All change at the London Film Festival

It’s all change this year at the London Film Festival. Veterans of the festival will doubtlessly have noticed the radical changes to the scheduling and the departure from Leicester Square’s Odeon West End in favour of the West End Vue. With online priority booking for BFI members opening on the 23 September, and shortly after for everyone else, many are wondering what these changes will mean for the character of the UK’s biggest, and arguably most important film festival.

Goodbye Odeon West End, Hello VUE

For years, the Odeon West End in Leicester Square has been the heart and soul of the London Film Festival. Its two improbably large screens and high seating capacity combined with a remarkable intimacy with the stages at the front always made it the perfect festival venue. With the Odeon’s flagship cinema across the square always screening the biggest high-profile releases; the West End has always been a slightly more arty refuge, often screening smaller films. However, it is shortly set to close down for good which has meant the festival has been forced to move across the square.

The West End Vue is an altogether different animal. It’s a multiplex; squeezing as many screens as possible into a small space and screening films back to back all day and all night to maximise revenue. Seemingly an odd choice for the BFI, but the bigger capacity of the VUE leads to some big implications for the festival.

With more screens, the festival is able to show more films and perhaps more importantly they are able to show repeat screenings of the most popular films. As anyone that’s spent hours queuing for returns on cold October nights would tell you, four showings of The Fantastic Mr Fox will lead to more people being able to access the festival without priority booking or tough winter coats and nerves of steel which is what was previously required.

This change isn’t to be underestimated and it might explain why the BFI have felt confident enough about the availability of tickets this year to be advertising screenings of individual films, rather than the festival as a whole on the London Underground. Screenings of Jason Reitman’s follow-up to Juno; Up in the Air with George Clooney has several large posters across the Underground; a move that makes sense when it becomes clear that there are double the amount of opportunities to catch the film at this year’s festival than there would have been in previous years. Critics may argue that the VUE’s screens are smaller, and that ultimately it will be the usual suspects dominating proceedings as usual, but it may just be that this is an important step to truly democratise the festival. We won’t know until it’s all over.

A Very Quick Glance At The Programme

With the LFF always coming hot on the heels of the immortal Venice Film Festival, Sandra Hebron, the festival’s artistic director is in the enviable position of being able to look at the latest work and see what does and doesn’t play to the festival crowd. That’s not to deny for a second the innovation and creativity that goes into planning the London Film Festival, but it means that we can always be certain that London will be privileged with the cream of the crop. There isn’t space here to write about all of the hugely exciting films that are coming to the festival, but let’s look at a couple.

John Hilcoat’s The Road, an ostensibly faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name is already one of the hottest tickets. The Road depicts a relentlessly bleak post-apocalyptic world with an immensely powerful struggle of a father and son at its heart. With the ever-intense Viggo Motensen taking the title role and Guy Pearce and Charlize Theron popping up at various points after the apocalypse, this is not one to miss. Nick Cave has composed the score and after his haunting and timeless work on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford many are anticipating another classic soundscape.

The Road has been produced by The Weinstein Company, which has come under increased scrutiny by industry insiders after a string of questionable decisions leading to a wholesale “financial restructuring” of the business. Bob and Harvey have literally bet the bank on their friend Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds which is doing well, but a big failure could spell disaster for the Hollywood power family. They have already been forced to postpone many of their planned 2009 releases; a sign that the studio is in as much trouble as some analysts have been reporting. Many see The Road as a return to their core business of making interesting and ‘important’ work (a stark contrast to their involvement in the Grindhouse fiasco). If the early reviews from Venice are anything to go by then The Road may just be their saving grace.

The ‘Surpise Film’ is always one of the hottest tickets of the festival and its history shows why. Last year we were treated to the outstanding The Wrestler and the year before it was No Country for Old Men. Expectations are high and speculation is abound. Michael Moore’s latest effort; Capitalism, A Love Affair is a notable absence from the schedule and some have speculated this could be the surprise.  However Hebron and co. have proven themselves to be unafraid to throw curveballs, so ultimately; all speculation is futile.

Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats based on brilliant writer and journalist Jon Ronson’s extraordinary exposition of some of the more bizarre elements of the United State’s military is another film that’s worth getting excited about. With title roles taken by George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor, its pedigree is strong. Hopes are understandably high.

The Times BFI 53^rd London Film Festival has an outstandingly diverse programme. Indeed the sheer amount of exciting films and new talent from around the world makes it one of the most anticipated in recent memory. We are set for a vintage year.

The Times BFI 53^rd London Film Festival runs from 14^th – 29^th October at cinemas across London. Booking and programme at http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff