| - sex scenes in Ewan new film, Young Adam, are set to test the new liberal approach of Britain�s censors to the limit. The film, which is based on a book by Scots beatnik Alexander Trocchi, contains an incendiary mix of sex and violence unprecedented in British cinema history. In one scene, McGregor beats co-star Emily Mortimer on the bottom and then has sex. The British Board of Film Classification - which draws the line at the erotic combination of sex and violence - said it would be looking "very carefully indeed" at the film, which is being promoted by industry giant Warner Brothers. - The way has finally been cleared for the construction of a new children�s hospice for Scotland. Work on the project, on the banks of Loch Lomond, will now begin within a matter of a few weeks. The Scottish Executive last week gave the green light to the planning application lodged by the Children�s Hospice Association Scotland. Because it is sited in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, planning permission had to be sought from Social Justice Minister Margaret Curran.She has now told the Park Authority she has given the �10 million project the go-ahead. - The poster for Down With Love: - Ewan is fronting a campaign to open Scotland's first cinema for sick kids. He hopes to raise �250,000 to open a 50-seat movie theatre in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill, Glasgow. It could treat young patients to previews of blockbuster films before they go on general release. Run by charity MediCinema, it will be only the second facility of its kind in Britain.Ewan has voiced an ad appealing for donations which will be seen in cinemas at the end of the month. UGC Glasgow will hold special film preview evenings to raise money for the project. The first MediCinema was set up in London's St Thomas' Hospital in 1999 and has screened Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Die Another Day before general release. Charity founder Christine Hill said: "We hope to do similar pre-release previews of blockbusters at Glasgow. "The new cinema will be built in an existing lecture room and we hope it will be open before the end of the year. "We are very excited about improving the hospital stay of sick children in Scotland." - Ewan has officially made it on to the Hollywood A-list!! He broke off from filming his latest movie, Big Fish, in Alabama, to fly to New York for a Vanity Fair cover photoshoot with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Ed Norton. The special Hollywood issue hits news-stands in the US on March 7, in time for the Academy Awards on March 23. There's no doubt the Scot won't be up for an Oscar for Best Actor as Obi- Wan Kenobi in Attack Of The Clones, but the magazine cover shows that he's fast becoming the hot new male lead of choice. His latest film, Down By Love, stars Renee Zellweger, who has just been nominated for best actress in Chicago. - Hal David and Burt Bacharach have created the title song for Down With Love. Other songs include Judy Garland singing Down With Love and Frank Sinatra on Fly Me to the Moon. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray) also have written Here's to Love to be sungby the co-stars over the closing credits. - Possible release date for Big Fish: 12th December. Filming is continuing. - Celebrities have bombarded immigration ministers with pleas to halt the deportation of a Cameroon refugee. As the Ham&High reported last month, Francoise Motoum-Kamga was abducted, imprisoned without trial, tortured, beaten and repeatedly raped by prison guards because of her peaceful political activity in opposition to the Cameroon Government. She escaped and fled to England in December 2000 where clinicians from both the Kentish Town-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and the Tavistock Clinic in Fitzjohn�s Avenue, Hampstead, diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and backed her claim for asylum. But the British Government has turned down the application � and leave to appeal � on the grounds that Cameroon has a democratic government and is deemed to be �safe� by the Home and Foreign Offices. Actress Juliet Stevenson, who lives in Highgate, has written to scores of high profile artists, actors and writers asking them to sign letters of support for the 30-year-old qualified nurse, to stay. Movie star Ewan McGregor, poet laureate Andrew Motion, film director Anthony Minghella, legal expert Baroness Helena Kennedy and actor Sir Derek Jacobi are among 40 celebrities to respond to her call. More than �1,300 cash has also poured in after the Ham&High reported that Ms Motoum-Kamga, now in hiding in Haringey, is destitute and could not even afford a winter coat. - Jude Law is the movie-buff�s choice to become the next 007 star, a survey found today. He took, more than a quarter of the votes, finishing just ahead of Ewan. Law had 28% of the votes, with Ewan having 26% Christian Bale on 24% for the Total Film magazine poll. Hugh Grant drew just 2% of the votes as a replacement for Pierce Brosnan, who is set to star as Bond for a fifth time. Ewan would like to do James Bond. - Irish auteur Neil Jordan has switched from Renaissance Italy to Ancient Greece in his attempt to get a film made this year. After a fruitless struggle to raise financing for his $55 million epic Borgia, he is now attached to direct The Return, about the homecoming of Odysseus to his island kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War. Jordan and Woolley are still teamed in their production shingle Company of Wolves, which has two pics due for release later this year -- Conor McPherson's The Actors and John Crowley's Intermission. Woolley is still trying to set up Borgia for 2004. - It should also cheer those depressed by a decaying culture and a coarsening sensibility. These young artists have not allowed success to blunt their ambition or blur their vision. They have not "sold out" by producing work of which they cannot be proud, by ditching a difficult project in favour of an easy sequel or insipid star vehicle. Witness the effort which Ewan McGregor, with his pick of Hollywood roles, has devoted to a low-budget version of Young Adam, a dark and perplexing novel by the Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi. In spite of setbacks and funding failures, McGregor has stuck with the project, and the film will be released later this year. Creativity and quality are fragile plants, but they continue to grow. Notwithstanding the dross, there are people out there who believe in the value of things that are not loud, obvious or easy. As well as the frocks, we should celebrate their achievement. - Lelia, webmistress of the excellent Ewan site Eccentricity, has a fantastic account of meeting Ewan in Alabama here, and some exclusive pics! Congratulations Lelia! - Other than the original cast's lack of ageing, the sequel to 1996 runaway hit Trainspotting is taking shape, said director Danny Boyle at the Sundance Film Festival. In Park City for the North American debut of UK box-office sensation 28 Days Later, the director said the sequel, based on the novel, Porno, by Trainspotting novelist Irvine Welsh, reunites the characters ten years later. He added that it was therefore essential that the film reunite the original cast members, which include Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller. "None of them look any different," he said. "I need them to look like they�ve burned themselves out, but they have all been using face creme and Vitamin E lotion." - Eric sent the following report to AICN: I live in Tallassee, Alabama. A small town that sets on the Tallapoosa River. It's about 25-30 mins from Montgomery and about 20 mins from Wetumpka (location of another Big Fish shoot). Anyway, part of the movie was shot here tonight (Friday 17 January). The scene involved a burning house and Ewan McGregor coming out of the house and down the front steps carrying a dog in his arms. He is suppose to be rescuing the dog from the burning house while the residents look on from the curb. As he walks down the steps with the dog in his arms the firemen are running up the stairs and stop at the top as Ewan hands the dog over to its owners. Then the residents clap and applaud Ewan while the firemen look on from the top. This was done several times....with a very long pause between shots because part of the house actually started to burn but nothing serious. They had to repatch part of the outside wall beneath a window cause part of the board in the wall came out. Before they shot these scenes, they shot a few scenes of the house burning and a few frightful people standing outside on the lawn. an old firetruck pulls up in front of the house and the firemen jump out and run up to the building. this was done several times as well. a few practice routines and then the actual taping. I got there at right before 6pm and it didn't actually start till a few mins afterwards but it lasted until about 9:15pm. long periods between each scene (and there were only two scenes being filmed. but they went through them many times). it was very cold, especially for Alabama. about 15 degrees outside. I saw Tim Burton many times. He seemed like he was having fun, laughing along with others on the set. I saw Ewan too but only when he was doing his scenes. The dog is a six month old St. Bernard, a very big dog to be so young. There is also a cave that has been constructed at the bottom of a boat ramp that is located about 3 mins from my house. They will film a scene there on Monday where Ewan meets a giant that lives in a cave. He is stealing the town people's pets, food, etc. Anyway, Ewan is supposed to teach the giant how to farm. Our local newspaper has a very good shot of the cave and the house which is suppose to be burned (but they actually just used special effects flame torches...I guess that's what you call them, to simulate burning). I haven't had a chance to scan them and they are not on the web but soon as I can I will send them along. - Down With Love trailer now on the net!! Click here to see the trailer. You need Quicktime 5 but u can get it at the link. - Home secretary David Blunkett's new crackdown on guns will have the approval of heartthrob actor Ewan McGregor. Although McGregor, 31, says he enjoyed firing machine guns in the film 'Black Hawk Down', he hates them in real life. So much so that he even swore volubly at the Curzon cinema in London's Soho while watching Michael Moore's documovie, 'Bowling For Columbine', which condemns America's gun culture. In it, Moore interviews actor Charlton Heston, president of America's right-wing National Rifle Association. A startled cinema-goer sitting next to McGregor tells me: 'Every time Heston was on the screen, McGregor squirmed in his seat and swore out loud. He used very strong language.' - Down With Love was on ET recently. There are