| FILMS | ABOUT US | CONTACT US | NEWS | HOME |
Butler to star in Burns movie
From The Sunday Times by Stuart MacDonald Jan 25th 2009
The long-awaited film based on the life of Scotland’s favourite son is to start filming this year
A biopic of Robert Burns, starring the Scots actor Gerard Butler, will begin shooting in Scotland this year. The £5m production, which has been beset with financial difficulties, will begin filming following the launch of a government-backed campaign to raise funding. Glasgow-born Butler, 39, has starred in blockbusters including The Phantom of the Opera and 300. The script has been written by Greenock-born Alan Sharp, who penned Rob Roy, the 1995 blockbuster starring Liam Neeson.
The film, which will be directed by Vadim Jean, a French film-maker, and produced by James Cosmo, a Scots actor, will be shot on location in Edinburgh and Burns’s native Ayrshire. Most of the budget, which includes investment from Scottish Screen, is already in place. The remainder will be raised by signing up 250 “subscribers” to the project. Each will commit a sum to the project in the same way that investors backed the publication in 1786 of the famous Kilmarnock Edition of Burns’s poetry. The success of the collection convinced Burns to stay in Scotland rather than emigrate to Jamaica, as he had planned. Alex Salmond, the first minister, will host a dinner at Edinburgh Castle in May to help raise funds.
The film, titled Burns, will be the first big-screen biopic of the poet since the 1930s. It will focus on his love affairs with his wife Jean Armour and Agnes McLehose, also known as Clarinda, an Edinburgh society hostess.
“Robert Burns is rightly regarded as Scotland’s favourite son,” said Salmond. “It would be great for Scotland if Burns could be immortalised in modern film, particularly as we mark the 250th anniversary of his birth this year and celebrate his genius through Scotland’s Year of Homecoming.”
‘The Understudy’ Wins at Avignon Film Festival
From Avignonfilmfest.com Jun 29th 2008
Press Release: 2008 Prize Winners / Communique de Presse: Gagnants des Prix 2008
The 25th Avignon Film Festival concluded on Sunday, June 29th 2008. At the Closing Ceremony attended by the festival’s Honorary President, Maria de Medeiros, and most of the filmmakers in competition, the 2008 international jury announced this year’s prizewinners...
Prix UCMF (presented by the France’s Union of Film Music Composers) for the BEST FILM SCORE was awarded to Carl Davis, for ‘The Understudy’ by Hannah Davis and David Conolly: A Mansion Pictures Production in association with Safehouse Pictures and Untold Pictures.
Faces to watch 2009
From Los Angeles Times by Charles McNulty, Theater Critic December 28th 2008
Marin Ireland - Adept at the risible or the radical
Ethereal yet grounded, actor Marin Ireland is magnetically attracted to theatrical projects that are at once ineffably abstract and vulnerably flesh and blood. Patrons of South Coast Repertory had the chance to experience her eccentric comic side last spring in Richard Greenberg's "The Injured Party." But she's revealed rawer nerve endings in darkly radical plays by Caryl Churchill ("Far Away") and Sarah Kane ("4:48 Psychosis" and in this fall's critically acclaimed New York premiere of "Blasted.")
This spring she makes her Broadway debut in Neil LaBute's "Reasons to be Pretty" which happens to be, believe it or not, the playwright's Broadway debut as well. A seeker of challenging sensibilities, Ireland is sure to thrive in LaBute's polemical seas. (Reports from the off-Broadway production say he's finally revealing a softer side, but come on -- this is LaBute!) And as a conventionally beautiful young woman who has taken an unconventionally risk-taking path, she'll no doubt bring sharp insight to this deconstruction of our cultural fixation on physical appearances.
Stone, van Houten find ‘Satisfaction’
3 BAFTA Nominations including Best Film for ‘Abraham’s Point’
From Bafta-cymru.org April 16th 2009
BAFTA Cymru ’09 Award Nominations Announced
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts - Wales (BAFTA Cymru) has announced the nominations for its 18th Annual BAFTA Cymru Film, Television and Interactive Media Awards Ceremony, which will honor the very best talent in over 30 film, programme, craft and performance categories at The Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay on Sunday 17 May 2009.
Wyndham Price’s directorial feature debut ABRAHAM”S POINT has received recognition in 3 categories: BEST FILM / DRAMA nominated on the shortlist alongside ‘I Know You Know ‘and ‘Martha, Jac a Sianco’; John Gillanders is nominated for BEST EDITOR, and John Handy is nominated for BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE as well as for his work on ‘Martha, Jac a Sianco’.
This year, both The British Academy Television Craft Awards and the BAFTA Cymru Film, Television and Interactive Awards are to take place on Sunday 17 May at the London Hilton and Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff respectively, in a joint celebration of excellence. With an abundance of talent nationwide the 17 May is a landmark date - being the 10th anniversary for the Television Craft Awards and the 18th anniversary for the BAFTA CYMRU Awards - a BAFTA night to reward the very best in craft and performance from 2008. Jointly, both Awards ceremonies will announce all their winners on the night.