As anyone who’s been watching BBC3′s Mongrels can attest, foul mouthed animals are a mine of comedic potential.

Another offering from Chris and Ben Blaine for C film, Hallo Panda is a comedy of unrequited love and panda husbandry.

The film follows inept zoologist Mark (Stephen Beckingham), as he struggles with the two main problems in his life.

First, he is hopeless besotted with moth expert Sarah (Cariad Lloyd) – and secondly, he is totally failing to convince a panda (Benedict Wong) to mate in order to save its own species.

As with most Blaine Brother films, Hallo Panda is without much in the way of serious problems – It’s a good, solid, occasionally outrageous comedy that revels in its own ridiculousness.

It requires the viewer to accept that this isn’t meant to be our world, but a strange doppelganger of it where scientists always wear their lab coats to the pub and where a panda can talk – and at the end of the day you don’t need any explanation for it.

Though providing plenty of laughs, the lion’s share of them goes to Benedict Wong as Panda. Where most of the other characters are perfunctory, Panda is an absolutely wonderful antagonist, who refuses to mate to save his species because he’s not in the mood.

Sadly, he is also Mark’s only friend and some of the sweetest scenes in the film come when Panda offers Mark advice on his love life. These scenes are played almost straight, and it’s easy to forget you’re watching a panda and a zoologist rather than two mates down the pub.

Hallo Panda requires something of a suspension of disbelief but it’s well worth trying to catch if you’re passing C Soco this August.

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Hallo Panda will be shown weekly from the 3^rd to the 30^th of August at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM REVIEWS – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hand Island, Thank You Skinhead Girl, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show

Death of the Revolution is the creative fruit of company founders Chris and Ben Blaine and is as near to flawless as short films get.

The tale follows primary school student Tony as he gets in touch with his inner utopian socialist and decides that enough is enough and that the imperialist oppression of his class must end.

The film is utterly charming, and manages to make a few subtle political and psychological points as well.

Free Speech, another Blaine Brothers joint-project is another excellent comedic piece, that once again manages to hit upon a few psychological truths, this time through a conversation between two lovers sharing a bath.

Admitedly not one for the kids to watch, as it does border on voyeurism at times, but definitely one for anyone who’s ever made the mistake of being too forthcoming in ‘sharing’ with a partner.

Oh, and Danny Dyer is in it, playing his usual version of himself, but his cockney charm works well here.

Tell, a rare non-Blaine Brother film from Charlie Productions, is the debut of director Laura Brocken.

Though flawed, it shows a lot of promise as Ms. Brocken experiments with visually depicting her abstract feelings – Particularly effective is the image of her carrying her own heart down a high street.

Although not all of the visualisations are as successful as this, the film remains an interesting piece of work.

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These films will be shown from the 3^rd to the 30^th of August at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM REVIEWS – Hand Island, Thank You Skinhead Girl, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show, Hallo Panda

Making their Fringe debut as part of the C Film festival, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show are proof, if any were needed, that short films can be surprising, thoughtful and just plain weird.

Hip Hip Hooray is the brainchild of Lynsey Miller and follows the exploits of Pippa, who works in an old folks’ home.

In an interesting inversion of some of the issues presented in C film’s Bridging the Gap programme, she finds that it is her rather than the residents whose existence is all but forgotten.

While the film doesn’t really manage to distinguish itself until the end, where it makes a bold move in terms of audience expectations, it is well-made and moving, and the cinematography by Dominik Rippl deserves special mention for its use of subdued colour.

Knock Knock, made by CineFringe film festival director John Lynch, is a surrealist piece that examines jokes, expectations and punchlines.

A film that defies much in the way of explanation, it juxtaposes long-form and short-form jokes and differing styles of comedic delivery.

And for festival goers it’s worth a look – not just because it’s a film about the Fringe being shown on the Fringe, although that is something that certainly adds to its meta-textual meditation.

Finally, The End of the Pier Show is a short film from director Ash Parker (creator of the Hand Island series) and writer Michael Facherty.

Though not stellar in terms of cinematography, in less than five minutes it does manage to create its own little abstract world that provides a very final twist for pier-end mime artist Pierrot.

