#9
Post
by Beate » Mon Sep 28, 2009 11:32 pm
I am sooo tired. Nearly fell asleep during the last film. Why on earth do people think it is a good idea to have a 75 minute drink session with free booze before a film? Naturally, once the screening started everyone realised they needed the loo, and my OH, who had had 3 beers in quick succession, had to go twice, everytime falling over the goody bags at our feet!
The goody bags were pretty great though! Film Festival programme book, National Geographic magazine, notebook in 3 different designs (elephant, giraffe and parrot), a brown t-shirt, a box of Maltesers, and I have only now discovered the zebra pencils at the bottom of the bag! As 5rannoch, her daughter and friends and my OH were the first to enter screen 7, we rummaged through the goody bags around us once we discovered that the notebooks came in different designs and the t-shirts in different sizes, until everyone had swapped to their preferred item! It was pretty packed but there were a few empty seats in front of us so now I have a few spare items, LOL. Is it too late to swap the giraffe back for the parrot, 5rannoch?
The screening consisted of 4 short films about extreme sports, each lasting about half an hour including a short Q&A after each one. The first one was "Celebrity Adrenaline Junkies with Jack Osborne", first episode of a series to be shown on ITV I think. To be fair, it was quite entertaining (the hobbit actor was hilarious), and Jack Osbourne, who was in the audience (first row, with a green hat on), dealt well with a heckler who asked him a provocative question I didn't quite hear but the word "cretinous" featured in it.
The second film was To the Rock and Back which I thought was totally boring. It dealt with sailing and a disaster 30 years ago where 15 sailors died during a regatta. One of the survivors, who lost his Dad that day but still sails was in the Q&A, and yet again a question was asked a bit provocatively: "Why, apart from the ego, did you do it?" The question was maybe valid, but the way it was asked was not entirely appropriate I thought, and she was subsequently booed.
The third film, First Ascent, dealt with a Brazilian climber who had died in an accident, and her boyfriend decided to scatter her ashes in the mountains of Patagonia. You really got a sense here that death is always round the corner in extreme sports, and it was quite moving.
The fourth film, Ocean's 14, was about a crew of inexperienced rowers who set out to beat a record to sail somewhere very fast. All I remember from this one is a horrific picture of sore bottoms! They all came on stage too afterwards but I was so tired at that point that I couldn't have cared less.
The whole thing was finally over by 10.15pm so the screening itself had lasted 2 hours, and if they had cut the drinking time by an hour we would have been home at a reasonable time!
I did however discover that the AFF itself has cut all the films' length for the festival so the three subsequent screenings should not be so long. I will publish screening times later.
6/10
Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2020" club. 7 seen
Member No. 1 of the "100 free films in 2009 - 2019" clubs. 826 seen
Member No. 1 of the "104 free previews in 2008" club. 92 seen
