For those who missed last night’s airing of Bomber Boys, fear not! UK viewers can catch up on BBC iPlayer until the end of the week (February 12). I am trying to find a copy to make screen captures, and hopefully some clips for those who haven’t been able to see it. Stay tuned!

Brothers Colin and Ewan McGregor follow up their documentary The Battle of Britain with a film exploring Bomber Command, a rarely-told story from the Second World War.

The film focuses primarily on the men who fought and died in the skies above occupied Europe, with numerous examples of individual heroism and extraordinary collective spirit, and Colin learns to fly the key aircraft of the campaign: the Lancaster bomber. But this is also the story of a controversy that has lasted almost 70 years.

The programme covers six years of wartime operations, and traces the obstacles and challenges that were overcome as the RAF developed and deployed the awesome fighting force that was Bomber Command.

By Celyn • February 06, 2012 • News, TV • Comments: 0

It’s something that happens all the time in Hollywood, and something every writer dreads. You’ve fallen in love with a story idea, come up with the perfect way to realize that story on screen…and then you find out somebody else is already making the movie. It’s not a phenomenon limited to armchair screenwriters as an excuse for not finishing their scripts either; it happened to Ewan McGregor.

The Scottish actor was planning to make his directorial debut on a movie about a 1968 yacht race. He had been researching the real-life story, he planned to pen the script himself, and he was even going to work on the project with his wife, production designer Eve Mavrakis. Then he found out that great minds think alike, and some other great mind had already bogarted his idea. He told Nylon Guys Magazine: “My wife was going to design it, I wasn’t going to be in it. And then I found out someone else is doing it. I was gutted.”

McGregor has apparently been toying with the idea of directing for a while now. In an interview with the Santa Monica Mirror last June, he joked, “The real reason I would like to direct is so that I can turn up at work and not take off my clothes. It seems like every day I turn up for work I have to take off my clothes and put on someone else’s clothes so it would be quite nice to just wear my own clothes all day.”

On a more serious note, McGregor said that he wasn’t interested in directing just for the hell of it, but that he wanted to find a particular story that fascinated him enough to justify settling into the director’s chair. As he said at the time, “I’m still waiting for that story to find me.”

Sadly, that story won’t be the yacht-race tale that had intrigued him, but hopefully he’ll find something else that catches his attention. He definitely hasn’t given up on the idea of directing. He told the magazine, “I think it would be so fascinating and satisfying. But I don’t pretend… I would be starting right at the bottom.”

In the mean time, you’ll be able to see McGregor in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, opening March 9th, 2012, and Haywire, opening January 20th.

Source

By Celyn • December 27, 2011 • News • Comments: 0

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, will open the Palm Springs International Film Festival January 5, organizers said Thursday.

The showing will mark the U.S. debut of the British comedy, which was directed by Oscar nominee Lasse Hallstrom (“My Life as a Dog”) and written by Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”).

Two other McGregor films will also be shown at the festival: There will be a special presentation of “Haywire,” a Steven Soderbergh-directed action film also starring McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum and Bill Paxton; and the drama “Perfect Sense,” which co-stars Eva Green, is on the lineup, as well.

In total, the festival will host 187 films from 73 countries. There will be 61 premieres.

Source

By Celyn • December 24, 2011 • News, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen • Comments: 0

Ewan McGregor has been tapped to star in HBO’s drama pilot The Corrections.

The Star Wars and Moulin Rouge actor will co-star alongside Dianne Wiest and Chris Cooper in Noah Baumbach and Scott Rudin’s adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s best-seller, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

McGregor will play Chip, the middle child of an elderly Midwestern couple (Cooper, Wiest) who reunite the family for one last Christmas.

Rudin optioned the film rights for Paramount to the National Book Award-winning novel in 2001 and would executive produce the project.

Baumbach and Franzen will pen the project and exec produce, with Baumbach directing the drama, which is currently in production.

McGregor’s TV work includes guest starring on NBC’s ER in 1997 as well as appearing as himself in the U.K. TV docuseries Long Way Down.

McGregor’s upcoming features include The Impossible and Jack the Giant Killer.

Source

By Celyn • November 23, 2011 • News, TV • Comments: 0

Thanks to Rossanna for letting me know that Beginners will be availible via Movies on Demand from Tuesday November 1, 2011! If you haven’t seen the film yet, make sure you add it to your list of films to see, it really is a great watch.

By Celyn • October 27, 2011 • Beginners, News • Comments: 0