James McAvoy: 'Filth' trailer, 'Trance' reviews, 'X-Men' portrait

 photo courtesy of James McAvoy MB (Twitter)

• Filth

Down and dirty: watch the first trailer for Irvine Welsh's Filth
A talking tapeworm is the least of James McAvoy's problems in Filth, the new adaptation of Irvine "Trainspotting" Welsh's novel. In this definitely 18-certificate trailer, we see booze flow, punches thrown, sex had – but that's hardly a surprise, this is Irvine Welsh after all
Read more and watch the trailer at The Guardian

Red band trailer also available at Aces Showbiz and BBC America

• Trance

Reviews are coming in. Here's a selection from Montreal Gazette, Washington Examiner, Courier Journal, and Huffington Post.
Interview at Interview Magazine.

• X-Men

From Flicks and Bits:

Stunning ‘X-Men’ portrait of James McAvoy’s Professor X

Imaliea has drawn this incredible digital portraits centering on Michael Fassbender’s Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto and James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier/Professor X. Both characters will next be seen on the big screen in 2014 in X-Men: Days of Future Past, the seventh installment in the ‘X-Men’ film series. X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled to go into production this month in Montreal, Canada. It will be the first film in the ‘X-Men’ film series to be filmed in 3D.
Head on over to Imaliea’s page for more top-notch artwork to feast your eyes on.

 Source: Flicks and Bits

James McAvoy: new 'Filth' stills

Irvine Welsh novel comes to life - new stills from Filth starring James McAvoy

The Fan Carpet brings you some small stills from the upcoming film Filth - the adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel. Welsh (Trainspotting) is known for his hard-edge and often funny writing style.

The film will follow Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), who is a cross between Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant and John Belushi in Animal House. His task is to nab a killer who has brained the son of the Ghanaian ambassador, but bigoted Bruce is more urgently concerned with coercing sex from teenage Ecstasy dealers, planning vice tours of Amsterdam, and mulling over his lurid love life.

Filth stars James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, and Imogen Poots and is being directed by Jon S Baird - we are still however awaiting a UK release date. Filth was shot in Scotland, Belgium,Germany and Sweden.

Interesting tagline for the film... "This Little Piggy went to town!"

See the Filth Image Gallery here
Source: The Fan Carpet

Also reported by The Film Stage

James McAvoy impresses Irvine Welsh in 'Filth'

James McAvoy 'absolutely amazing' in 'Filth'

Author Irvine Welsh has described James McAvoy's performance in his latest film as "absolutely amazing."

The film, which is adapted from Irvine's best-selling novel of the same name, sees the Scottish star play a drug-addicted and misogynistic detective sergeant named Bruce Robertson.

Irvine, who also penned Trainspotting, added that: "It's just one of the greatest acting performances I have ever seen, I think he's better than Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. He is absolutely electric and is right into the character. It's a fantastic emotional performance."

Filth, directed by Jon S Baird, also stars Jamie Bell, Alan Cumming, Jim Broadbent, Imogen Poots and Downton Abbey's Joanne Froggatt.

Whilst Irvine is currently promoting the DVD release of Ecstacy, Filth is set to be released in 2013.

Source: HelloMagazine 

Also reported by The Daily Record 

Interview: Emun Elliot, actor and star of 'Prometheus'

Emun Elliott was first noted as a young actor of talent in the acclaimed Black Watch. Since then the Scot has risen through the ranks to work with some of the biggest names in the film industry.

‘I think I was more surprised than anyone when I beat Andy Murray,” says Emun Elliott, with a laugh. “My mother couldn’t quite believe it.” 

The movie world may only just be cottoning onto Elliott, but The Scotsman’s sister paper, Scotland on Sunday, talent-spotted him way back as a face to watch – as one of Scotland’s Most Eligible Bachelors. He debuted on SoS’s annual list at No 14 when he was part of the award-winning cast globetrotting the world in the National Theatre of Scotland’s heart-twisting military lament, Black Watch. Then two years ago he shot to No 1, pushing aside Murray, and gamely saying that he played guitar and liked “natural women.”

“Oh, that’s still the case,” he says, bashfully. Certainly, 28-year-old Elliott has heartthrob tendencies, mixing Clooney, Javier Bardem or Colin Farrell with Edinburgh edginess, but his potential extends beyond the pin-up. Since graduating from the RSAMD, he has barely stopped moving from stage to TV and film sets and, nowadays, he’s a cog in some very big wheels.

The £100m Alien prequel Prometheus, directed by Sir Ridley Scott, opens on Friday amid much anticipation and quite a bit of secrecy. A heap of movie images have appeared online – showing off new space costumes and giant setpieces – while its selected clips and trailers have been raked over obsessively by fans. 

“It’s basically this epic adventure through space that tackles some of life’s most fundamental questions,” says Elliott. “Ridley seems more excited about this film than anyone else, which bodes well.” 

The film’s now so close we can almost touch it, yet none of the stars, including Elliott, who pilots the spaceship Prometheus into deep space terrors, has seen the finished film.

His audition set the tone: “I was given a couple of script pages, with no context. So I just had to go on instinct.” 

