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Third to shoot was black comedy Keeping Up With the Joneses, the story of the wife of an MP who discovers her husband’s true colours when she’s taken hostage by his criminal business associates. Written by Selina Lim, directed by … Continue reading
Svengali
John Hardwick / UK / 2013 / 90 mins
Jonny Owen, Vicky McClure, Roger Evans, Martin Freeman, Maxine Peake, Michael Socha, Dylan Edwards, Joel Fry, Curtis Lee Thompson, Brian Hibbard, Sharon Morgan, Morwenna Banks
He’s a small-town man with big-time dreams.Svengali tells the story of Dixie (Jonny Owen), a postman from South Wales,
and a music fanatic. All his life he’s dreamed of discovering a great band and
then one day, trawling through YouTube, he finds them… ‘The Premature
Congratulations’. He hunts them down and offers them his management
services. They are young, arrogant, sexy and utterly magnificent. Putting their
demo on a cassette tape, Dixie heads out onto the streets of London…Innocent, wide-eyed Dixie embarks on a roller coaster ride through the most ‘infamous’
industry of them all. His partner and his sanity through it all is his soulmate Michelle
(Vicky McClure). Every day is a battle for Dixie, totally broke and working for nothing
to get his beloved band gigs, their egos grow with their stardom. The more successful
‘The Prems’ get, the greater the chances are of Dixie losing them. He has to decide
what are his real priorities in life… his love of music or his love for Michelle.
Source: svengalimovie.com
A few weeks ago I reported that Andrew Scott and Maxine Peake will take part in ‘a season of BBC dramas exploring “a world of dystopian futures”’. Now here’s the release for next week’s broadcast of ‘The Sleeper‘ written by Michael Symmons Roberts. Next Saturday on BBC Radio 4 at 14:30!
The Sleeper
Duration: 1 hour
First broadcast: Saturday 15 June 2013
A fable for our times. In The Sleeper by Michael Symmons Roberts we see our own society as it is today but with one familiar element removed. This is a Britain in which, decades ago, human beings gradually lost the gift of sleep.
The Sleeper is a new verse drama by Michael Symmons Roberts with music by the WNO and youth chorus from Irish composer Stephen Deazley, adapted to create a soundtrack mixing speech, poetry and chorus.
Society is strained to breaking point by 24-hour wakefulness. The government has cracked down on subversive images of sleep. People work around the clock. Hotels are for private meetings and illicit sex. Shops never close.
Into this paranoid world, a teenage girl emerges, a girl who can sleep. Protected by her friends, she goes on the run from the authorities who are keen to control and study her gift. The group ends up living in a city centre squat, surviving as a group by shoplifting and begging.
The group grows increasingly anxious and fractious, with Ellah (the sleeper)’s boyfriend Jamie lapsing into cultish beliefs in the ‘old gods’, in which lullabies are chanted as prayers, worshipping sleep. Some of the other group members join in these rituals. Keller, the level-headed natural leader of the group, is struggling to keep the peace.
Hungry, scared and sick of being pursued, the group receives an offer of help from a wealthy man – known by the nickname Hypnos – who says he will protect them. But what does he want in return? Desperate, and running out of options, they go to him.
When they reach the man’s hideout they find a spectacular, illegal private ‘archive of sleep’ – films, paintings, music, books – and an eerie film-set centred on a four poster bed. The price for his protection is a movie. He wants to film the ‘sleeper’ sleeping.
Why? Well, it transpires that he is the son of the last ever sleeper. In fact, as a young child he woke his mother up from that last sleep. He plays the group a film of that fateful event, a home movie taken by his father of his mother’s rare and last sleep, ending with Hypnos – as a boy – waking her. After that, no-one slept again. The guilt of waking his mother has never left him, and the only cure is to film this newly discovered sleeper peacefully asleep.
With music created from the original WNO Youth commission by the composer Stephen Deazley, and performed by members of the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and Youth Opera
Directed in Salford by Susan Roberts
Michael Symmons Roberts is an award winning poet and experienced radio writer. His latest projects for Radio 4 include Crimes of Mancunia, A Man in Pieces and the award winning Soldiers in the Sun.
