Swiss rights group takes German-speaking rights

By Scott Roxborough

Sept 29, 2009, 07:27 AM ET
COLOGNE, Germany — Swiss rights group Ascot Elite Entertainment has snatched German-speaking rights to J. Blakeson’s kidnapping thriller “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.

Blakeson’s first feature, the story of a kidnapping that goes horribly wrong, stars Brits Gemma Arterton (“Quantum of Solace”), Eddie Marshall (“Hancock”) and Martin Compston (“Red Road”). Ascot acquired the rights from Westend Films and plans to release the title as part of its “Best of British” slate.

Source: THR.com

Gemma Arterton was spotted driving a Mini on the film set of Tamara Drewe, where she plays the title role. Starring as a young newspaper reporter, Arterton returns to her home town where she finds her childhood home about to go up for sale. The film is directed by Queen director Stephen Frears, with a provisional 2011 release date.

GALLERY LINK:
- Tamara Drewe (2011): On The Set (West Country, England) – September 24, 2009

All hail the ruling queen of Brit cinema!

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans: Total Film (UK) – November 2009 (thanks to Lorna)

PS: You can follow Gemma-Arterton.net on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/gemma_arterton

GALLERY LINKS:
- Scans: Clippings From 2009 > Daily Mail (UK) – September 25, 2009, thanks to Lorna
- Photoshoots: Observer Magazine (2007)

PS: You can follow Gemma-Arterton.net on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/gemma_arterton

Gemma Arterton makes her West End stage debut early in the New Year, following a string of high-profile screen roles.

The RADA-trained actress has signed to appear opposite Tamsin Greig, Rupert Friend and Harry Lloyd in the savage Hollywood comedy The Little Dog Laughed, about how a closeted movie megastar finds a ‘wife’, and a boyfriend.

Gemma will play Ari, the spiky young woman who lives with a rent boy played by Mr Lloyd.

Read the full story »»

James Bond star Gemma Arterton is filming scenes in west Dorset for a new Hollywood blockbuster.

The actress, who starred alongside Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace as Bond girl Strawberry Fields, is taking the title role in a modern retelling of Thomas Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd.

Posy Simmonds’ illustrated novel Tamara Drewe, which was serialised in a Guardian cartoon strip, is being adapted for the silver screen with celebrated director Stephen Frears at the helm.

Read the full story »»

Age: 23

Years on Lists: 2008, 2009

What She’s Done: She reportedly beat out 1,499 other candidates to score the role of ill-fated 007 temptress Strawberry Fields in ‘Quantum of Solace.’

What’s Next: Two mega-roles: She’ll get lo — that’s her character’s name — opposite Sam Worthington in March 2010’s ‘Clash of the Titans,’ and play princess to Jake Gyllenhaal’s ‘Prince of Persia’ two months later. Also, yet another ‘Wuthering Heights.’

Industry Buzz: “Arterton is movie star class in the Audrey Hepburn mold. She’s smart and sweet and was the only memorable thing in ‘Quantum of Solace.’ She still does plenty of UK theater, is a model for Avon and has ‘Clash of the Titans’ next year — quite an accomplishment for a 23-year-old.” — Jordan Hoffman,

Source
Thanks to Andie for the heads up!

Which has a few bits about Gemma.

[...]
Early on comes a very disturbing scene in which you’ve just kidnapped Gemma Arterton, and you’re required to bind her to a bed and remove her clothing while she puts up an incredibly convincing fight. How did you go about approaching a sensitive scene like that, requiring so much trust between relative strangers?

MARSAN: It was horrible. She’s very brave, very stoic and very trusting. It was just an awful thing to do. But there was an air of respect on the set. Everybody was very sensitive. What it did was, it made everybody trust each other for the rest of the film, because we shot that first, we got it out of the way. Everything else, there was an air of cooperation and mutual respect, and a great deal from sensitivity from everyone.

COMPSTON: Gemma was a star. She never once complained, or said it was too much. Already it’s an incredibly uncomfortable thing for us to have to do to someone you barely know; it would have been ever more so if she was uncomfortable. But she just went on with it.

Read the full story »»

What a way to end this festival! After hearing some fairly good reviews, I decided to catch J Blakeson’s The Disappearance of Alice Creed as my final film of the festival, my 22nd here in Toronto. This film has such a great concept. I wouldn’t call it brilliant or groundbreaking, but it’s pretty damn unique. It stars only three people. It starts with two men who buy supplies and fortify an apartment for what looks to be a prison for someone they’re about to kidnap and rape. A gruesome start, but there are plenty of twists and turns. They nab a girl, put her in the back of a van, bring her to the apartment, chain her up, and then we’re off.

Read the full story »»

Leaving the Groucho club in London.

