In the film, Depp plays John Dillinger, a 1930s Robin Hood-style bank robber who was enormously popular with the public – unsurprisingly, given that the USA was in the depths of the Great Depression at the time. Bale plays Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent assigned by J. Edgar Hoover (played fantastically here by Billy Cudrup) to catch him. It’s very fast-paced and Mann packs in a lot of exquisitely choreographed machine gun battles, but there’s something about Public Enemies that never really comes together. Its many strands exist in parallel and when they intersect, there’s no cohesion; the tension between Depp and his pursuer should be palpable throughout the film (even though they only share one scene together) but they’re curiously detached, both failing to invest much in the relationship. Compare this, say, to No Country for Old Men, in which Javier Bardem’s psychotic killer and Tommy Lee Jones’ Sheriff never actually meet, but yet somehow the relationship between the chased and the chaser is both moving and disturbing.

In the wake of such disappointment, I was more than a little surprised to see that it had been given two five star reviews, from Empire magazine and Film 4. According to Empire, it is “intelligent and absorbing”, but I wouldn’t call it either of those things. For me, the most absorbing element was the stylish cinematography, and even that was at times impressive, at others just a little irritating and empty. I didn’t think it was especially intelligent either; there’s a half-hearted attempt at the start to make Dillinger’s love interest, Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard), seem like a strong woman but all signs of her independent streak are vanquished when he gives her a fur coat and, to the sound of dramatic music, she is won over and is transformed into a background figure. She is, we’re supposed to believe, Dillinger’s reason for living but the shallow-ness of their love story makes this difficult to digest.

Broadsheet reviews have been more temperate, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw giving it three stars and both The Times and the Telegraph awarding it just two. But my favourite review of Public Enemies comes from the always brilliant Little White Lies – the best film magazine in the UK, in my opinion. I agree with LWL’s Anton Bitel that there’s much to admire in the contemporary parallels that the indirectly film draws between the 1930s and the late 2000s, but that this relevance is undermined by the implausability of its romance and the often over-stylised camera work. At its heart, this is a work with great potential – Dillinger’s dramatic real life story and Mann’s pedigree as a filmmaker assure that. But this potential is ultimately unrealised, resulting in a flawed plot and a film that takes itself too seriously to be fully engaging.

In any case, I think my decision to give Mary and Max a go was definitely a success. It’s a lovely film from start to finish, not just in terms of the painstakingly loving way in which it’s been made, but the delightfully shambolic story as well. It’s a stop-motion animation film from Australian animator Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar for his short film Harvie Krumpet in 2004, and – as with nearly every stop-motion animated feature I’ve seen – it’s the small details that combine to form a very absorbing film.

The story starts in the 1970s, when Mary – a little Australian girl with no friends and a birthmark on her forehead ‘the colour of poo’ – finds Max Horowitz’s address in her local post office directory, and starts writing to the lonely, middle-aged New Yorker who she later finds out has Asperger’s Syndrome and clinical depression. Their relationship develops across a period that spans over a decade and would seem a little far-fetched were it not for the fact that it is based on a true story; Elliot himself had an American penpal called Max with Asperger’s Syndrome (who knows all about the film and approves!), although the moving ending doesn’t bear resemblence to real events.

One of the many things I loved about this film was its muted colour scheme. Mary’s world is all browns and beiges, while Max’s is an uncompromising grey. Indeed, the only bursts of colour we see that are part of his existence are things that Mary has sent him: a brown chocolate bar, a red pompom and a childish drawing of herself. It all helps to create an authentic sense of the helplessness and suffocation that the characters feel in their daily lives, as well as underlining the seriousness of the themes it attempts to tackle; alcoholism, mental illness, substance abuse and suicide all play very strong roles in the film.

At the same time, the entire movie is encased in an atmosphere of such tender humour that it’s hard not to laugh even when you perhaps shouldn’t be. The only real drawback was that I didn’t think it felt like a cohesive narrative in parts – to me at least. In some senses, it felt like several short films had been pieced together and though the whole they create is both moving and memorable, I think a bit more fluidity would have given it that extra punch.

