There are eleven stills from Thomas Clay’s The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael on the website of international sales agent Wild Bunch Sales Limited.

The screenplay for The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael was written by Clay and Joseph Lang. The movie stars Dan Spencer as Robert Carmichael, Ryan Winsley as Joe, Charles Mnene as Ben, Danny Dyer as Larry Haydn, Lesley Manville as Sarah Carmichael, Miranda Wilson as Monica Abbott, Michael Howe as Jonathan Abbott, and Ami Instone as Marie.

The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael premièred at the 44th International Critics’ Week (44e Semaine Internationale de la Critique) - a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) - on May 15th of last year, and has been screened at a number of other European film festivals, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) in Scotland and the Raindance Film Festival in London, England.

Here’s a brief description of The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael from the Fangoria article “Eating Out of Cannes”: “Thomas Clay’s THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL is really a disaffected youth picture, but it ends with the most gratuitously offensive bloodbath in years. People literally ran for the exits when the title character sexually violates a pregnant woman with a broken bottle and then rapes her with a sword. Clearly, the Cannes crowd hadn’t seen Lucio Fulci’s NEW YORK RIPPER! Clay’s use of Iraq War footage over the end credits to glibly politicize this moment caused just as much upset as the graphic imagery. Even Tartan Films boss Hamish McAlpine balked at this one!”

Below is a description of The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael from the Wild Bunch website.

In a small English coastal town, three teenage boys are drawn into a world of temptation and violence. Bored, troubled, excluded, unable to accept or even to recognise moral boundaries, the boys’ actions move inexorably towards a shocking act that will horrify their sleepy community and expose its deepest, hidden fears.

Brutal, poetic and explosive, infused with a dark and ironic wit, THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL issues a fierce challenge to the moral and political complacency of our times and heralds the arrival of a remarkable new British cinematic talent.

25-year-old director Thomas Clay’s extraordinary film features the beautiful and stately camerawork of acclaimed DP Yorgos Arvanitis (ETERNITY AND A DAY, A MA SOEUR!) and startlingly assured performances from newcomers Dan Spencer, Ryan Winsley and Charles Mnene, alongside established acting talents Danny Dyer (HUMAN TRAFFIC, THE FOOTBALL FACTORY) and Lesley Manville (VERA DRAKE, ALL OR NOTHING).

Boudu Film: The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael official subsite
Variety: Review of The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael
Wild Bunch: The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael stills gallery (8 JPEGs - enable cookies & double-click on link)
Wild Bunch: The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael still #09 (504 KB JPEG - not in the gallery; variation of still #01)
Wild Bunch: The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael still #10 (472 KB JPEG - not in the gallery; variation of still #02)
Wild Bunch: The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael still #11 (448 KB JPEG - not in the gallery; variation of still #03)

As was reported here on Twitch back on August 6th, there’s a downloadable trailer (see the bottom of this article) for Jannik Johansen’s psychological thriller Murk (Mørke) on Locomotive Corporation’s excellent PLAY.dk website.

Murk was produced by Fine & Mellow Productions A/S (Denmark), and co-produced by Film and Music Entertainment Ltd. (F&ME - U.K.); it had a budget of roughly 22,000,000 DKK (approx. 3.6 million USD). It premièred at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) in Scotland on August 19th of this year, and was screened at the Copenhagen International Film Festival (CIFF) in Denmark later that month, at Filmfest Hamburg in Germany in September, and at the Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) in Norway earlier this week. It was released theatrically in Denmark by Nordisk Film Biografdistribution on the 7th of this month.

Distribution rights for Murk are being offered for sale by Nordisk Film International Sales at this year’s American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica, California. The movie is being screened at the Mann Criterion on Friday November 4th at 3:00 p.m..

The screenplay for Murk was written by (Jannik) Johansen and Anders Thomas Jensen. The movie stars Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Jacob, Nicolas Bro as Anker, Lærke Winther Andersen as Hanne, Laura Drasbæk as Nina, Lotte Bergstrøm as Julie, Anne Sofie Byder as Sonja, Morten Lützhøft as Carl, and Lisbet Lundquist as Caroline.

