Film: London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2006

This year's festival programme was announced yesterday, and I'm sorry to say that once again I'm not terribly impressed. There's nothing that looks as good as last year's Girl Play or D.E.B.S. Maybe I'm being too nostalgic but it's not like the old days; surely more lesbian and gay movies are being made now but where are they? In years gone by there were real events at the festival, including talks with Donna Deitch (director of Desert Hearts), Sandra Bernhard and sexpert Susie Bright. There are no such events this year.

Yet again the programme has one too many old films, couldn't they find enough new material? There's even a couple of films included that open a few weeks or months before the festival, Transamerica (starring Felicity Huffman) and Brokeback Mountain, which rather smacks of laziness on the part of the festival programmers (now including Del Lagrace Volcano, the transgendered incarnation of lesbian photographer Della Grace). Bring back Cherry Smyth I say!

My biggest gripe is that Imagine Me and You should have opened the festival. Yes, it was probably all down to bad timing as it was due to open on February 17th but recently got pushed back to March 30th. However, its inclusion would have made it a festival to remember, especially if the stars Piper Perabo and Lena Headey had been in attendance.

I haven't received my festival programme from the NFT yet so I have only perused the web site, consequently I may have missed something but here's the most interesting films that I've found so far:

Thursday April 1st
20:00	Happy Endings	Odeon Leicester Square	Opening gala. Yet again the festival is opening with a film that has been available on DVD in the US for at least 6 months, just like last year's Pray for Rock 'n' Roll. I give up!
Saturday April 1st
12:10	Sévigné	NFT2	Not starring Chloe Sevigny unfortunately.
18:30	Unveiled	NFT1	Released on DVD in the US on 18th April
Saturday April 8th
12:00	Show Me	NFT2	Released on DVD in the US on 21st March, so chances are that I won't wait to see this
20:40	The Aggressives	NFT1	I will only see this if I see Show Me, which is doubtful as I will probably get the DVD when it's released
Sunday April 9th
18:10	We Want Gay TV	NFT3	Clashes with About a Girl. I think this one will be the winner though
18:30	About a Girl	NFT1	Clashes with We Want Gay TV, so may not get to see it
Monday April 10th
18:30	El Favor	NFT1
20:30	The Journey	NFT1	Now available on DVD in the US, so I expect I will have seen it by then

Sky+: Solution for Planner Entries with ..searching

From time to time you may see ..searching as the name of the programme in the planner, not only is the name missing but the channel is too. If this doesn't right itself by going out of the planner and then back in, you need to fix it by rebooting your box. I posted about this problem on Digital Spy a couple of years ago, and I've just used it to resolve the same problem I've been having with my box for a few weeks now. At first I thought it hadn't resolved it and called Sky but just as I got through I realised the problem was resolved.

Here's the steps required for the solution:

1. Remove your viewing card
2. Put the box into standby
3. Power off the box at the mains
   
4. Put your viewing card back in to your box
5. Wait a couple of minutes
6. Power on your box at the main
7. Wait a couple of minutes until the box has rebooted
8. Go in to the planner
9. You may still see the entries with ..searching but if you press the Sky button on your remote, then go back into the planner they should be gone.

It's important to resolve this problem asap. If you leave it then the entries will lose their series links and you will probably miss some recordings.

Film: Final Destination 3

The first film in this so-called trilogy was original, a stand-out film that I thoroughly enjoyed in 2000. The 2nd film added something extra where we learned that to beat death there had to be new life. This third installment adds nothing to the trilogy, it simply follows the pattern of the first movie, i.e. someone has a premonition saves some people from dying and then death returns to take them out in so-called spectacular fashion in the order they were meant to die originally. There are no revelations and if you've seen the first film there really is no point in seeing this one.

That's right, Final Destination 3 is a pointless exercise in cinema. FD2 is not referenced; we don't know what happened to Kimberly and Thomas who survived in FD2. Whereas in FD2 we discovered what happened to the FD1 survivors; Alex had been killed in another freak accident and Clear Rivers had herself sectioned. The writer/director of FD1 James Wong, wrote and directed FD3 but had no hand in FD2. That's no excuse for not referencing FD2 or making such a poor film. I wish he hadn't bothered.

3/10