Wednesday was the first of my National School Film Week presentations and I was up early to get to the cinema in Bradford for about 9:45am. This was for This is England, the 2006 film about a young kid growing up in 1980s Britain and becoming involved with a group of skinheads. I hadn't seen it on general release and though not easy viewing, it's got some good performances and is more about the nature of belonging than it is about the racism which existed/exists. There were supposed to be about 200 kids at the Q&A afterwards, but only a fraction turned up - however there were some good questions asked and hopefully some decent answers from me. Somewhere, some street corner is crowded. Go get 'em, Mr Truant Officer!

On Thursday, the second presentation was for The Orphanage, the rather brillaint suspense movie from Spain and which was produced by Guillermo del Toro, the guy behind Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy etc. I had seen this one before, but it stood up to a second viewing and even had some of the teachers jumping out of their seats at a couple of key moments. This is my kind of 'horror' movie... very little violence and all about atmosphere. Very effective. You can keep your silly torture porn, THIS is how to do those scares properly. Had about 50 kids in the audience afterwards, though the questions leaned towards 'Who's the most famous person you've ever met?'

Friday was another early start so that I could get across to Impact to pick up the new issue (good content, but the cover printing leaves a bit to be desired, dammit) and then get back to Leeds to interview Dave Gibbons. Dave was the artist on Watchmen and is a throughly nice bloke. He's had a much more happier experience with Hollywood than Alan Moore (Watchmen's writer) and his new book Watching the Watchmen is a great look at the visual evolution of the comic - just a few months ahead of the big screen adaptation hitting cinemas. I'll be typing up that interview tomorrow to run in the next Impact - got to have it ready for Monday.

Next week should be a bit easier on the sleep-patterns and the eyes, but will be working late into the night as usual. The weather's turning colder, which means winter is on the way. Ah well, better start that Christmas shopping, packing and get ready to turn that clock back tomorrow am.