SO I was just in Rotterdam for the film festival which was a great hark back to the London days of the LLGFF and the LFF: camping out for 10 days in the same smoky cinemas, chatting late with producers, writers, talent, bar staff, anyone cute, anyone cute and unavailable, anyone that had a car and a driver ... you get the picture.

The festival had a strongly Asian slant (no pun intented!) and produced quite a mixed bag I thought. I was only there for a few days and three movies, hardly a good cross section but came away with some interesting observations.

I saw a movie late Friday night called Fresia which was very much of the Battle Royale genre, but this one was quite stilted acting, I came away with the sense that the director was trying to make the dialogue more poignant by interjecting long pauses. One bonus was you could take bottles of wine and glasses into the theatre :-)

Next morning (fog lifting) I saw a movie called How is your fish today? Now this movie evoked two responses in me. I'll start with the more positive: great shots of Beijing and this amazing town called Mohe, apparently the northernmost point of China. There's this great part where they're on a train to the north and there's this huge sheet of ice inside the train!!

The second: how more boring can a film get? Did the director set herself a trap? It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: the movie is about an author who writes a screenplay and uses his characters to try and escape the dull confined life he leads. The screenplay is sent back by the producer as the worst thing he's ever seen, and he then tries to re-write it by living the life of his one dimensional anti-hero.

Well the movie isn't much better! There is no empathy with the characters, the central actor just couldn't have killed his girlfriend (as the author realises 1/2 way through the movie) and I have never had an hour go so slowly I was looking at my watch thinking it had to be wrong. IN desperation I leisurely walked out to take a leak, exclaiming loudly as I exited into the beautiful morning sun 'ahh it's so boring' only to see the actor calmly observing me over a coffee and another of his interminable cigarettes. Oh well: the truth hurts.

Now the highlight of my day is this movie AFR. Can I just say I walked into this movie without reading anything about it. I like to consider myself a current affairs buff and was mildly surprised that I had never heard of this chap Anders Fogh Rasmutten who alledgedly was the Danish PM, but hey it's a small country and it doesn't make the news much! (ducking the retribution of my Danish friend Thomas!) . The movie is about the PM who has this gay relationship with a younger guy who turns out to be an anarchist. When they split up inevitably things get nasty it is ends up with the lover killing him. The movie twists and turns like a twisty turny thing and you never quite can make up your mind. Top points go to the cocky photographer who after he gets his new Leica video camera films himself cumming on a pier in slow motion!!

Basically I thought the movie was a real documentary and was electrified as it unfolded: it was so good! A bit fantastical, but they had amazing footage of this guy with all the european presidents and George Bush, loads of CNN footage etc. Anyway I felt very blond afterwards, but hey I got to feel elated for 85m - that's priceless. Go see this movie, it's brilliant.

OK, signing off more later.