Glasgow Film Festival
Coming so early in the calendar, this festival has its pick of the exciting new titles we’ll spend the rest of the year waiting for. Films such as Hail, Caesar!, the Coen brothers’ star-packed Hollywood homage, which opens the event. Not to mention new Disney animation Zootropolis, Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, and the talked-about Green Room, featuring Patrick Stewart as a neo-Nazi. On the foreign-language side, there’s Oscar-nominated Turkish teen drama Mustang, Cannes-winner Dheepan and Norwegian disaster epic The Wave. And much more besides: 174 films in total, including a mini FrightFest, Bowie material, and guests from Richard Gere to Peter Greenaway. Plus some ingenious pop-up events: a Romeo + Juliet-style masked ball, The Man Who Fell To Earth at the Planetarium, and a Con Air event where you’re put in an orange jumpsuit and transported to a secret location.
Secret Cinema
Last summer’s Secret Cinema was such a success, it singlehandedly put The Empire Strikes Back back into the UK box office top 10 for 11 weeks. More than 100,000 visitors passed through its vast Star Wars-themed world (actually a derelict factory in Southwark) replete with a Tatooine bazaar and a nightly blowing-up-the-Death Star re-enactment featuring a full-size X-wing fighter. What will their next trick be? Well it’s a secret, obviously. Half the fun at this stage is attempting to decipher Secret Cinema’s cryptic promotional clues on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere – we’re getting a noir-ish, codebreaker-y, cold war kind of vibe so far. Ticket holders might get more of an idea once they’re given costume instructions. Tickets aren’t cheap (starting at £67), but four extra dates have been added and, as usual, it’s selling out fast.
