CineSkinny Reloaded

So it’s official. The 2013 edition of Glasgow Film Festival will be the biggest yet, with 368 screenings and events taking place in 27 venues spread across - and in one case below - the city. The sheer volume of movies on offer makes deciding what to see on any given day a bit like the dilemma faced by Brangelina trying to choose the next adorable orphan to adopt. If only there was some sort of daily guide to help you navigate the festival’s cornucopia of film strands and events...

Step forward The CineSkinny, back for its fifth GFF, to offer some guidance. Published each day of the festival by The Skinny’s crack team of cinephiles, online or in print, it’s your one-stop-shop for festival information.

You probably don’t need us to tell you that Park Chan-wook’s Stoker is going to be epic, that Ryan Gosling looks dreamy in The Place Beyond the Pines or that enough blood is going to be spilled at FrightFest to make La Tomatina look like a toppled Bloody Mary — although we'll do that too. The CineSkinny's raison d'etre is to unearth the deeper cuts; to lead you through the kind of unchartered cinematic territory that you might not want to venture into on a whim. As you read this, The Skinny's film team are working their way through dozens of exotic titles to let you know exactly where to spend your hard-earned dosh come February 14.

For example, we’ll be telling you that Flemish oddity The Fifth Season (20-21 Feb) should be filed alongside Melancholia as one of the great end of the world movies of the 2010s; that Olivier Assayas’ Something in the Air (17-18 Feb) is the most effortlessly hip and deeply humane coming-of-age film since Dazed and Confused; that the James McAvoy-starring Welcome to the Punch (24 Feb) looks like the cinematic love child of Michael Mann’s Heat and John Woo’s Hard Boiled; and that the pick of the New Brazilian Cinema strand, Neighbouring Sounds (19-20 Feb), announces Kleber Mendonça Filho as one of the most exciting new voices on the world film scene.

But, like The Skinny, The CineSkinny is more than just a consumer guide. We’ve been ferreting in the GFF programme to find the most interesting stories and features to entertain and delight during your downtime between screenings. As you grab a beer in GFT's gorgeous Art Deco bar you can read the lowdown on Park Circus, the Glasgow-based distribution company that this year resurrects forgotten gem Living Apart Together (24 Feb), a celluloid wormhole to early eighties Glasgow (all white shoes, brown pubs and cheesy nighclubs choked in a fog of Embassy Regal) that manages to be retro-cool despite the fact its star, B.A. Robertson, is sporting a hairdo so awful he makes No Country For Old Men’s Anton Chigurh look like a member of One Direction. We’ll be singing the praises of that baby-faced gangster Jimmy Cagney, who's celebrated in an eight-film retrospective this year. And one of our music-heads will help explain why Big Star, the subject of Drew DeNicola’s doc Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (21 & 24 feb), are a particularly big deal to the Glasgow music scene.

All this, plus we’ll be tracking down some of the directing, writing and acting talent behind the most interesting titles in the programme and asking them to spill their guts on the films they’re bringing to Glasgow.

You’ll be able to pick copies of our daily editions throughout the festival at the GFT and other participating venues or read/download The CineSkinny online at this very site. And if you find yourself in a screening sat next to a bleary-eyed film journo frantically taking notes on the film at hand in between sips of Red Bull, that’ll be us. Please say hello.