FILM REVIEW
SOOTTISH FILM
I Stand Up: Fraser MacDonald's short film Stand Up. shot just before summer at Napier University. has emerged as one of the top student films of the year at the 1995 Fuji Film Scholarship Awards. The film won the Carlton Television Screenplay Award (Fraser MacDonald). received a special commendation from the Cine Lingual Judges (Fraser MacDonald and Judi K. Green). was nominated for the Colour Film Services Award in association with MGM Cinemas for Most Distributable Film. and was runner up for both the Zonal Award for Best Sound Recording and Design (Robin Coultard) and the BBC Design Award in association with the British Film Designer Guild for Best Production Design (Alan Saywell).
Stand Up follows a yotrng Scottish comedian‘s struggles with notions of personal and national identity on the eve ofjoirring the professional London comedy circuit. It‘s a thematically strong piece that examines Scottish cultural icons from the twee to the meaningful. while also capturing the essence of the Scottish working class male‘s difficulties in expressing hirnsell verbally. Ironically. as the only Scottish contender among the fourteen chosen for this year‘s Fuji Film Scholarship. it is the strong ‘regional' content that is. at the moment. deterring broadcaster Carlton Television from purchasing the
film. It is. however. due to be screened at the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh later in October along with Tom DiCillo's feature. Living In Oblivion. I Lloyds Bank Channel 4 Film Challenge: Entry forms are now available at branches of Lloyds Bank for this year‘s national scriptwriting competition. which will be divided into three age groups - eleven to fourteen. fifteen to nineteen and twenty to twenty-five — and into drama. documentary. entertainment and animation categories. Six winning scripts will be produced and broadcast by Channel 4 in late 1996. Entry forms are also available from Lloyds Bank Channel 4 Film Challenge. PO Box 666. London E15 lDW (0345 443355). I Film Crash Course: The Independent Film Workshop returns to Scotland on 21/22 October fora two-day crash course on Iilrnrnaking. presented by Elliot Grove. founder of London‘s Raindance Film Festival. Day One is aimed at producers. and will cover the making and marketing of a low budget movie; Day Two examines the important elements of a good script. The course takes place at Glasgow Film and Video Workshop in Albion Street from 9.3()arn—6pm each day; pre- registration costs £65 per day or £100 both days (£75 per day at the door. space available). Call ()171 437 3991 for details.
I Leeds Film Festival: Scotland is represented at the 9th Leeds Film Festival (12—27 October) by a screening of this year‘s Tartan Shorts — Fridge. Dancing and The Pen — and two other shorts by young filmmakers. Wendy Griffin‘s 55 Haddingtan Place and Ewan Morrison's The Contract. The screening takes place at 7.30pm on Tuesday 24 October at the Leeds City Art Gallery. Details about the festival in general are available on ()I I3 247 8389..
Wessex Comes north ' ' 5 T' . "
A big screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s last novel Jude The Obscure will spend two weeks shooting on location in Edinburgh in late October. The Scottish capital will cover for Hardy’s town of Christminster, a thinly veiled portrait of Oxford. The story, which caused a scandal when published in 1895 on account of its bleak, anti-Victorian views on marriage - causing the Bishop of Wakefield to burn his copy - follows a poor country boy's struggles to enter into university life, a situation made more complex when he falls in love
Christopher Eccleston
and Kate Winslet star In Jude
with his married cousin.
Shallow Crave and Hearts And Minds star Christopher Eccleston plays Jude, with Kate Winslet (Heavenly Creatures) as his cousin Sue and Rachel Griffiths (Muriel ’3 Wedding) as his wife Arabella. Jude‘s director is Michael Winterbottom, currently in the public eye with Butterfly Kiss and Go Now, and the screenplay is by Hussein Amini. The period tragedy is due for a cinema release in late 1996. A List location report will appear in a couple of issues’ time. (Alan Morrison)
VIDEOS
HONG KONG ACTION
In Last Hero In China, it’s the turn of new star Jet Lee to play the long- running fictional martial arts master Wong Fei Hung. The character’s values may seem a bit conservative in today‘s cynical celluloid world, but Lee is a terrific performer. His namesake, Donnie Lee, also holds his own as a maverick cop caught up in the action set pieces and violent comedy capers of Tiger Cage II. A maverick cop with a neat line in swordplay, he’s on the trail of laundered drug money.
