scotland Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Poor Scotland -- it seems only if you have Mel Gibson or Liam Neeson in a kilt can you get one of your native heroes onscreen. Not that Gerard Butler hasn't tried. He's long cherished plans of starring in a biopic of Scottish poet Robert Burns. The problem has always been one of financing -- even after 300, Butler wasn't able to convince anyone to fund the film, apparently due to a combination of no one outside of Scotland remembering or caring who Robert Burns was, and no one quite knowing who this "Gerard Butler guy" was. (I imagine Scottish heroes are probably easier to market to overseas audiences if they're wielding massive claymores instead of pens.)

That may soon change. According to The Times, Butler hopes to get his chance in 2009. Vadim Jean is attached to direct, and James Cosmo is set to produce. (Presumably, Butler might as well since he does have his own shingle now.) Most of the budget is already in place, thanks to Scottish Screen, and the remainder will be raised by signing 250 "subscribers" to the project. They're borrowing an idea from Burns himself -- in 1786, investors backed the famous Kilamarnock Edition of Burns' poetry, convincing the poet to abandon his plan to relocate to Jamaica. This year would also be the perfect one to film in, since its the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth.

I'd happily contribute, since I'm rather fond of Burns, Scotland, and period pieces (and ok, Butler himself) but I'm sure one has to be richer (and probably Scottish) to be one of the 250. So here's a bit of press instead, and best of luck to Butler, Jean, and Cosmo that 2009 is their year. Movie audiences need a little poetic education once and awhile.

It's hard to say which event in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night was cooler: New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog in conversation with director Jonathan Demme at the Times Center, or the two crazed climbers who attempted to scale the New York Times building right next door just a few hours earlier. In some ways, the two occurrences worked together: It was later announced that one of the climbers did it in order to raise awareness about global warming, a relevant issue for anyone interested in Herzog's latest film, the remarkable Antarctica odyssey Encounters at the End of the World. Like most of Herzog's documentary work, it's a brilliant amalgam of gorgeous imagery and Herzog's personal philosophies. Not a scientist himself, he spends time in their company down south, seeking to understand their behavior ("Is this a big moment?" he asks when they nonchalantly announce the discovery of a new bacterium).

Demme, admitting that he and Herzog had just met earlier in the evening, opened the conversation by reading an effusive letter to Herzog written by Roger Ebert after the critic discovered that the director dedicated Encounters to him. Herzog seemed displeased that Ebert printed the letter ("Those things should stay between two men") but had only praise for his friend. "I salute him, a good soldier of cinema," he said. "We have very few left."

The Sunday edition of The Scotsman is reporting today that Sue Quinn, a locations manager for Warner Bros. has been seen in the far north of Scotland, around the area of Cape Wrath, known for its spectacular cliffs and caves. According to the paper, the Harry Potter producers are considering using the caves and cliffs to shoot the climax of the sixth film of the series, when the heroes must travel along a coastline in search of the soul of Voldemort. Among the areas Quinn is known to have checked out include Smoo Cave, a 200 ft. long, 130 ft. wide cave, the Clo Mor cliffs, which are nearly 1,000 ft. high, the Cape Wrath arches, which contain a string of caves, a rock tower called Stac Clo Kearvaig that rises 130 ft., and the Whaligoe Steps cave, which is in a bay enclosed by two sea cliffs. The paper also notes that the Scotland locales are thought to be in competition with similar locations in Ireland and New Zealand.

A harbor master who took Quinn out on his boat to scout the locations told the paper that "she was taking thousands of photographs of the cliffs, caves and rocks. She seemed to be very interested in Smoo Cave and the stacks in particular. Warner Bros. would not comment for the paper, but a spokesperson for VisitScotland said "It would be great if filming for the next Harry Potter movie took place here. 'Set-jetting' is an increasingly popular trend." There's still plenty of time, of course -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince isn't scheduled to hit theaters until November 28, 2008.

There's something vaguely shameful but comforting about a cliché sports film. It's like putting on the cozy track pants you keep around for TV night: You're not sure you'd want someone else to witness your enjoyment, but man, it feels welcome and right. Based on the true story of Graeme Obree – a Scottish amateur cyclist who broke several world records on a bike of his own design – The Flying Scotsman is actually two comfort-filled cozily cliché films in one: The inspirational sports tale and the inspirational triumph-over-mental-illness movie. And this makes it easy to make fun of The Flying Scotsman – I've been calling it "Good Will Biking," "A Beautiful Bike," even "Chariots of Bike" – but, again, you don't go to movies like this expecting them to be revelatory re-inventions; you go to see them to watch all the bases rounded, how the cast and crew enact all the expected moments.