Even the reading offered few clues as to what Sir Ridley was looking for.

“One of the people at my reading was a seven foot tall albino skinhead, so there definitely wasn’t a particular type they had in mind. But I was a private in Black Watch and I’m an officer in Prometheus so at least I’m moving up the ranks.”

Elliott is not a man in a hurry. 

“I think it’s been a case of steady progress,” he says, an upward Edinburgh lilt turning this into a question. “By the time I stepped onto the set of Prometheus I had been in the game for a while, and I see that as a positive rather than coming to this straight out of drama school. I still felt a bit nervous on my first day, mainly because Ridley had built a spaceship and it looked pretty much like the one in Alien. I first saw the film a long, long time ago, then went back to watch it again before doing Prometheus. I was surprised how suspenseful and ahead of its time it was, and being linked to it made me nervous because you want to do it justice.”

When Ridley Scott’s Alien came out in 1979, it was as revolutionary as Star Wars had been two years earlier. This was the grimier, grittier side of science fiction, where space truckers griped about their wages, then stumbled across something predatory, unnameable and lethal. Prometheus is a loose slingback that predates Alien but there are similarities, including a stern corporate presence (Charlize Theron) and an android (Michael Fassbender) aboard the ship.

During preproduction, Fassbender was still tied up working on another picture, so when Sir Ridley conducted screen tests for the character of the project’s reckless scientist Holloway, Elliott stepped in to play the android David. 

“This was the first time I met Ridley,” he says. “It was great because it broke the ice, and instead of small talk, we got to know each other on a professional basis.”

Was Scott intimidating?

“Actually he’s very warm and a bit cheeky. He’s up for a laugh, although he can go into General mode if he has to. He just fills you with confidence. When I was preparing to play Chance the pilot, I came up with a backstory, but at the back of my mind I thought he’d tell me to forget all that and just play what was on the page. But he took it all on board. He’s very open and collaborative, even though he’s been doing this since before I was born.”

By contrast Elliott is a little shy and private but instinctively courteous, which is to say that he tolerates my attempts to prise out plot secrets. Did he get to keep anything from Prometheus, I ask, hoping he’ll let something slip obliquely. 

“Yes, a facehugger. It’s above my bed,” he says and chuckles, not unkindly, at my frustration.

It’s easier to talk about Filth, which brought him back to Scotland last winter. Adapted and directed by Jon S Baird from Irvine Welsh’s novel, it puts you inside the head (and eventually inside the bowels) of a corrupt cop, Bruce Robertson, played by James McAvoy. Robertson is perhaps one of the vilest characters in print since Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and his karmic balance is a more idealistic, straight-arrow detective, played by Elliott. The film also stars Jamie Bell and Low Winter Sun’s Brian McCardie and hopes are high for the film when it opens next year. Creative Scotland used a still of McAvoy, Elliott, Bell and McCardie in party hats to invite the world’s press to their annual party at the Cannes Film festival. 

“I’d been wanting to work with James McAvoy since I was in drama school. I suppose there are parallels in that we’re Scottish, we went to the same drama school and share the same agent but aside from that, he’s someone I’ve looked up to. Most people in my year found him an inspiration – he gave us all hope.”

A shame then, that he punched him in the face on his first day. 

“It was the very first scene we shot, in a nightclub, and I had to throw a punch at Brian McCardie,” recalls Elliott. “Unfortunately James got behind Brian just as I was swinging the punch. Brian ducked in time, but I cracked James on the nose. You could hear it. First day. First rehearsal. James, not wanting to make a fuss, wandered off. He was all right in the end. I thought he took it very well.”

In Filth’s stills, the physical contrast between the two men neatly underscores their character’s rivalry; McAvoy is fair, blue eyed and grungy, Elliott is darker, dimpled, with expressive chestnut eyes crowned by strong eyebrows. Eliott was raised in Portobello by his social worker mother and his university lecturer father. The name (“Ee-mon”) is part of his father’s Persian heritage “but I see myself as Scottish too. They are both ancient cultures with an incredible history and I’m proud of them both.”

Since he graduated from the RSAMD with a gold medal in his year, Elliott has worked almost constantly. His first TV job was Monarch of the Glen, playing an artist and painter. 

“I remember going shopping with the costume designer and afterwards getting to keep my clothes. I couldn’t believe it: I was in the Scottish countryside for two weeks in a Scottish TV show. It was a lovely way to start.”

Since then he’s taken on the sort of furious workload that McAvoy used to be famous for. He’s currently working a six-day week to complete his role in the second series of Comedy Central’s sitcom Threesome, where he plays the one of a triangle who are bringing up a baby between them. Then he’s off to Newcastle to star in The Ladies Paradise, an eight-part TV drama loosely based on Emile Zola’s novel Au Bonheur des Dames which has been earmarked by the BBC to warm primetime audiences this winter. Elliott plays the owner of the first ladies’ department store, who charms an ambitous young employee, played by Above Suspicion’s Joanna Vanderham. 

“It’s pacy, sexy and dark,” he promises, although the five-month shoot meant he had to bow out of filming Glasgow romcom, Not Another Happy Ending, where he was due to fall in love with a character played by Doctor Who actor Karen Gillan.

