Monday, November 03, 2003

WEEKEND AT RAINDANCE
**Sell-Out Halloween at Raindance Film Festival
Raindance audiences were queuing up to get the fright of their lives on Friday as The Last Horror Movie and the Horror Shorts Programme saw sell-out audiences once again at Raindance. The Last Horror Movie is a truly frightening film which is nominated for a Raindance Jury Prize, being awarded on Friday. Truly scary cinema is rare these days, so audiences were in for a real treat with the films on offer from Raindance...

More Sell-Outs!
Miranda - a sexy and highly original adult comedy starring Christina Ricci and John Simm had its UK Premiere to a sell-out audience. The film is also nominated for best UK feature. Similarly, the magnificent Infernal Affairs, hotly tipped to be the winner in the foreign language category at next year's Oscars, played out to a sell-out screening.

TODAY AT RAINDANCE
**Dazed & Confused Present an Evening at the Edge of Cinema

Style bible Dazed & Confused, media partners at this year's Raindance Film Festival, present an evening of films from filmmakers such as Isaac Julien, Lynne Ramsay and Andrew Kotting, whose work represents a blurring of the boundaries of cinema. In their work, cinema meets the world of other visual arts head on: photography, video, performance and film. The films will be followed by a panel discussion on the interplay between cinema and art.

**MUST SEE: Nine Souls

Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda, winner of the Best New Director Award from the Japan Director's Guild for his first film Pornostar, shows us modern Japan as we've never seen it before in affable comedy Nine Souls. Toyoda sets his focus on the characters - nine prisoners on the run - and the dynamics between them, as the individual dramas of each of the convicts flare up one by one as they all touch base with their past lives. The result is an even-handed yet undeniably potent blend of comedy, tragedy, pathos, and redemption.

TOMORROW AT RAINDANCE

**MUST SEE: Road Dogs: Contemporary Easy Rider with Unbeatable Soundtrack

In Road Dogs - labelled by Variety as Boyz on the Road - two Afro-American men take to the road in order to leave their violent pasts behind, creating a thoroughly enjoyable Road Movie coined as a contemporary Easy Rider. An incredible soundtrack including tracks from artists as diverse as Snoop Dogg, Korn and Mystic plays compliments the glorious photography of America's beauty spots.

**MUST SEE: Trilogie 1: On The Run

The first part of Lucas Belvaux's trilogy of films showing at Cine Lumiere which work on the principle of cross encounters - the main characters of one film have minor roles in the others and vice versa. Although they share sets, scenes and characters, the films are genetically 'different'. The first is a thriller, the second a comedy and the third a melodrama. The director will be introducing each film (playing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), and participating in a Q&A after Thursday's showing.