After my recent musings about how no one writes letters anymore, it’s nice to see a fictional work (albeit one set before the days of email) tackle a story that uses letter-writing as the primary plot driver. If Mary and Max gets a distributor in the UK (I really hope it does!), I think it’ll be something that appeals to a range of film lovers, even those that don’t usually choose to see animation. I’d also be really interested to see what Adam Elliot comes up with next… though, judging by stop-motion’s usual years-long timescale, I imagine it’ll be some time yet.

The first (back in March) was great. There was some very entertaining poetry from Tim Turnbull, Dan Rhodes read from his book Anthropology and Joe Dunthorne also read some captivating selections of his own work which still circulate around my mind today. Then there was a set from local blues-style band the Black Diamond Express, who I’ve seen play a few times and never been disappointed (incidentally, they’re hosting their own ‘Vaudeville Spectacular’ at The Ark during the Fringe, which should be fun). Best of all, there were exclusive filmed readings from Nick Cave from his new book The Death of Bunny Munroe, soon to be published by Canongate, with (if I remember correctly) original music from Warren Ellis in the background.

Last night was the second Irregular outing and while it was a lot of fun, I don’t think it quite had the same energy or excitement as the first. The band, Modernaire, were an amazing live act and I’d love to see them again (I even bought their CD which, predictably, isn’t as peppy but still good). I thought poet/singer Salena Goddon was a great compere but I’m not sure the crowd quite warmed to her irreverant delivery (I don’t think the late start helped much either). Then there were the two novelists, Richard Milward and Trevor Byrne. I’ve been reading quite a lot about Milward recently, though I’ve never read any of his books (Apples and Ten Storey Love Song), and apparently last night was the launch of Byrne’s first novel, Ghosts and Lightning. They both read well and their extracts were very engaging, but I think in both cases they benefited from being read in the accents in which their characters were speaking – a Middlesborough accent in Milward’s case, and a Dublin one in Byrne’s. Still, the event’s definitely made me more interested in reading their work.

Hopefully I’ll be here for the next Irregular night (I assume in September?) and I’m already looking forward to seeing who’s on the next bill. Fingers crossed it’ll turn into an unmissable Edinburgh fixture before the year is out.

In the film, penned by author Dave Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida, expectant parents Burt and Verona hop from city to city in North America visiting friends and trying to find the perfect place to raise their child. Where they will ultimately choose is made screamingly obvious halfway through, and there are some painfully twee moments that will bore anyone who cringes automatically when confronted by overly-sweet sentiment (like myself).

But in between its dull beginning and slow ending, there are some wonderfully memorable moments. They encounter a little boy in Tucson who comically admits to trying to suffocate a baby, and he has one of the most wickedly funny lines in the whole film. And while Maya Rudolph is touching as pregnant Verona, it’s John Krasinski that really fulfils the comic potential of Away We Go’s more sharply-written scenes. I think he’s great as Jim in the US version of The Office, and here there’s something inherently comical about his whole performance that makes him very watchable.

I won’t be in a hurry to watch Away We Go again, but I do think it was a good opening choice – not just for the attention it attracted towards the festival, but because its charming balance of Hollywood glitz and tender storyline (not to mention its unchallenging script) appears to me the ideal way to ease devout festival-goers into the rest of the programme, especially with the undoubtedly harrowing Antichrist still to come.

Hopefully I’ll get a ticket when the box office opens on Monday. I’m really interested hear Simon speak – not just because I love The Wire and the Iraq drama he produced last year Generation Kill (on Channel 4 later this year, I believe), but because I don’t agree with a lot of his comments on the future of internet journalism so it will be great to have the opportunity to ask him about this in person (if I’m lucky).