For the observant and fans of the director’s webseries, there is also the chance to spot most of the cast from Hand Island appearing as extras.

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Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show will be shown weekly from the 3^rd to the 30^th of August at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM FESTIVAL – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hand Island, Thank You Skinhead Girl

Straight from being crowned Best Documentary at the 8th International Short Film Festival in Balchik, Bulgaria, and making it’s debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, Thank You Skinhead Girl is director Sharon Woodward’s examination of the skinhead subculture in Oxford in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Ms. Woodward grew up in care, and uses her own experiences, as well as archive material and interviews with other skinheads, to explain the role such gangs played for young people who felt lost and alone.

Though simple in their execution, the film’s straightforward, intimate interviews give the viewer a window into a world that many see as merely violent and delinquent.

And it is this charmingly unpretentious approach which must partly account for its popularity at film festivals around the country, considering its otherwise niche audience.

Otherwise, there are few real quibbles with the film. It tends to rely on a fairly limited soundtrack – ‘Skinhead Girl’ by The Oppressed is a catchy and undeservedly forgotten song, but is used perhaps a little too extensively.

And whilst probably a symptom of the documentary’s small budget it is a shame, especially considering the importance of music to the skinhead gangs.

The other main bugbear is the recitation of a poem at intervals throughout the documentary. Not only are these intervals annoyingly uneven, but the poem itself serves to jarringly break the flow of proceedings.

Though its subject matter will probably mean that Thank You Skinhead Girl won’t find a massive audience beyond critics and skinheads, anyone with an interest in ’70s and ‘80s culture would be well-advised to give this a gander.

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Thank You Skinhead Girl will be shown weekly from August 3^rd to 30th at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM FESTIVAL – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hand Island, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show

Films may be all well and good but the C film festival at the Edinburgh Fringe is also bridging the digital divide by showing the first five episodes of new British webseries Hand Island.

When cowardly Colin (Alex Robinson) is mistaken for the new manager of an exclusive-but-sinister island, he quickly finds his life at risk from the island’s ‘Advisor’ – a stuffed toy tiger.

As he runs for his life across the island, he finds (and begins to fall for) fellow castaway Vinny (Bex James), while receiving help from the mysterious decoy duck obsessed ‘native’ (Katherine Ellen-Kotz) and idiot chauffeur Wade (pronounced ‘waar-day’ and played by Ash Parker, who also directs and co-writes).

Hand Island won’t win any awards for sophistication, but it is a genuinely funny sitcom somewhere in between the cultish charms of The Mighty Boosh and Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere, and represents an ambitious attempt to produce a series on a budget of virtually nothing.

Of course, this budget means that sometimes, you really can’t ignore that the main villain of the piece is stuffed tiger toy – but while this can to some extent be considered part of the joke, director Ash Parker has gone to such extraordinary lengths to often successfully make the tiger seem animate, that when it fails it just seems a bit of a shame.

Fortunately, the voicing and characterisation of the tiger are so much fun, you’re generally willing to let things slide – even when some of the actors’ comic timing is occasionally off as well.

Parker and co-writer Alex Robinson rely on a good story with likeable characters to keep the audience interested, making the first three episodes, which broadly form a single story arc, the most successful of the series so far. Episodes 4 and 5 lose a little pace, but are worth keeping up with for some amusing moments.

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An episode of Hand Island will be screened every weekday from the 3^rd to the 30^th of August at C soco urban garden. The screenings are free to the public.
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C FILM FESTIVAL – Film at the Edinburgh Fringe, Thank You Skinhead Girl, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, being one of the biggest arts festivals in the world, has always been curiously underserved by film.

After the Edinburgh International Film Festival separated itself from the other Edinburgh Festivals a few years ago, no one really stepped into the filmic breach, despite the opportunities it offered.

This year however, two film festivals are having a crack at putting film back on the Fringe; CineFringe and C film.

CineFringe aims to provide the Fringe with what some believe it desperately needs – a traditional film festival to showcase independent film.

Based in the city’s Surgeons Hall, it’s set to provide regular screenings of films made especially for the Fringe – Though as yet, with only a fortnight or so to go, there is still no list of films available.

