One of the annoying things about the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) website at www.edfilmfest.org.uk is that you can’t tell if there are any tickets left for a screening until you’re half way through the ticket booking process. Even then, there’s no way to tell how close a screening is to being sold out, or to check if a previously sold-out screening now has returned tickets available.
So, film-going ladies and gentlemen, I present the EIFF Ticket Availability Checker, a mashup of data publicly available (but hard to find) on www.edfilmfest.org.uk and boxoffice.filmhousecinema.com.
Check it out by visiting www.ixalon.net/eiff
If you find any problems or have any suggestions, please contact me or leave a comment here.
Published on
June 19, 2009 in
General.
Time for another off-topic blog post! 
This time on the 63rd annual Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).
I’m not sure if it’s my taste in films, the excellent work of the festival staff, or a general trend in filmmaking, but this year’s line up at the festival seems pretty spectacular. There’s been a few films every day so far that I’ve been keen to see, where during previous years, I’d be lucky to find a handful over the whole festival. I think the success may be down to all these, but also that the festival is now reaping the rewards of moving from August to June. 2008 was the first June festival, and it felt a little subdued; I think film makers, delegates and the public didn’t know what to expect.
Thankfully it didn’t take us long to get used to the change, and with June being a quiet time in the Film Festival calendar yet also near the start of the summer blockbuster season, there seems to be a lot of films vying for attention. There still isn’t quite the buzz that’s associated with the main Edinburgh Festival season in August, but the line up of films (and the simplified logistics of getting around the city) makes up for it. Continue reading ‘Edinburgh International Film Festival’
First up, it’s pretty unusual for me to post about politics; I normally keep such thoughts to myself or moan about the general ineptitude of politicians to friends and colleagues, however I’m a keen follower of what’s going on regarding UK politics, as it has the opportunity to be an exciting time of change.
Today a report was published by the Calman Commission; who were tasked by the opposition parties of the Scottish Parliament, with the support of the UK Government, to look at the relationship of Scotland within the United Kingdom. This relationship or “devolution settlement” is already a very misunderstood and highly politicised thing, which pretty much everyone will admit is so riddled with problems and patchy half-thought-out legislation that something needs done. I’m neutral when it comes to both party politics and on the independance debate; as with most things there are reasons for, reasons against and a lot of spinning in between – but one way or another, the problems with the status-quo need addressed. Continue reading ‘The Calman Commission Report’
Last night VidZone, an interesting new free service cropped up on the PS3, curtesy of the lovely people as SCEE and Rants Ltd. VidZone in a nutshell is a music video channel where you choose the music; you queue up tracks from VidZone’s playlists, search by artist, song or genre, and build up your own playlists.
Despite a few teething problems, common to any new free service these days, VidZone works remarkably well. On my connection videos start streaming within a couple of seconds, there’s a good selection for a fledgling service, the video quality is decent for the majority of videos and the audio quality is as good as any other streaming service or music channel. There are however a number of minor niggles: Continue reading ‘PS3 VidZone Critique’