Credits
Writer
Michael Symmons RobertsKeller
Matthew BeardElla
Sarah ChurmJamie
Henry DevasSara
Rachel AustinDavis
Jason DoneHarper
Maxine PeakeSomnos
Danielle HenryHypnos
Kevin DoyleDirector
Susan RobertsComposer
Stephen Deazley
Source: bbc.co.uk
Maxine Peake and @msmirandasawyer filming for @bbcCultureShow at the @wcmlibrary in lead up to @MIFestival. Cracking pic.twitter.com/IHyB02aNcs Source I spent yesterday afternoon filming for the BBC2 programme The Culture Show with Miranda Sawyer, who presents the show, and the actress, … Continue reading
There’s a test screening of ‘Keeping Rosy‘ at Hertforshire College tomorrow. If anyone is able to attend send us an email or a tweet, would love to hear your opinion! 
ABOUT KEEPING ROSY
Charlotte is a woman who is completely defined by her career. All she wants in life is to be cut a
slice of the advertising agency she has devoted herself to building.However, the fragility of her perfect existence is exposed when, after finding out she’s been
shafted in the boardroom, she returns home where an unfortunate encounter leads to a series of life
changing events.While Charlotte’s life disintegrates, we follow her on a heart-racing journey of self-discovery,
atonement and danger as she fights for a future that is rosy.The test screening is a great tool for film enthusiasts to become part of the film making process. The opinions and impressions shared with the film makers during this event will help to shape and improve the film greatly.
The test screening new Wednesday will have the following running order:
7 – 7.30pm: complimentary drinks reception
7.30 – 9pm: screening
9 – 9.30pm: questionnaires and focus groupThe film is appropriate for everyone aged 16 and over.
When: Wednesday, 29th May, 7pm
Where: North Hertfordshire College, Centre For The Arts, Willian Road, Hitchin, SG4 0LS
Please RSVP by emailing: keepingrosy@hotmail.comCAST & CREW
MAXINE PEAKE –
Shameless, The Village, Silk
BLAKE HARRISON –
The Inbetweeners
STEVE REEVES – DIRECTOR /
WRITER
Directed over 500
commercials, winning many national and international industry awards. Keeping
Rosy is his feature filmdebut.
MIKE OUGHTON – WRITERMulti-award-winning
advertising writer.Keeping Rosy is his feature film debut.
ROGER PRATT – DIRECTOR OFPHOTOGRAPHY
Academy Award-nominatedDOP: two Harry Potter movies,12 Monkeys, Brazil
RICHARD HOLMES – PRODUCERShooting Fish, Waking
Ned, Eden Lake, Resistance
ISABELLE GEORGEAUX -PRODUCER
Resistance, Jadoo
Source: hitchinfilms.co.uk/3.html
Maxine didn’t win but here’s what the judges said: “In an Olympic year, it was captivating to hear the story of an unsung sporting hero who took on the cycling world and won. Beryl: A Love Story On Two Wheels … Continue reading
Maxine Peake and Andrew Scott are to feature in a season of BBC dramas exploring “a world of dystopian futures”.
The BBC Radio 4 season, called Dangerous Visions, will be broadcast in June and will include a mix of adaptations and brand new plays. These include two dramas based on books by JG Ballard – The Drowned World and Concrete Island, the latter of which will star Sherlock actor Scott alongside Georgia Groome.
Jeremy Howe, Radio 4’s commissioning editor for drama, explained that the whole season had been inspired by Ballard’s writing.
He added: “His dark, satiric imagining of the near future is about as dark and current as anyone, even though he died several years ago. I wanted to create some context for it and so we invited various leading radio writers to come up with, not Ballardian stories, as I didn’t want to limit their imagination, but their own visions of a near future dystopia.”
There are five new plays in total, including The Sleeper, written by Michael Symmons Roberts, which depicts a society where no one can sleep. Originally an opera for which Roberts wrote the libretto, it will open the season of dramas on June 15.
The BBC said it will show a world where “people work around the clock, hotels are for private meetings and illicit sex, and shops never close”. It will feature music from the Welsh National Opera, which performed The Sleeper when it was an opera.
Source: thestage.co.uk
I’ve added 6 HQ photos of Maxine attending the BAFTAs last night. Unfortunately she didn’t win. Check out the photos in our gallery. She looks gorgeous! Thanks Claudia for donating them More here: Appearances > 2013 > May 12th – … Continue reading
The DVD box will be released on July 8, 2013. This is the DVD cover (thanks Kathryn-Morris.co.uk for the bigger version!):
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