The Flying Scotsman starts with a disheveled man riding a bike into mist-shrouded woods, then walking it through Scotland's meadows and fens and trees. It's, as we soon realize, a one-way trip; the rider hangs a noose from a tree and prepares to hang himself. And then we flash back – into the life of Graeme Obree (played by Johnny Lee Miller), and to the things that have led him to the woods, in the rain, to die. We see Graeme in happier days – or, at least, not-suicidal days. Obree's an amateur cyclist – and a good one. But he can't keep his bike shop open, and he's working as a courier to feed his family. One day, he meets a fellow courier, Malky (Billy Boyd) who seems to know all the angles; when Graeme introduces himself, Malky's matter-of-fact: "I know who you are; I follow cycling." It's a nice trick to establish Graeme for us, the audience – setting Graeme up as someone with a few minor records, a certain degree of renown.

It doesn't seem like Irvine Welsh is having much luck with his film career; it's been years since anyone has heard a peep about a possible Trainspotting sequel, and now a production of Ecstasy in Scotland has shut down.

An article in Scotsman.com reports that the entire Scottish production team has been scrapped, and the film's start date has set back for March at the earliest. The film is based on Welsh's book of the same name and follows a drug dealer who tries to escape his past for true love, only to hit some complications along the way. Knowing Welsh's sense of humor, I'm sure they aren't pleasant. Already talk of the entire film being abandoned has started, but director and co-screenwriter Rob Heydon insists that the project will continue. Tension must be building though, as the director was quoted as saying, "We have replaced our PM (production manager) and line producer. They are obviously very bitter about it." However, the line producer has a very different version and was quoted in the Scotsman.com article as saying, "the crew were due about £30,000. I have no idea where Rob gets any notions of our being bitter. Disappointed and frustrated are more accurate." Either way, it is not looking good for the film; fans of Welsh will just have to keep their fingers crossed until March.

[via Dark Horizons]

In the midst of a festival featuring scary and gory movies, Gamerz provided a welcome change of pace. The title sounds appropriately geeky, but the movie is essentially an old-fashioned coming-of-age relationship comedy wrapped in the universe of role-playing gamers. The film from Scotland had its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest this week.

Gamerz is set in contemporary Glasgow, which is unusual for geek films. Ralph (Ross Finbow), who is starting his first semester at the local university, is obsessed with a role-playing fantasy game (along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons) that he's created himself. He creates elaborate Lego mazes in his bedroom, and sketches them in the middle of physics classes. In fact, he takes a teaching assistant job just to gain access to the departmental copy machine so he can duplicate his rulebooks ... and discovers forbidden depths of the university buildings that would provide a fantastic setting for game nights. Ralph soon takes over as gamekeeper of a student union group and leads them into the secret tunnels to play, winning approval from fellow gamer Marlyn (Danielle Stewart), with whom he's smitten.

Now that Sean Connery is retired -- aside from returning as Henry Jones in Indiana Jones 4, hopefully -- he can do leisurely things like ... write a book about Scottish history. Well, okay, he isn't exactly writing a textbook on his native land, he's simply writing his memoirs and including a lot of Scottish history in them. Now comes the joke about Connery being so old that his memoirs are the history of Scotland, or the one about Connery being so representative of Scotland to outsiders that Scottish history began with Connery's birth (wait, those jokes aren't different. yes, slightly, they are. are you sure? oh well, forget it, neither one is funny anyway). So, you're probably thinking that Connery is wasting his time; we don't need a history of Scotland when we can just watch Braveheart, Brigadoon, Highlander and Trainspotting and know all there is to know, right? Connery says, "Our goal is to produce a readable, visually stimulating book of Scotland, with personal discoveries." So we know it has words and pictures. Other than that, I'm confused as to what it will be about, really.

What I do know is that after finishing this book, Connery should start teaching Scottish history at this great university I'm going to found. So far the staff of professors will include him and John Cleese, who will be teaching comedy.

Aside from its dialects and locations being distinctively English and Scottish, Driving Lessons feels very American. The coming-of-age film, which stars a stone-faced Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films), has a story that seems straight off the assembly line of our own indie scene. Some of the conventions used in the script include the out-of-his-league crush, the casual virginity-loss, the overbearing and/or religious parent, the life-changing road-trip, and the cross-generational relationship that begins as student-mentor and ends as everlasting friendship. Such tried-and-true elements are not specific to the States, but with so many novice filmmakers here relying on generic adolescence as their easy starting point, the conventions have become staples of American cinema.

Grint plays Ben, a boy so far on the verge of manhood that he states his age as precisely 17½. He's not very ready for the world, though, thanks to his strict, protective mother (Laura Linney) and his weak father (Nicholas Farrell). When urged to get a summer job, Ben finds employment as an assistant for an aging actress named Dame Evie Walton (Julie Walters, who plays Grint's mom in the Harry Potter films), who not only helps him to grow up, but also helps him to have fun with the transition into adulthood, as well.

At long last, Scotland is getting its first film school. Though it won't be officially inaugurated until later this week, it has been revealed that the academy will be jointly run by Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art.  The school, which will enroll its first students this fall, is part of a network of seven new film schools across the UK.  What's most notable about the schools are their funding sources:  the National Lottery (from which they will share £6.5 million/year) and the Skillset Film Skills Fund, and organization jointly funded by film and television industries and UK governments. Fantastic.