“It was heartbreaking because I’d been attached to that film for three years, and work-shopped it with the writer, director and the producer. It was really close to my heart, and we tried to juggle the schedules. Sod’s law, and really hard to let it go, but I went for Ladies Paradise because it was unlike anything I’d done before.”

Fans of Game of Thrones are already disconsolate that it is unlikely he’ll return to HBO’s fantasy drama, where he played Marillion, a lover, poet and musician until drastic action was taken.

“I mean, I could come back,” he ponders. “but they cut out my tongue in my last episode, so I don’t know what they’d do with me. He’d certainly be short on lines – ‘It’s all in the eyes’”

Viewers of BBC Scotland’s raunchy lesbian drama series Lip Service were also sorry to see his lothario architect depart the hit show: 

“But at least I didn’t die in a car crash like Laura (Fraser, his Lip Service co-star), he just disappeared to London. Maybe it will be like Coronation Street – in 14 years they’ll find me in a room, keeping a mute minstrel company.” 

Somehow I doubt anyone could keep Emun Elliott locked out of sight for that long.

• Prometheus is in cinemas from Friday 1 June
 
Source: The Scotsman  

• Bloody Disgusting have posted a review of Prometheus

Emun Elliott: filming 'Prometheus' felt like being on another planet

Scots TV hunk Emun Elliott was obsessed with the Alien films — now he’s living the dream in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Prometheus.

The 28-year-old — best known as gay Ritchie in Comedy Central hit Threesome — is starring alongside Hollywood babe Charlize Theron in the prequel to sci-fi classic Alien.

It also features telly hardman Idris Elba and Inglourious Basterds actor Michael Fassbender. And the big-screen epic — expected to be a massive hit for legendary director Scott — is one of 2012’s most eagerly-anticipated releases.

Alien fanatic Emun, from Edinburgh, plays spaceship pilot Chance — and he was in dreamland the minute he stepped onto the £65million movie’s spectacular set.

Emun admitted: “That was the highlight. I’d seen the Alien movies and it felt like we had these landmark shoes to fill.

“There was a real feeling of anxiousness and trepidation at first, but I remember Charlize saying she was nervous too.

“Once the cameras started rolling though, you realise that it’s just like any other job.

“But yeah, just wandering about in a space suit with a big globe over your head was cool.

“You’d get so far onto these massive sets that you felt like you were actually on another planet or a spaceship.”

Last year, Emun raved about Oscar winner Charlize, 36, in an interview with The Scottish Sun.

He said: “Charlize was lovely, just a proper movie star. She was gorgeous, brilliant and knows exactly what she’s doing.”

But he also struck up a friendship with co-star Idris — famed for his roles in BBC series Luther and US drama The Wire.

Emun revealed: “Idris is not only one of the sexiest men I’ve ever encountered but also one of the coolest. I learned an awful lot working with him.

“I worked primarily with Idris, Michael and Benedict Wong.

“Benedict and I play the pilots Idris plays the captain, so it was a sort of threesome.

“It was straight forward — the director gave us free reign to do whatever we wanted to do and gave us nudges here and there.”

Prometheus hits cinemas in June.

Emun has become a well-known face on telly starring in Threesome, Comedy Central’s first British sitcom. He has also appeared in Sky Atlantic’s fantasy series Game Of Thrones and BBC3 lesbian drama Lip Service.

He played bad-boy architect and womaniser Jay in the raunchy Scots show and viewers saw him exit last month when his character got a new job in London.

Emun joked: “I was hoping I’d leave the show in a more epic and exciting way. I was hoping to fall out of a window mid-orgy, but instead he just says ‘I’m off to London’. Hey-ho.”

In Game Of Thrones his on-screen alter ago had his tongue sliced off. Emun said: “I’d love to return one day but my character lost his tongue so I wouldn’t have any lines. It would be an incredible performance or a ridiculous one!”

A 2005 graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Emun is getting plenty of screen time later this year. Threesome returns for a second series and he will also appear in BBC drama The Ladies’ Paradise.

Next year, the actor returns to the big screen in Filth, the movie based on Irvine Welsh’s novel.

It stars X-Men actor James McAvoy, Braveheart’s Ron Donachie, Harry Potter veteran Jim Broadbent and Billy Elliot’s Jamie Bell.

Emun added: “I’d wanted to work with James since I was at drama school.”

Emun has been snapped up by Ridley Scott again — this time for the film legend’s forthcoming TV sex-fest Labyrinth.

The hunk stars in the historical mini-series alongside Harry Potter baddie Tom Felton, and fellow Scot Tony Curran.

He said: “My character basically goes around sleeping with beautiful women and killing Catholic crusaders on the back of the horse. The director Chris Smith likes to take things to extremes so there’s loads of gore and lots of sex — it was a bit of a dream!”

The show, which airs on Channel 4 later this year, is based on the novel by English author Kate Mosse and boasts Scott as executive producer.

Emun told CultBox Online: “It’s a bestseller, so it’s already got a huge following. I’ve seen a rough cut and it’s massively exciting.”

Read more at The Scottish Sun