like Harmony Korine’s Juien Donkey-boy in 1999, Christopher Nolan’s Memento and even Fight Club show us how the medium of film can be used to explore trauma, mental breakdown and loss, and sadly, Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World does not quite live up to its predecessors.

With Pixar’s recent run of hits (everything since Cars has been increasingly good), I was probably one of the few people going into this film with any apprehensions at all. It’s been years since I saw Toy Story 1 or 2, and when I did see them I was pretty young, so I was mostly concerned with my memories building up the previous films, and Randy Newman.

Luckily, Randy Newman is kept on a tight rein, and apart from that, Toy Story 3 rocked. As much of an emotional rollercoaster as Up, it is perfectly paced, both funny and terrifying, and had me me hooked from start to finish. Lee Unkrich knows when to lay it on and also when to hold back, so the funny moments stay funny and the tender moments stay tender.

The movie starts with Andy all grown up and heading off to college, so the toys (Buzz, Woody, Jesse and co.) are packed off to Sunnyside Day Care Centre, which holds promises of constant playtime without the awfulness of having your owner grow up and leave you. Things seem peachy at first, but the toys soon learn that all is not as it seems, and so plan to escape.

New additions include Ken (Michael Keaton), Trixie the dinosaur (Kristen Schaal) and fantastic turn from Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants.

I’m not going to say any more, except that this one is worth getting worked up for, and you will totally cry.