But if CineFringe’s directors can really provide a cinematic programme tailored for the Fringe, it could be something truly exciting – and that’s even before you consider the added bonus of a programme of practical filmmaking workshops.

C film meanwhile, has been knocking about on the Fringe for around four years now, going through various permutations.

This lack of continuity may, in fact, have prevented it from emerging as an established film festival but this year, they’ve opted for a more low-key mode than before, screening a selection of independent short films in a converted mobile office container in C soco urban garden.

Such an informal cinema will allow punters to come and go as they please – for free – giving them opportunity to enjoy any other events happening in the garden.

But unlike CineFringe, C film seems to be concentrating on providing a more eclectic experience, with a specific interest in supporting emerging talent.

With both CineFringe and C film in a position to really distinguish themselves, this could be a great year for film on the Fringe. Of course, this entirely depends on the films they screen – and you’ll have to wait for August to make your own mind up on those.

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CineFringe Film Festival 2010 runs from the 11^th to the 28^th of August. Tickets are available fro the Edinburgh Festival Fringe office.

C film runs from the 3^rd of August to the 30^th of August and is non-ticketed.
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C FILM REVIEWS – Hand Island, Thank You Skinhead Girl, Hip Hip Hooray, Knock Knock and The End of the Pier Show, Hallo Panda, Charlie Productions at the Edinburgh Fringe

It’s a little bit startling to realise that it’s been fifteen years since the release of the original Toy Story.

Now Pixar, the reigning and undisputed CG animation champions, have released the third in the series, and it feels like the toys have never been away.

Toy Story 2 gave us a brief glimpse of the toys life post-childhood and it didn’t take a genius to work out that would be explored more in this third, and most probably, final instalment.

A warning to any adult entering a screening of this film: You Will Cry!

The atmosphere is thick and melancholy from the word go, as we find Woody, Buzz and their few surviving friends shut away in a chest, about to make one last desperate play for their owner Andy’s attention. He’s soon away to college and their future is uncertain.

However, thankfully, the film is still jam-packed with adventure and avoids becoming a morose meditation on decay that might scar young tots as easily as entertaining them.

Finding themselves in a day-care centre, the film soon switches gears and picks up speed under the framework of a prison breakout. The inevitability of growing up forms a constant backdrop that gives the movie an undercurrent of last-chance desperation and this really comes through in a garbage-pile finale that resembles a vision of hell.

Yet, despite all this, there are laughs aplenty, thrills for the kids and rye jokes for the adults.

The visuals are as eye-catching as ever, enhanced very nicely in 3D, a format that has not yet won my heart; but just as in all Pixar films, that isn’t the point. The heart of these films is beautiful – what other studio would portray a damaged and understandably angry villain in a so-called kids’ film? Or create such a heartfelt rumination on mortality? And still make a rip-roaring spectacle to delight young and old? I can’t think of one.

If there is anything to complain about, it’s perhaps that we’ve seen this all before, but to be perfectly honest, Woody and co are still some of the most watchable characters around.

It’s cinematic, rousing and captivating, yet with a humility rarely seen in anything of such sheer ambition.

As the crack team of “extractors” try to navigate and understand dreams in search of their elusive goal of implanting an idea, the film continuously asks questions whilst explaining itself simultaneously.

The exposition never feels a chore – It is necessary to establish the rules of a whole new game.

The bending, twisting dreamscape effects and the intense, booming soundtrack are amongst the most immersive you may ever see – a testament to Chris Nolan‘s slow, steady pace – yet all of it still seems to skip by in a heartbeat.

However it’s not perfect, and Nolan’s plot and ideas-driven filmmaking style unfortunately on this occasion, unlike the Dark Knight, is at the expense of strong, memorable characters – Whilst effectively drawn, they are clearly there to serve the film’s higher abstract purpose.

Furthermore, the traumatic situation suffered by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Cobb and his intimate relationship with his wife, the immaculate Marion Cotillard, is only conveyed in essence, and while a deeper, more profound emotional core lurks beneath the surface, it is never truly explored in depth.

A plausible counterargument to this is that it’s simply not a character-centric film.

But Nolan has assembled an insanely talented and diverse ensemble cast who give it everything they’ve got for this mind-bending conceit – so good, in fact, that you’ll surrender to the moment.

