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Ahead of its opening on February 26th, the first trailer has landed for The Truth Commissioner directed by Declan Recks (Eden). Filmed on location in Belfast, Derry and Dublin, the film is adapted from David Park’s award winning novel of the same name and looks behind the rhetoric surrounding the Northern Ireland peace process. Synopsis: Set in a post-troubles Northern Ireland, The Truth Commissioner follows the fictional story of Henry Stanfield (Roger Allam, V for Vendetta), a career diplomat who has just been appointed as Truth Commissioner to Northern Ireland. Co-starring Barry Ward (Jimmy’s Hall), Sean McGinley (The General), Conleth Hill (‘Game of Thrones’), Ian McElhinney (‘Game of Thrones’) and Tom Goodman Hill (The Imitation Game), the story revolves around the lives of three men who are directly or indirectly involved in the disappearance, 20 years earlier, of 15-year-old Connor Roche. Though Stanfield starts bravely, he quickly uncovers some.

As the world prepares to completely lose its mind with the release of the new Star Wars film, it is obviously time to try to stir the pot as much as possible. That in mind, the previous films from the franchise are going to be released on April 10th in digital edition, and with some new bonuses to help sucker you in to the purchase.

They also come with the legacy bonus content, and put together, these are impressive releases. I don’t want to overly comment on how many sales the first three episodes are going to get, but if you need to catch up on the universe in general, this is your chance. And, since we’re looking at a new generation who need to get on board for the new film, this is the way to go.

Take a look at all the bonus potential below, and...

BBC Worldwide North America announced today the acquisition of Queen And Country, the latest film by five-time Academy Award nominated director and writer John Boorman (Hope and Glory, Excalibur, The General, Deliverance), securing all rights in North America.

The film, which Boorman has announced will be his last, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2014 and was acquired after making its North American debut during Film Comment’s special screening at the 52nd New York Film Festival earlier this month.

Queen And Country introduces Callum Turner (Ripper Street, Borgias) to the big screen and also stars one of Variety’s “Top 10 Actors to Watch” Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class), David Thewlis (War Horse, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and Vanessa Kirby (About Time). Featuring cinematography from Seamus Deasy (Neverland, When the Sky Falls) and set design by Academy Award nominee Anthony Pratt (The Phantom of the Opera,...

Over the course of a 25 year career, actor Brendan Gleeson has made a name for himself with a number of strong supporting and leading turns in movies such as The General, Gangs of New York, Kingdom of Heaven, the Harry Potter series, and In Bruges. Many fans of the performer were interested to see what he would do next, which raised the profile of his next project. Titled The Grand Seduction, the film is directed by Don McKellar, who works from a script by Michael Dowse and Ken Scott. Gleeson stars alongside Taylor Kitsch, Liane Balaban, Gordon Pinsent, and Mark Critch. The first trailer for the film has now been released, and can be seen below.

(Source: Collider)

The post ‘The Grand Seduction’, with Brendan Gleeson, releases its first trailer appeared first on Sound On Sight.

Queen and Country

Director: John Boorman

Writer: John Boorman

Producer: John Boorman, Kieran Corrigan

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Tamsin Egerton, David Thewlis, Richard E. Grant, Caleb Landry Jones

The octogenarian director is still going strong, though this is his first feature since 2006’s The Tiger’s Tail. We’re thinking this historical piece sounds exactly like Boorman’s cup of tea, whose more recent dabblings in John Le Carre land or the South African set In My Country didn’t quite win raves. Instead, this recalls something like his semiautobiographical 1987 film, Hope and Glory.

Gist: An Englishman who grew up in London during World War II joins the military to fight in the Korean War. br>

Release Date: Boorman’s last stint at Cannes was in 1998 for The General, for which he won Best Director. Chances are slim that we’ll see him there again, look for it...

John Boorman is the legendary British film director behind Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope And Glory, The General, The Tailor Of Panama and many more.As he has been recently awarded a BFI fellowship - which is currently showing a selection of his films in a special John Boorman season - we asked him into the podcast studio for an in-depth interview, and here, ladies and gentlemen, is the fascinating result.P.S. Don't forget to check out our podcast photo gallery here and subscribe to the Empire Podcast via our iTunes page or this handy RSS feed.

What's it like to go Cannes as a family? Director Katrine Boorman explains the highs and lows of being there with her father John

I first went to Cannes in 1970 when my dad, John Boorman, had a film playing in competition. It was Leo the Last, about a deposed Italian prince living in London, and I remember holding hands with my sister and its star Marcello Mastroianni as we ran along the beach being chased by paparazzi. Dad won best director. I was so excited.

