Early bird showings aside, the festival is looking pretty damn snazzy this year. The opening night gala goes to The Jacket director John Maybury’s newie The Edge Of Love, a period romance starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. The three names are appearing at the festival, adding some glamour to the proceedings – but let’s face it, it’s not all about the glamour. We’re looking forward to most of the smaller names on the program: vegan slasher Blood Car; promising South Korean comedy Milky Way Liberation Front; machina-obsession documentary Mechanical Love; The Juche Idea, an insight into North Korean propaganda; the award-winning coming of age story The King of Ping Pong. That’s just a small number of some of the stuff offered by festival director Hannah McGill this year, and that’s before we get into the most DoG friendly-looking films of the festival. Bananaz, a film about the creation of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewitt’s toon-pop outfit Gorillaz, will be showing at the festival, with director Ceri Levy in tow for a Q&A. Hotly-tipped British thriller/horror Donkey Punch will be playing at the festival as well with its creative team setting up in the Edinburgh Cameo, as will Derek Son, director of hotly tipped K-horror Cadaver. But really, it’s all about one film here: WALL-E, the new movie out of Pixar studios. Reports seem to hint that it’s a silent movie that will be absolutely impossible to not love – we’ll be all over this film before you know it. On top of that bounty, there’s guests dropping by into the capital for the fest: Brian Cox, Shane Meadows (whose Somers Town is playing at the EIFF), famed cinematographers Roger Deakins and Seanus McGarvey, Oscar winning documentarian Errol Morris and God-like animation legend (y’know, being God-like and all) Ray Harryhausen. We’ll be keeping an eye out for them, along with the sights and the sounds of the fest and the chance I may challenge myself to sit through the two-hundred-and-seven minute long (spanning an entire week) Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest. Ah, summer.
