auchmeddan

We’ve been lucky the last few days and haven’t seen a bad movie since “Destricted”. We’ve had a good run with “Neo Ned”, “Colour Me Kubrick” and “12 and Holding” on Saturday, and “Wristcutters: A Love Story” and “The Treatment” on Monday.

Saturday was especially fun for me as we got to see good movies AND hang out in the Cameo Bar all day. “Colour Me Kubrick” was quite funny and was full of well known British actors in various small roles - spotting them was part of the fun. There were also a few clever references to other Kubrick movies, and a show stealing entrance by Jim Davidson which was one of the film’s highlights.

In the evening we watched our 2nd feature starring Jeremy Renner, “12 and Holding“. An interesting coming of age drama revolving around a trio of 12 year olds, this was entertaining and disturbing in equal measure.

Monday we caught “Wristcutters: A Love Story” at the Cameo. Jules really enjoyed this movie, while I thought it was pretty good but not one of my faves. In the evening we caught “The Treatment“, which I really enjoyed despite the fact that the lead actor was previously in “The Gilmore Girls”. Ian Holm had all the best lines as a sadistic psychoanalyst but my favourite performance was from Famke Janssen who, given the chance at a serious role, turned out to be a great actress.

Shannyn Sossamon and Patrick Fugit in “Wristcutters”

An incredibly simple love story about two star-crossed lovers who meet in a mental hospital : a neo-nazi who was involved in a hate crime and a young black girl who believes she has Hitler’s soul inside her.

Making you laugh out loud one minute then choking back tears the next, Neo Ned is now our favourite movie so far in the film festival and maybe even the best film I’ve seen so far this year. The film is carried by two incredible leads who you find yourself emotionally attached to in no time at all, and deserve the credit for making this film so accessible. Jeremy Renner’s performance in this film is out of this world and Gabrielle Union is superb.

There was a Q&A at the end of the movie with the Director (Van Fischer), Producer (Mark Borman), and Jeremy Renner present - all of whom received resounding applause from the audience. It’s just a shame Gabrielle Union wasn’t there to ogle at

Jeremy Renner was so good in the film that we bought tickets for his other movie in the Festival, “12 and Holding”, which was showing later on the same day.

The day started well with “Snow Cake” - a very well-acted character study starring Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Ann Moss. It was a moving and humourous movie which Jules and myself both enjoyed a lot. The Director’s Q&A at the end was also very entertaining.

The evening movie was “Destricted” - 5 short movies about sex and pornography. There were 2 good episodes - a short 2 minute montage and Larry Clark’s entry around “gonzo” pornography. The rest of the running time was just a sausagefest. From the opening 5 minute (? - it felt like eternity) shot of a flaccid penis becoming hard I knew some of this movie was going to be awful. I had no idea though that most of the running time was going to be film of guys jerking off! They should have just called the movie “cock, cock, and more cock!”. I think the entire audience was bored into a coma as I didn’t hear a single positive comment as people exited (with the exception of praise for Larry Clark).

We saw the World Premiere of “Holly” last night and the movie was so good that it’s the first time I’ve ever bothered to go vote for a film at the Internet movie database.

Although “Holly” is sombre in tone it is very well done and the central performances are excellent (especially Thuy Nguyen as Holly). I hope this raises awareness for the K-11 Project and they can somehow make some changes to the child-sex industries in Cambodia and Vietnam.

I’m not sure that any other movie we see at the film festival will be able to top this.

We saw the international premiere of the movie “Apart from That” last night at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Apart from about 4 minutes the movie was an exercise in tedium that robbed us of almost two hours of our lives. The directors were coming in at the end of the movie for a Q&A session but I couldn’t wait to leave the cinema. I usually love hearing a director talk about filming but this was such a dull, poorly shot movie that I had no interest at all. The very forced use of “artistic” camera techniques such as out of focus, long shots of characters in conversation, and too close close-ups made it look like a student film and worked together to cause eye-strain and headaches.

I wish we’d just stayed in the bar. I hope the movie we’re seeing tonight “Holly” is better. At least it appears like it will have a story and purpose.

I had some footage from our Reef Dive in the middle of our Shark Trip, and have put together a short clip of some of the highlights. It made sense to leave this out of the original video, but I wanted to put it up so friends back in Bermuda can see the difference between what they are used to and what they can see if they head to the Bahamas. If you can take your eyes off the reef sharks you’ll see there are a lot of fish out there.

Edinburgh appears to be in the grip of a real summer at the moment, with the temperature hovering around 80 degrees. It’s been great to have the heat without the humidity we got used to over the last few years!

Jules and myself celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary last week with a late lunch and (more than) a few drinks in the city centre, and we ended up out with friends on my birthday. It’s been a nice relaxed trip home so far as the huge amount of time we have means we don’t feel the need to rush to do anything. It’s given me a lot of time to read and relax, although I am looking forward to going to see the Hibs this weekend.

Things will get a bit more hectic for us in the last 2 weeks in August when the Edinburgh Film Festival runs as I’ve booked us tickets for 12 movies, but I’m really looking forward to that as it’ll be the first time I’ve made it to the Film Festival in seven years. Until then, I’ll be happy if we keep going at the same slow pace.

I shot some video with my underwater camera while we were on the trip and have compiled a short video. The video gives a better impression of how busy Tiger Beach is in a way still photos can’t capture.

The video is around 18MB and runs for 2:30 mins. More photos will be added to the Bahamas Photo Gallery when I get onto a high speed line here.

This was our last day at Tiger Beach, and we managed to get 4 dives in totalling around 5 hours of underwater time.

For me one of the highlights was watching the small Tigers sniffing around in the sand for dead fish, and then working some scraps through their jaws. We also saw a large Tiger flex it’s jaw outwards out of it’s mouth, and got a good idea of what the bite radius of one of these sharks would be. It was a pretty fearsome sight and a good reminder just how dangerous the Tiger Sharks are, just in case anyone had gotten too complacent around them. Jim Abernethy’s words of warning from early in the trip came back to me.. “If a Lemon bites you I can take care of that. If a Tiger bites you you’ll die out here”.

By the end of our 4th dive all of our group were tired and agreed we were finished, and as we rinsed off our gear I said a silent, sad goodbye to the Sharks of Tiger Beach. The week was an incredible experience that we’d repeat again in a heartbeat if we can ever afford to fly back from New Zealand.

The crew of the “Shear Water” were great and maybe someday we’ll get to see Ed, Lew, Wade and Jim again. I hope so.

This turned out to be a much easier day. After a morning dive at Tiger Beach we moved to a beautiful reef at around 60ft and did a couple of dives here with some Caribbean Reef Sharks. These guys were so small (5ft or so) that they were cute.

The reef itself was beautiful and was home to more fish than you could count. We saw everything from friendly Grouper to Rock Beauties, with highlights including a large Green Moray Eel, a Nassau Grouper that followed me around like a little dog, and a small school of Tuna.

It was nice to have a couple of dives where we could just relax and enjoy the scenery.