Leeds Film Festival 2009

It's here! *dances*

The peeps at the festival have now launched the main site, which lists about 180 film events over November, which has me slavering at the prospect.

The first film I looked for was Ponyo which to my delight has been included this year. Seeing a new Miyazaki epic is always a pleasure, especially as this one has been drawn completely by hand, with no computer effects used at all. Apparently it's as smooth and gorgeous as any they've done before, but I don't want to look too much into it so I don't spoil my enjoyment. (Did that with Howl and Earthsea and regretted it.)

Although Oshii's Sky Crawlers has again been left out (AGAIN) of a screening, we do get one of his oldest but most beautiful films, Angel's Egg, which despite being 20+ years old, is only now getting it's European premiere.

There's a lot more besides (the anime is very much in a minority), including the new Coen Brothers film A Serious Man gets its premiere, plus Paul Giamatti (as himself) selling his soul in Cold Souls. Opening film The Men who Stare at Goats must also be up there as a possible future great. Get yourself a brochure or check the website to see just how much is up there.

I have put together a Plan-ET- readable events file, so anyone with Plan-ET can create a schedule for themselves against it. The LIFF brochure has a really useful timetable in the back that you can scrawl over, but will quickly fall apart and get messy with scribbles over it. Plan-ET will enable you to set priorities and work out the best order of films to watch, which even if you're going for just a few films, is pretty handy to have. If you are getting one of their film passes, I would definitely recommend using Plan-ET to help make up your film-going schedule.

If you want a free copy of Plan-ET, the latest version can be got if you send a request to planet.fancysoft@googlemail.com. (yes, I promised I would host it somewhere, I just haven't got round to it yet) I will send you a copy of the runnable JAR file (requires Java 1.6) and the LIFF 2009 event file. I would also send out updated jars to those who have already sent me requests in the past.

Oh yes, and as usual I'll be telling you all about the lovely films I see as I go.

Plan-ET Early Access Now Available

The Event Scheduler has a new name, and has come on a wodge since I mentioned it a week or so ago. Alerts are a little more refined and can be filtered down (the thing whines on about all sorts of little tasks in the pursuit of a perfect events list, which you can now turn off), it works out total costs of all events in your schedule with and without discounts (and recommends which discounts to take), and it will now print out a basic schedule report, which although it is just a text file at the moment, is the first step of the final major area of work that will be the focus of my future attention. After I return from Cambridge, that is.

During our brief stay, I hope to bend the ear of one of the organisers and slip into their mitts a brief flyer extolling the virtues of the app, and convince them what a good idea it would be for them to perhaps make use of it at next year's bash. How good my convincing skills are I don't know but I'd like to try; I genuinely think this app could be a lot of use, especially to that breed of festival goer who likes to pack as much stuff in as they can.

Finally, If anyone is interested in having a go with an early access copy, I can now provide you with one, if you send me an email at planet(dot)fancysoft(at)gmail(dot)com. I will send you a copy of the app in a runnable JAR file (it requires Java 6 installed on your machine - The JRE can be downloaded here - but other than that requirement it should work on Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux just fine). I'll also send a copy of the Cambridge events file for you to play with, and a couple of basic running instructions. Eventually I will be putting Plan-ET up on a code hosting site so people can take a proper look under the hood once I'm happy with it, but for now this will do.