Sometimes, the Melbourne Film Festival lets you down. Of course it does. If it didn't, it would be peopled entirely by the same demographic. This is not the case. Sometimes it's a comedy film and there's a comedy crowd. Sometimes it's a religious film and it's full of people wearing tiny gold icons under their windcheaters. Sometimes it's a music documentary and there are people in heavy metal t shirts wandering in with popcorn.

But it doesn't let ME down often, because it's fairly hard to let me down. It's fairly difficult for me not to find even the bits that I don't find interesting kind of... interesting... on account of the fact that someone else is finding them interesting.

Anyhoo. So there's this friend of mine. I spend each festival thinking, "Oh, she would have LOVED that film! That film was MADE for her!"

Then she calls me up and says, "Can I trail along to one of your films?" and I say "Oh, you're going to WET YOUR PANTS this film will be SO GOOD".

Anyway, last year she came to three. Two of them were terrible. I only saw two truly terrible films last year. One of them was so badly projected we got our money back. The third film? Ace. Unreal. Really excellent.

Which is why I thought it would be safe to assume I could "let her trail along" tonight to see a film about... well, now, that would be telling.

It was a film that should be shown to anyone who thinks they're creative, because it's an interesting eight minute film. It went for two hours. It's a film that teaches people that you should always edit more than you think you should out of whatever it is you're creating.

My friend is beginning to think she is cursed.

Otherwise today I saw Eagle vs Shark, a New Zealand film, which was gorgeous and hilarious and which is on again on August 12. Funny as hell.

The last film I saw today was about Alexander Litvinenko, I am SURE I am spelling that wrong but I'm too tired to even use google... Anyway I have written here previously about him and I've always been fascinated by his story and the connections between Putin and the secret service/death squads/terrorism within Russia. Anyway, wow. Writers and people who say things about politics that people in power don't like can get themselves into some serious trouble in some countries.

Good to remember when you're complaining about deadlines. Which I will hereby refrain from doing. Good night.

Well, the Film Festival has redeemed itself from a rather baffling and deeply disturbing (yet still effective) opening day.

Yesterday I saw: a New Zealand sheep zombie movie. Hilarious on so many levels, not least of which was the screaming pile of Melanie and Rita sitting next to me.

War Tapes - excellent war journalism - in which American soldiers were given their own cameras and told to shoot what they saw in the Iraq war. Horrible, funny, politically complex. Really should be compulsory viewing (although might need a few blown-up body shots to be removed before it gets a wide release).

A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie (who is very good in it) about the journalist Daniel Pearl who was beheaded in Afghanistan. Very well put together and it's a story I've always been interested in.

I also "saw" a documentary about Primo Levy - or, actually, not about Primo Levy. It must have been about something, but I certainly couldn't figure it out and I have honestly NEVER done this before, I am ususally unable to, but I slept right through it. Genuine REM sleep for about three quarters of the film. I'm sure it's interesting to people who are obsessed with Primo Levy but since my association with Primo Levy is that "I really must read his books", and since the quarter of the documentary that I saw shed no light on him whatsoever, it was an excellent opportunity for some shut-eye.

Other films I've seen since Thursday:

Teeth - a genuinely hilarious film about vagina dentata. Possibly my favourite so far. Go and see it at the second screening, I promise you will not be unsurprised by the events that transpire in what looks (at the beginning) like it could be "Mean Girls" or something similar. Another movie in which Rita and Melanie's (and Baggins') screaming was just as much a part of the experience as the film itself.

Savage Grace - a film starring Julianne Moore and "based on real life events". This fact alone is the reason the film works because Oh. My. Lord. Anyone who thinks their family is dysfunctional should check this out.

The Simpsons Movie. Shut up. After seeing Ex-Drummer, we deserved it. Including The Simpsons, that's ten movies since Thursday. Also, the more you see, the more you want to see. This could be a long couple of weeks.

Too many deadlines to see enough films.

Too many films plus too many deadlines = too little time to eat and get giggles with friends.

Too much of The Guilt to entirely enjoy the deadlines or the films or the friends.

What happened to my gay abandon?

Why am I again confronting the dual parts of my personality: the obsessive antisocial nerd versus the social hedonist? Why can't they both just get along?

Films I've seen so far:

The Happiest Day of His Life - short film purporting to subvert gender stereotypes but actually just relying on them. It's a shame. It was a good idea and I do think the phrase "dick-whipped" should be introduced to society.

The Armstrongs - a documentary about a small business that actually had me groaning aloud and crawling around in my chair, much like I do when I watch shows like "The Office", which this was disarmingly similar to, although this was real. Hilarious and depressing at the same time. Probably my favourite so far.

Ex-Drummer - a really well conceived, well-shot, entirely hideous film that made me quite ill. I'm still not sure if it was sending things up or celebrating them.

Yo - well acted by possibly the nicest, kindest, sweetest-looking actor on earth. Kind of been done before though, story-wise. There's something about the subtly and the slow reveals in films at MIFF though, which make the story not always the point. Which, coming from me, is usually an insult.

