by Robert Alstead

Summer lovin'
My Summer of Love is a soft, sultry mirage of a film about a love affair between two teenage girls living in the hilly countryside of Yorkshire in the north of England. Mona, a working class lass, is fed up with her humdrum life, especially after her reformed, born-again brother (Paddy Considine) decides to convert the pub they inherited from their parents into a religious meeting area. When she wakes one day after basking on the heath, she finds the posh Tamsin looking down on her from atop a horse and an unlikely friendship blossoms between the two.
As in The Last Resort, director Pawel Pavlikovski is a master at conveying mood and story through the texture and composition of the moving image. The windswept Yorkshire hills, the terraced houses, dappled woods and shadowy interiors, help convey a warm summer languor. Nathalie Press as Mona and Emily Blunt as Tamsin put in impressive performances to create a palpable sense of intimacy and vulnerability. The short transition from buddies, through shared pain to romance never rings hollow, and ensures the dark denouement is all the more effective.
Everything’s Gone Pete Tong is about a hedonistic DJ, who falls from grace when he loses his hearing, yet finds redemption, celebrates and sends up the rave culture and the music industry hilariously. The music’s good too, if you like a bit of techno now and then.

Resfest
The second annual Resfest, which took place last month, is a new media festival where filmmakers, multimedia designers, video games creators, and digital artists share thoughts and ideas on their converging worlds and try to second guess what the next big thing will be.
As well as the more conventional screening of short films by the CBC’s late night arts program/new media channel ZeD, you could also try out a prototype handheld digital tour guide that delivers video clips to you by wireless as you move around an environment, and visitors could also view some of the first Canadian video clips made specially for mobile phones. This is still very much cutting edge stuff, so the end product was far from stellar. With the handheld digital tour guide, video clips would start freezing as you moved around because the signal was not strong enough and as for the phone video clips, well, it’s a very small screen.
As a new generation of handheld devices are released and telephone companies upgrade their networks later this year and early next year, the quality of the video clips and the quality of mobile content is sure to improve (at least for those who can pay the extra bucks). I’m sure that many readers have concerns about the health implications microwave/cellular networks have, but on the other side of the coin the promised land of wireless delivery will mean freedom to roam rather than being shackled to the office. At least, that’s the theory.

Bike Ride
Last month was Bike Month, and included a night of eclectic films all relating to the bicycle. A couple stood out for me: Tom Schroeder’s Bike Ride a rippling white-on-black, line-drawing animation where James Peterson tells the amusing story of elation and deflation of cycling 50 miles to see his girlfriend (you can view it online www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/986192, although you don’t get quite the full fluid experience). Very different, but as memorable, was Hiding From the Wind by North Vancouver documentary maker Bruce Mohun. The short documentary follows Gabriola Island sculptor George Georgiev as he prepares to take the record for the fastest bike in the world. His machine, a sealed recumbent, looks more like a fish than a bike, and whistles as it touches speeds of 120-130 km/h. It drew gasps of awe from the gathered audience of Vancouver cyclists.

Looking forward
The summer blockbuster season is upon us. This month we have Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (out now), Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (15), sci-fi thriller The Island starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson (22), and Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (29). In a different league, is the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (15). I haven’t seen it but the storyline of “a homeless musician who finds meaning to his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots” is intriguing to say the least.

Robert Alstead, who also writes for iofilm, is currently making a documentary about cycling called You Never Bike Alone.