The Edinburgh International Film Festival: Gala

For the Gala section of the festival the red carpet is rolled out and is the gliziest part of the two week event.

The Edge of Love

Two feisty, free-spirited women are connected by the brilliant, charismatic poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), who loves them both.

The passion and pathos of the legendary poet is told through the lives of these two women.

Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and Dylan were childhood sweethearts; fast forward ten years, and the two reconnect in wartime London, where she is working as a singer and he is churning out government propaganda scripts in aid of the war effort.

The two feel the thunderbolt of their emotions once more - but Thomas is now married to the adventurous Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Despite their rivalry, the women form a surprising friendship.

John Maybury (The Jacket, Love Is The Devil) directed romantic drama The Edge Of Love from a script by Glasgow-born Sharman Macdonald (The Winter Guest).

Starring: Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Rhys, Camilla Rutherford, Alastair Mackenzie.

Before the Rains

The story centres on the lives of a British landowner in India, his Indian right-hand man, and the landowner's love for his beautiful young servant.

The man is Henry Moores (Linus Roache), a wealthy landowner who lives very comfortably with his wife, Laura (Jennifer Ehle), and young son, Peter (Leo Benedict).

Comment on this Article Next door lives his assistant, T.K. (Rahul Bose), who has abandoned his roots in the nearby village and cast his lot with the British.

They run a tea plantation and discover cinnamon higher in the hills. That involves the construction of a road up a steep hillside, which must zigzag its way to the top to avoid being washed away in the monsoons.

Meanwhile when Henry's wife is away he is led by his desire and ultimately into consequences beyond his control.

Starring: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das

Wall-E

Academy Award®-winning writer-director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") and the inventive storytellers and technical geniuses at Pixar Animation Studios ("The Incredible," "Cars," "Ratatouille") transport moviegoers to a galaxy not so very far away for a new computer-animated cosmic comedy about a determined robot named Wall-E.

After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, Wall-E. (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named Eve.

Eve comes to realize that Wall-E. has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home).

Meanwhile, Wall-E.. chases Eve across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen.

Joining Wall-E. on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future, is a hilarious cast of characters including a pet cockroach, and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots.

The Wackness

In the sweltering summer of 1994, Giuliani is scouring New York City within an inch of its life, hip-hop is permeating white youth culture, and a pot-dealing loser kid, Luke Shapiro, is trying to figure out how to solve his parents’ insolvency, beat depression, and get laid before pushing off to college.

Luckily he’s got a nifty deal with a psychiatrist, Dr. Squires, who trades him therapy sessions for weed.

It happens that the oddball doctor’s marriage is crumbling, so the two-one in late adolescence, the other in late middle-age embark on messy passages into new life stages.

As Luke falls for a classmate who just happens to be Squires’s daughter, the summer heats up, and he follows doctor’s orders, learning to coexist with pain and make it part of him, rather than let it become his downfall.

The Wackness plays like the luscious rush of first love, discovering great new music, meeting amazing personalities who impart the meaning of life, and realizing what you’re made of.

Perfectly capturing the textures of 1990s Manhattan and the zeitgeist of worldly, yet emotionally unformed, private-school students forced to parent their parents, director Jonathan Levine conveys a whimsy, too buoyed by the dazzlingly funny Ben Kingsley and unexpected stylistic flourishes that gives the film’s insights and idiosyncrasies big, glorious, flapping wings. --© Sundance Film Festival

Starring: Josh Peck, Sir Ben Kingsley, Method Man, Mary Kate Olsen, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, Aaron Yoo

Transsiberian

An American couple, Roy and Jessie, decide to take the long way home from their recent sojourn in Asia on the legendary Trans-siberian Express train from Beijing to Moscow.

On their way, they meet another couple from the West, Carlos and Abby, with whom they quickly form a familiar bond that often unites fellow travellers away from home.

When Roy accidentally gets separated from the group at a stopover, Jessie begins to realize that their compatriots aren't exactly who or what they seem to be.

The real danger begins to surface as a deceitful Russian detective and locals terrorize Jessie in this unforgettable journey.