heaps of pics that there is a link here to check 'em all out! - In April, Renee Zellweger makes like Doris Day to Ewan McGregor's Rock Hudson in the '60s-style sex farce Down With Love, the very thought of which makes her bubble over with enthusiasm. "That Ewan McGregor is so cute in his suits you are just going to die. Just going to die. I would come to work every day and I would say, 'You are going to have to go away!' " - Ewan's dreams of being a matinee idol finally come true in his latest movie. The actor was reared on the sex comedies of golden era stars Rock Hudson and Doris Day while growing up in Crieff, Perthshire. And now he and Chicago star Renee Zellweger have paid homage to their heroes in the spoof Down With Love. Ewan, 31, said: "I know all three of Rock and Doris's movies and I love romance and being in love - it goes straight back to those films I watched as a kid. "My fantasies have always been about that Hollywood era of being attached to a studio." He dived straight in, dyeing his hair black to look like a 60s idol. He even bought a copy of 1950s heartthrob James Dean's car to use while filming in LA. He said: "My family were there and we'd get up, have orange juice then I'd zip to the studio in my sports car. "I'd then get into wardrobe with these great suits, step on to these great 60s sets and then zip back home in time for dinner. Fantastic. It was like being back then." Hudson and Day movies set a winning formula with their opposites-attract tension in the hit comedies Pillow Talk in 1959, Lover Come Back in 1962, and 1964's Don't Send Me Flowers. And Down With Love, set in New York in 1963, is in that vein. It follows the budding romance between Ewan's character Catcher Block, a playboy journalist described as a "man's man, ladies' man, man about town", and feminist advice columnist Barbara Novak, played by Renee. The film even has the brightly coloured look of the Hudson-Day movies, with in- car scenes shot with fake backgrounds rather than modern on-location takes. Yet, despite his glee at the role, Ewan found it hard adjusting to working on an LA comedy. He said: "I'd just done a very dark, erotic film in Scotland called Young Adam and then I was immediately playing this idol character. "Also, we all found it difficult to begin with doing that type of 60s comedy, which is `performed'." After his chart hit from the musical Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman, fans will see Ewan sing yet another duet with one of Hollywood's leading ladies when the film is released in the spring. He and Renee are also expected to release one of the songs they perform in the movie as a single. The romantic family man role also seems to be closer to the real Ewan than the racy characters which made his name in films like Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. Ewan, who has daughters Clara, six, and baby Esther with French wife Eve, said: "Everything I ever wanted is back at my house." - A Down With Love pic: - In Montgomery on Wednesday afternoon, Albert Finney and Jessica Lange held hands and smiled for the cameras. They were followed by Ewan McGregor, who posed with a young boy. The stills, taken in front of the closed Cloverdale Junior High School that is now the film company's headquarters, were merely the preamble to a much larger shoot. Director Tim Burton's Big Fish begins shooting Monday in Wetumpka and will continue filming in and around Montgomery through the end of April. While Finney, Lange and McGregor posed for shots that will be used as photographs in the film, they are far from the only stars who are already in Montgomery preparing for the beginning of the shoot. Billy Crudup and Helena Bonham Carter, two of the movie's previously announced stars, are here, as well as former Benson star Robert Guillaume and French actress Marion Cotillard, who have just joined the cast. Guillaume and Carter are here temporarily for wardrobe fittings, but will fly back later for filming, as will other stars, such as Danny DeVito, Steve Buscemi and Alison Lohman, who starred in White Oleander. Not only were new stars mentioned Wednesday, but so were new locations. Eileen Peterson, production publicist for the film, said that while most of the film will be shot in the Montgomery and Wetumpka areas, the company will spend several days shooting in Tallassee and at Auburn University. "The entire film will be shot within about a 40-minute radius of Montgomery," Peterson said. And she means the entire film. When it was announced in August that the movie would be shot here, it was believed that Burton would do location shooting and then finish many of the inside scenes at a Hollywood sound stage. But Peterson said the entire production will be shot in Alabama. Shooting for Big Fish will begin in Wetumpka and continue there throughout the week, and then will move on to Tallassee, Peterson said. Alabama Film Office Director Brian Kurlander has called the Columbia Pictures film a redefining event for the film industry in Alabama. And financially, he said the film would have an estimated $25 million economic impact on central Alabama. Burton, the 43-year-old who has directed such films as Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks and Planet of the Apes, is adapting the movie from former Alabamian Daniel Wallace's novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. The story concerns a son (Crudup) who returns to a small Southern