Projects matching: Jones

Synopsis

In this new film, starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, the Martyns, to outsiders, are the kind of people that you'd cross the road to avoid, but though they're the family from hell, once you get to know them you can't help but love them. Robert Martyn (Lee Evans), an unemployed but optimistic loser, lives with his adoring and long-suffering wife Angie (Kathy Burke). They have two children - Katie, their heavily pregnant fourteen year-old daughter, and angelic Little Bob, their eight year old son who worships his Dad. Everyday he wakes up thinking that things will turn out better for him and his family, and that one day he'll win one of the competitions he's always entering. All he wants to do is give his wife and kids everything they really deserve. When Robert discovers that yet again he hasn't won the 'Dream Holiday' of a lifetime, a competition in his local newspaper, he finally snaps. He decides to take the law into his own hands; if he can't win a holiday, he'll just have to steal one!

Synopsis

Annie-Mary is an awkward and secretly rebellious 20 something still living at home in a village in the Welsh valleys with her womanising widowed father. Moral support comes from the odd collection of characters who make up the population of the village but it takes a series of calamities with unexpected silver linings before Annie-Mary can finally stand up and claim her freedom. Very Annie-Mary is a joyful, poignant film about striking out against the odds, and winning in the most eccentric way.

Synopsis

Melancholic postcards of beautifully ugly places, old age, anger and bewildering complacency. A dance film about what it's like to be a Welsh Boy.

Synopsis

Three years ago, Lawrence Ledbetter, a brilliant, but crooked accountant had a get-rich-quick plan that needed a run-down town and a set of corrupt local businessmen and officials. One day he walked into Weyback. Every phase of the town's regeneration scheme made The Fellowship, as Lawrence called the Weyback fraudsters, richer and were soon laundering Russian Mafia money, Then, Lawrence left town with half The Fellowship's and all of the Russians money. Now Lawrence is back in town and with the Fraud Squad circling, the Russians wanting their money and The Fellowship's new leader wishing the obvious imposter dead. He just about manages to keep one step ahead, surviving car-crushing plants, deep river mud, shoot-outs and strangulation. He finds comfort with a night club chanteuse but then finds himself on the wrong end of her gun when the wedding in the bedding goes badly. Led to him by a crazy ex KGB mole and armature ballon strangler, the Russian hit man and his rubber-suited female colleague, Lawrence finally realises what must be done and enlists them in the dead of night under Weyback's new motorway, to serve justice so Lawrence can once again leave Weyback for good.

Synopsis

An intriguing mixture of moody film noir and modern-day western, Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? is the third feature from Pilton Pictures after the controversial The Priest And The Pirate and romantic comedy Happy Ever After. Trading on genre cliches of cheating hearts, two-timing friends, avenging angels and the iconic influence of Clint Eastwood, it is laced with a dark humour that lends a distinctively Scottish flavour to some quintessential American ingredients. 'I think it's very European in the way it was shot, but quite American in the way it deals with narrative,' explains writer/producer/director Hugh Farrell. 'It is a kind of hybrid - a sort of haggis-noir western. I also think people will find it very funny and respond to the talent of first-time actress Sam Tonks.' Devised, rehearsed and shot in a breathtaking eight weeks, the project brought together a dozen first-time actors to work on fleshing out a script, developing their characters and testing the storyline. Shot in 16 days, it made the low budget its aesthetic, seeking creative solutions to financial obstacles. 'People have embraced the Dogme school of film-makers as a breath of fresh air and a different response to the sometimes overwhelming industrial process of making films,' says Farrell. "We've found an energy and immediacy in that kind of highly condensed, pressurised way of working that we chose.'

Synopsis

The filming of F.W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' is hampered by the fact that its star Max Schreck is taking the role of a vampire far more seriously than seems humanly possible. Official Selection Berlinale 2018 - Homage

Synopsis

Newport and the Gwent valleys provide the backdrop for this gritty, hardhitting film. It's the last night of the Millennium and it's also crunch time for three couples. Lee is a local rock singer who's tuning up for what could be his big break - a gig in London. It may be a chance to escape from Wales but can he escape from his troubled past? Dafydd and Susie are expecting their first child but footloose Dafydd is afraid the baby will stifle his freedom. And eloping to freedom is what's on Howard and Alma's minds as their affair reaches a climax. Three couples. Three crises. One hell of a night.

