Those whacky MIFF funsters!

Went to the media launch for the Melbourne Film Festival this morning, and now have my appetite for a three-week cinematic feast well and truly whetted. Traditionally, festival supremo James Hewison uses the media launch to announce the all-important opening night film: this year, he teased us, and announced that we wouldn't find out what the film was until the actual opening night!

"Cinema seems to infiltrate our lives so much that I often wonder whether it's possible to see a film without a sort of pre-determined point of view," Hewison said. "On 26 July, MIFF's opening night (and my last as Executive Director) audiences will have that rare oportunity to have a virginal cinema experience. A pure experience - I hope - as we reveal a film that you certainly won't forget and won't leave you unmoved."

So, if any of you manage to find out what the opening night film is going to be, please let me know!

Probable highlights include:

• Princess, part of the 'Danmark Nu' program, and directed by Anders Morgenthaler, a passionate, animated tirade attacking the porn industry in classic 'one man on a mission of revenge' style (read a review of it in The Hollywood Reporter, here):
• The documentary An Inconvenient Truth, about former US Vice President Al Gore's one-man crusade to save the planet from climate change;
  
• The narrative-free doco that dives to the roots of all politics, Workingman's Death, directed by Michael Glawogger, which focuses on the extremes to which people have to go to earn a wage, and especially those workers who have no choice. Implicit in the journey is a stomach-churning critique of the New Globalism, best illustrated by Indonesian sulfur haulers working on the slopes of an active volcano;
• A Scanner Darkly, the new animated feature from Richard Linklater, a dark and trippy SF film based on the work of Philip K Dick;
• Park Chan-wook's new film Sympathy for Lady Vengeance;
• Boy Culture, a candid look at the life of a successful sex worker based on the critically acclaimed novel by Matthew Rettenmund and directed by Q Allan Brocka;
• The Palme d'Or winning The Wind That Shakes The Barley by director Ken Loach, one of many films coming to us straight from Cannes;
• And from the UK, the new film by Dog Soldiers director Neil Marshall, The Descent, which I have been waiting months to see. The Guardian called it "one of the best British horror films of recent years," while The Times said it was "unwatchable, but for all the right reasons...The gore leaves nothing to the imagination and everything to your next nightmare."

The Backbeat music doco program also has some promising flicks, including:

• Beyond Beats And Rhymes - a provocative documentary that was originally conceived as a "loving critique" from a self-proclaimed ‘Hip-Hop Head’ but soon becomes a take-no-prisoners assault on the hypocrisy of mainstream hip-hop. The film sees director Byron Hurt tackling head-on issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today's hip-hop culture, eliciting some very uncomfortable responses in the process.
• loudQUIETloud goes on the road with The Pixies eleven years after their 1993 break-up.
• American Hardcore is a history of American punk rock, and features interviews with Ian MacKaye, Mike Patton and Phil Anselmo; while Punk's Not Dead is a DIY search for the soul of a subculture and a celebration of all things loud, fast, and spiked, that shows that punk is stronger and more relevant today than it's ever been.
  

MIFF runs from Jul 6 26 - August 13: I'll see you in the dark!