A former student from Plymouth is making waves in Hollywood - even snagging Quentin Tarantino as producer of her latest documentary.

Megan Raney left Plymstock School’s sixth form in 1995 and, after attending university in London and working in North America, developed a passion
for filmmaking.

Now living and working in California, she and her brother Colin Gray have formed a production company, The Sibs, which is gaining a high profile among film industry players.

Megan and Colin recently visited the UK for a showing of their film, Freedom’s Fury, at the Barbican in London.

Five years in the making, the flick follows events leading up to the ill-fated Hungarian Revolution of 1956, featuring political history interwoven with preparations for, and matches during, the water polo competition at the Australian Olympics in the same year.

The film reaches a climax with the famous ‘blood in the water’ semi-final between Hungary and Russia. Yeah, well it’s not that famous actually. We had to look it up. Apparently, that game turned into a brawl as Hungary’s players did what they could to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of their homeland weeks earlier. Être et avoir eat your proverbial heart out.

Either way, it’s safe to say that there probably weren’t a huge amount of documentary makers clambering to tell this story and you’d imagine the market for it would be fairly, shall we say, niche.

However, the film’s executive producers Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Lui (yes, you read that correctly!) seem to think it has wider potential and it has already been shown at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Quelle swish.

Since then, the movie has earned The Sibs rave reviews (’A stunning, mandatory, must-see film’ - Cosmopolitan, ‘Truly enthralling’ - Elle), and even the Order of the Knight’s Cross on behalf of the Hungarian Republic. Indeed, some folks are even suggesting the flick could pick up an Oscar next month.

But The Sibs haven’t let things go to their heads. They’re in production for their third feature documentary, Prisoners of Faith, developing two independent scripts and planning to make their narrative feature film directorial debut.

Stay tuned to D+CFilm to find out how they get on. Oh, and here’s the trailer for Freedom’s Fury. It’s a pretty dodgy ‘copy’ but you get the idea.

Posted by Thin White Duke

Okay, we admit it. We’ve been completely obsessed with the latest single by Charlotte Hatherley for about, ooh, the last month or so. Called Behave, it’s a bastard mindworm of a tune which stomps round and round your head in clomping great red DMs. Yup, it’s really that good.

The accompanying video is pretty ace too. It’s directed by Oscar Wright, brother of Shaun Of The Dead director and Hatherley’s current boyf, Edgar Wright. Hooray for nepotism.

According to Ain’t It Cool, the promo references Tron and Gatchaman (that’s Battle Of The Planets to you, chum). We don’t know about all that, but Charlotte sure looks purtey! Hyuck!

Posted by Thin White Duke

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Follow the main cinema links for dates, times and matinee screenings.
Follow the title links for movie details, friendship and maybe more.

PLYMOUTH ARTS CENTRE 

Pan’s Labyrinth (15) Click here to watch trailer
Little Children (15) Click here to watch trailer

TAVISTOCK WHARF

Casino Royale (12A) Click here to watch trailer

DARTINGTON ARTS/THE BARN

Breaking And Entering (15) Click here to watch trailer
We Shall Overcome (12A) Click here to see pix
Romanzo Criminale (15) Click here to watch trailer
Starter For Ten (12A) Click here to watch trailer

EXETER PICTUREHOUSE

Miss Potter (PG) Click here to watch trailer
Night At The Museum (PG) Click here to watch trailer
Open Season (PG) Click here to watch trailer

If you want your local arthouse or cinema club featured in the Arthouse Roundup, send some details to info@dandcfilm.co.uk

The UK’s first broadband TV channel run by and for young people is looking for fresh ideas from upcoming talent in D+C.

Chew TV is after subject matter that will stir up a bit of debate. The form of your idea could be anything from an animation, film, documentary, music video, audio or even, it says here, a game. How wizard.

The good news is Chew TV will help you develop your idea by altruistically offering expertise and help with financial support and equipment. Proposals may be submitted by individuals, groups of young people or through organisations such as schools, colleges, universities or youth clubs (do kids still go to youth clubs these days?).