The battles are just as tough and physical in Heroic Trio, but this time there’s more emphasis on brilliant visuals and a cartoonish, strangely downbeat, tone. Maggie Cheung, Anita Mai and Michelle Yeoh are the team who split their lives between domestic chores and superhero pursuits to rescue kidnapped babies. There are more fighting femmes in Angels 2, as Moon Lee and Elaine Lui take on a guy
Curry And Pepper lovable rogues fall out over women, then make up as they beat the crap out of arms dealers. One of the duo,
g Chow Sing Chi, takes over from Chow
Yun-Fat in God Of Gamblers 3, which whips our ESP-blessed card-player back to pre-war Shanghai for some supernatural slapstick fun as he chases the heart of arthouse star Gong Li. Best of the new batch is A Moment Of Romance, with Andy Lau in top form as a no-hoper street kid who falls for the rich girl taken hostage by his gang in a iewellry heist. Mismatched love,
with Hitler-style delusions in the jungles of Malaysia. Writer-director Teresa Woo gives an adrenalin rush to the Charlie’s Angels crimefighting formula, splattering those palm trees
with gore.
There’s an obvious US influence in the Lethal Weapon-style buddy cop pairing of Curry And Pepper as the
£ 12. 99.
superb car stunts and a modern violent edge make this a package that should appeal to a wider audience. (Alan Morrison)
All titles are on the Made In Hong Kong label, priced £13.99, except Angels 2, which is released by MIA/Hang Kong Classics, priced
I Le Colonel Chabert (12) From its opening frarrres of an icy post- battle landscape. shot in the subtle blue tones of cold and death. Yves Angelo‘s film Iras a bleakness at its core. Gerard Depardieu plays a man who claims to be an officer believed killed in the Napoleonic Wars. who comes back to claim his name and fortune. Unlike the thriller identity twists of The Return ()jlflartin (Itterre. this filtn has a classic. literary feel to it. in which old-fashioned honour is pitted against more modern cynicism. A perfectly crafted downbeat drama. (Fox Video rental/£15.99 retail) I Oumb And Dumber ( 12) Childish. puerile.crass1y silly — and wonderfully so. What is just plain annoying in other movies becomes absolutely side- spIitting and even endearing due to the performances of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as two brainless buddies who really do care for each other. There's a measure of innocence here that makes the stupid slapstick and broad verbal joshing impossible to dislike. (First Independent)
I Hercules Heturns ( 15) When a film buff and his
friends open an old cinema. but discover that their first movie - a musclebound Hercules epic — has arrived in an unsubtitled Italian print. they entertain the punters by dubbing it live. The juvenile jokes stay bogged down at playground Ievel (peppered with plenty of Australian homophobic jibes). and it‘s only the satirical stuffon the commercialisation of cinema — the top 'n' tail to the tnain event — that's got any spark to it. (Tartan £15.99)
I Star War Trilogy ( t5) Individually. they‘re adventure masterpieces; viewed together. they're make for about as entertaining an epic as cinema has conjured up in its 1()() year history. But as of January I996. Star Wars will be deleted forever. Fear not: all three titles — Star Wars. T/lt’ [fin/tire Strikes Back and Return ()j'T/re Jet/i — are now available in both fill] and widescreen versions. TIIX digitally mastered. and with an exclusive three-part interview with George Lucas. The picture and sound quality is supremely sharp (even on standard equipment). making this a genuine must-buy set. (Fox Video £12.99 fullscreen. £13.99 widescreen each).
I Chappaqua ( 18) An American drug and alcohol addict goes to a French clinic to straighten
l
himself out. and relives old hallucinations. Given that the cast features William Burroughs. Allen Ginsberg and Ravi Shankar. you get what you expect (if you're expecting surreal 60s psychedelia). But Conrad Rooks' LSD-inspired movie is sheer pain-in- the-arse pretension from beginning to end. a better advert for the ‘Just Say No' crusade than any anti- drug film could be. It's true what they say: never trust a hippie. (Tartan £15.99)
I Street Fighter II ( IS) The second generation of the video game improved on the original. and while that wouldn't be difficult in film terms (given the standard of the Van Damme vehicle). this sequel proves to be repetitive and totally uninvolving. The story is an afterthought — Bison is brainwashing top fighters and turning them into assassins; the only concern here is to cram in as nrany fights between different characters as possible. And. ofcourse. there are too many individuals for the uninitiated to follow. although the fight anirrration does combine grace and power. Ilowever. you‘d be as well peeking over the shoulder of someone in your local amusement arcade. (Manga £12.99).
_20 The List 6- 19 Oct 1995