Projects matching: Jones

Synopsis

Some Voices has come a long way from its theatrical origins. The journey started when Elinor Day, then at the BBC, saw Joe Penhall's acclaimed play about two brothers, one of whom is schizophrenic, at London's Royal Court theatre. "I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it," says Day, who commissioned Penhall to adapt it as a film script. "Penhall has such an original vision of the world."



Day took Some Voices with her when she moved to FilmFour, where Paul Webster liked it and agreed to commission re-writes. Penhall reworked the script thoroughly over four years, finding a visual equivalent for the "gothic, heightened naturalism" of the play's dialogue. The result, Penhall says, is "a film based loosely on the play, rather than an adaptation", with the slide back into illness of schizophrenic Ray (Daniel Craig) depicted in imaginative imagery rather than words.



FilmFour brought Simon Cellan Jones on board to direct. Although it is his feature debut, the director had an impressive track record in television, including the Bafta-winning Our Friends In The North.



The story is set in Shepherd's Bush, west London, where Cellan Jones lives and Penhall used to. The film was shot on location in six weeks, with a handheld camera capturing the locals' everyday life. "Every now and again you would get people looking into the camera and yelling, but we would just have to let it go," says Cellan Jones.



Some Voices premiered in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes this year.

Synopsis

Adapted for the screen by Jon Penhall, from his own play, Some Voices is an emotionally charged drama/comedy of life in west London - a love story and an examination of the relationship between two larger-than-life brothers. The film tells the story of Ray, who is released from a psychiatric hospital into the care of his over-worked and over-protective brother, restaurateur Pete. Things start well, with Ray working for his brother with comic consequences. But when Ray falls head over heels in love with Laura, a wild Scottish girl, and stops taking his medication, things start to spiral out of control.

Synopsis

1880s deep in the countryside the Bass Player hot, tired and depressed decides to swim in the lake. There he sees a young girl asleep on the bank. Captivated he ties a bunch of flowers to her fishing line but the idyll is shattered as he discovers his clothes have been stolen.

Synopsis

Light satirical drama about the chaotic pleasure of relationship. A young caretaker is a non-believer in love, until he bumps into a French girl under a bed!

Synopsis

Stephen Norrington, best known for splashy special effects action movies such as Blade, returns to home soil with The Last Minute, a black comedy about the lure of fame and the price of failure, produced by his regular collaborator Matthew Justice.



Max Beesley, the boyish charmer who became a teen heartthrob in the recent BBC adaptation of Tom Jones, takes the lead as Billy Byrne, a supercool, supertalented young artist who is the toast of the town. But, just as he begins to get used to the heady cocktail of success, his star crash-lands back on earth and he finds himself caught up in a dangerous world of crime and murder.



The film was, says Justice, "a fantastic opportunity to do a movie that does not rely on all the genre trickery of our previous pictures, although naturally, old habits die hard!"



Thanks to Palm Pictures, Justice and Norrington were allowed to make the film exactly as they had always planned, with "a small, young, talented and hungry crew working with a great cast in and around London," explains Justice. Shot last summer in East London and at Three Mills Studios, the film features a supporting cast of new and old faces alongside Beesley, including Jason Isaacs as a sledgehammer-wielding bootboy with a taste for crooning, veteran baddie Udo Kier and newly crowned king of the wideboys, Frank Harper.

Synopsis

A joyrider once asked me to get into the passenger seat. I might look stupid but I'm not that stupid. We play golf. You gotta keep your eye on the ball 'cause it's a dangerous game'.

Synopsis

To eleven year old Taliesin Jones, God is as palpable as the apple he buys on his way to school, as real as the rain which trickles down his neck, as near as the warts on his fingertips. In Cqmglum where he lives on a farm in rural Wales, God is all around, even at school where Hoop The Mental hits him on the nose, and earthy Julie Dyer blows confusing smoke rings at him.


Others don't see the world the way he does. When his mother leaves home with her hairdresser to put more colour in her life, Taliesin is left behind with his distracted father, sullenly adolescent brother and his own creeping uncertainty to try and make sense of this sudden conspiracy of events. It is only with elderly Billy Evans, piano teacher and part time healer that Taliesin finds a source of miracles, miracles which transform his life . . .


The Testimony of Taliesin Jones is a beautifully measured story exploring the troubled borderland between childhood and adolescence. Poetic, precisely observed and filled with humour, it examines the resources of imagination and faith to which children can turn when faced with the confusion and imperfection of the adult world they are about to enter.

