Composer Max Richter on David Mackenzie's "Perfect Sense" film

As some of you have emailed, yes news here regarding Sigma has fallen upon some unforseen turns sorry :( and now slow times. As such, thought it might be of interest to point out an older yet interesting interview with musician Max Richter on the score and theme he wrote for David Mackenzie's upcoming "Perfect Sense" (formerly "Last Word."). While those at Sigma are hard at work preparing for a hopefully soon release-Colin has been hard at work making the poster- Max Richter has granted several interviews of late (one appearing in Clash magazine this month), and it is in this piece on Tracks & Fields where the composer gives us a tidbit on what we can expect. Quotage:

M: I’m just finishing a film for David Mackenzie which has been a really nice collaboration. We’ve been shuffling it around for the past few months, and having the chance to think about the material a bit more deeply has been great. It’s a string score with a lot of grit and electronics all over it. The film is pretty heavy duty – it’s basically about the end of the world.

Click here for more wonderful music at the Max Richter official Myspace.

Jamie Sives: Confirmed for BBC "Outcasts," Filming Game of Thrones Until October

Some fantastic news today as a followup to the post below regarding Scottish actor Jamie Sives. Straight from the man himself, here's the latest!
THANK YOU SO SO MUCH JAMIE! XXX :))

GAME OF THRONES: Jamie will be filming his role as Jory Cassell until the end of October this year, and is enjoying his time there. Wish had more to pass on but he's really quite the busy fellow at the moment. Still fantastic news indeed. :) Game of Thrones from HBO is set to debut (at last word) Spring of 2011. Be sure to check out Winter is Coming and Westeros and the author George R.R. Martin's official blog for more!

"Outcasts": the new drama series for the BBC. Jamie is definitely confirmed for a guest role in one episode out of the eight; part of the new sci-fi series starring Jamie Bamber. According to the various press releases, the series is due to air in the UK later this fall, and will be airing on BBC America as well "late 2010"
[OLLIE!!! I know!!!, I sent out a few emails straight away to confirm, thought of you immediately, soooo exciting (btw owe you proper mail, will send it soon!) xxxxx]

ONE DAY: Jamie has completed filming his role as the Beard :D :D :D aka Mr. Godalming in Lone Scherfig's adapation of "One Day" with Anne Hathaway. This film is due in theatres next year. Be sure to buy the book by David Nicholls, its pretty good for a summer read I thought!

DVD Updates: Clash of Titans, Triage, It's a Wonderful Afterlife all out NOW. I'm a bit stressed as the copy of Triage I ordered hasnt arrived yet-hence the lack of reports/screencaps of the extras gah horrible :((((, but it is available. On the other hand the Its a Wonderful Afterlife DVD arrived aok, and you can also SEE A NEW CLIP OF JAMIE SIVES AND MARK ADDY from IAWL (also co-starring in Game of Thrones together ) below. lol Yay! (I also enjoyed the scene of Detective Jamie sneaking about in the rain lol)

The Entry on a Batch of New Photos of Jamie Sives and Im near death

It's August. Its hot here. Do write about where things are hot elsewhere? ie JAMIE SIVES!!!
Oh yes, I went there...
Worse...How about his attempt to slay me by loveliness...in the form of even more GORGEOUS NEW PHOTOS of Jamie Sives. Curse you but I ADORE YOU JAMIE, THANK YOU SO MUCH for these news pics! *going to flush head over sheer painful silliness of this entry, but still, I adore him so much, it kills me thrills me with all the new wonderful to behold :)*
K, Im done ENJOY new pics on IMDB (including one of Jamie with his good mate Benedict Cumberbatch while filming To the Ends of the Earth, and who was most excellent in the new bbc sleuth series!)

Trailer Watch: Alastair Mackenzie in "Monster Mutt"

It was about a year ago we saw our first look at actor (and Sigma co-founder/producer) Alastair Mackenzie in Monster Mutt. They've recently released the first trailer for the film so..... AT THIS LINK you can see Al briefly in his (scary goofy look) role as Monty in this family friendly movie-Enjoy!
The look on his face, and this still (approx 1:36) make me completely love him even more LOLOL GO AL GO! :)))
Also, further good news via the film's official FB page is that Monster Mutt will open the London Children's Film Festival the first week of November, 2010! More details to follow at the festival website next month.

Colin Kennedy's "I Love Luci" Not Short on Continuing Success!

Sigma's own Colin Kennedy continues to have luck with I Love Luci, as the film has done well at some recent film festivals. Luci took second at the Rushes Soho Shorts festival in London last week (article on the winners here). Congratulations Colin, Brian and all! :)

Also, with the Motovun Film Festival now concluded, they are taking it on a brief tour in the Balkans, with Luci to screen as part of the 'Best of the Fest' collection. No word on how Luci did at the regular festival as of yet, but if you follow Colin on Twitter or read the official FB page, we know much fun was had at the festival with Luci recently.

Sidenote: Colin's work as an artist, this time visual was mentioned as his artwork for the "Donkeys" film poster from Sigma, was included as one of the Top 5 movie posters over at Central Station-article here; more from Colin, here.

