Tartan up the juries
Sir Patrick Stewart - we do not yet know if he will insist on using the full, grand title - is to head the Jury at the 64th Edinburgh international film festival. The actor, who can legitimately be called "Mr President" for the duration of the event, will sit in judgment over the prestigious Michael Powell award, given to the best British film at the festival. Competitors include: Paul Andrew Williams's Cherry Tree Lane (his searing debut London to Brighton premiered at the festival in 2006); Nick Moran's The Kid
Huge
Soulboy
Mr Nice
Skeletons
Long Shot
Madonna's no virgin
WE
Julie & Julia
Robin Hood
The Lives of Others
Bronco's back
Bronco Bullfrog
Bronco Bullfrog
; , the directing debut of comic actor Ben Miller; and , a dramatic story set around the Wigan Casino's 1970s northern soul scene, directed by Shimmy Marcus and starring Martin Compston. , with drug runner Howard Marks embodied by Rhys Ifans, and Nick Whitfield's film , featuring Jason Isaacs, are also up for the trophy. Meanwhile, making good use of its star attendees, Edinburgh has asked Ben Miller and Jason Isaacs to judge the best international feature. Their co-juror is Lynda Myles, former artistic director of EIFF who, incidentally, features in a cameo role in the film , an on-the-hoof doc about film-making,shot at Edinburgh in 1977 and getting a rare airing as part of this year's retrospective of post-new wave British films.Surely the only way is up for Madonna the film-maker? Mercifully, she isn't starring in her second attempt to direct and it looks like being a thoroughly professional affair. begins a 10-week shoot in London, New York and the south of France next month, telling the story of a young woman in modern-day New York (Abbie Cornish) who becomes obsessed with the 1930s love story between Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VII (he'll be played by James D'Arcy, not, as many previously thought, Ewan McGregorcorrect). The film, flitting between two love stories in a sort of a way, will also star Oscar Isaac, currently on our screens as venal King John in Ridley Scott's . It will be shot by cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski and Oscar nominee Arianne Phillips, who also styled Madonna's concert tours, is in charge of costumes.Lost London film , featuring teenage actors from Joan Littlewood's Stratford workshops, has been digitally restored. It looked pristine when it premiered at Bfi Southbank ahead of a nationwide re-release for the first time in 40 years. The film, a favourite of Paul Weller for its youthful sense of rebellion and its mod soundtrack by Audience, was nearly lost for ever in the 80s, when the negative was dumped in a skip but, somehow, it survives. Its director Barney Platts-Mills showed me snaps of the 1970 premiere in Mile End, when Princess Anne bravely ventured down to the East End. Actor Sam Shepherd is kissing her hand security guard looks on. "What you don't see in the pictures," Sam's mate and co-star Roy Haywood tells me, "is that her muscle bundled Sam into a cupboard straight after and told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, he'd be finished. You don't kiss the hand of royalty - that's what I learned from ."
