It sometimes feels if you can’t move for film — and other — festivals these days but here’s one with genuine mass appeal. TCM Crime Scene 2008, sponsored by Turner Classic Movies and supported by the Evening Standard, is the seventh annual celebration of that most popular of cinematic and literary genres, the thriller.
This year’s five-day programme includes premieres of enticing new movies from America and across Europe, a tribute to French auteur Bertrand Tavernier, talks by MI5 boss turned author Stella Rimington, film historian David Thomson and countless practitioners of the thriller-writer’s art, a look behind the scenes of TV drama Spooks, and a centenary tribute to John Creasey, creator of the Toff. Something for everyone, then.
The season kicks off at BFI Southbank tonight with the premiere of Taken, a hectic chase thriller co-written by Luc Besson, directed by Pierre Morel and starring Liam Neeson as a father racing to prevent his daughter being sold into the sex trade. Later, there’s a first look at Lakewood Terrace, a psychodrama with racial overtones, directed by Neil LaBute and starring Samuel L Jackson, and a real coup for the festival’s closing gala — Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone’s ultra-realist exposé of the Neapolitan Mafia, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
There are also new thrillers from Britain and Denmark, and a twisted mystery, The Unknown Woman, from Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore. Personally, I’m looking forward to OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, which promises to send up every espionage cliché in the book.
For the more high-minded, Tavernier is awarded a mini-retrospective at the ICA, and will take part in a Q&A session after a screening of Clean Slate on the afternoon of Sat urday 27 September. Other Q&As are promised, and there is a series of daytime and early evening author events during the day and early evening at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly. This includes — at 8pm on Friday 26 September — an evening of stand-up comedy from those such as Mark Billingham, Simon Brett and Stella Duffy, who are as at home on stage as they are coming up with fiendish plots in their writerly garrets. And for those who simply can’t face leaving the house, there will be a complementary season of crime films on — where else? — TCM.
For full details and to book online go to www.tcmonline.co.uk/crimescene.