Other highlights at the book festival this year include disgraced Oxford poetry professor Ruth Padel, who will be opening the show, and Neil Gaiman who will be talking about his fantastic (in every sense of that word) back catalogue of graphic novels and books. He’s doing a second talk too with Ian Rankin, who is launching his first ever graphic novel, and I’m betting that will be one of the festival’s most exciting events.

I also love the look of some of the writers workshops at the book festival, particularly Zinnie Harris’ Writing for Theatre event on August 30th. I’m also going to make an effort to see Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury and ‘Voices of Kolkata’, both of which I think will be useful for my future investigations into postcolonial literature.

But as much as I’m looking forward to these events, I’m also a little sceptical of the set-up of some book festival occasions. Often, they work very well – but a few times, I’ve attended talks in which the ‘chair’ of the discussion between author and audience has been a little too adulatory towards the writer they’re presiding over. I don’t think this is useful for anyone, but hopefully these incidents will be few and far between in 2009. In any case, I’ll simply be grateful for warm, bright weather – Charlotte Square really is beautiful when bathed in sunlight.

One of my highlights of last year was Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved, so it’s great to see his new show – Stefan Golaszewski is a Widower – is on at the Traverse in August. Also at the Traverse will be The Doubtful Guest from Hoipolloi, who were behind Hugh Hughes in Floating (2006) and Story of a Rabbit (2007); he’s back this year too, in 360 at the Pleasance. Then there’s Ella Hickson’s Precious Little Talent, which promises to be a great follow-up to last year’s Fringe First award-winning Eight (I interviewed Ella a couple of weeks ago for a feature that’s going to be in Fest’s preview guide and it sounds very charming).

One thing I am really looking forward to is Grid Iron’s new work Barflies, an adaptation of Charles Bukoswki’s stories, that will be presented in the Barony Bar on Broughton Street, just around the corner from my house – it’ll be great to see one of my local pubs being turned into a full-on Fringe venue. Lynn Ruth Miller – the oldest performer at the Fringe last year at 74 – is back too with more life stories at a very popular free Fringe event and the Penny Dreadfuls, whose comedy spoof-thriller Aeneas Faversham Forever was hilarious in 2008, are back as well with something supposedly more modern: The Never Man. If you’ve never seen them before, here’s a taste:

Local musical heroes Broken Records are back too; I’ve seen them play in Edinburgh a few times over the last couple of years but I bet they’ll sound great in the Queen’s Hall. And David Byrne? The Playhouse is really near my house so I might try and get a glimpse of him after the gig (although that was my plan when Bob Dylan played there a few months ago – and Tom Waits last summer – and I failed both times).

It’s an absurdly small selection of acts from a vast programme (over 2000 shows) but I’ll update gradually as the weeks go on – promise.

The ending is no secret but if you haven’t seen the film – which is an exploration of provisional IRA volunteer Bobby Sands’ hunger strike in prison in 1981 – and you want to remain totally in the dark, it might be best to stop reading here.

I love the way Hunger is divided into thirds: there’s the beginning, which introduces the conflict’s many facets without uttering more than around 50 words while doing so. Then, after more than half an hour of what feels like total deprivation of all the audience’s senses except sight, there’s a staggering scene in which Bobby Sands – played so elegantly by Michael Fassbender – talks to a priest about planning his hunger strike and their conversation is a stark contrast to the quiet sound of what has preceded it. I have a feeling this scene was shot all in one take (not sure though); its understated brilliance and unrelenting energy is really something to behold. Following this is the climactic end in which Sands’ steadily deteriorates. Here, I love the way the minute attention to detail McQueen pays at the beginning of the film – the falling snowflakes, the bloody hands that need to be washed at the end of every day – turns sour; the focus is on Sands’ bedsores, how blood from them seeps through his sheets and onto the mattress. There’s even an agonising close-up of his doctor painstakingly applying ointment onto his open wounds.

