Projects matching: Jones

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.

Synopsis

Friendship and tension between the sexes is the subject of this short comedy. Paula's friend, Terry, mistakes her attempts to build a closer friendship with him for romance, and this misunderstanding has profound effects on their relationship. While Paula is played by an actress, Terry is a 1/6 th scale puppet.

Synopsis

Pete's (Rhys Ifans) business is going bust, his sperm count is dodgy, and his relationship with Sarah (Sadie Frost) is on the rocks. He's infatuated with his secretary Charlie (Dani Behr), despite her being hitched to his bike-messenger Trevor (Andrew Howard) and he's spending too much time in Harry's (Nick Moran) coke den. In short, Pete's in trouble.


Then his charming Irish accountant and boyhood pal Deeny (Joseph Fiennes) fixes up a meeting with the mysterious Russian Mr Kant (Steven Berkoff) and his 'assistant' (actually his daughter) Masha (Tara Fitzgerald). Masha and Pete get it together and Mr Kant comes over with the emergency loan. Pete is saved.


But then comes the payback: Pete is summoned off the M25 by Masha, and ordered to Russia. There, he is taken in hand by Dr Jones (Keith Allen), Mr Kant's guru, made love to again by Masha - and then appears to be killed by Mr Kant's terrifying bodyguard (Olegario Fedoro) as a warning to other Western 'partners'. Meanwhile it's clear that Deeny set the whole thing up and is plotting to take over Pete's firm - indeed his whole life.


However, Pete's not dead. Returning to London, he finds Sarah's pregnant and he's got to kill Deeny. The only people Pete can turn to are Charlie and Trevor. Masha is pregnant too and Mr Kant won't intervene.


Pete's got a great plan, and Masha agrees to help with the greatest - and most bizarrely convincing alibi ever, but just as its all coming together Pete learns that Deeny has Sarah and Charlie at his mercy. Now Masha and Mr Kant must help and race to his aid, but Pete has to face Deeny alone, head-to-head, and right up to the final frames.

Synopsis

In Rhythm & Blues two London worlds collide in a dark and gleaming comic thriller. Beginning in a graveyard, Rhythm & Blues follows the adventures of a Scottish skinhead, Byron and his enigmatic Adonis protégé, John.





The pair are adopted by the male dysfunctional male escort agency, 'Boys Galore', run by the Dickensian duo, Mitzi and Bethsheba, which leads to a surreal encounter with American tycoon Bad Daddy and his courtiers.





Bad Daddy lives in a gothic palace with his love addicted French companion, Jean-Claude (who is also a master of gay marionettes). The house becomes centre-stage for a massive clash of personalities and cultures. Hiding amongst this incongruous group is a serial killer masquerading as an escort and nicknamed by the tabloid press as 'The Rent Boy Ripper'.





The result is a dangerous cocktail of the streetwise and the louche which pushes to the limits the ties of friendship bound by the contradictory forces of love, lust and loot.





Side-stepping political correctness and good taste, Rhythm & Blues is irreverent, high camp, slapstick and totally over-the top mixed with a touch of John Waters, Ealing Comedy and Pedro Almodovar.

Synopsis

A heist story set against the backdrop of the Jewish diamond district in London, involves a diamond deal gone helter-skelter, the rough and tumble world of bare-knuckle boxing, a colourful Irish gypsy and a dog.

Synopsis

Guy Ritchie's much-anticipated follow-up to his 1998 hit Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels retreads the East End streets of London, this time centring on the diamond district of Hatton Garden.

Ritchie, who also wrote the script, and producer Matthew Vaughn have attracted a stellar cast including Brad Pitt and Benicio Del Toro, as well as returning Lock, Stock cast members Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and Jason Flemyng. Columbia TriStar is backing the project, along with the consortium of private investors who backed Lock, Stock, including Xingu Films, the production company of Trudie Styler, wife of rock star Sting.

Snatch tells the story of a diamond deal gone wrong. Del Toro plays a diamond thief and courier who stops in London on his way to making a delivery to his boss in New York, played by Dennis Farina. His love of gambling lands him in trouble with the local unlicensed boxing community, which includes an unreliable Irish gypsy boxer, played by Pitt. And so begins a whirlwind of double-crossing and double-bluffing.

Principal photography took place for six weeks during October and November 1999. Columbia TriStar will release Snatch in September in both the UK and the US before rolling it out internationally.

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'.