One of the great things of being a “lady of leisure” when it’s film festival time is, money forgiving you can spend your time watching movies!  I’ve been to four movies in the last week so though, heck I should write something about them all for you.

The first movie I saw at the festival was Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary about the best film that was never made.  The movie tells the tale of Chilean/French film-maker Jodorowsky attempting to make a film adaptation of Dune in the early 70′ s. Along the way he collected a merry cast and crew including and in no way limited to Orson Wells, Pablo Picasso, Mick Jagger, the artist Giger and so on to make that would have been undoubtedly the most pyschedelic and wondorous sci-fi movie possible.  The whole story makes you smile partly through Jodorowsky’s slightly bonkers but adorable telling of his tale.

Next up was Computer Chess, a drama/comedy set in the early 80’s of a computer chess tournament where nerds battled each other with their computer chess programmes.  There’s some great outfits, a girl (!), and so much early computer eye candy!

The producer did a Q&A after the film and talked about how the whole movie was shot on 80’s video cameras, that the actors were all real life nerds and not actors (and include Wiley Wiggins of Dazed and Confused fame), the script was only 8 pages long and was mainly improvised.

Check out the website for videos of HOPCs (Hot Old PCs of course), the Nerd Corner and a pretty thorough history of computer chess. A film for all nerd appreciators out there!

Teenage, the second documentary in the list was based on the book by Jon Savage and scored quite joyously by Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox (who is going to play Jared Leto’s lover in a forth coming movie…).  The movie charts the birth of such as the teenager, and tells the story through archive footage and rather beautifully done vintage adaptations.  You follow a few young people through their adolescence from Germany, UK and USA including a hilter youth, swing kids and sub debs leading up until just after the 2nd World War when it is considered the teenager and youth culture was born.

Afternoon Delight is the new movie by Jill Soloway (6 Ft Under, The United States of Tara) and stars the lovely Kathryn Hahn, Josh Radnor and Juno Temple.

I was particularly excited about seeing this movie not least for the cast and crew (The United States of Tara was one of the most underated TV shows of the last few years), but also as it’s another movie in my favourite genre of movie, the “Sad White People” movie, nothing necessarily bad happens, everyone’s white and typically middle class,  but they’re all miserable, the storyline tends to focus on feelings, a break up, an unhappy marriage, and even if they do end up back together with the one they love, they’re still probably sad, but just recognise it a bit more, see Take This Waltz, Celeste and Jesse Forever, Liberal Arts, Save The Date, Jeff Who Lives at Home, Girl Most Likely, Everything Must Go, Greenberg, Frances Ha, Free Samples etc etc.

Kathryn Hahn is lovable chaos and and obviously a sad white person, dissatisfied with bonafied asshole of a husband played by Josh Radnor, decides to as you do invite a stripper/”sex worker” aka prostitute to live with them, hilarous and down right not hilarious consequences incur.  Both Hahn and Radnor were great, and Jane Lynch’s cameo as a therapist is hilarious.  Deeply funny and deeply miserable in equal parts.

There was a Q&A with Jill Soloway where I got to ask a question (mainly about the casting) where we found out that they originally pursued Kate Winslet for the main part, that Radnor did it more as a favour, and that Jill’s next project is a TV show for Amazon Prime and that she seems more likely to pursue TV than film partly because it’s less restrictive (also read this indepth interview with Mark Duplass where he talks about the future of independent cinema).  The film is out in the UK later this year so do go see if if you can.