town to get to know his dying father (played by both Finney and by McGregor in flashbacks). It is through his father's tall tales that the son begins to understand the elusive man. - Star Ewan's DLR drinks ad shoot... but it'll never be shown on Brit TV. Ewan indulged in a bit of trainspotting at the Wharf - but instead of climbing into grotty toilets he was chased around by a gaggle of 75 women. The Scottish Star Wars star spent Hogmanay day at Canary Wharf Docklands Light Railway station filming an advert for a Japanese energy drink. A crew of 45 worked the central platform of the DLR for the day-long filming on January 31. One onlooker was clearly bowled-over by the 31-year-old Moulin Rouge star. They told The Wharf: "He's a really friendly down-to-earth guy and he's as gorgeous in the flesh as he is in the movies." The advert, for Japanese soft drink Roots, will never be shown in the UK. The commercial begins with Ewan sitting alone on the platform sipping from a can of Roots - a Japanese energy drink which, it would seem, renders you irresistible to the opposite sex. Film crews had to bring their own train station seats for Ewan, as the DLR's marble benches were deemed too classy for the advert. As the drink starts to take effect Ewan is suddenly spotted and chased along the platform by a crowd of screaming young ladies. "I don't think the reaction would be too different if he sat there for real - drink or no drink," said the onlooker. Despite being happily married to French wife Eve Mavrakis, Ewan has never been one to hide his light-sabre under a bushel - delighting his league of fans by kitting off in several films, including a full frontal in rock star flick Velvet Goldmine. For him, a visit to the futuristic landscape will have been familiar territory - he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in two Star Wars prequels - The Phantom Menace and Attack Of The Clones. And it's not the first time Ewan has been to the area - he filmed a Millennium short film at London City Airport in August 1999. The actor also played disgraced banker Nick Leeson in Rogue Trader in 1999, so mingling with the Wharf's (resolutely more honest) financial community would have proved no problem. Celebrity endorsements are huge in Japanese ads - particularly for drinks, where over 80 per cent are associated with a big-named star. - Jude Law and his actress wife, Sadie Frost, have pulled out of Natural Nylon Entertainment, amid reports that the film production company has effectively closed down. Their formal withdrawal follows those of Ewan McGregor and producer Damon Bryant last year. Law, McGregor and Bryant remain shareholders in the company, with fellow thesp Jonny Lee Miller and producer Bradley Adams. But sources said the company has been "put to bed." News comes just after sister outfit Union Pictures, a TV production firm run by Adams, went into voluntary receivership Dec. 20, although none of the actors was involved in that company. - Earlier this year Film 2002 met up with Ewan McGregor on the Glasgow set of Young Adam. The film, directed by David Mackenzie, is based on the book by cult Scottish novelist Alexander Trocchi and co-stars Tilda Swinton and Peter Mullan. McGregor plays Joe, a drifter working on the canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Film 2002: What's the movie about? Ewan McGregor: Trocchi wrote the book in the 1950s, Young Adam is about a man on the outside of society. Trocchi was very much a man outside society, he was a heroin addict and a pornographer. A very interesting character. It's quite dark, it's very erotic, and it's a very adult film. I feel at the moment we're getting movies that over explain themselves to us, to the point that you come away feeling stupid. This doesn't do that, so as actors we get the chance to play and let the audience decide, which is lovely. Do you happily flip between Hollywood films and smaller films like this? I have had a run of big films, like Moulin Rouge, Star Wars, Black Hawk Down, and I was dying to do a small scale film, where you know all the crew. On big films there's maybe 500 people on the crew and you don't know who half of them are. You can end up feeling as if you're being wheeled on to do your bit and wheeled back to your trailer. On a film like this you're surrounded by people you know, you are all working together to make a film and it's a good feeling. But more than anything, this is a cracking script. Is it important for an actor of your standing to do smaller films? I certainly wouldn't say it's your duty or anything like that. I have always been most interested in stories more than anything else and I hope that never changes. It's good for you to do different kinds of work, it makes me happy to do big films and smaller films. This is quite a difficult part to play but if you are constantly playing things you know you can do it is going to take the edge off things and everything will become more mundane. There was a story you had taken an unscheduled dunking in the River Clyde... That's a complete myth! My folks were in New York and someone came up and said "How is your son, he's fallen in the Clyde" - and I didn't! I did after that but I was meant to... Peter Mullan got an injury to his back which held us up for a couple of days. I might be a jinx - Nicole's ribs, Peter's back... other actors should be afraid to work with me I think! - Celebrity Big Brother winner and former Take That singer Mark Owen was named Britain's most relaxed star in a poll, followed by Ewan! - Happy New Year everyone!!! 