Eleven years later, he was back with Excalibur 11 years later, based on the King Arthur legend. I spent so long waving to the crowd and having my photo taken, I didn't notice everyone else had gone into the cinema. Dad grabbed my arm, only for the door to be closed in our faces. He turned to me with a look of fury. Eventually, we were spotted by an official,...

Sony Pictures Classics has announced that they have acquired worldwide rights to Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Amy Berg.s (Deliver Us From Evil) high profile documentary West Of Memphis. The film debuted at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premiere Section to great critical acclaim. West Of Memphis is produced by the Academy Award-winning team of Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, and first time producers Damien Echols and Lorri Davis.

West Of Memphis is a powerful documentary that chronicles the new investigation surrounding the .West Memphis Three,. which ultimately broke the case open and led to the freedom of three innocent men: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. Beginning with a searing examination of the fatally flawed police investigation into the 1993 murders of three, eight year old boys in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, the film goes on to reveal personal insight into Echols. fight...

The Ifta nominated feature film 'Anton' has been released for rental under its international title 'Trapped' in the UK and Ireland. Released through High Fliers Films, the film will be available to buy in January 2012. The 2008 thriller, directed by Graham Cantwell (The Callback Queen), stars Gerard McSorley (Veronica Guerin), Anthony Fox (The General) and Laura Way (The Silence) and is produced by Patrick Clarke (Beyond the Pale) and Anthony Fox.

Marlene Dietrich said of Orson Welles's Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil that he was "a great detective but a lousy cop", a judgment that could equally be applied to Brendan Gleeson's corrupt but deeply lovable Connemara policeman, Sergeant Gerry Boyle, in John Michael McDonagh's The Guard. This lively comedy-thriller is the latest example of that very knowing genre, the Irish crime movie, whose greatest peaks to date also star Gleeson: John Boorman's The General, and In Bruges, written and directed by McDonagh's brother, Martin.

It's an amalgam of In the Heat of the Night, The Quiet Man and Pulp Fiction telling the not wholly plausible tale of a combined anti-narcotics operation between the FBI and the Garda on the west coast of Ireland that brings together sly, slobbish, boozy, faux-racist Gerry Boyle and efficient, uptight federal agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), an African American Ivy League graduate and Rhodes scholar.

This movie made me smile and even laugh out loud. In fact, it gave me more pleasure than any aliens, robots or superheroes have all summer. That’s because it’s doggedly offbeat and completely original. It also provides a showcase for two fine actors, Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. Gleeson may be known to a wide audience as Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter series, but I think of him as the rock-solid star of such films as The General and In Bruges. He’s an actor who can effortlessly command the screen, as he does here playing a true iconoclast,…...

An Aardman Production For Sony Pictures Animation Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Brian Blessed, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen Also On Board

Culver City, Calif. – Hugh Grant will voice the lead role alongside an all-star cast in The Pirates! Band Of Misfits, the new stop-motion, 3D, animated film produced by Aardman Animations for Sony Pictures Animation. The film, which will be distributed by Columbia Pictures, will be released March 30, 2012 in North America.

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to...

Trailer to follow very shortly, and we’ll be doing something very cool closer to the release!!! Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh and starring Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, Harry Potter, and The General) and Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2, Crash, and Hotel Rwanda). The Guard is a thriller-comedy set on the west coast of Ireland where Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett (Cheadle)to his door. The Guard also stars Liam Cunningham, Pat Shortt, Darren Healy, David Wilmot, Rory Keenan, Mark Strong, Fionnula Flanagan and Slovenian newcomer KatarinaCas. The Guard has already won critics and audiences over when it screened earlier this year at the renowned Sundance & Berlin film festivals. Screen Daily believes that “The Guard.

The latest round of Irish Film Board funding decisions have been announced. The funding decisions include development, production and distribution financial support and were published on Wednesday, April 13th. The decisions see support offered to projects such as a new feature entitled 'Broken Dream' written by John Boorman (The General) and Neil Jordan (Ondine), to be directed by the latter as well as Neil Jordan's other feature project, 'Skippy Dies'. In all, approximately €2,000,000 has been awarded.