Synopsis

When Tal Jones' mother leaves home to live with her hairdresser, the 12-year-old boy is left to deal with his uncommunicative father (Jonathan Pryce) and bitter older brother (Matthew Rhys), as well as all the other problems of growing up in a Welsh farming community, such as bullying, piano lessons and warts.



The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones takes an unexpected turn, when Tal finds out his elderly piano teacher Billy Evans (Ian Bannen, in one of his last roles before his death last year) is a faith healer. Billy heals Tal's warts, inspiring him to form his own gang, the Believers, who land in trouble when they try to cure a school mate with diabetes. The result is a story about God, belief and miracles.



Based on Welsh writer Rhidian Brook's first novel, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1997 and was shortlisted for Welsh Novel of the Year, the material had particular appeal for director Martin Duffy, who had worked with healer Finbarr Nolan on his autobiography Seventh Son Of A



Seventh Son.



Unknown actor John-Paul Macleod was chosen from hundreds of hopefuls for the title role.



Duffy's first feature, The Boy From Mercury, won several awards, including three of the main prizes at the Giffoni children's film festival in Italy. His next film is The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, starring Elijah Wood and Janeane Garofalo. The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones had its first screening in the Cannes market in May.

Synopsis

Seventeen year old Justine (Laura Fraser) is fed up with the lack of success she has with guys. It seems as though the boys have it easier. She's ready to take that big step, but with whom? To ensure she chooses the right candidate - her 'Mr Barcode' - Justine enlists the help of her worldly-wise best friend Fran (Marcelle Duprey). Alex (Kieran O'Brien), the school stud is the obvious choice. So together, Justine, Fran and their geeky friend Chas (Luke De Lacey) hatch a plot to get Alex to a computer show where he is bound to fall for Justine's charms. Only things don't go according to plan! At the last moment, Alex abandons the plotting trio in order to go out with the man-eating Hoover (Natasha Bell).





A deflated Justine wanders through the great halls while Chas is in his perfect world. None of the excitement of the show can soothe the rejection she feels until she is enticed into the make-over machine, the Narcissus. Their machine can give you the face you've dreamt of; in fact the 'you' of your fantasies can be yours with the help of the Narcissus!





Having created the perfect Justine on screen, she then sets about creating her ideal man.

Synopsis

This 90's film is based on the very successful stage play 'Yr Aduniad - The Reunion' by Delyth Jones.





When thirtysomethings Lynne, Sioned, Wendy, Nerys and Jane meet for a reunion. They haven't seen each other since school days. Their chosen venue is 'Le Petit Cassoulette' a wine bar in their home town, Llanelli, a place as chic as it is shabby and as pretentious as it is tacky. The Reunion is essentially a comedy with dark undertones.





We are eavesdropping on very personal confessions about their past, their expectations and the reality of their lives. All laced with the honest, sometimes perceptive and often lewd and bawdy observations on life, the universe and men, that you only get from five old friends on a night out.

Synopsis

All for Eight Pounds Fifty is a light comedy set in Northern Ireland. The Heroes or villains of the piece decide that robbing a small country petrol station will give them enough money to have a good time.


The robbery is a success but the haul is not quite what they expected.

Synopsis

Seven very different people are gathered in a brightly lit but sparsely furnished white room. The only thing they have in common is Virgil Guppy. Virgil isn't there having just been flattened by a ten ton truck. Virgil's odyssey unfolds as the seven wait in the white room.





Virgil Guppy is going to buy a car. Not just any car but a luxury car. This is more than a simple deal. Virgil is not just buying a car, he is buying the last piece of the jigsaw that, with the flat, the job, the wardrobe, even the girlfriend, fit together to make up what Virgil hopes is his identity.





Virgil buys the Jaguar, low mileage but slightly damaged bodywork, from David Leer and his son Buddy, two clearly dodgy dealers. Sure enough within four miles the car dies quite spectacularly. Virgil fails to claim his money through the courts and, worse still, his car came with the optional extra of a dead body hidden in the boot.





Virgil is arrested for murder and an impressive array of circumstantial evidence is presented by witnesses as varied as Sydney Greengrass, a retired accountant, who has the unnerving habit of hitching his curiously shaped trousers up way past the nipple line and Poppy Fields, a middle-aged Prostitute fast reaching her sell-by date. Virgil is convinced he has been framed by David Leer, but David Leer seems to have disappeared.





Once out on bail, Virgil's jigsaw starts to fall apart . . .