Festivals

Blade Runner 2049 easily must be the most anticipated movie of the year  - if nothing else because of the absolute cult status of its forerunner: Ridley Scott’s 1982 seminal Blade Runner. That film infused a science fiction story (based on a Philip K Dick novella) about artificial intelligence and the fundamental question of human identity with a film noir sensibility lifted from hard boiled detective movies of classic Hollywood.

On the heels of the latest trailer released strategically in advance of Comic-Con, Blade Runner 2049 wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to woo its hardcore fans. Enter the Blade Runner 2049 Experience, which rapidly garnered a block-long line outside of the big top erected across form the convention center.

“Imagine the raw, gritty Los Angeles of Training Day meets Lord of the Rings” - that’s how Will Smith described Bright to the HFPA journalists attending Comic-Con.   That has got to be one of the most original statements in the history of film pitches but the three-minute trailer for the $100 million Netflix “urban fantasy drama” seems to confirm precisely those elements.

Wednesday was preview day and the last calm before the storm in San Diego with the first visitors allowed on the convention floor for an early pick of swag, mementos, and fantasy knick-knacks. Now the tsunami that is Comic-Con has finally hit in earnest as a wave of cosplayers swarmed the Convention Center, turning downtown into the usual bustling hub for alien life forms.

A Golden Globe winner and a gentleman, Colin Firth got things started on the HFPA Comic-Con lounge with an animated chat about his return as Harry Hart, the suave spy & mentor of Kingsman, now in its second outing, The Golden Circle. Directed by Matthew Vaughn once again, Kingsman: The Golden Circle gives Colin’s Hart a new disciple, Eggsy, played by Taren Egerton.

And so it begins: as of this morning (and not counting last night’s preview), 130,000 fangirls, fanboys and media will converge in San Diego’s Convention Center for the 48th edition of Comic-Con International.  6,500 of them alone will meet several times a day in the almost-sacred Hall H, where studios, TV channels, and A-list production companies will announce and promote their movies and shows, with cast and filmmakers in attendance and exclusive clips and trailers to be shown.

Now in it’s 19th year, the Taipei International Film Festival kicked off its opening night with The Great Buddha +, directed by Huang Hsin-yao.  The sold-out film is Huang’s first feature, based on his Golden Horse award nominated short film of the same name.

The prestigious Edinburgh International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world, but after spending a week there we can say that it is one of the coolest, charming and most pleasant film festivals around.   151 features from 46 countries screened at this year’s edition of the festival, between featrures, shorts and documentaries, with God’s Own Country , written and directed by actor Francis Lee, opening the event on June 21.

The Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF) represents the newest of Greek cinema and follows a new generation of filmmakers who think out of the box. Among the consequences of the crisis Greece has suffered for the last eight years, there are a few positive ones including a reinvigoration of the arts.