LONDON – An intimate family portrait of filmmaker John Boorman by his daughter Katrine Boorman entitled Me and me Dad, is to be touted to buyers at the upcoming Marche du Film.

Carey Fitzgerald's British sales banner High Point Media Group will bring the movie to Cannes having picked up worldwide sales duties.

The movie is sparking buzz in the U.K. ahead of its trip to the Riviera market.

Having never previously picked up a camera, Katrine spent four years filming her father who, during the process, finds it impossible to resist taking control and offering her a crash course in film making.

It explores some of the personal ideas and experiences that informed Boorman's output including Hell in the Pacific, Point Blank, Deliverance and The Emerald Forest.

What emerges is billed as a uniquely personal portrait of a family, shaped by a distinctly creative source at its center.

Katrine's own career has encompassed both acting (Excalibur, Hope and Glory, Gazon Maudit) and production (Boogie Woogie). Me and me Dad marks her directorial debut and is produced by Mel Agace and Danny Moynihan, author and screenwriter of Boogie Woogie.

Rose Garnett, who has worked on films including Nowhere Boy and Black Swan, executive produced alongside Christopher Simon and Felix Vossen of Embargo Films.

A magnificent fusion of chilling horror, satirical humour, music and eroticism. The Wicker Tree is a cult masterpiece. 

Robin Hardy's long awaited directorial return, The Wicker Tree, is finally on its way after an incredibly turbulent production process. This "spiritual sequel" to Hardy's 1973 masterpiece, The Wicker Man, explores similar themes to its predecessor but is not directly connected to it. It is simply a return to the genre created in The Wicker Man, an eccentric fusion of humour, eroticism, horror and music and is unlikely to be similar to anything you have seen in recent years. After numerous financial meltdowns, false starts and casting changes, this eagerly anticipated project finally got off the ground in 2008 and I am pleased to say it was worth the wait.

The Wicker Tree follows two young evangelist Americans - Beth (Brittania Nicol) and Steve (Henry Garrett), who set off to preach the word of God to the heathens of Scotland (Hardy's tongue remains firmly planted in his cheek). Beth, a successful pop star turned gospel singer, and her Texan cowboy boyfriend, Steve and greeted by powerful Scottish couple, Sir Lachlan (Graham McTavish) and Delia Morrison (Jacqueline Leonard) upon their arrival. The evangelical pair are persuaded to come and preach in the Morrison's home town of Tressock, where they are invited to take leading roles in the annual May Day celebrations - unbeknownst to Steve and Beth, these have sinister consequences.

Before viewing The Wicker Tree, you should be warned that this by no means the straight-forward horror that the trailer implicates. Hardy's emphasis here is clearly set upon comedy and the satire of religious evangelism. Beth and Steve are two characters who know nothing of the word they preach and when faced with answering some of life's most challenging moral dilemmas, they simply state "Well, if its in the Bible then it's what we believe." These characters shape their lives on this concept, placing their hope in a God that they believe will forgive their past mistakes, and it is this theme of misplaced hope that makes The Wicker Tree such an interesting watch. The pair's beliefs are further rocked when they are presented with several temptations in the Pagan playground of Tressock, Steve lured away by lascivious temptress, Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks) and Beth haunted by her racy pop star past, in the form of a frequently played track called, Trailer Trash Love.

One of the main pleasures of The Wicker Tree is the sense of foreboding throughout, we know the outcome of the film, but it is the ride which Hardy takes us on which makes this feel fresh and exciting. We are treated to a wonderful cameo from Sir Christopher Lee which sums up the main question at the heart of the film - an unidentified older man (potentially The Wicker Man's Lord Summerisle) states to a young boy: "Can fate be altered? This is a question that every religion has tried to answer. And the answer is almost certainly ‘no’." The residents of Tressock have turned to the Goddess, Sulis for hope, where Beth and Steve have placed their faith with the Christian God. This theme of Paganism vs. Christianity strikes a chord with The Wicker Man and once again channels the idea of misplaced hope. 

