The Standing There Productions guide to the Melbourne Film Festival continues despite my "wagging" an apparently brilliant film, Crimson Gold on Saturday. A disgraceful black mark against my name, I admit.

I did, however, see the following films this weekend:

Grbavica. Excellent film in the Women's Film section, which is an interesting section actually. This film is post-war and it's gorgeously done. It opens on this group of women who are encouraged (in fact paid) to tell their war stories and talk about their grief as part of the healing process. At first glance, all of them appear to be dead.

Anyway, others:

Summer 04. German film summarised as follows: what tangled webs we weave (sorry, but you see so many and the capacity for meaningful analysis diminshes hourly).

An Inconvenient Truth. Really excellent film made by Al Gore about global warming...

I know, I know!

Seriously, though. This film is a very well-made documentary that can't really be accused of bias. It's an excellent lesson in climate change (literally), as well as being fairly revealing about Al Gore, which turns out to be quite surprising. What's more it understands its own role as a film...

Which is more than I can say for Al Franken: God Spoke, which apparently thought it was a film about how brilliant Al Franken is and how he should be the next President of America. Al Franken is a comedian from Saturday Night Live , who wrote an often hilarious booked called Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced View of The Right in America. He is, however, one part political analyst and nine parts comedian. Not the other way around. His targets in the film are, well, everyone who isn't talking to him right at that very moment (one of his foes correctly points out in the film that he sucks up to people in person and then mocks them in the car on the way home). And he doesn't mind what he picks on them for, either. Poofy impersonations, ever so slightly sexist asides, and a searing analysis of a Senator's dog poo. Again, maybe comedy ain't my thing at the moment. I could smell the ego from the second back row.

Also saw a Danish gangster film, Pusher, which was excellent but which was a gangster film (yeesh!). Straight after that I saw a Hong Kong musical called Perhaps Love. Also very good although richly bizarre transition from gangster film to dancing in streets.

Lastly, The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Irish. Good LORD those poms have a lot to answer for. Extremely well written.

So, thirteen films down, many bijillions to go. Good thing I've got nothing else to do with my time (gulp).

I am so exhausted that I just wagged my first film in the Melbourne Film Festival.

It was a good one, too. Iranian.

I'm going to have a bit of a nap.

Update-wise, last night I saw The Way I Spent The End of The World, which was a lovely, slow, Romanian film. I then saw Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, which I almost fell asleep in, which is a documentary kind of thing about Sarah Silverman, a Jewish-American comic. I think, after the Comedy Festival, I might have reached saturation point with stand-up.

Let's see how I feel about film after the six I'm seeing in a row tomorrow.

Yikes.

Well the Film Festival opened on Wednesday night with the hilarious "black tie" requirements (as always) being almost completely ignored by the Melbourne crowd, especially the people I was there with (who had nailed the "black" part of the dress code but needed some help with the more formal aspect symbolised by the tie).

I very much enjoy an industry event where somehow, despite all the best attempts of the organisers, a bunch of interesting people have managed to lie their way in. In other words, my friends were there, which is brilliant and which means I still haven't quite recovered.

Last night I saw The Hawk is Dying , which stars Paul Giamatti from Sideways , Michelle Williams (Jen from Dawsons Creek ), one or other of the Culkin brothers, and an extremely manhandled hawk. I then saw a Hungarian film called Taxidermia , which was genuinely insane and involved a bloke who stuffs animals, a couple who eat competitively for their country (a brilliant satire on sport actually), a guy who has sex on a dead pig, and rather a lot of projectile vomiting (welcome to the topsy turvy world of MIFF). Then we saw Thank You For Smoking , alongside a short film by the guys who made it, who did a Q&A session afterwards.

My recommendation so far is Thank You For Smoking , with the caveat that it's being released soon anyway so don't waste your MIFF time unless you have too much of it (erhem). But it's very funny and it's well-written, which are two elements I rather enjoy in a film that's supposed to be funny and well-written. The short film they made, In God We Trust , was great fun too - yay for finding people early in their careers!

I've just realised the young soapie drama theme here. So far, Seth from The OC (Thank You For Smoking ) , and Joey and Jen from Dawsons Creek (Katie Holmes, Thank You For Smoking and Michelle Williams, The Hawk Is Dying ) have all been in MIFF films. Perhaps Standing There Productions' next film should have a Neighbours star in it, preferably engaging in recreational drug use or down and dirty sex, or playing someone with "difficulties", to up the street cred. Mental note.

Tonight, Melanie Howlett, Standing There Captain of Industry, is in town to enjoy The Way I Spent The End of The World and the Sarah Silverman docco with me this evening, before an action-packed weekend of too many films and not enough time to do my homework.

Yeep. See you Monday.

How's this for robust media - it's the Prime Minister's birthday! Hurrah! The fourth estate celebrates! This article actually describes, without irony, an alleged "journalist" asking a group of rowers on the Yarra this morning to sing happy birthday to the Prime Minister, John Howard, on his fabulously athletic morning walk. Presumably the footage of the rowers singing will have the jouranlist's solicit edited out of it on the television news, although possibly not - why bother? Nobody really thinks the media has a purpose anymore other than providing a huge stack of paper to wrap around the sodoku on the weekends. (Someone I worked with once asked me: "what do journalists do these days? Isn't it all press releases?")

Indeed.

Mind you, some journos are earning their wage. I have found a cleverer headline for the "Man Wins Bet, Loses Penis" article I drew your attention to previously. Click here to read the same article, this time titled: "Bet Leaves Drunk Man Willy Nilly". As I say, I did used to work in commercial radio and headlines like that maketh the radio show.

