London Film Festival Review: Andrew Cumming’s ‘The Origin’

Believe it or not but Santa's reindeer get ready for the festive season by holidaying in Scotland - or at least that's what you can tell the kids when you take them to see Scotland's only free-roaming herd of these wonderful beasts ahead of the festive season.

A woman travelling to Scotland by rail has defended her decision not to give up her seat on a busy train for an elderly woman.

Scots cops have arrested a teenager on suspicion of the murder of a young man in London earlier this month.

This year's The Great British Bake Off is in full swing, fans are absolutely loving it, and one Scot has sailed his way through to the seventh week.

An 82-year-old woman has died in hospital in hospital following a road crash between two cars in Orkney.

A Jet2 passenger plane was escorted by two RAF jets to Stansted airport after "a bomb threat made to the aircraft", sources claim. It is believed that the commercial aircraft was flying from Turkey to Manchester when it was diverted to the London airport after a distress signal was sent.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Both Brendan Fraser and Darren Aronofsky have had some high-profile setbacks when it comes to the comic book genre. The two men, who are collaborating on the acclaimed indie drama “The Whale,” opened up about their struggles during recent interviews with Variety. Fraser spent months in Glasgow, Scotland portraying Firefly, a pyromaniac who faces off against Leslie Grace’s costumed heroine in “Batgirl.” That film was supposed to debut on HBO Max, but it was scrapped, a victim of the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia, the streaming service’s parent company. “It’s tragic,” Fraser told Variety as part of a cover story on “The Whale.” “It doesn’t engender trust among filmmakers and the studio. Leslie Grace was fantastic. She’s a dynamo, just a spot-on performer. Everything that we shot was real and exciting and just the antithesis of doing a straightforward digital all green screen thing. They ran firetrucks around downtown Glasgow at 3 in the morning and they had flamethrowers. It was a big-budget movie, but one that was just stripped down to the essentials.”   

The 16th Film London Production Finance Market opened Tuesday morning with a keynote talk featuring BFI CEO Ben Roberts who spoke at length about his 10-year funding plan for British cinema and the financial issues hitting the industry, including the recent shuttering of the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Manori Ravindran International Editor BBC Film boss Eva Yates has set out her new editorial team, with the BFI’s Kristin Irving joining as a commissioning executive, and Anu Henriques boarding as a development executive. Meanwhile, Claudia Yusef has been named commissioning executive, expanding her responsibilities across development and production. Irving was a senior production and development executive at the BFI’s Film Fund. She formerly worked in a number of development roles including for production company Portobello Pictures on films such as Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning “Ida.” She also worked across sales at sister company, Fandango Portobello. At the BFI she has exec produced films including “Rye Lane,” “A Gaza Weekend” and “The Origin.” She joins BBC Film in November.

Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, the Duchess of York, provided an update on the dogs she deemed "national treasures" that once belonged to the late Queen Elizabeth II. The ex-wife of the disgraced Prince Andrew spoke with "The Telegraph" about the "well-trained" dogs she and the Duke of York inherited after the queen's death in September.  Although they divorced in 1992, the duo reside together in England and maintain an exceptionally close relationship.  Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth owned dozens of corgis, and was frequently pictured with her beloved pets, walking around Windsor Castle. Prince Andrew visited with the royal corgis inside Windsor Castle prior to the Queen's funeral service.

K.J. Yossman Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the Scottish arts company behind the Edinburgh International Film Festival, have appointed administrators. They are the first high-profile victim of the looming recession currently gripping the U.K, which follows the two-year COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, CMI’s board said: “The charity is facing the perfect storm of sharply rising costs, in particular energy costs, alongside reduced trade due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. The combination and scale of these challenges is unprecedented and means that there was no option but to take immediate action.”

Manori Ravindran International Editor In the Stone Age horror movie “The Origin,” a tribe of starving homo sapiens must fight for survival in early Britain. It’s a film set 45,000 years ago, but its message about humanity — told through a genre lens — is as dark as it is timeless. Directed by Scottish helmer Andrew Cumming (“Radiance,” “Clique”) and written by Ruth Greenberg (“The Spark”) in both of their feature debuts, the film — produced by “Saint Maud’s” Oliver Kassman — is launching at the BFI London Film Festival on Thursday with three sold-out screenings. Shot on location in 2020 in the Scottish Highlands, the story follows a group of early humans looking for food and shelter in a new land. They subscribe to their leader’s promise of a better life, but find themselves in a dangerous terrain, where they’re preyed upon by a supernatural force. The cast includes Safia Oakley-Green, Kit Young and Chuku Modu.

The trustees in charge of the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the charity which runs the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh, and Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen, have appointed administrators.

Two men have been charged with assault after a heckler was allegedly thrown to the ground during the Queen’s coffin procession in Edinburgh.

 may have been scrapped, but the DC film still lives on in the heart of star Leslie Grace.Over the weekend, the actress shared two videos on her TikTok featuring behind-the-scenes clips of her work as Barbara Gordon from the canceled DC film, with the second set to a song she'd written herself called «Batgirls Get Lonely Too.» The videos include footage of practicing her fight scenes and stunts, playback of Grace fighting Brendan Fraser's Firefly, the actress' face covered in SFX makeup bruises and goofing around on the set of the project, alongside her cast and crew.«I couldn’t resist,» she captioned the first video, soundtracked by Omar Apollo's «Evergreen (You Didn’t Deserve Me At All).» The second montage of clips featured Grace's song, which she shared she «wrote...during the pandemic… b4 I even knew ANY of this would be my life.»Grace's trek down memory lane comes a little over a month after she broke her silence about DC canceling her film. The actress took to Instagram to share her pride in the production, despite the studio's decision.She wrote, «On the heels of the recent news about our movie 'Batgirl,' I am proud of the love, hard work and intention all of our incredible cast and tireless crew put into this film over 7 months in Scotland.

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel “Let the Right One In” has already been adapted three times, first, and most successfully, as a wildly acclaimed Swedish film by Tomas Alfredson in 2008. The Hollywood machine quickly turned that around and retitled it “Let Me In,” directed by Matt Reeves, for an underrated English-language version in 2010.

Leslie Grace has shared behind-the-scenes footage of the now-canceled DC Comics film Batgirl. The actor and singer shared a video on TikTok where she can be seen training for the superhero movie.

J. Kim Murphy Leslie Grace, the star of the now-canceled DC Comics film “Batgirl,” has shared more behind-the-scenes footage of the production, nearly two months after the project was axed by Warner Bros. Discovery. “I couldn’t resist,” Grace wrote in the description for a TikTok that she posted on Saturday morning. Set to “Evergreen” by Omar Apollo, the video contains footage of Grace through various stages of production, recording herself with a Gotham hero’s signature smokey eye makeup, rehearsing complex fight choreography and taking a wire-assisted tumble in front of a blue screen. The video concludes with Grace, grinning, riding a mechanical rocking horse in the full purple Batgirl costume, complete with goggles and a leather jacket.