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, Eduardo Noriega, Ben Kingsley

Standard operating Procedure

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America's image of itself.

Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behaviour of a few "bad apples"?

We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame?

We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people?

What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs.

The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there.

Elite Squad

The film is set in 1997 and presents an intimate look at the city's vast and intricate web of corruption.

Drug trafficking militias have virtual control within the favelas while the police run their criminal enterprises outside.

The elite BOPE force (State Police Special Operations Battalion) combats drug trafficking keeping order has its price though and their actions make it difficult to distinguish right from wrong and justice from revenge.

BOPE Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is facing a crisis: in addition to the pressures of fighting within war zones, the Captain must find and train his own replacement so he can escape the day to day violence and be close to his wife who is about to give birth to their first child.

Two of the force's newest recruits, Neto (Caio Junqueira) and Matias (André Ramiro), are childhood friends: one is quick on the trigger to maintain order and the other refuses to compromise his ideals. Together they are the perfect replacement. Alone they may not have what it takes to survive.

Starring: Wagner Moura, Caio Junqueira, André Ramiro

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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For the Gala section of the festival the red carpet is rolled out and is the gliziest part of the two week event.

The Edge of Love

Two feisty, free-spirited women are connected by the brilliant, charismatic poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), who loves them both.

The passion and pathos of the legendary poet is told through the lives of these two women.

Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and Dylan were childhood sweethearts; fast forward ten years, and the two reconnect in wartime London, where she is working as a singer and he is churning out government propaganda scripts in aid of the war effort.

The two feel the thunderbolt of their emotions once more - but Thomas is now married to the adventurous Caitlin (Sienna Miller). Despite their rivalry, the women form a surprising friendship.

John Maybury (The Jacket, Love Is The Devil) directed romantic drama The Edge Of Love from a script by Glasgow-born Sharman Macdonald (The Winter Guest).

Starring: Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Rhys, Camilla Rutherford, Alastair Mackenzie.

Before the Rains

The story centres on the lives of a British landowner in India, his Indian right-hand man, and the landowner's love for his beautiful young servant.

The man is Henry Moores (Linus Roache), a wealthy landowner who lives very comfortably with his wife, Laura (Jennifer Ehle), and young son, Peter (Leo Benedict).

Comment on this Article Next door lives his assistant, T.K. (Rahul Bose), who has abandoned his roots in the nearby village and cast his lot with the British.

They run a tea plantation and discover cinnamon higher in the hills. That involves the construction of a road up a steep hillside, which must zigzag its way to the top to avoid being washed away in the monsoons.

Meanwhile when Henry's wife is away he is led by his desire and ultimately into consequences beyond his control.

Starring: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das

Wall-E

Academy Award®-winning writer-director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") and the inventive storytellers and technical geniuses at Pixar Animation Studios ("The Incredible," "Cars," "Ratatouille") transport moviegoers to a galaxy not so very far away for a new computer-animated cosmic comedy about a determined robot named Wall-E.

After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, Wall-E. (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named Eve.

Eve comes to realize that Wall-E. has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home).

Meanwhile, Wall-E.. chases Eve across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen.

Joining Wall-E. on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future, is a hilarious cast of characters including a pet cockroach, and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots.

The Wackness

In the sweltering summer of 1994, Giuliani is scouring New York City within an inch of its life, hip-hop is permeating white youth culture, and a pot-dealing loser kid, Luke Shapiro, is trying to figure out how to solve his parents’ insolvency, beat depression, and get laid before pushing off to college.

Luckily he’s got a nifty deal with a psychiatrist, Dr. Squires, who trades him therapy sessions for weed.

It happens that the oddball doctor’s marriage is crumbling, so the two-one in late adolescence, the other in late middle-age embark on messy passages into new life stages.

As Luke falls for a classmate who just happens to be Squires’s daughter, the summer heats up, and he follows doctor’s orders, learning to coexist with pain and make it part of him, rather than let it become his downfall.

The Wackness plays like the luscious rush of first love, discovering great new music, meeting amazing personalities who impart the meaning of life, and realizing what you’re made of.

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