Below is a synopsis for Murk from this page for the movie on the British Council’s Britfilms.com website.

Continue Reading "American Film Market (AFM): Update on Jannik Johansen’s MURK (MØRKE), w/ Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Nicolas"...

Here with his final report from the Edinburgh Film Festival is, once again, Richard Brunton with a look at the German serial killer film Antibodies.

This marks the last movie in my very first Press visit to the Edinburgh Film Festival 2005, and what a movie to see as the final movie. More on my torn farewell to the festival on my own site later, but for now let’s get to the review that Todd has been waiting for.

I was about to write how IMDB bills the movie, and then I read it. I would suggest you do not, I won’t say why other than if you don’t and you see this movie, it will be a richer experience for it. Basically though, the movie is about the capture of serial killer Gabriel Engel played by André Hennicke, someone the Police have been trying to catch for a very long time. A small town cop, Michael Martens played by Wotan Wilke Möhring, comes to interrogate him over the disappearance of a child from his village and makes more headway than the Detectives have. However the meeting troubles Martens, and the two characters suddenly seem not as far apart as their roles suggest.

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Fest Report: Antibodies (Antikörper) Review"...

Another missive from Richard Brunton in Edinburgh ... you may have seen this one up on The Movie Blog as well, but hey ... Richard offered it to us as well and I’ve been lusting after this film for a while now.

For me the biggest movie to go and see at the Edinburgh International Film Festival was Serenity. Not just because of two of the most gorgeous looking women on the screen just now, Gina Torres or Morena Baccarin, but because of the excellent writing I had heard while watching the TV series from which the movie continues, Firefly.

I am not quite through the entire TV series, but I am enjoying it, yet I’m not totally hooked. The thing is for me the series is still too episodic and the big story line that runs throughout the movie, River Tam, is far too frustrating to hang in with for a long period of time. I mean her lines really are nonsensical, and I couldn’t see connections except on a few episodes where she would mumble something and later in the episode you would see what she was referring to and you realised, she’s not just mad. So the series didn’t really hook me in enough, but still, I wanted to see the movie because it was big, a premiere, two stunning ladies are in it, and Joss Whedon’s clever scripting.

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Festival Report: Serenity"...

I’ve gone on record a few times already talking about my high hopes for American indie Thumbsucker so I’m mighty jealous of Richard Brunton. who’s already caught the film and says it’s a keeper ... read on for his thoughts ...

I wasn’t keen to go and see Thumbsucker, partly because I thought it was too close to a Hollywood movie for me, partly because I’d seen the trailer and not really fancied it, but mainly because I knew everyone was raving about it as being a great small movie and that can often turn me off. After all if there are so many people raving about it, it gets big names behind it, then is it still such a small movie?

However I took Todd’s advice and I arrived early enough to get a prime centre seat. This one was once again in the main screen at the Cameo, a superb location for a movie, with one of the biggest screens I’ve seen this side of an IMAX.

The first thing you have to say about this movie after seeing it is that Keanu Reeves is funny as hell. He has some superb lines to deliver, and he does them so well. I couldn’t decide if there was some tongue in cheek writing going on while thinking about his previous roles in Point Break and The Matrix, subtle sayings and nuances of the character just made me think of that and laugh. Anyway, that’s the first thing that has to be said, he is superb in the movie as Dr. Perry Lyman, the transcendental dentist!

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Festival Report: Thumbsucker"...

Strange but true ... for all we’ve been talking about Paul Spurrier‘s Thai ghost story P around here we’ve never actually reviewed it up until now. Well, Richard Brunton just caught the film in Edinburgh and here he is to share his thoughts ...

The last showing of the day during my second day at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2005, and not only that but also my first ever chat with a DirectorProducerWriterActor...and whatever else you can list. Meeting Paul Spurrier, the man responsible in all the aforementioned ways for the film P, was indeed a very interesting experience, and one I hope to repeat before he heads off home again. More about that chat later, back to the screening for now.