Happy St.Patricks day wherever you are. What follows are a few suggestions for paddy’s day viewing, all Irish flick’s of course. The General – Brendan Gleeson is simply brilliant in John Boorman’s gangster biopic. His&Hers – Ken Wardrop has made one of the best Irish films for years. This one will make you laugh, cry and ponder. Especially for mums and the ladies! Brilliant! Intermission – Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy combined with Colm Meaney star in a funny and fast moving crime thriller. The Wind That Shakes The Barley – Cillian Murphy fights off the British in a movie that resonates with the whole country. Directed by Ken Loach. The Snapper – Colm Meaney is the dad of a single mum, made pregnant by her elder neighbour. The funniest Irish film of all time. So there’s a few suggestions. Obviously there’s more stuff out there like The Commitments...

Cable television has seen a Renaissance as of late, and the American arm of the BBC wants a slice of the pie. Perry Simon, The General Manager for BBC Worldwide America, Channels, division has hired veteran executive Rachel Smith to the network. Smith will take the newly-created post of Vice President of Original Programming.

It’s easy to see why the BBC wants to expand its presence on cable. With the typically high-caliber original programming from premium channels HBO and Showtime, not to mention impressive offerings from the likes of AMC, FX and TNT, the American cable market is rife with possibilities for new viewership. BBC America has so far been content to rebroadcast popular content like Doctor Who and Top Gear from its mother network, along with reruns of UK-centric shows ...

Click to continue reading BBC America’s New Executive Hire Signals Push for Original Programming...

Updated: Ok, so I’ve had way to many emails from you guys pointing out that the Oscar form isn’t working for some of you this time around. I’ve put my best team of problem solvers on the issue and they can’t work it out, but 7 or 8 of you have told me it’s not working for you… so I presume there’s many more out there. To date we’ve had a little less entries than last time, so this problem is too much for me to ignore.

My only solution for now is for you to email your picks to editor@obsessedwithfilm.com. I will be collating results on Monday or Tuesday, so you’ve got a bit of time left to enter.

Now you’ve read our 1999 Academy Awards retrospective, here’s your chance to re-write history without the hassle of going back in...

This brutal Irish comedy-thriller is a little too determinedly eccentric, but highly watchable

This is yet another brutal Irish comedy-thriller, all bullets, booze and blarney. The chief figure in its line-up of usual suspects is Brendan Gleeson, who made his name as the infamous crook Martin Cahill in John Boorman's The General and co-starred with Colin Farrell in Martin McDonagh's classic Irish crime movie, In Bruges. This time, in a movie scripted by Mark O'Rowe (who wrote the outstanding TV film Boy A), Gleeson is a Dublin underground boss sending his heavies to collect gambling debts from small-timer Cillian Murphy, who gets unexpected assistance from two would-be suicides, his errant dad (Jim Broadbent) and a depressed girlfriend (Jodie Whittaker). The characterisations are a little too determinedly eccentric, the result highly watchable.

ComedyCrimePhilip French

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our...

From 28 Days Later to Green Zone, Brendan Gleeson has a habit of making peripheral roles the highlight of a film

In these pages a few months ago, Joe Queenan saluted the mighty Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, unsung hero of countless historical blockbusters. If only, suggested Queenan, Gleeson was allowed to be the leader rather than the trusty lieutenant, "things would have turned out a whole lot better for everyone". The 55-year-old Gleeson, who was once told by a Hollywood agent that he was "too old and too ugly", brings to the screen a salty authenticity absent from your Orlando Blooms. Built like a tank, and with twinkling eyes set in a doughy face, he is one of the world's finest character actors – a man capable of investing the most fleeting cameo part with instant vitality.

Revered directors such as Steven Spielberg (in AI: Artificial Intelligence), Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York...

The 10th annual Belfast Film Festival will open with the gala Irish premiere screening of Danis Tanovic's 'Triage'. This year's festival will feature screenings of Irish and World cinema works, workshops, an acting masterclass with 'Sliding Doors' star John Lynch, short films and documentaries. The event will run from April 15th to 30th. 'Triage', the festival's opening film, tells the story of the impact of post-traumatic stress syndrome on a war photographer, played by Ifta winning actor Colin Farrell (Ondine) who returns to Ireland to be faced with the fact that his best friend has failed to come home. It was produced by Alan Moloney (Intermission), Cedomir Kolar (Heaven) and Mark Baschet (No Man's Land) and the director of photography for the film was Seamus Deasy (The General).

Attending the Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin the other week, actor Jon Voight talked with Swedish publication MovieZine and mentioned plans to re-team with his "Deliverance" and "The General" director John Boorman on a new project.