Synopsis

In 1935, when it was more common for Irish families to leave their famine-stricken country for America, the impoverished McCourt family does the reverse. Angela and her alcoholic husband Malachi set sail from New York Harbour to Cork with their four children, Frank, Malachy Jr. and twins Eugene and Oliver to a land which a mystified young Frank had only heard of as 'where there was no work and people were dying of the starvation and the damp'. A cold greeting awaits them in Limerick by Angela's Catholic family. Grandma lends them money for a small place but any hope of their luck changing soon disappears with Dad not being able to find employment, and Oliver and Eugene dying from malnourishment and the damp. Dad's spirits sink lower and he drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Edinburgh Film Festival - nbx write up: As soon as he finished reading Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, the devastating portrayal of a child growing up in Ireland, British film-maker Alan Parker tried to option the film rights. Although they had already been acquired by US producers David Brown and Scott Rudin, Parker soon signed on as director, taking a production credit via his London-based Dirty Hands Productions. The director then updated the first draft of the script written by Australian writer Laura Jones. "Adapting any famous literary work is problematic in that, in the compression to a manageable cinematic shape, inevitably, certain characters and situations will be excluded," Parker said. At that time in 1998, Dirty Hands had a first-look deal with PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, now known as Universal Pictures International (UPI). UPI agreed to back the project along with Paramount Pictures. With two-times Academy Award nominee Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle in place as the leads, and three boys cast for the three ages of Frank, production began in September 1998. "Our film had the advantage of being financed by two studios and so we had the luxury of moving this huge travelling circus around Ireland," says Parker. The team decided to shoot in Dublin and Cork as well as Limerick, the western Irish town where the majority of the book is set. "It was obvious that a patchwork quilt, a mosaic of different places, would have to be put together to accurately replicate the Limerick of 50-odd years ago," says Parker. Angela's Ashes wrapped in December 1998 after a 75-day shoot. It was released in the US in December 1999.

Synopsis

The story of one woman's desire to reclaim her independence. It's all happening this afternoon! Edith's been busying herself, getting the whole community going - even the Vicar's on her side. Crippled by a stroke, Edith communicates when she wants to with her finger, one tap for no, two for yes...

Synopsis

Based on Jonathan Coe's novel Dwarves Of Death, Five Seconds To Spare is the story of William (Max Beesley), a young aspiring musician who arrives in London in search of success and romance, only to find himself the sole witness to a bizarre murder. The film marks the feature film debut of award-winning commercials director Tom Connolly and is produced by Amanda Posey, who says she optioned the rights to the book in 1995, because of its "vividly cinematic premise". Coe wrote a number of drafts for Five Seconds To Spare before Connolly, also a screenwriter, came on board as director and re-wrote the final draft. "Tom had a very strong, coherent and complete vision of both what he wanted to do with the script to give it a visual vibrancy, and how that translated into shooting it as a director," says Posey. Despite his experience as a musician, Beesley, who hit the spotlight with his performance as the BBC's Tom Jones, was not at first an obvious choice for the part of William. "Max is magnetic and confident, in complete contrast to the character of William," says Posey. "But he worked because he counteracted any possibility of William seeming drippy." Music plays an integral part in the film, which boasts an original score by Ben Pope and even features a cameo by Radio One DJ John Peel. Five Seconds To Spare premiered at the Greenwich Film Festival in June.

Synopsis

Linda is devastated. La Scala, her wonderful bingo hall, is caught in the pincers of development. The council has finally noticed the decay and deterioration and are threatening demolition. And worse: A mile up the valley, Mega Pleasure has been built. The UK's biggest bingo arena. A stream of villagers begin the pilgrimage: the chance to play in the new National Bonanza game and win a million quid. Gavin, the charismatic caller and Linda's lover-elect, soon follows, lured by untold riches and natural fibres. Mr Anzani, Linda's friend, mentor and boss, is distraught. His family of Welsh-Italians have held the hall, in many guises, for over three generations. Is his to be the last? But Linda discovers she has a gift: she can guess the numbers before they're called. She can decide who wins the games. The pathway to salvation is clear - everyone comes to the lucky hall. But who should she gift the million to? In desperation she seeks her auntie Beth's advice. 'Leave it well alone' is Beth's advice, telling Linda that her (recently deceased) Mother had the same strange abilities. But Linda doesn't leave it and soon finds that some gifts are best left unwrapped.

Synopsis

It was in part thanks to the success of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels that It Was An Accident got off the shelf and into production. Screenwriter Ol Parker first got hold of the novel by Walthamstow-based former probation officer Jeremy Cameron in 1996, adapted it and teamed up with producer Paul Goodman. But film executives didn't get the stylised vocabulary and frenetic pacing - it was way too ahead of its time. But in the post-Lock, Stock world, Parker's script, now with director Metin Huseyin on board, found an enthusiastic backer in Lottery franchise studio Pathe Pictures. Goodman is quick to point out the differences between his film and Guy Ritchie's. "They share similar language but this has heart and soul," he says. The film stars two of Britain's most promising young actors: Chiwetel Ejiofor (most recently wowing theatre audiences in Blue Orange at the National Theatre) and Max Beesley (reunited with Metin Huseyin after the BBC serial Tom Jones). It was the richness of the language in Cameron's novel that appealed to Parker and Goodman. That Parker and Huseyin had both lived in Walthamstow gave them an insight into the area's particular brand of East End culture and helped turn what could have been just another London gangster flick into a film that, as Huseyin says, is "very funny about violence, but underpinned by a serious story about a guy you want to succeed trying to go straight". The film is looking for spots on the international festival circuit. "We'd like to see it at Toronto because it's a multi-cultural town that we know will respond to the film and that will help with a US sale," says Goodman.