The Legend of Barney Thomson.

A cracking wee film, chock full of great Scottish humour with just a touch of cockney banter via Mr Raymond Winstone. The Legend of Barney Thomson (2015), which opened the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival to great acclaim, is based on Douglas Lindsay's novel The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson and was adapted for the screen by Richard Cowan. It has the distinction of being directed by Maryhill born Robert Carlyle who also takes the title role.

A charisma bi-pass and no patter....

Barney works in a local family run barber shop in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow’s East End, and is described by his colleges has having a charisma bi-pass and accused of not having one of the most essential qualifications of a Glasgow barber - patter! He worships his mother, a rather colourful and outspoken character that shares the same name, although spelt different, with the rather dreadful pudding that you may remember being served up at school diners! Played with obvious relish by Emma Thompson, Cemolina Thomson is certainly one of the highlights of this movie, as is the afore mentioned Ray Winstone who plays the Glasgow hating London policemen Detective Inspector Holdall.

 

....that is until the 'accidental' death of Wullie Henderson....

Life for Barney Thomson consists of boring mediocrity, that is until one particularly dark day his boss, Wullie Henderson (Stephen McCole), tells him that the family has decided to let him go. Incensed by this unexpected announcement he accidentally kills Wullie! Meanwhile in another part of Glasgow our cockney police inspector and his long suffering sidekick are investigating, none to successfully, a series of murders that have become known as 'the body part killings' the reason is that the thoughtful killer sends a victims body part to the dead persons relative’s as a keepsake! It's when the investigation overlaps with the disappearance of the deceased Wullie that Barney's life becomes less mundane.

 

....something Barney discusses with his mother over a fish supper.

This is a brilliantly gruesome black comedy I had the great pleasure of actually seeing in Glasgow and comparing it to the dross showing elsewhere in the multiplex is head and shoulders above anything else on release at this particular time and certainly should not be missed. A love letter to a great Scottish city from one of its best-known sons.

Effie Gray.

There was an unusually strong difference of opinion at this weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre’s Film Club showing of Effie Gray (2014). Which included a walk out by a regular film club attendee part way through the film and following the screening a lively debate about the pro’s and cons of this divisive movie. I can only give you my personnel opinion which I think was shared by a number of the audience but not, I must say, by all those that were present.

 

Euphemia Gray.

This humourless Victorian period drama tells the true story of Scottish born Euphemia Gray (Dakota Fanning) who married the art critic John Ruskin (a rather unconvincing Greg Wise) when she was 19 year old and he was 37. She left her husband without the marriage being consummated and after it was annulled she married the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) in 1855.  

 

John Ruskin.

Directed by Richard Laxton, best known for his television work, it has a screenplay written by Emma Thompson, who also appears in the film as Elizabeth Lady Eastlake an art critic in her own right and wife of Sir Charles Eastlake who was the director of London’s National Art Gallery. The film's release was delayed by lawsuits alleging that the Thomson’s script was plagiarised from earlier dramatisations of the same story but she won her case and the movie was eventually released to mixed reviews two years after it was completed.

 

John Everett Millais.

This is in fact another story about cruelty to women, which I am sure we are all aware happens in all works of life. Earlier this week I saw The Homesman (2014) that dealt with the way women were treated in America’s mid west farming community. Now we get the same problem but involving the rich and privileged classes. The difference is wealth and how in the upper echelons of English society the problem is dealt with in an entirely different way, approaching people with the right connections, and the money to engage men of legal standing to “serve papers” – problem solved!!

 

Something about this painting brings to mind Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue? (http://youtu.be/lDpnjE1LUvE)

The movie is very much like the John Ruskin portrayed on our screens, a great lump of cold emotion. A story of a man who is incapable of giving what his wife what she most desires: love, happiness and respect. But again I’m drawn to say that there can’t be a less engaging story to make a film about.  And like the Scottish locations chosen for the film it is a stark and emotionless tale of people that are not very likeable - really that sums up the film for me?   

Saving Mr Banks.

Apparently filmmaker and studio owner Walt Disney spent 20 years trying to get the film rights to enable him to make a story that his own children particularly liked about a ‘mystical and magical English nanny’ and a chimney sweep with the worse cockney accent your ever be unfortunate enough to hear! The story Mary Poppins was authored in 1934 by the Australian born novelist Helen Lyndon Goff who wrote under the pen name of P L Travers.

Helen Lyndon Goff.

If John Lee Hancock’s film Saving Mr Banks (2013) is anything to go by I would not mind betting that Walt wished he’d he never bothered. Mrs Travers, as she insisted on being called, was a bad tempered, rude, self obsessed spinster who brought to mind the lyric about ‘cobwebs’ from the Marianne Faithfull track ‘Why’d Yd Do It’ from Broken English.  We first meet this woman as an obnoxious misguided child who lived in a remote part of the Australian outback with her suicide prone mother, her drunken father, who hinged on the edge of insanity and a younger sister.  The film jumps back and forth between her rather unfortunate childhood and her visit to the Disney capitalist filmmaking utopia in New York.!

Mary Poppins, Walt Disney and Mrs Travers!

The extremely glossy production, were both the Mary Poppins story and the author’s repugnant outlook on life are explained away by her upbringing, stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P L Travers. Not exactly riveting, but it turned out to be an acceptable experience but one that was tadge over long and it will certainly not linger in your subconscious. Evidently it won an award for the ‘Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up’ that say’s it all really!