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About the Author /

Matt makes films as well as writing about them. Although this forces him to put his money where his mouth is, his hands do most of the typing and his films are made for peanuts, leaving his mouth free to mumble overly complicated metaphors about itself.

Article

Matt Strachan 2011 Top Ten

I’m a big fan of top ten lists and their assorted brethren (best of this, top twenty that, pre-mortem 1001 something or other). They don’t have the best of

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Film Festival, Live Action

EIFF2011: Tomboy

What happens if you take Kimberly Peirce’s Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, exchange small town America for the suburbs of Paris and make Hilary

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Film Festival, Live Action

EIFF2011: Jack Goes Boating

Philip Goes Film Directing, finally, and it turns out he’s pretty darn good at it. After several years of directing theatre, predominantly (if not

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Film Festival, Live Action

EIFF2011: My Brothers

Perhaps if Paul Fraser – writing partner of choice as far as Shane Meadows is concerned, having helped pen Dead Man’s Shoes, A Room for Romeo Brass and all

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Documentary

Countdown to Zero

Even if you don’t quite buy the American version of events, it’s hard to deny that the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year was, to all intents and

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Live Action

The Messenger

The adage is such a part of the fabric of filmmaking these days, that it’s hard to know if Akira Kurosawa originated or articulately restated it when he

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Live Action

Le Quattro Volte

Inanimate objects and cinema have never been the very best of friends. Despite attempts to personify them, some better than others (Ramin Bahrani’s 18

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Live Action

Win Win

Win Win isn’t a bad way of describing director Tom McCarthy’s career behind the camera to date, although Win Nominate might be slightly more

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Animation, Film Festival

RE:PLAY Films 01

The collective DN obsession with DANIELS after Pigeons and Simple Math is something we’ll be seeking professional help for soon. It did, however,

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Music Video

Manchester Orchestra: Simple Math

Forging a compelling narrative whilst still remaining true to the spirit of a track is pretty much the Holy Grail of music promos, and it doesn’t get

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Music Video

Oser: Oh La La !

Beautiful people pasting each other with big buckets of bright technicolour gloop. In slow motion. And French. Oh là là indeed…

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Documentary

Salim Baba

In these 3D-HD-ADHD times, as film (and its audience) continues to be polarised into sofa- or spectacle-cinema, you could be forgiven for losing sight of what

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