thssss......

Hmmm. Seven Intellectuals (part V) not as good as Part IV but still interesting. It would have been better still were it not for the distracting babble of Filmhouse staff on the other side of the fire exit door during their lunchbreak. This part had a little bit more noise than Part IV; a wee bit of singing (though not in a language I understand) to go with the odd grunt or squeak and the ambient noises.

The only slight problem with being near the Filmhouse on a day off in the early afternoon is that it's extremely similar to any normal workday lunchtime due to the location fifty metres from my workplace, albeit slightly later and therefore with less office-lunch people around and a longer period before the return-deadline at the end of which is another film rather than an afternoon's work. Perhaps time to reclaim the Water of Leith from being a workday-lunch-walk-route to just being a normal nice place to walk along.

Hmmmm. A better selection of shorts than the other day in Scottish Short Film Showcase though there were only four of them totalling ninety minutes. A good start and finish with Bogman Palmjaguar and The Island but mildly weak middles with The Flyer and Let Me Show You Some Things although the former was at last set locally although featured people LITTERING King's Stables Road.

There was a larger gap between films than I'd remembered booking so we ended up at Wannaburger given the absence of anywhere selling decent pizza in the immediate vicinity and the stupid habit all coffee shops apart from Beanscene have of shutting at seven. I'd quite liked their burgers when there some time ago but there was something a little dull about the taste today... my alleged chilli topping was barely detectable, taste-wise and the burger was quite plain, most disappointing after I'd gone for beef rather than bean seeing as I don't usually bother with beefs at home anymore. Next time I will know better. If they're going to have such bland meat they might as well use ostrich and at least significantly reduce the fat content.

Finally, Left Bank was reasonably well-shot but a bit of a mess, plot-wise. Good use of nice colourful bokeh but a little more cohesion next time would improve matters. Maybe everyone had somewhere they really needed to be such as another film in another auditorium or even another cinema but perhaps it was the threat of there being a deathly silence during the Q&A at the end which caused four-fifths of the audience to run away as soon as the credits started to roll.