To submit your beezer idea, contact Chew TV telling them what you want to do, why it interests you and how they can help you develop it. Proposals should be submitted to Chew TV, Creative Partnerships, 21b Pydar St, Truro, TR1 2AY.

We’ve also got an email address for them somewhere, but we can’t find it. However, as the deadline for entries is March 5, there’s plenty of time for yous to be a bit proactive, ain’t there? Cuh, kids today, eh? They don’t know they’re boooooorn!

Posted by Thin White Duke

You know we told you about that Bethemoviestar website, which claimed to be the world’s biggest open casting call? And you know we were a little, um, sarky about the whole malarky? If you missed the story, click here to have a look, while we eat this big slice of humble pie. Apparently the site has been an incredible success, receiving over 100,000 visits in just its first week. Well.

Evidently galvanised by the coverage on D+CFilm (plus some radio interviews and newspaper articles and stuff) some 400 aspiring movie stars sent in clips to audition for Steve Nesbit’s occult thriller, which has a terrible name that we can’t actually remember at the moment.

Nesbit explained to D+CFilm: “Bethemoviestar.com had so many clip submissions over the holiday that it crashed. It was down for a couple hours. We’ve now had to add an extra web server to handle the traffic. There’s also been a huge response from the casting community, wanting to share in some of our raw talent - so we’re still hoping for many more entries.”

Hmm, we bet they are. After all, there’s precious little evidence of these numerous fantastic clips on the actual site. There is, however, a reeeeeally long interview with Nesbit - you can tell he’s a proper filmmaker cos he’s got a TV with colour bars on it behind his head. Coo! Not sure we need to know
what he thinks of the new James Bond or what films he’s gonna watch over Christmas though.

Either way, we’re appropriately humbled and can only wish bethemoviestar.com luck with its mission and say we’re looking forward to seeing the finished movie (well, we’re not really but y’know, there’s no need to be rude, is there?).

Stay tuned to D+CFilm for more exciting developments in the bethemoviestar saga (or possibly not).

Posted by Thin White Duke

Dorset-based indie, Cranbrook Films, is celebrating a second consecutive year of accolades for the excellence of its DVD production.

The company’s Space For Sport And Arts DVD has been given the big thumbs up by Televisual Magazine (no, us neither). This apparently follows hot on the heels of the same award in 2005 for its Greenspaces DVD.

The Space for Sport and Arts DVD was produced for Sport England and Arts Council England and sets out to improve sport and arts facilities at primary schools in deprived areas of the country. Which is, of course, A Very Good Thing Indeed - well, the arts bit at least. We hate sport. Ugh!

Posted by Thin White Duke

The movie mag polls are in, and it looks like United 93 is their ‘film of the year’. Well, quelle sur-chuffing-prise, eh?

Worthy, dull, uninspired, it just goes to show what a crap year it’s been in cinemaland (except for Crank, which was ace - obviously!). So, god bless YouTube and hallaluyah for those beavering away under the radar.

Like filmmaker Dylan Avery, whose online 9/11 documentary was just what the proverbial doctor ordered in this whey-faced year of film. He raised $2,000 to make Loose Change, a film that asks ‘honest questions’ about the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

And frankly, it’s never ‘too soon’ to be asking questions like: why were there reports of multiple explosions in the towers? Why did the plane crashing into the Pentagon (and for that matter, the United 93 crash) leave no evidence of an actual plane? Why did the footage of Bin Laden admitting the attacks bear no resemblance to existing pictures of the man? Hmmm?

As opposed to the sanitised likes of United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Avery’s flick actually bothered to put things in context and make its case with bone-chilling precision. Which is why we at D+CFilm are naming it our film of the year. Hell, it’ll probably be our film of next year too - after all, you can watch Loose Change version two online now (click here to watch it in full), but an updated third version is lined up for a theatrical run in 2007.

Rest assured, when this stuff hits the cinemas, the shit hits the fan. Happy new year, D+Cineasts!

Posted by Thin White Duke