Anyhoo. The Guilt, The Guilt. I'm off. Seeing Teeth tonight with a collection of my favourite people on earth.

For someone with such a heady concentration of inner turmoil, my life really isn't that bad.

Wow. Just when you think you're on top of things, someone goes and bees clever.

Thank you to the very dedicated Daniel, who has made my life approximately nine thousand times more liveable by creating this, which I hereby propose the Melbourne Film Festival PAY HIM to turn into a website.

Excellent work.

So far I have only booked two films, which is hoplessly slack of me, but I will make up for it in the watching, oh yes I will.

I have noticed lately that I am FINALLY experiencing the "post show slump", which until now I thought I had escaped.

I think every autobiography or biography of a writer has the word "antisocial" somewhere in the index. For someone who is usually very social, the post-show slump and period of reinvention after having written something and before writing the next thing must be a very surprising period for the writer's friends (if the writer still has friends, having inflicted this period on many of them over a period of years).

My mobile phone is broken. Normally, this would have been fixed immediately. Thus far, I have had a broken phone for three weeks. This is both a metaphor for my inability to fix things, and the side effect of my belief that the grumpy introspection of this post-show slump period should not be inflicted on anyone.

Having said that, the only way to fix the post show slump is to swim against the tide. Bring on the friends, I say, and possibly a new haircut.

Each year, my head explodes when the Melbourne International Film Festival Guide comes out. It really does literally explode, clear off my shoulders.

And today is the day.

THANK YOU to whoever at the film festival listened to the requests for everything to be listed on the same page. I know I, for one, filled out hundreds of individual response slips with responses like PLEASE LIST THINGS PROPERLY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD written on them in red pen. Last year, it was like a computer game. It was like a quest. It was a feat of mental gymnastics just to get to the movie in time.

If you look closely at this photo, you can see "PLEASE FIX FESTIVAL PROGRAMME" written in red pen. This is one of the forty-seven versions of the same request that I wrote (literally - I saw forty-seven films and I filled in a form for each of them). Like so:

Which brings me to the problem with having a full festival pass: it enables you to go to everything. And yes, if you go to twenty films over 19 days, you have justified the $300 ticket, BUT...

If someone says "Buy this credit card for three hundred bucks - now, go to your favourite shop. The credit card is unlimited."

What are you going to do?

You're going to go completely bezerk and buy as much stuff as you can. You'll be buying things in a size 24 JUST IN CASE YOU MEET SOMEONE who is a size 24.

So, you want to see EVERYTHING (with a few exceptions, the sight of which fill you with enormous relief) because you CAN.

Greed, I suppose, is what I'm describing. Film greed. One very time-consuming sin.

Let the games begin....

So I was riding my bike into the sunset the other day (literally, straight into the sunset - I know what those flat earth guys were on about - sometimes it feels like you're going to ride straight over) and I remembered something.

I remembered the main difference between riding a bike and driving a car or walking. It's not the lactic acid in your thighs. It's not the lack of a dashboard and a glovebox or an ipod and an umbrella.

I was riding my bike into the sunset and I looked up and I remembered! The greatest thing about riding a bicycle is that you CAN look up. You can look up and take in the whole sky and the entire 180 degree view of the universe and you won't have an accident or fall over or crane your neck peering through half an inch of windscreen.

It's an unreal thing to be able to do. There really is no other way to travel, at least not for the truly self-righteous such as myself. "Yes, everyone," I think as I ride along, "I am getting excercise AND helping the environment AND getting from A to B, all for a few hundred bucks I otherwise would have spent on petrol, thus promoting the oil market and continuing the divisive global resource war which the government today admitted was the reason we are at war in Iraq! Huzzah! What are you fools doing in your four wheeled horror boxes? You can't even see the sunset, you complacent boxed-up morons!"

Bear in mind, until a week or so ago, I myself was a boxed-up moron of the highest order.

Thank you again to the prince among men who sold me my freedom at a bargain price. Want some? Go here.

Meanwhile, I'm counting down the days to the film festival, to and from which I will of course cycle. Presuming my joy extends that far into winter, which is a noble presumption indeed.

I'm in the library. I'm going to go and do some work so I can meet my appointment with this evening's sunset. Hooroo!

We got our film festival tickets today (last day to get the early bird tickets, so hurry up kids)...

Last year, I saw about four films a day.

This year, I intend to beat my previous record. How I am going to afford this, given it will require me to take time off my already infrequent day job, is one of those "play-it-by-ear" kind of scenarios.

I realise this means that most of my year has so far been taken up with festivals. April and May were the comedy festival, June was the Sydney Writers' Festival, and July and August are the Melbourne Film Festival. How on earth I get anything else done is beyond me. Probably because getting anything done is also beyond me. I can feel The Guilt creeping sneakily back into the cracks between my debt and my lack of time to do anything productive on account of my debt.

The circle, the circle of life, as The Lion King would say.

Speaking of wasting time you don' t have enough of, here is an exciting opportunity in this excellent area of study:

Looks like our friend Dave Eggers is writing about films for The New Yorker. With Anthony Lane! Oh to be a fly on that wall. Read this.

I know I am.