School of Herzog

Imagine the coolest, most radical film school ever. Stop imagining. It's here: Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School. Forget your standard academic film-schoolly-type course. Apparently the director of such towering masterpieces as Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo "will not teach anything technical about filmmaking". Okay, it's not a school as such, but a series of weekend seminars that will first take place in Los Angeles but travel around the globe. The unusual topics you'll be taught include the art of lockpicking, travelling on foot and the athletic side of filmmaking.

Meanwhile, Herzog's Nic Cage-starring "remake" of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant has played Toronto International Film Festival and from initial reports, it sounds like it's an altogether different beast - funnier it seems. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman has called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans "demon-rich, loopy, fascinating and improbably entertaining" while Twitch praised it "as fine an example of gonzo filmmaking you are ever likely to come across". Yes, I'm excited.

[Sorry it's been a while but I've just returned from a rather wonderful holiday in the Big Apple! Been adjusting, sorting out and catching up with admin stuff in the last couple of days]