His eye for X-factor performers (Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, the always terrific Cillian Murphy) is offset perfectly by his Tarantino-style interest in drawing out unseen sides of pigeonholed stars (here Tom Berenger’s small but subtle turn as a corporate executive).

DiCaprio, meanwhile, demonstrates his maturity as a movie star by keeping the whole thing anchored, without histrionics, smugness or scene-stealing mania, all in spite of a character with a deeply destabilised mental state.

Despite slight emotional gaps, cinema really doesn’t get much better than this.

Nobody could see everything in here first time around – it’s one of the most challenging blockbusters ever made, and confirms Nolan a true giant among 21st century filmmakers.

After stopping Arnold from getting to the chopper, they’ve had to put up with some fairly poor assignments – Battling Danny Glover and Gary Busey in Predator 2 was a significant step down and getting upstaged by Aliens wasn’t half as much fun as it should have been.

However, the luck of the Predator has changed.

Along has come Robert Rodriguez, and armed with a spec script written in 1994 he’s put the invisible big-game hunters firmly back in charge.

Predators very deliberately goes back to the basics of the 1987 original, dropping a group of heavily-armed hard nuts into the jungle and then picking them off one by one.

Lead by Adrien Brody’s gravely-voiced, wiry mercenary, a disparate group of scary people – and Topher Grace – are parachuted into the alien rainforest and then hunted for sport.

Entertainment is the number one priority here and in some respects the only thing that really sets this apart from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is the superior talent both in front of and behind the camera.

The story is fairly standard, but good, even though nothing particularly revelatory happens. Yet it’s the action and suspense that really pulls this beast along and both are light years ahead of not only the AVP films, but also most of the pale pretenders to the sci-fi horror throne.

Rodriguez, who only writes and produces (Hungarian up-and-comer Nimród Antal calls the directorial shots), has said he wanted the sequel to do for the Predators, what Aliens did for the Alien franchise. Sadly this hasn’t quite happened; the natural escalation just isn’t there.

Neither has it really matched Predator. Brody is a good enough actor to convince as an extremely hard mercenary – he’s certainly put on the muscle – but he lacks Arnold’s charismatic screen presence and struggles to carry the film.

And while the mismatched killers are fun – especially Walton Goggins’s death-row con, armed only with a prison shank, and Louis Ozawa Changchien’s silent Yakuza enforcer – sadly no one really shines.

Still, it’s good to see the Predators back on top.

Nearly a decade ago Dreamworks made the first serious challenge to Pixar’s dominance of computer-generated animation.

Shrek challenged the established fairytale archetypes and then built on it with a sequel that delighted adult and child alike.

But with 2007′s bloated Shrek the Third, the series swapped charm for pointless celebrity guest voices and witless pop-culture references that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the risible Epic or Date Movie.

So it’s hardly surprising that Shrek Forever After should be greeted with a degree of trepidation.

Sadly it doesn’t quite manage to bottle the lightning of the hugely entertaining first and second outings – but thankfully it does represent a massive leap forward from 2007’s cinematic clunker.

The Dreamworks team seem very conscious of the drawbacks of the last instalment and have seemingly bent over backwards to take the film back to basics.

Aside from the central protagonists, the celebrity cameos are out – new villain Rumpelstiltskin is, rather brilliantly, voiced by storyboard artist Walt Dorhm.

And with its alternate universe setting, the main characters are taken back to their roots, while the plot itself is a relatively free-flowing and uncomplicated affair.

Effectively it puts Shrek back to the start of the first film. Tired of his new domestic existence, he makes an ill-advised deal with Rumpelstiltskin that wipes out his existence and makes Far, Far Away a very different place.

He has one day to win his life back, to gain the friendship of Donkey and a now very chunky Puss-in-Boots and, most importantly, woo Princess Fiona all over again.

This makes for a solid story overall and, while Donkey is effectively the same character he was in the original, there are nice alternate versions of Puss and Fiona to engage the interest-antennas.

But the problem is that that original spark has gone and ultimately leaves this film feeling like a low-key coda that merely sets out to bandage over the wound left by Shrek the Third. It’s definitely worth your 90mins, but it’s not the antidote to what’s so far been a pretty dire run of blockbusters.