Whilst Hardy does turn everything up to its hammiest, from the thick Texan accents to the pagan weirdness, it still does have several chilling moments. Whether the impending, brutal traditions of the Riding of the Laddie and the crowning of the May Queen, match the sheer terror of the burning Wicker Man, is up for debate but they certainly give it a run for its money.

As to be expected, The Wicker Tree's soundtrack also impresses, featuring a beautiful combination of American gospel and Scottish folk, as well as some trashy country pop. Although it is unfortunate that there is not a Maypole or Tinker of Rye ballad in sight.

Brittania Nicol excels as Beth, showing off a genuinely beautiful voice and a clear acting talent. Beth is deeply flawed but Nicol plays her as such a sweet soul that one cannot help but get attached to the character, despite this. When Beth begins to suspect that she is in danger and confronts the villagers, Nicol is simply magnificent. The role of Steve is also particularly well cast, with Henry Garrett bringing a sense of likeability and humour to the role, as well as a convincing Texan drawl. The pair get the opportunity to show a vast range through the fish out of water elements of Hardy's script, from a lighter comedic side to equally convincing dramatic aspects. 

Perhaps the most challenging part to fill is that of Sir Lachlan, a role originally written for Sir Christopher Lee (which he was unable to play, due to back injuries on the set of The Resident) but Graham McTavish manages to make the part his own, bringing a sense of gravitas, intelligence and charisma. Despite several big name actresses in the running for the role of Sir Lachlan's wife (including Faye Dunaway, Vanessa Redgrave & Joan Collins), Delia was eventually played by British soap star, Jacqueline Leonard. Leonard is impressive, channelling Dynasty's Alexis Colby in this sly and manipulative turn. Foyle's War star, Honeysuckle Weeks steps into the role of Lolly (possibly The Wicker Tree's Willow), a character torn between her pagan beliefs and the man she loves. Weeks also picks up a rather strong Scottish accent, which provides some laughs in several of the more erotically charged scenes that she features in. There is also Clive Russell in the wonderfully entertaining role of Beame, the Morrison's butler.

Being a fan of Hardy's source novel, Cowboys For Christ, I did find that several interesting scenes and details had been left out. The Wicker Tree is by no means a long film, at only 92 minutes - it could have benefited by spending more time on the film's final showdown, but given budget constraints this may not have been possible.

The Wicker Tree is truly a one of a kind cinematic experience. Like its thematic predecessor, The Wicker Man, it fuses humour, eroticism, music and horror, with utmost success. The horror comes second to these other aspects, however, with The Wicker Tree's key focus being on its successful satire of religious ideology. Robin Hardy has presented us with a magnificent cinematic romp and one of the most entertaining pictures in recent years.

RATING: 5/5

 
A Passionate Women comes from Kay Mellor, so I expected it to be good. I’m glad to say I wasn’t disappointed. It is a well written piece of drama and wonderful to see stories about women’s lives on TV. Something we don’t necessarily see enough off. It’s a sprawling, engaging piece of drama.

The series boasts a strong cast, with Billie Piper putting in another brilliant performance, Theo James also gives a great performance as ‘Craze’, the Polish womaniser who Pipers character has an affair with. James did this show before his star turn in Downton Abbey. He is a star in the making. A Passionate Women is a great piece of drama that gets you thinking. Set in the 50s and 80s, it has beautiful cultural reference points and a wonderful ending that pays off. Your mother will love it and I reckon you will too. I particularly liked the moral tail of the story, it opens up the debate on infidelity and it’s long-reaching consequences.
 
The mini-series charts two stories in two feature-length episodes – the first focusing on a mother’s affair in the 1950s while the second is set in the 1980s and looks at the consequences of that affair 30 years on.  Set in Leeds in the 1950s Cold War period, Billie Piper stars as Betty, a young wife and mother who reluctantly falls passionately and hopelessly in love with her charismatic Polish neighbour.  But little does Betty know that some 30 years later, in 1980s Britain, her affair will implode on her beloved son Mark’s wedding day…
Sue Johnston plays the older Betty in the 1980s, while Andrew Lee Potts, Frances Barber, Theo James, Rachel Lesokovac, Alun Armstrong and his real-life son, Joe Armstrong, also star.

