Tag: Scottish

Pressure

Pressure

Director – Anthony Maras – 2026 – UK, France – Cert. 12a – 100m

*****

Days before the proposed Allied D-Day landings in 1944, the Scots meteorologist in charge becomes convinced that it should be postponed due to impending bad weather – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 9th

Taking leave from his heavily pregnant wife Liz (Tamsin Topolski), due in hospital imminently for the birth, Scots meteorologist RAF Gp Capt. James Stagg (Andrew Scott) travels by military car to Southwick House, the stately home requisitioned for the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), where he meets his own liaison officer Andrew Carter (Jojo Macari) and, in what is to be his office, MTC First Lt. Kay Summersby (a nicely understated Kerry Condon), Eisenhower’s private secretary. All communications with the General go through her.

From their first encounter – three days from the proposed D-Day landing on Monday morning, when USAAF Col. Krick (Chris Messina) and his weather room staff are improvising a version of The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B with a piano – Stagg is less than impressed with his American counterpart. Krick boasts that he not only correctly predicted the weather for Eisenhower ahead of various military battles in North Africa and elsewhere, but also did the same for David O.… Read the rest

Tags 1944, air current, Allies, Andrew Scott, Anthony Maras, archive footage, bad weather, beaches, bombing, Brendan Fraser, burning of Atlanta, casualties, Chris Messina, Clapham, conference room, D-Day, Damian Lewis, data, David Haig, David O. Selznick, delay, domesticity, England, fatalities, France, General Eisenhower, General Montgomery, Gone with the Wind, historical precedent, James Stagg, Jojo Macari, Kerry Condon, live ammunition, meteorologist, Monday morning, Normandy, North West Europe, office, Operation Tiger, phone, postpone, pregnant, pressure, private secretary, RAF, requisition, Scots, Scottish, Second World War, SHAEF, Southwick House, St. Mary's Hospital, stately home, storm, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Tamsin Topolski, telephone, The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B, top brass, UK, up-to-the-minute data, wall chart, weather, weather balloon, weather forercast, weather room, weather stations, weather systems, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

The Wicker Man:
The Final Cut

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date September 27 2013
No Comments on The Wicker Man:
The Final Cut

Director – Robin Hardy – 1973 – UK – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A Christian police sergeant investigating a missing child on a remote Scottish island meets a terrible fate – out as a Collector’s Edition UHD / Blu-ray /DVD from Monday, September 25th following its release in UK cinemas in a 4K restoration from Wednesday, June 21st, 2023

(Originally reviewed for cinema release in a 2K restoration on Friday, September 27th, 2013)

Originally released forty years ago in the UK in a cut down version its director disliked, The Wicker Man now reaches our cinema screens in a longer, restored version which he says fulfils his original vision. Its plot is deceptively simple. A Christian police sergeant flies to a remote Scottish island in response to a letter about a missing child. But when he arrives on Summerisle, no-one seems to have heard of that child. It gradually emerges that the policeman has stumbled into an intricate web of lies and deceit wherein a terrible fate awaits him….

Using material from a recently discovered, longer US release print – rechristened The Final Cut by Hardy who assembled this cut in 1979 – it’s a provocative work on a number of levels.… Read the rest

Tags angel, Britt Ekland, cavort, celebration, charismatic leader, child, child sex abuse, Christ, Christian, Christian faith, Christianity, Christopher Lee, community, country matters, daughter, deceit, dogma, drinking song, Edward Woodward, engaged, estate, evening meal, faith, filth, folk song, grounds, indigenous, island, islanders, isolated, landlord, law, lies, life, Lord, mainland, May Day, maypole, missing, missing child, missionaries, naked, outsider, Pagan, phallic symbol, police, police sergeant, profession, pub, religious cult, remote, resurrection, ritual, Robin Hardy, scandal, scapegoat, schoolchildren, Scottish, seasons, sergeant, sex before marriage, sexual mores, socio-cultural model, Sodom, song, Teeside, traditional, UK, Victorian, visitor

Features Live Action Movies

Limbo

Director – Ben Sharrock – 2020 – UK – Cert. N/C 15+ – 103m

****1/2

Immigrants are holed up in a rundown house on a bleak Scottish island as they await letters granting their requests for asylum in the UK – on MUBI from Thursday, September 23rd

A smiley chalked on a blackboard. A woman’s austere face suggesting exactly the opposite. Instructors Helga (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Boris (Kenneth Collard) are demonstrating how a man should behave towards a woman dancing to pop music. Helga’s top looks far too proper and her skirt both far too formal and long for a good night out, as if she were dressed for work in an office. Boris is admonished for first resting his head on Helga’s clothed breast then putting his hands on her bottom. “Now, can anyone tell me what Boris did wrong,” she asks the group of stunned men watching, seated.

Behind her on the blackboard are the words, “Cultural Awareness 101. Sex. Is a smile an invitation?”

Welcome (or maybe not) to the world of an asylum seeker from Syria placed on a remote Scots island. Welcome (or maybe not) to the UK’s Hostile Environment.

A rudimentary training centre.… Read the rest