2003 here we come! - Renee was interviewed for this article on Down With Love and more importantly...Ewan! A possible single between the two would be fantastic wouldn't it! Ewan is teaming up with Ren�e Zellweger in a movie musical tribute to Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The Scots star is making a habit of hitting the high notes with Hollywood's sexiest stars after starring with Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Ren�e is no stranger to song-and-dance routines either. She's starring in the film version of the hit stage musical Chicago. Their pairing in 1960s-style romantic comedy Down With Love sounds like a match made in heaven - and there's even talk of Ewan and Ren�e releasing a single. In New York yesterday for the launch of Chicago, which opens at Scottish cinemas on January 17, Ren�e admitted she's a big fan of Ewan's musical talents. She said: "It was natural that Ewan McGregor should go and do a movie musical because he has it in him. "When we were making Down With Love, Ewan was on his guitar the whole time. "You could hear him playing and singing down the hall every day. "Everything he does has rhythm to it. He's also very suave but he is not conscious of it. Even when he is joking around, he has this tremendous presence." Ren�e - who flew to New York from Transylvania where she is filming the American Civil War drama Cold Mountain with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law - also revealed that Ewan is pretty nimble on the dance floor. She said: "He dances far better than I do. He is such a dancer you can't believe it. (Wasn't Ewan awkward about dancing in Moulin Rouge?) "We have dance numbers in this movie and we sing a little bit. "We are talking about a duet right now - that'll be as soon as my voice heals from screaming on Cold Mountain. I don't know if there will be a single, they are talking about it. We'll see what happens." - This isn't really recent but its worth a look because this is an article written by Ewan for the Sunday Post Hospice Challenge: I was in Rachel House on Tuesday with a film crew making an advert for CHAS when its chief executive Agnes Malone told me there had been an objection to the site of the new hospice. It was terrible news and so hard to believe anyone could deny the building of something so vital to so many children. However I am still very optimistic that we will get the go-ahead on Tuesday. The suggestion of rejecting permission is only a recommendation to the committee and I am confident they won�t take that route. On Tuesday CHAS will get 15 minutes to put their case why planning permission should be granted and it is a very strong case indeed. Never mind 15 minutes, just five minutes inside Rachel House would be enough to convince them. It is hard to imagine any reasons for not allowing the building of a second hospice at Loch Lomond. In fact I can�t think of a single one. Yes it is a national park and I understand their environmental concerns, but only a road-width of the six-acre site will be edging into the park. The children of Scotland desperately need this service. It would be absolutely criminal if they do not get it. Some of the objections seems to be based on the noise that one bureaucrat thinks will be generated by the hospice, he says it would be like building a supermarket there. Nonsense That�s nonsense. At Rachel House there is no noise, instead it is very peaceful and calm. It�s certainly no supermarket! The people of Balloch have been very supportive of the new hospice and have made it clear they want it to be built there. Locals in Kinross love Rachel House and are very proud to have it in their town. I�ve no doubt the population of Balloch will feel exactly the same. The planning director of the park authority has said another site could be found. But CHAS has looked at 47 sites and this one gives everything they need. The building has been designed specifically to sit here and it would literally be a case of going back to the drawing board if planning permission was rejected. That would take time that we don�t have. Rachel House is a great, fun environment that is perfect for the kids who need to go there. No-one has to be turned away but it is quickly nearing saturation point and a second facility is vital. It would mean that instead of having eight beds for the 1300 families that need respite care, there would be twice that number. That would ease the pressure on Rachel House considerably. I�ve been to the hospice many times but I am always struck by how it isn�t remotely grim. I am always amazed at the strength and resilience of the kids. Rachel House really is an incredible place and no-one should stand in the way of another hospice. The film crew and I had a great time up there for two days last week. I defy anyone to go there and not be impressed by the place and the people. It is only common sense that the planning permission for Balloch goes through and I remain optimistic that it will. Looking after our children is so important and a necessary part of our humanity. I know that Sunday Post readers have already raised more than �1.5 million towards the new hospice. That�s an amazing amount and they can be reassured none of it will go to waste. Surely common sense will prevail. |
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