Kay Mellor OBE, one of Britain’s leading TV writers, has penned numerous hit dramas including The Chase, Fat Friends, Playing The Field and the seminal Band Of Gold. A Passionate Woman is based on the real-life affair of the writer’s own mother, and is a very personal look at the changing role of women over the last 50 years, making it an ideal Mother’s Day gift.    
The DVD of A Passionate Woman will be released on 27 February 2012 by High Point Home Entertainment through HMV and other retailers and is soon to be available on Amazon and Play for Pre-ordering A Passionate Women 

Review: Robin Hardy's THE WICKER TREE

by Kurt Halfyard, January 27, 2012 7:07 AM

Comedy, Cult, Horror, Musical, UK, Ireland, Australia & New Zealand, Western

The Wicker Man is one of those films that has taken on such a life of its own over the past 38 years.  It succeeded against all manner of personality conflict, distribution woes, and production logistics - tales of which are legendary -  to pretty much re-mythologize various old pagan rituals and philosophies and has hypnotized and surprised fans of thrillers, art-house horror, and folk-laden musicals.  Director Robin Hardy calls The Wicker Man its own genre:  The Wicker Man genre.  Ironically, the 1973 film is in itself a satire of sorts on the power of belief, but that did not stop its fecundity of myth-making from re-establishing icons (look no further than modern Beltane festivals, Burning Man and other such festivals around the world) in popular culture that went well beyond simple film circles.  Christopher Lee, who famously played Lord Summerisle as a mixture of haughty academic superiority and benevolent believer has often claimed The Wicker Man as his favourite film, and this on a resume that spans hundreds of films of all genres, budgets and ambition.  Quite simply, the film is one of the greatest movies about the nuts and bolts of religion and the power of belief (a quite separate thing from religion, I assure you) as a tool for manipulation.  A thriller, a mystery hidden in plain sight that shocks the audience in its final scene with a power rarely seen in movies, past or present.  

So.

How do you top that?

The Wicker Tree is a spiritual sequel from the original director separated by nearly four decades.  Expectations are the trickiest of things in pulling something like this off.  You are not going to be able to recreate the surprise of the original, as that is quite simply what audiences expect.  One has to look no further than disaster of Neil LaBute's remake to understand that it is not a good idea to simply repeat the original film in a location with a few token changes.  And Robin Hardy takes a massive risk to re-frame The Wicker Tree as a broad satire.  The sacrificial 'heroes' this time around are goodie-goodies all wholeheartedly different type of naïveté and the villains are of the mustache twirling variety.  The original film skirted the razors edge of absurdity, a modern cult practicing unfettered off the coast of Scotland trick an uptight man of the law and God into their web, that managed to stay on the believable side of the line due to the righteous indignation of Edward Woodward's Sgt. Howie, the stature and talent of Christopher Lee and a verité visual/musical aesthetic.   The new film is a ferocious piece of camp which acts as a bait-and-switch for a surreptitiously intelligent cache of social commentary.  It is occasionally pedantic (as was original) but leavened with a tongue in cheek sense of humour that goes out of its way (intentional or not) to undermine the power of  myth-making in the original.  Nobody comes out of this unscathed.  The film may have a cheapo-TV-veneer look, and his characters may be straw men (I absolutely could not resist that joke, sorry) but the film is a conversation starter to be sure, akin to how Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant:  Port of Call New Orleans was to Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant.  Considering the evocative title that Hardy's source novel is published under, "Cowboy's For Christ", I will go against my pet peeve of the colon and ungainly long titles to suggest the final release of this new film should be titled The Wicker Tree:  Cowboys for Christ to get at both the connection to the original, and the sublime absurdity of this remake, sequel or whathaveyou.