But perhaps my favourite part of the whole film was how the characters are unveiled. The majority of people with a desire to see Hunger will most likely have heard or read of the praise surrounding Michael Fassbender’s performance, or at least seen a trailer, before actually viewing the film. Inevitably, I spent much of the beginning of the film looking for its star, who doesn’t actually emerge until at least 40 minutes into it. When he does, he’s very slowly unveiled. All the prisoners in the jail featured in Hunger grow their hair and beards in protest at prison regulations (if there was another reason, I didn’t detect it). As a result, they’re forced to have their hair cut and beards shaved every so often by the prison guards. One indistinguishable man is forced out of his cell and his head secured on a stool so that he can be sheared; with every snip of the scissors, Fassbender’s face is revealed. It’s a very painful scene but a wonderful moment of film making.

The only thing I’d really criticise is its somewhat whimsical ending. Then again, it does capture a romantic facet of nationalism in what’s a ceaselessly unromantic film.

I wonder too whether the demise of literary letters might be contributing to the decline of the epistolary form in the novel. When I was in my very early teens, one of my favourite books was Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, a novel composed in the form of letters written by a college girl to her secret benefactor, whose identity isn’t revealed until the very end. I haven’t read it since I was about 14 and I remember very little of the actual text, but I do recall absolutely loving the fact that it was written in letters – it somehow made it much more accessible to my young self. I’ve always had a weakness for epistolary novels since – Aravind Adiga’s riveting The White Tiger is probably the most modern example I can think of – but they are few and far between these days.

I’ve only read one novel composed entirely from emails sent between characters and I didn’t think it had much punch. Then again, that might have been more because it was written by Meg Cabot who wrote the Princess Diaries (its title escapes me now) and it was very flimsy and unchallenging (just what I needed at the time), rather than a weakness in the form itself. But generally, I just don’t think any book written in email form would have quite the same lyrical grace about it as one written in the form of letters. Of course, it can be successful on occasion; the beginning of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty – “One may as well begin with Jerome’s emails to his father” – is a wonderful modern mirroring of the opening line of EM Forster’s Howard’s End, “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister”. But I can’t think of any other examples just now – perhaps time will prove me wrong.

Anyway, ‘Why I Write’ is a wonderful essay, and especially so if you’re a writer. I first read it at school I think but I only really paid attention to it recently, when I started thinking more seriously about making a living from writing – or rather, non-commercial writing (as far as any writing that you hope to make money from can be non-commercial). The more I write, the more I want to know why other people write – because, apart from a compulsive desire to put thoughts to paper and a basic knowledge that I’m better at it than most other things, I’m not entirely sure why I write or why I want to write. Confused? Sometimes I am too.

‘Why I Write’ addresses the question directly, perhaps, but I think another Orwell essay – ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’ – actually says more about what it’s like to be a writer. There’s a wonderful line in it where he talks about the thought of looking for anything in his messy office giving him suicidal impulses, and I know just how he feels. There’s something about working out of your home that inspires slovenliness in staggering degrees. And while I’ve never been the most tidy of souls, I’ve got worse as I’ve started writing more and more – and definitely since I started reviewing books.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop being interested in why people write. But however many opinions I read on the subject, so far I have always found Orwell’s the most intriguing – and the most comforting. There’s a post from former Observer literary editor Robert McCrum on the Guardian Books site today which talks a bit about the ongoing debate over whether or not Orwell would blog if he was alive today. I like to think that he would have – and that his blog would have been the very best.

Plus, starting a new blog now seems somewhat timely as it’s almost time for me to start parts of my life over again. My once dreamlike plans to do a masters in english literature seem like they’ll become a reality in the next couple of months, so I’ll be picking up my stuff and moving from lovely Edinburgh – which has been my home for nearly seven years – to York, a sort of mini-Edinburgh in England, I like to think.

And since it’s now the start of what’s possibly going to be my last summer festival season as a resident in this fair city, I think I should take the opportunity to attempt to formulate my musings while I still have all this cultcha on my doorstep. So over the coming months, I’ll populate this blog with various reviews of things I’ve seen at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June and the Fringe in August, as well as anything else that comes my way – or try my best anyway!