Kaleem Aftab

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

27 May 2011

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

Man on Wire - James Marsh interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Philippe Petit was the man who dared to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Director James Marsh tells Kaleem Aftab how he made a film of this incredible feat

The Visitor - Thomas McCarthy interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Thomas McCarthy works as an actor or a writer or a director, but feels that to do all three jobs in one film would be a little too much for him to take. As an actor, despite turns in such stellar productions as Syriana, All The Kings Men and Flags of…

Standard Operating Procedure

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Errol Morris, USA) 116min The great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War) turns his investigative eye towards the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The coup of the film is that Morris interviews some of the soldiers who…

Donkey Punch

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Oliver Blackburn, UK) 99min New British director Oliver Blackburn marks himself out as a name to watch in this misogynistic horror set in Marbella. When three lasses from Leeds (Sian Breckin, Jaime Winstone and Nichola Burley) decide to board a yacht…

Somers Town

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Shane Meadows, UK) 75min While Shane Meadows’ last outing, This is England, showed the racist side of British nationalism, his follow-up, the black-and-white Somers Town, demonstrates just how nice the Brits can be to immigrants. Starting life as a…

Jesus Christ Saviour

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Peter Geyer, Germany) 84min At the beginning of Werner Herzog’s engrossing documentary homage to his favourite actor and nemesis Klaus Kinski, My Best Fiend, there is a tantalising glimpse of Kinski performing his infamous 1971 Jesus concert. Finally…

Fears of the Dark

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Various, France) 85min This episodic animation is destined for cult status. Five respected graphic novelists have each penned a story detailing what made them scared at night. Dogs, mad girls and silence all feature strongly. Each story has then been…

Two Days in Paris

(15) 100min

23 Aug 2007

French actress Julie Delpy jumps behind the camera for the second time with a film that pays a heavy debt to her most famous screen role, that of Céline in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Two Days in Paris is an investigation…

Paranoid Park

16 Aug 2007

Using Blake Nelson’s novel as inspiration Paranoid Park is a cross between Memento, Brick and The Outsiders. Gus Van Sant pushes the boundaries of the time-jumping narrative he essayed in Elephant to tell this pulp tale of a high school kid who gets…

XXY

16 Aug 2007

This, the winning film of the Cannes Critics’ Week International Grand Prix Prize brings to mind the opening line of Jeffrey Eugenedes bestseller Middlesex: ‘I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of…

Crazy Love

16 Aug 2007

Burt Pugach was working in the movie business when he spotted Linda Rise sitting on a park bench and decided he had to have her. Little did she know that he had a wife and disabled child already. From this moment on their story proves the adage that…

Ethan Hawke

9 Aug 2007

Kaleem Aftab talks to actor, writer and now director Ethan Hawke about adapting his novel The Hottest State for the big screen

Jess Weixler

9 Aug 2007

Jess Weixler is so all-American she looks like she’s jumped straight out of a photograph of high school cheerleaders. Her long blond hair and blue eyes make her the archetypal American beauty – just like all those Britney Spears wannabes lusted after by…

Two Days in Paris

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Film Festival A woman for all seasons Julie Delpy talks to Kaleem Aftab about her feature film directorial debut and tells him why she finds it hard to sit still

Knocked Up

19 Jul 2007

Writer, director and producer Judd Apatow honed his skills on The Larry Sanders Show, winning a couple of Emmys for his writing. What he took from the experience was that the best comedies are not made up of jokes, but of observations on the ways people…