Starting in Dallas, Texas, in a small corn-pone gospel church, where Britney Spears manqué, Beth Boothby (a fresh and game Brittania Nicol) along with her authentic cowboy finance show off their silver purity rings to the congregation as they are sent off on a year long mission to spread the word of Jesus Christ to the heathens of Scotland.  Young, dumb and full of cu...er...vapid righteousness, these younglings possess their sense of spirituality in the form Hallmark greetings as an absolute end; not any sort of road to enlightenment.  Wet behind the ears, apple-cheeked Beth, and aw-shucks Steve, end up in the vipers nest of the Tressock Estate on the Scottish-English border and in the hands of of Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish.)  It is implied that Morrison (bearing Rowan's surname) is generation or two distant to Lord Summerisle.  Christopher Lee, god bless the man, appears in a awkward cameo to offer his benediction on this project but ends up, in no ambiguous terms, stating the thesis of the Wicker Man genre.   A shadow of his former kinsman Lord McTavish and his Lady of reptilian demeanor groom Beth and Steve to be the May Day sacrifice while simultaneously offering a blunt chorus of mockery of their guests' American unworldly earnestness and "power of the blood" hymnal collection.  It seems the fertility issues on the Tressock Estate are not the apple crop, but rather an entire generation of women (or perhaps it is the men) failing to have children.  This might also have something to do with McTavish's business venture that employs nearly all of his people, a nuclear power plant up the way leaking Tritium into the water supply.  McTavish himself even stylizes himself a real Montgomery Burns.   Capturing the ironic tone of the film, the very water supply that the women submerge themselves into, as a baptism of sorts or a pagan ritual of sorts (things not so far apart really) to enhance their fertility, may be the cause of the peoples secret grief.   

Since much of the audience of The Wicker Tree expects how this is going to play out, Hardy noodles with this expectations.  First with the overt comical tone of the picture, then, getting in to the meat of things, with the nature of the sacrifice.  The director weaves the requisite musical component, Robbie Burns' lyrics and traditional Scottish balladry is mixed alongside  gospel tunes and pop-tart New Country trash which is evident conflict at hand within the film and in a meta-sense, of this films relatiohship to the original.  But the goal, I believe is not to achieve the mythic horror of the original, but make a point of belittling it, akin to singing the same song with a completely different grammar.  It is a very novel way to go about a sequel, particularly considering the same director (albeit absent co-writer Anthony Shaffer) behind both entries.  As further commentary, the Beltane Fire Society, a collection of amateur pagan enthusiasts who mount a popular and carnal annual Beltane Festival in Scotland, stand in for the villagers, as if to say The Wicker Tree is more performance art than honest narrative.  The eponymous tree, as a totem, is much more stylized and nouveau-art-chic than the original which was conceivably cobbled together by the carpenter-fisherman peasants of Summerisle.  I will not reveal the ending, but state simply that is not as critically important (or surprisingly inevitable) as in 1973 film.  How could it be? More a farcical tone, an Outer Limits level reveal, ends the film when there is nothing more to do with its cardboard mannequin characters.

Far more interesting is approach of the film, more Alexander Payne than Edgar Allen Poe.  It offers a number of ripostes on the nature of evangelical religion in America, and the backing off of the separation of church and state (and foreign policy.)  It is as scathing in its treatment of the antiquated Scottish Royalty as soapy Boris and Natasha villains who tool around in Ferraris and more interest in business ventures than civic harmony.  The ritual of Riding the Laddie, in which fox-hunter clad woman chase down a virile young man (our Cowboy for Christ) on his gallop to a castle, is treated in some scenes with historical dignity and ceremony, and others it is milked for maximum witty innuendo.  Bluntly speaking, the The Wicker Tree is going to be seen as horrific and blasphemous to those who saw the original film as an act of iconic horror and blasphemy.  Yet underneath its broad tone and stagey execution is something worthy of conversation that might be best to walk with your eyes open.  The film may not be as elegant (or cinematic) as the original, but perhaps is a more pertinent commentary on our times, and in the end it appears that Robin Hardy is telling the world to simply, "Lighten up" instead of "Light them up!"  Amen.