Medium: HDV

Genre: Science Fiction/Drama

Synopsis:  When a deep space vessel encounters catastrophe, Tony finds himself alone in a tiny escape pod…

Director: Paul Anderton

Production Company: Curtin Parloe Films

Status: Pre-production

The rules themselves are fairly simple, with each player commanding their own army of 28mm high models belonging to a specific race (Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, etc.) with specific objectives in mind (usually the decimation of the opposing army). Each player’s turn is threefold; move, shoot and assault (hand-to-hand), with the success of all attacks determined by the roll of six-sided-dice (and occasionally a “scatter” die which determines artillery inaccuracies). Rolling over a pre-determined amount will result in a kill, although armour allows the defender to deflect the killing shot by rolling a high enough value of their own). Each soldier is part of a squad (usually of five), and one squad may only attack another per round.

In essence, the engagements are simplified versions of encounters in role-playing-games, with the health of each soldier assumed to be one of two states – alive or dead. This simplification brings the strategy aspects to the fore, and is necessary for the fast-pacing of the game, in which the fate of a squad can be decided in a few seconds – the sheer number of attacks involved in a single encounter can be mindboggling, with a fistful of dice being rolled at once.

The game I played was the one included in the starter kit Assault on Black Reach, which includes a rulebook and two small armies – Space Marines and Orks. It was fairly enjoyable, although the role-playing aspects of it seemed somewhat incongruous to me, and £50 is a weighty price-tag for something unless you’re willing to devote as much time as cash to it.

Form: Short

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: The horrifying future of the paperless office toilet.

Starring Michael Justice, Tigga Goulding, Chris Douglas and Stephen Scott.

Written and Directed by Colin Warhurst.

Produced by Chris Lane.

Cinematography by Paul Anderton.

Production Company: Siab Studios

Status: Completed

Best Animated Film
Up

Best Foreign Language Film
Das weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte

(data from IMDB)

Bronson
Quirky and stupendous. Tom Hardy excels in this operatic biopic of (career criminal) Charles Bronson’s legend.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
A true Terry Gilliam film (genius but flawed), and a fitting tribute to Heath Ledger.

District 9
A well-made allegorical sci-fi movie.

Zombieland
Funny and moving, a film about the long term effects of living with zombies.

Dil Bole Haddippa!
The best Bollywood movie of the year, a comedy about a woman who wants to be a top cricketer.

Moon
Sam Rockwell is excellent as a moon worker facing his own mortality.

Observe And Report
A mall-security version of Taxi Driver. Seriously funny and dark.

In The Loop
A spin-off of The Thick of It, it’s savage, witty and hilarious.

Looking For Eric
Eric’s life is a mess until a vision of Eric Cantona comes to help. Fantastic movie.

Star Trek
The scifi franchise reboots with a phenomenal movie.

Honourable mentions:
Awaydays
The Hangover
Surrogates
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Last Chance Harvey
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Traitor
Funny People
The Perfect Getaway
Nowhere Boy

Back in 2007, I co-wrote SLEEPER, a feature screenplay with two colleagues, Paul Blinkhorn and Steven Hutchinson. It received quite a buzz at the time, with some big Hollywood names expressing an interest in attaching themselves to the project. Unfortunately, the director proved to be the wrong man for the job, so we took our script from him. since then he’s been rather forcefully claiming that the screenplay is his, as he “copyrighted it according to UK law”, and that we were trying to steal it from him. It’s been pretty nasty.
Now, one thing I already knew about intellectual property was that copyright lies with the creator of the work, but the difficulty lies in proving authorship. You can’t post a screenplay to yourself, as this proves nothing, so you need a paper trail. What I didn’t know was that a digital paper trail is perfectly acceptable, and this we have in abundance.
However, my concern was this: The director had come up with the original idea – “A man (ex-Special Forces) uncovers a terrorist plot and his wife and daughter are killed in retribution. Teaming up with a pretty CIA agent, the man has to stop the terrorists and achieve revenge”. He then wrote a screenplay which had been sent to various agents. It so happens that I considered the screenplay unfilmable, and barely readable. Those of us still attached to the project after reading it decided that the only course of action was to throw it out and start again, which we did. The new screenplay had some similar names, and the basic idea, but the rest was completely original. Ultimately though, the original idea (nebulous as it was) was the director’s.
I figured that this would be a problem if things ever came to court, but some interesting facts were revealed in the seminar. The most important is this: you cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of that idea. Therefore, even though it was the original idea of the director, the script is the intellectual property of my colleagues and me (copyright remains with the creator, you can only transfer the rights to use that property). If we wanted to, we could easily prove in a court of law that the screenplay was ours.

As of writing, the project has been renamed, and currently has a “hot new director” attached. We’ve decided to let it go for now, as it’s not worth the trouble unless the project starts getting somewhere – as the media lawyer says “you could get an injunction, but they’re not cheap!”

Genre: Melodrama

Synopsis: ‘After Auschwitz’ follows Rebeka, a Jewish woman in her 70s, who in forced to reassess her position in the world. Hiding from the shadows of her past, she reflects on the paths not taken, of love lost and the moral obligations of being a survivor.

Director: Paul Blinkhorn

Production Company: Hillyard Productions and Curtin Parloe Films

Status: Post Production