Tonight, I'm going to the opening night of the Film Festival. Tomorrow, it begins in earnest. Stay tuned for updates, reviews, complaints about the program guide, and reports on the health and wellbeing of a person who sees five films in a row and then attempts to get up and go to work in the morning.

So how's this:

1. Three grant applications for three separate projects due in the next three weeks
2. One grant application due for Victoria Law Foundation in one week
3. Three weeks worth of film festival films to be watched, starting tomorrow
4. Under half the films actually booked on account of booking system being worst in universe
5. House out the back being sold, so people "inspecting" via side entrance, next to our house
6. Some "interested home buyers" have since broken our fence, stolen housemate's new bike
7. Housemate has flu
8. Housemate possibly not able to claim on expensive insurance policy
9. Freezing cold day
10. Heater suddenly and inexplicably broken
11. Attempts at turning on heater makes whole house smell like fire
12. Landlord coming over
13. Landlord possibly not as keen on weeds in front garden as we are
14. Kim Beazley is the leader of a political party
15. My grandma is in hospital
16. Plays, film scripts, and grant applications do not, apparently, write themselves.

Spewbags, as they say in the classics.

So it's that time of year again. I cannot imagine how I'm going to find time to celebrate my birthday (AUGUST ELEVENTH) what with one thing and seventeen billion others being crammed in between here and December.

First of all, the Melbourne International Film Festival opens on Wednesday and I'm going to the opening night film, and then, every day after that, to between two to five films, in a row, at a time, between Thursday and two days after my birthday (WHICH IS AUGUST ELEVENTH).

Just for practice, I went to the movies on Saturday night, where I found myself at the end of the longest queue I have ever seen at the Nova in Carlton, which I am happy to say was the queue for an Australian film. The film was Jindabyne , which I really enjoyed (I love the Paul Kelly song and I seem to remember studying the short story and not wanting to tear it to shreds, which is high praise of course, and there were some great performances in the film). There's an Aboriginal woman who, just near the end of the film, is quite, quite brilliant. Her use of pockets is lovely.

Er, also, without being at all unprofessional about it, my friend Simon is in this film and he's ace. And if I didn't already think he was ace, I would probably still think he was ace (he does this thing in this scene at the pub which I am going to have to buy the DVD for, just in order to press pause on the exact, teensy, tiny, little moment where he gets it right). Fascinatingly, his birthday is just after my birthday, or just before, I can't remember which, but in any case it somewhere around the vicinity of my birthday (AUGUST ELEVENTH), which of course is also an important reason to go and see Jindabyne.

Anyway, Crime and Punishment is still tormenting me but I am no further into it despite reading it for what feels like nine months. Hopefully I will be finished by my birthday which is on AUGUST ELEVENTH in case there was some lack of clarity surrounding that issue.

So Bleak House (Sunday nights, ABC, after the nature show omigod how cool are Sundays) has been the light house in the dark fog that is Crime and Punishment - goodness the Dickensian intrigue is almost too much to stand! The possibility that everyone is related to everybody else and that fortunes could change in the slip of a gene pool is just tantalising. Makes me think I should have read the book. Oh well. Who has time for that?

... Which is the logic behind the fact that I have also started listening to Mao's Last Dancer as an audio book while I attempt to tidy my bedroom/wake up in the mornings/establish some kind of existence for myself in the pre-coffee hours of the day. So far it's really great, although it's confusing when you watch Bleak House , read Crime and Punishment and listen to Mao's Last Dancer all in the same half a day on the weekend. By the end of it you feel like a Chinese woman with bound feet and a fortune that may or may not be yours who has just murdered someone. Yeesh.

So, August eleven, did we get that down? Birthday songs, poems, odes, and arias will be gratefully received between now and August 12th (although those on August 12th will be accepted with some degree of haughty disdain). iPods will also be accepted, as will apple crumble, frisbees, warm knitted gloves, or brightly coloured wigs.

Also, she doesn't read blogs, but get well Grandma.

Last year on all my feedback forms for the Melbourne International Film Festival, I wrote how much I adored the experience, and I also wrote, in huge block letters across the bottom of the form YOUR BOOKING PROCESS IS IMPOSSIBLE AND YOUR PROGRAM IS INFURIATING.

Having spent the last hour (my lunch hour) online, and having spent my Monday lunch hour with two copies of the MIFF guide spread out on the office lunch table, I can honestly say that this booking procedure has become an epic journey akin to the book I'm reading, the aptly titled Crime and Punishment . Many things have happened to me during my journey - I have made friends (very nice girl on the end of the MIFF phone), I've made enemies (Stewart was in the room when I was attempting to book the other day, and I'm not sure we're on speaking terms quite yet) and I've learned many things about the struggle of mankind along the way.

The main thing I've learned? If you're booking tickets for MIFF, I advise you to physically walk into the Forum office, stand in a queue and list the films you want to see, without worrying how you're holding everyone up, and make sure you look over the shoulder of the young funky kid who types them in. I learn this every year, but that doesn't stop me hoping that one day, somewhere, someone will take note of my crooked scrawl on the feedback form: BOOKING TICKETS FOR YOUR FESTIVAL FEELS LIKE PUNISHMENT AND COULD POTENTIALLY INCITE CRIME. MUCH LIKE THE NOVEL CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN MANY WAYS, ALTHOUGH WITH TRACES OF ROGER HARGRAVES' WORK (MR GRUMPY AND LITTLE MISS FURIOUS COME TO MIND).

I remain hopeful that this feedback will one day change the world. These films had better be good.