eqan mcgregor Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Based on the book by Chris Cleave, Incendiary follows a grieving mother (Michelle Williams) as she attempts to come to terms with a terrorist bombing that takes the life of her husband and young son. Some have criticized the book for taking advantage of the London bombings, however it was written before that attack and even arrived in bookstores on that same day. Bridget Jones's Diary director Sharon Maguire takes the helm here, bringing us a daunting multi-layered story that begins with a bang (no pun intended), but then slowly falls apart when it doesn't have time to tie up loose ends.

The entire film is wrapped around a letter our main character, an unnamed "Young Mother", is writing to Osama Bin Laden. During a football match, terrorists set off a number of bombs and crumble the stadium. At that exact moment, "Young Mother" is having sex with someone who is not her husband; a journalist named Jasper Black (Ewan McGregor) who she meets one night while feeling alone, deflated and emotionless due to her husband's long hours on the job as a bomb expert. But it's not just his job; he doesn't pay much attention to his wife at all -- he ignores her, never touches her and has seemingly drained whatever ounce of love was left between them.

Not that I have anything against Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but their Team America: World Police flick was a disaster, in my opinion. While I'm a huge fan of South Park, I could not, for the life of me, get past the first fifteen minutes of Team America without changing the channel. And I really wanted to love it -- had heard such good things about it -- but simply couldn't discover the proper vibe within myself to enjoy the puppets ... and the guns ... and the puppet sex.

Needless to say, newbie Edward McHenry will soon give us his take on the puppet gimmick with Jackboots on Whitehall, except he'll be using action figures to accompany some top notch voice talent. Comedy spoof will tell of a fictional scenario in which the Germans win the Battle of Britain during World War II, only to be defeated by the Scots ... and Ewan McGregor. That's right, McGregor has signed on to voice a "heroic Scottish farmhand who leads the resistance against the invaders and wins the girl." Joining McGregor in this latest round of casting is Richard Griffiths; he'll be playing the Luftwaffe leader Hermann Goering.

Also on the list of Brits playing Germans are Alan Cumming as Hitler, Tom Wilkinson as Hitler's propaganda minister Goebbels and Richard O'Brien as Holocaust-header Himmler. Rosamund Pike will play the object of McGregor's affection, while Richard E. Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar have also snagged roles. Writer-director McHenry jumps from his popular short film, Baptism of Fire, to helming a feature film with an assortment of pretty big names. How did he do it? Not sure, but I'm positive the script (which won the Swipe Films Screenplay Scholarship) had something to do with it.

I've never seen Baptism of Fire, but apparently it utilizes a lot of the same techniques found in Jackboots. Brits as Germans, action figures instead of puppets and an unknown writer-director -- what do you make of this?