"To be honest. We just talked about another project. No one knows about this one. So let’s see if that goes. We were talking about working together again anyway, so that would be nice. He just gave me the script to me yesterday and I read it overnight. I didn’t read it all together because I wanted to get some sleep, but I couldn’t put it down. I had to read it all the way. It’s a very magical piece" said Voight.

What that piece is could be either something we've yet to hear about, or one of the two upcoming projects that Boorman's name has been linked...

There are many theories, ideas or should I say 'schools of thought' on how the world would end. At the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation ranks at the very top. While others argue it will not be man who will destroy the world (directly) but - an epidemic of global proportions (most probably from a potent strain of virus - think: I am Legend) or severe climactic change (another ice age perhaps? That would be Day After Tommorow right?) or mechanical uprising (The Terminator, anyone?) or even attack from the outside - conquering aliens (Mars Attacks!) or perhaps an asteroid. And let's not forget zombies!

- - -

- - - Inspired by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012, tMF listed down 10 of the most fascinating 'end of the world' movies.

Before looking at the list, you need to know that it's not based...

There are many theories, ideas or should I say 'schools of thought' on how the world would end. At the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation ranks at the very top. While others argue it will not be man who will destroy the world (directly) but - an epidemic of global proportions (most probably from a potent strain of virus - think: I am Legend) or severe climactic change (another ice age perhaps? That would be Day After Tommorow right?) or mechanical uprising (The Terminator, anyone?) or even attack from the outside - conquering aliens (Mars Attacks!) or perhaps an asteroid. And let's not forget zombies!

- - -

- - - Inspired by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012, tMF listed down 10 of the most fascinating 'end of the world' movies.

Before looking at the list, you need to know that it's not based...

There are many theories, ideas or should I say 'schools of thought' on how the world would end. At the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation ranks at the very top. While others argue it will not be man who will destroy the world (directly) but - an epidemic of global proportions (most probably from a potent strain of virus - think: I am Legend) or severe climactic change (another ice age perhaps? That would be Day After Tommorow right?) or mechanical uprising (The Terminator, anyone?) or even attack from the outside - conquering aliens (Mars Attacks!) or perhaps an asteroid. And let's not forget zombies!

- - -

- - - Inspired by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012, tMF listed down 10 of the most fascinating 'end of the world' movies.

Before looking at the list, you need to know that it's not based...

There are many theories, ideas or should I say 'schools of thought' on how the world would end. At the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation ranks at the very top. While others argue it will not be man who will destroy the world (directly) but - an epidemic of global proportions (most probably from a potent strain of virus - think: I am Legend) or severe climactic change (another ice age perhaps? That would be Day After Tommorow right?) or mechanical uprising (The Terminator, anyone?) or even attack from the outside - conquering aliens (Mars Attacks!) or perhaps an asteroid. And let's not forget zombies!

- - -

- - - Inspired by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012, tMF listed down 10 of the most fascinating 'end of the world' movies.

Before looking at the list, you need to know that it's not based...

Sam Riley and Samantha Morton in Control

Photo: The Weinstein Co. I finally watched Anton Corbijn's Control last night based on the life of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis and on top of being a good film, it is a beautiful film to look at, but one I am sure most general audience members wouldn't even give a chance. Why? It's in black-and-white, but there's a slight twist to this story and it's the only reason I bring it up. Control was actually shot in color and then converted to black-and-white in post. In the special features on the DVD Corbijn explains he originally considered shooting the film on black-and-white film stock, but he said the tests "were so grainy, which was one thing, but the grain also moved around and it became just another element you had to look at and I didn't want that in the film.

Chicago – HBO’s “Into the Storm” is a different kind of WWII movie than audiences have recently become accustomed to seeing. This excellent drama is not about the people on the ground but about the powerful men that made the decisions that determined their fates.

Television Rating: 3.5/5.0 In 2002, HBO aired one of their most critically acclaimed and beloved TV films, “The Gathering Storm”. The historical drama starred Albert Finney as Winston Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as his wife Clementine Churchill. The film detailed the rise up to WWII, ending just before Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, which is where “Into the Storm” opens.

Into the Storm

Photo credit: HBO Films

“Into the Storm” is the next chapter in the series, detailing Churchill’s time during the war and starring Brendan Gleeson as Churchill and Janet McTeer as his wife. Once again, the film has been produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott.