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Edinburgh International Film Festival opened with an animation and the theme continued this weekend with the much anticipated premiere of Toy Story 3.

It may have lacked the magic of the opening night - three separate screenings in a busy multiplex doing little to maintain the excitement and even the characters from the film posing for photos on the red carpet, bailing out after the second wave of fans - but the film itself lived up to all the hype.

It's been 15 years since the first film - and this one moves the human characters along on the same timescale.

Thus, Andy, the little boy from the first film is off to college, and the toys fear their only options are the attic or the bin.

By accident, they end up in a local daycare centre, where they're welcomed by a new set of cast-off toys, and look forward to a new generation of children playing with them but all is not as it seems.

The film is aimed fairly and squarely at those who grew up with the films - who like Andy, will be in their 20s now - and perhaps their parents too.

In jokes

That's not to say the younger fans won't enjoy it - but there are lots of in jokes and other film references which will soar right over their heads.

A horror movie flashback, for example, when we find out why Chuckles the Clown lost his smile and the brilliant voice casting of Ned Beattie as Lotso the strawberry-scented bear.

Older film fans who recognise the dulcet tones of Superman's arch enemy Lex Luther will realise from the start that this kindly old bear isn't what he seems.

Also brilliantly funny, even without seeing his rubber faced gestures, is Michael Keaton as Ken - as in Ken and Barbie, complete with dream house, walk-in wardrobe and constant protests of "I'm not a girls' toy".

And Timothy Dalton as a would-be thespian hedgehog may have the tiniest of cameos but threatens to steal the show.

Set-piece chases

There's a lovely joke about Buzz Lightyear being reset and returning as a Spanish toy - a knowing nod to the international marketing franchise the toys from the film have become - and there's some great set-piece chases and narrow escapes, not least a plunge into a landfill furnace - where the toys are left holding hands, grimly facing the end.

I'm sure I wasn't the only adult to wonder if they were about to end the story in the darkest way possible.

Then again, that's the thing about seeing the film before anyone else does - and I'm not telling you what happens!

Suffice to say, there is scope for a sequel but I understand there's little appetite for that at Pixar.

Indeed there was news of their next big feature from two of the film's animators who attended the Edinburgh premiere.

They're working on a brand new title called Brave - which is set in Scotland, based on a fairytale The Bear and The Bow, and voiced by Reece Witherspoon.

It'll open in 2012 and I'm sure Hannah McGill at the film festival will have her eye on that one.

I don't know whether it was the venue - Edinburgh's Festival Theatre, transformed into a 1,500-seater cinema - or the film - Sylvain Chomet's charming love letter to Edinburgh, The Illusionist - but the was the most glamourous to date.

Hundreds of people waited outside for a glimpse of Sir Sean Connery, Sir Patrick Stewart, American Ferrera, Jason Issacs and Britt Ekland.

And in the absence of stars from the film, they were entertained by showgirls, stiltwalkers and striped-suited acrobats - all lovingly recreated from Chomet's film.

Chomet himself was delighted. He first came to Edinburgh in 2003 for the premiere of Belleville Rendezvous and liked it so much he stayed.

He spent five years here, setting up a studio in the capital and beginning the drawings for The Illusionist, which he relocated from Paris and Prague to Paris, Edinburgh and Iona.

So to return to Scotland - with his family (including two children born in Scotland - his "Scottish souvenirs") for the opening premiere, was something of a thrill.

The film itself is a treat - although there's a brief hitch at the start before the curtains open to reveal the screen (a strange but undeliberate echo of the film's opening titles).

The attention to detail is amazing, from the distinctive wood panelled pawnbrokers on Queen Street (with its name cheekily changed to Blair and Brown) to the chip shop selling everything deep-fried (salad - not available; full scottish breakfast, in batter).

A colleague notes an anachronism in the black cabs - which he claims are too modern for 1959 - but it's a minor quibble in a film with so much attention to each loving detail.

It's darker and more melancholic than expected. The vaudeville days are in their last gasp, and there's little call for The Illusionist or his old-fashioned friends (the clown is suicidal, the ventriliquist, a drunk).

You'd expect nothing less of Jacques Tati, on whose script the film is based.

The nostalgia spills over afterwards into the opening night party.

Magicians and showgirls mingle with the party-goers. The city centre venue - and the fact that all 1,500 guests get to see the film together (previously, it required four separate screenings with film-makers having to shuffle between them) - gives the whole event a much more laid-back feel.

Jason Isaacs shares a bag of chips with some Harry Potter fans.

Britt Ekland is given a crash course in playing the bagpipes.