P is the first Thailand film Directed (Screenwritten, Produced, Musically arranged and Edited) by a British talent. It’s also not a tourist movie, it’s an explorer’s movie, as Paul explained to one interviewer asking him. He hasn’t arrived in Thailand and made a Thai movie only to disappear. He’s lived there, learned the language, the customs, and made every effort to understand the country and the people before making the movie, and this makes a huge impact onscreen.

It’s hard to put this movie in a box, and it’s hard not to try. You want to call it something when you’re describing it to people, and I found myself trying to say horror, or Asian. Well it’s both...with some comedy thrown in for good measure. As Paul says himself it’s a fun, and serious, adventure. It’s better not to try and put it in a box and rather just go and watch it, or in this case go on and talk about it.

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Festival Report: P"...

Checking in once again from Edinburgh, here’s Richard Brunton with his take on tiny budgeted Australian crime comedy The Magician.

This is one of the films I went to see during the 2005 Edinburgh Film Festival on a whim, seeing an empty space one day I decided to select a movie that was playing to fill it. I could have gone and selected some of the movies I haven’t seen from the videoDVD library that they have, but what the hell I thought, the Festival is all about taking risks and seeing new things.

So the movie began, with handheld shots of a man sitting in his darkened car explaining to the camera that he’s going to follow the bloke into the garage and then “give him the good news”, and that he does. The Magician is a movie written, directed, produced and edited by Scott Ryan, oh, and he plays the lead as well. Reportedly he did so on a budget of only 3,000 Australian dollars and in only ten days, although reports suggest that he spent something in the region of five years writing it!

The Magician is an interesting tale of a filmmaker who makes a documentary of hitman Ray Shoesmith and a few of his “marks”, and that’s really about all there is to it. Yet it turns out to be rather fun.

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Fest Report: The Magician"...

A couple weeks back I received a very kind offer from a familiar face: Richard Brunton, who writes for my old stomping ground at The Movie Blog, was going to be hitting as many films as possible at the just launched Edinburgh Film Festival and he offered to send reviews of all the more obscure titles our way with the more mainstream stuff hitting TMB. I’m no idiot. I said yes in a heartbeat. And here he is with a review of a film I’m itching to see: the Nicholaj Lie Kaas starring Danish thriller Mørke. Hit that link for the trailer.

This marks the first movie viewing for me at the Edinburgh Film Festival for 2005, and what a way to start it off.

For most of the movies I’m going to see I’ve followed a simple rule, read the blurb on the website and choose from there, if I want any further information maybe a quick glance at ratings (if available) on IMDB, and then the rest is up to the movie at the screening.

I’m glad I followed that rule with this movie, because it made for a much more intense experience with some of the strongest feelings I’ve had from a movie for some time barring straight jump out of your seat horror, that is.

Continue Reading "Edinburgh Film Festival Report: Mørke (Murk)"...

First I heard of this was the varying reviews on ‘Newsnight Review’ last night. For those outside the UK, the show is a bit more ‘highbrow’ than the sort of shows that would normally give such a thing coverage. It still came off reasonably unscathed - though it put a couple of people off the idea of visiting the annual Fringe / Comedy Festival in Edinburgh around which the film is based - one reviewer saying it was the best example of such a film since ‘Trainspotting’. Pinch of salt, I suggest.

Yes, the films is a ‘Black Comedy’ from Annie Griffin, Writer and Director of ‘The Book Group’ which was one of those shows that grew through word-of-mouth and was intentionally killed-off after two series (Series One on R2 UK DVD now, Series Two on R2 UK DVD 18th July 2005). Could suffer, this film, from the usual British Comedy film flaws : a complete evolution of skills to produce a typical 30 minute show that can’t stretch to create a 90 minute film. Worth a look at the trailer anyhow - not safe for work or small children. If you search online for more, include ‘Annie Griffin’ for more success. ‘The Book Group’ was superb.

Trailer (Small Quicktime Download, 2.9Mb).
Trailer (Medium Quicktime Download, 5.7Mb).
Trailer (Large Quicktime Download, 12.5Mb).