Fang to rights
Tim Burton's Frankenweenie – a stop-motion, black-and-white ode to the horror films of his youth – opened the 56th BFI London film festival last week. It was bursting with every horror reference you could think of, as young Victor Frankenstein brings his dead dog Sparky back to life with an experiment for the school science fair.
Burton has lovingly crafted his references – doesn't everything in stop motion require hours of planning and thought? – but a little bat told me that he has actually overlooked one crucial aspect of film-making. In one scene the boy's parents are watching a horror movie on TV as he creeps back from the pet cemetery having dug up his dead pup. The parents (voiced by Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short) are cuddling on the sofa in front of what turns out to be the 1958 Hammer Horror version of Dracula, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and, of course, restored by BFI and Hammer in 2007. However, I understand that Burton has not cleared the rights for the use of his two clips of Dracula.
My man with the garlic whispered to me amid the gothic caves of the opening night party: "It's hard to believe, but I'm sure the clearance has got lost between various different factions. One side leaving it up to the other as usual. But I can assure you, Hammer know nothing about it…" Oops.
Bronson Webb, Agyness Deyn and Richard Coyle at the LFF gala screening of Pusher. Photograph: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images Agyness happiness
Former model Agyness Deyn is happily married to actor Giovanni Ribisi and loves living in Hollywood now. She was, however, thrilled to be back on her old stomping ground of Hackney for the premiere of the UK remake of Danish crime thriller Pusher, in which she plays, in her debut acting performance, a pole dancer with a heart, Flo. She does it very well – so well, in fact, that I hear Pusher's original director, Nicolas Winding Refn, is writing a follow-up movie for her character. "I think she's brilliant," Nicolas told me. "There's much more to her in Pusher that we had to leave out but she's so beautiful on screen. She could have been a silent movie star."
Despite moving to Hollywood, Agyness will often be back in Britain as the film parts roll in. She's shooting Sunset Song for Terence Davies in January, opposite Peter Mullan, who will play her father in the adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's tough Scottish tale. I jokingly mentioned that this being a Terence Davies movie, she'd probably be roped into a pub singalong and she squealed: "Yes, we just did a script reading the other day, and there's a singalong. How did you know?" Some things are just so reassuring, don't you think?
Harvey's no free spirit
Harvey Weinstein has promised to single-handedly stamp out internet piracy. In his tough-talking yet warmly delivered LFF keynote speech to the industry at BFI Southbank, Harvey swore that, after the US elections, he would be getting together with internet companies such as Apple and Google and, on what he said would be "a day of reckoning", would be making them "an offer they can't refuse".
Harvey likened the free availability of films and other content on the internet to going into a clothes store and taking some shirts, "because we believe in free shirts. It's a nonsensical idea." He then treated the audience to clips of some of his favourite movies, many of which featured John Wayne, including Rio Bravo, Fort Apache and They Were Expendable.
Harvey also took a swipe at Clint Eastwood following the actor's recent appearance at the Republican convention. "I love the man, but I just don't like his politics. He's got it wrong this time around. I liked his new movie Trouble With the Curve but," he said, referring to Eastwood's mock debate with an invisible President Obama, "maybe it should have been called 'Trouble with the Chair'."
Spike Island? Nice one
Spike Island brought the 1990s flooding back and had the LFF buzzing. Mat Whitecross's film about five lads trying to get into the famous Stone Roses concert is a lively and enjoyable trip, and a welcome lads' subculture movie that isn't about football. However, I hear there are plans for subtitles, or at least an accompanying glossary, when the film hits America. Trash himself struggled with some of the Manc accents but I revelled in hearing those quaint old expressions from a memorable era when it was cool up north: sound, nice one, kecks, buzzin', draw, soz, tomoz – and the one I'd completely forgotten, rave on.
Five cool picks this week
No: Chilean maestro Pablo Larraín won Cannes's directors' fortnight with this brilliant study of Pinochet-era politics, starring Gael García Bernal as an ad man, and the great Alfredo Castro as his corruptible boss.
My Brother the Devil: tender, nimble and smart British urban debut from Sally El Hosaini, about two brothers navigating life on a Hackney estate.
The Central Park Five: stirring classic documentary-making from legend Ken Burns, focusing on five Harlem youths accused of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989.
The Manxman: the last of the BFI's nine Hitchcock silent restorations, this sweeping romance forms the archive gala, with live performance of Stephen Horne's new score for "piano, fiddle, viola, oboe and folk harp".
Horses of God: terrific, vibrant look at young radicalisation. Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch's film has a touch of City of God about it, but with a more unsettlingly relevant edge.
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