Sir Sean Connery can't resist joining the band for a singsong as he leaves the party. Eventually it's his dimunitive but determined wife Micheline who persuades him to go.

"It's better than Cannes," says Chomet as he leaves, which is surely sacriledge from the mouth of a Frenchman.

But if he's right, it could be the start of a very enjoyable fortnight.

When he launched the Glasgow Boys exhibition back in April, Kelvingrove champion and avid collector Lord MacFarlane of Bearsden, was convinced there were many more works of art out there.

"You only have to look at the lists of paintings exhibited at the time to see there are least 100 unaccounted for," he says.

"There are probably lofts and attics in the west end of Glasgow which have Glasgow Boys works tucked away and this exhibition may give a reason to bring them out."

Two and a half months and 36,000 visitors later, and the Glasgow Boys exhibition is going strong but no sign of any of those missing paintings.

When I meet Lord Macfarlane again, he's still upbeat about finding them.

"There's one work by Alexander Roche, which is the size of Guthrie's A Highland Funeral, which is huge.

"It's never been seen in public. And if works as large as that can be hidden away, it opens up all sorts of possibilities about what's out there," he says.

And while they haven't uncovered any paintings, they've at least found out a bit more about the people in some of the paintings.

Prue Whyte, who lives in London, got in touch to say her grandfather is the small boy in Guthrie's aforementioned Highland Funeral.

"My great grandfather was a dentist, and an amateur artist. He had his own studio in Helensburgh. Guthrie didn't have a studio, my great grandfather did, so he used his studio and his children as models."

As well as Prue's grandfather, nine-year-old John, his sister Kristina was used for another famous picture - To Pastures New - which features her herding geese.

The Whyte family even managed to round up a goose, although Guthrie finished the painting - with Kristina - in a more rural setting.

Prue and her family only realised the connections after the death of her own father in the 1980s.

"It is amazing to know the people in these very significant paintings are your family."

Senior curator Jean Walsh says the Whytes aren't the only family to get in touch.

"We always knew these were real people with real lives, but we're able to put lots of extra details in now.

"Like the fact the children in the painting Playmates were all members of the Anderson family.

"Guthrie may have seen them walking back and forwards on their way to school, and decided to paint them. they look quite glum, and it's obviously cold, and in winter, which explains why they do look glum."

It wasn't all glumness though.

According to family members, Guthrie's mother stayed at Cockburnspath while he painted and rustled up milk and cucumber sandwiches for his models - on white bread, which was unheard of at the time.

But mystery still surrounds one of Guthrie's subjects.

Old Wullie, who appears in several of Guthrie's paintings from Kirkcudbright has yet to be identified, despite his distinctive sideburns and hat, and obvious practical abilities when it comes to gardening.

Curators hope someone will be able to reveal his identity before the exhibition is out.

Critics have predicted the decline of the Fringe for well over a decade now.

The recession, the size of the event and competition from other festivals are all cited as factors.

But far from declining, the Fringe continues to expand - up by 17% on the number of shows staged last year.

The wee canapés on offer at the launch are in marked contrast to the bizarre feast that the Fringe has become.

From the big brand names - Alan Cumming, Dizzee Rascal, Paul Merton to the unusual combinations - Scottish Opera and burlesque specialists to Club Noir.

Exotic delicacies sit, waiting to be tried, alongside the more predictable fare which is served up every year.

Choose carefully - cultural indigestion is no laughing matter.

Obvious highlights so far - although with a telephone directory sized programme, it'll take weeks to read it all - include Unfinished Business, a new play about the Lockerbie disaster and Fair Trade, a new Emma Thompson backed play about sex trafficking in Britain.

The Wire's Clark Peters returns with his show Five Guys Named Moe and Scottish company Grid Iron return to the festival with an earlier hit
- Decky Does a bronco - which is set in a swingpark.

It's not just the artists who're broadening their horizons.

One of the fringe's longest-standing promoters William Burdett Coutts of Assembly Theatre will celebrate his 30th year at the festival by branching into Princes Street Gardens.

Not just the Ross bandstand either, but a third spiegeltent, with space for 500, and a new social hub in the heart of the city.

And don't forget the enthusiastic amateurs who'll make their debut at this year's Fringe, some from the most unlikely quarters.

After decades of performing Flanders and Swann's hippopotamus song in private, Cardinal Keith o'brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has decided to go public.

He'll perform the number with The Really Terrible Orchestra at a performance in the Metropolitan Cathedral in August.

While some may raise an eyebrow at such a senior cleric appearing in the midst of this sprawling, uncensored smorgasbord (alongside shows like Spank and I Was A Teenage Rent Boy) he has a simple explanation.