Finally, because I got sidetracked with my family issues and missed some important things, I want to point out this FANTASTIC black and white portrait taken of Colin last year by One day alive. Colin is a very handsome guy it goes without saying, but there is something really striking about the expression on his face in this photo of the man, the filmmaker, the artist in a manner that makes me ponder-what is he thinking? what is going on here- a moment of reflection, triumph, frustration. Hard to read yet very interesting (or at least to me) I also really appreciate the subtle contrasts in this photo, one sleve up one down, the degrees of dark and light; very cool.

ReelScotland Interview with "Donkeys" Director Morag McKinnon

There is a fantastic article online today at ReelScotland with Donkeys director Morag McKinnon. In this rare interview with Morag, she speaks candidly about the second installment of the Advance Party series, what it was like to take the characters from the critically acclaimed Red Road and set them in a different light featuring some of the same brilliant cast (including the always excellent Kate Dickie). It is a long piece, and well worth reading, but of note are nuggets and quotes regarding the process of the film, working with screenwriter Colin McLaren and more:

ON THE TITLE CHANGE:

Was the change in title, from Rounding up Donkeys to just Donkeys, part of needing to make it tighter? I suppose so, yes, that’s fair to say, but after yesterday’s screening I’m surprised anyone knows why it’s called that at all because the audience laughed over the line ’rounding up donkeys’! They didn’t hear it and they’ll be going out wondering why it’s called that!

That was the first public screening. Laurel and Hardy would have screenings where they worked out how long people would laugh for, which is why there are scenes with a space to laugh, and I think we should have had a public screening before this so we knew that there’s this key line in the film and you can’t hear it.

SCRIPT WRITERS, SHOOT TO SCREENING:

How did you come to be involved in the Advance Party project? The scripts were completed in tandem, so how did you decide to use the various characters?I rolled up to Sigma Film [the film's producers] and said ‘I’ve got this script, do you fancy making it?’ and they said that they liked the script but that they had a scheme called Advance Party and did I want to be part of it?

I said alright, not knowing really what it was because you say yes to opportunities when you can, especially if they’re making feature films because that’s really rare. I knew they wanted an English one [Red Road], a Scottish one and an Danish one, so I did the Scottish one and then [Advance Party creators] Lone Scherfig and Anders Thomas Jensen basically constructed these characters and gave them to us and said if we wanted to add extra characters that was fine.

The interesting thing is that you have stories inside you and gravitate towards the characters you want to work with. With Andrea, she knew she wanted to work with Jackie, and stories emerge from that very naturally. I went straight to Alfred because he’s a liar, he’s fallible, he’s 64 and I wanted to do something with someone coming to the end of their life, having a health scare and really having to confront what their life was all about. I think that as you enter your 30s you start to really think about mortality, at how to prioritise your life, and that’s what I was going through at the time. I wanted to do something tragi-comic because I’d just finished working on a prison series which was very gritty and hard and I really needed some laughs.

You react to what you’re experiencing and it was a very natural gravitation towards Alfred and I knew what story I wanted to tell. You have this palette of characters and you very naturally know what you want to do and tell.

How did you come to work with Colin on Donkeys? I’ve actually known him since htherigh school, and most of my work to date has been written by him. We’ve been a creative partnership since art college. He wasn’t the first writer because I think the company wanted me to work with someone else but that didn’t quite work so I got Colin on board because I thought it would work

Was that before or during Red Road? It was concurrent and I think the gestation for the script was made longer because I did try to work with someone else and we had to start all over again which is why we were kind of delayed coming after Red Road because our script took longer to develop....I knew I wanted to go with Alfred and that I wanted it to be a story about someone coming together with his estranged daughter, so I started writing the treatment, then the other writer came in but that didn’t work out and so I gave that to Colin and he embellished it into a script. Sigma wanted me to write it but Colin came in and did what he does so well, which is to impart witty dialogue and nice plot twists and he can do what I can’t do, so there’s a nice collaboration there. Also, I knew the tone he’d bring to it because we’ve done tragi-comic things in the past and I really like that so for me he was a very natural partner. It’s a lovely, lovely script.

Red Road was such a big success that you’d expect any sequel to have guaranteed press and publicity around it, but there’s not been been a buzz around Donkeys. Why has it taken so long for the film to receive its premiere?

It treads a fine line tonally and there were two rungs of editing. There was a long edit and we thought it was nearly there but not quite, so it was a case of sitting on it for a little while. Then there was an edit revision and then a process of revising the edit. That was essential because it was too long and it needed to be tight and show its full potential.Sometimes you can get too close and it was a protracted edit because it wasn’t quite there. It can be healthy to go away and come back again with fresh eyes. I think it benefited it in the end. It was sent out to a few festivals and there was this sense it wasn’t quite ready yet and we needed to get the tone right.

Future of Advance Party series:
Do you know the state of the third film? I can’t tell you anything about it apart from the fact that the director, Mikkel [Nørgaard], got himself involved in the Danish equivalent of Friends and he might not be free for a while yet. That’s been very successful and he also has family commitments. They did develop a script a while back which seemed really nice. There’s a new Advance Party project where they have eight scripts that they’re developing. Perhaps the way the series was developed could have been looked at as, in a sense, there are intrinsic problems when different scripts take different lengths of time to develop.