I have an effective way of ensuring that I prematurely age at several times throughout the year. At it's most potent, it coincides with the Leeds Film Festival, which after dealing with some brochure film time vs. website film time issues (seriously - if you have booked your films based on the web version, make sure you double check as some are way off) I have a solid schedule of about 50 films, which if I do the usual thing and cheat and treat all the short films separately, should make the ton. Wouldn't want to go too over the top, after all.
As with Cambridge, there is a feeling of cutting back this year at Leeds, thanks to our lovely recession situation. It's not severe, but the films list cuts out some earlier and later showings from the usual schedule, and contains a few films, reshown from previous fests. Not that I'm complaining too much - both Detroit Metal City (review) and Big Man Japan had me in tears of laughter in 2007/8, Waltz with Bashir is an intelligent muse on the experiences of war and Persepolis is a beautiful and honest labour of love. They also have classic films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Psycho and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. They even have a showing of the Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies, just in case you'd forgotten about the face-slapping potential of the medium. My schedule contains some of these films, but I'll be concentrating on their newer output, of which there is still plenty.
But also - as usual - it clashes with the Leeds Abbey Dash, which takes place on the last day, so I will squeeze back into my shorts, put on my tatty trainers and do one final 10k before the year gets too bad for it, as a final send off to the festival. Best get back into the groove then..
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