"I've witnessed the Fringe all these years and watched more and more people coming along and more and more people joining in. The RTO asked me and I suppose that makes me their RTS - a really terrible singer- but that's fine by me."

Last weekend, I attended the Scottish Design awards, a glitzy and glamorous event in Glasgow's Crowne Plaza Hotel, where the leading lights of architecture and design were honoured for a variety of work.

From Malcolm Fraser's impressive new headquarters for Scottish Ballet, which won two awards, to an elegant compost shed in an Edinburgh garden, the event suggested an industry in a relatively healthy state, despite the recession.

There were of course categories where the work was sparser, and no awards were made at all, but that comes with the territory in any small country.

Look at the Scottish Baftas, which often have to shuffle the entries to cover patches of low employment. The design industry is no different.

What events such as the Design Awards achieve is a chance to talk about the work of the last year, to ponder why Fraser's Scottish Ballet HQ won two awards here, but made neither the Andrew Doolan RIAS or RIBA shortlists.

To admire the often unsung work of design companies, and give them some credit for their part in the industry.

To honour longstanding practitioners - this year, it was the Glasgow team of Dick Cannon and Tom Elder, who've been working together since 1980 - and to give everyone a chance to do a little networking between the backslapping.

All of which makes it all the more baffling, that Carnyx, the publishing house behind the Scottish Design Awards, also run the Carbuncle awards.

The awards, which first began five years ago, are the polar opposite of the Scottish Design awards.

Apparently driven by the public - who are encouraged to nominate in categories such as Most Dismal Town or Worst Planning Decision - they've created a stir for the worst possible reasons.

While the organisers insist their aim is to get the wider public discussing architecture and design, the early winners - Airdrie (twice) and Coatbridge - suggested that far from tackling town planners, architects and designers, they were actually just taking a potshot at town centres - who needed investment and regeneration, not a "Plook on a Plinth".

A number of key figures in the design industry have spoken out against the awards.

Others have cut their ties all together.

Last year, leading Scottish architect Alan Dunlop, resigned from the board of the company's design magazine - then named, Prospect, now renamed Urban Realm - because of his doubts over the legitimacy of the awards.

Many more voiced their concerns privately at last week's awards.

Carnyx say they have plans to restyle the awards - to make them fairer and it's true this week's shortlist of East Kilbride, John O'Groats, Inverness, Denny and Lochgelly, with the exception of the latter, highlights a lack of design potential, rather than inward investment but it's also been the final straw for architects in the Highlands - who've issued their own shortlist of good buildings.

They, like previous critics, say the competition fails to understand the wider issues of bad planning decisions - and doesn't seriously advance the debate.

Even the organisers, forced to trawl shopping centres in search of passers-by to accept their ugly award, seem to have realised that.

With a bit of luck, they'll also realise it requires more design, and fewer dismal towns.

Eagled-eyed motorists on the A1 may have spotted an unusual sight amongst the sheds and warehouses of the Macmerry Industrial Estate at Tranent.

Towering above the rooftops is a giant crouching man, which even on the greyest day, offers a fantastic silhouette against the skyline.

This is the latest work from Antony Gormley - best known for the Angel of the North - and the closest he's come, in terms of scale, to that work.

He made contact with Had Fab Ltd in East Lothian after a number of other companies told him his project was unworkable.

With 5,000 randomly orientated elements in a variety of angle-sections connected by 547 nodes and 14,000 bolts, the work is complex as well as big.

And while the scale didn't bother a company used to designing sub stations and electricity pylons, they did find the design a challenge.

"I didn't say we couldn't do it," says Had Fab's managing director Simon Harrison," but a lot of people did and even our fabricators, who're used to very complicated projects, had their doubts at the beginning."

But they did it and have spent the last few weeks assembling the work.

Antony Gormley was there to see for himself today, as was a delegation from Holland, where the work will be shipped shortly. It'll be part of a public art commission at Lelystad on the Zuiderzee coast, east of Amsterdam.

Dismantling will begin on Monday, despite the growing interest in the project from the local community.

The company have had so many enquiries about the giant in their yard that they even staged an open day to let the public get up close and personal. Hundreds attended, and the opening hours had to be extended.

But fans of Gormley's work will have to settle for the more modest figures striding through the Water of Leith, which he's made for the National Galleries of Scotland.

One is already in place at Leith Docks. The other five figures in 6Times will be installed in the next few weeks ahead of the official launch at the end of June.

And the crouching giant in Tranent? He'll disappear from the skyline as quickly as he appeared.

But keep your eyes peeled off the coast of Holland for a work of art genuinely made in Scotland from girders.