GALLERY LINK:
- Candids: September 18, 2009

J. Blakeson’s The Disappearance of Alice Creed was outstanding.

(…)

Alice Creed is a simple premise and it thrives on that simplicity which makes its many unexpected twists and turns take the viewer even more by surprise. It opens as we watch two men, Vic and Danny, played by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston, silently go through their elaborate preparations for a kidnapping. A few minutes later they’re dragging a panicked young woman (Gemma Arterton) back to the room they’ve prepared, stripping her naked, chaining her to the bed, then leaving her locked up as their plan is set in motion.

Read the full story »»

Kidnappings rarely go off without a hitch – especially in the movies – but The Disappearance Of Alice Creed finds inventive new ways to approach the perfect-crime-gone-wrong genre. In his feature debut, writer-director J Blakeson has concocted a grimy, twisty tale that occasionally pushes plausibility but is buoyed by three strong central performances.

Starring Eddie Marsan (Hancock, Happy-Go-Lucky), The Disappearance…will appeal largely to aficionados of grungy thrillers full of double-crosses and battles of wit. Cult status would appear to be firmly in this film’s grasp.

Read the full story »»

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (dir. J. Blakeson, 2009)

This excellent thriller is worth every bit of your attention, but you may just have to trust me. You see, the movie opens with two men kidnapping a young woman, hauling her to a soundproof apartment, chaining her to a bed, and stripping her naked. But before you can spit and storm out of the theatre – I do not do “torture porn” – things get really interesting, and never look back. The complex script is tightly controlled, the performances are all note perfect, and the spare direction is astoundingly effective throughout. Set in two rooms for almost all of its brisk runtime, and involving only three actors, the film is alternately claustrophobic and revelatory. In the title role, Gemma Arterton (who is almost unrecognizable from her turn as bond girl in Quantum of Solace), gives an especially terrific and deeply brave performance, hinting at what’s underneath but refusing to give it away. Though nothing is sugar-coated, the film never descends into any celebration of violence, of the flesh, or of pain. Indeed, with each new surprise, every sudden twist, you just fall deeper under its sway. A smart, grown-up, black little movie, with among the most satisfying endings I’ve seen this year.

RATING: 8/10

Source: PopMatters

Eddie Marsan stars with Gemma Arterton and Martin Compston in J. Blakeson’s terrific psychological kidnap thriller The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.

The Toronto audience was left on the edge of their seats and the acting’s excellent, although Eddie told me one scene, when he has to punch Gemma, got a little too realistic.

‘Obviously, I meant to miss, but in the heat of the moment I hit her for real. I was so upset that Gemma had to console me!’ Eddie said.

Read more: Daily Mail

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009): Production Stills
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009): Clip #1: Ransom Video

Even without the crafty and contorted screenplay, The Disappearance of Alice Creed would be seeing for Blakeson’s austere work behind the camera and the near-flawless interplay between the three leads. And in a rare case of me saving the best for last, it must be mentioned that Gemma Arterton pretty much owns the whole movie. As the title character, Arterton is asked to be amazingly vulnerable, powerfully miserable, desperately crafty, and suddenly brave. Compston and Marsan more than hold their own (especially in their many scenes together), but it’s the recently-ascendant Ms. Arterton who grabs this tight little thriller and makes it her own.

Read the full story »»

Many thanks to Dannii for this! Movieline posted two clips from the movie, one of them with Gemma.

Yesterday, we chatted with Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston about their roles as would-be kidnappers who find themselves increasingly in over their heads in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, which has already secured some international distribution at TIFF but is still being circled by studios for domestic rights.

You can watch the clips here.

GALLERY LINK:
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009): Posters & Covers

Could 2010 herald the return to form of the fantasy epic? With Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, we’re saying yes.

GALLERY LINK:
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010): Related Clippings > Deathray (UK) – October/November 2009 (thanks to Lorna)

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the North American distribution rights to director Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe film, reports Variety.

The movie is based on the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds, itself based on Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd.

The starring role in Frears’s (The Queen, Mrs Henderson Presents) movie will be played by Quantum Of Solace Bond girl Gemma Arterton, among a cast including Dominic Cooper, Roger Allam, Luke Evans, Bill Camp and Tamsin Greig.

Tamara Drewe originally appeared as a comic strip in The Guardian in 2005, and was nominated for an Eisner Award.

Filming is due to begin on September 21.

Source: Digital Spy

9/14/09 Lenore Francois Strong, convincing performances & engaging intrigue yield a successful 1st feature film. 4 stars

Source

Alice Creed is played by Gemma Arterton, who was lovely in Quantum of Solace. Here she picks up a brutally physical role – there aren’t a lot of places one can successfully go with a character, after all, when one is bound naked to a bed in the first 3 minutes of a film – and yet Arterton becomes a firebrand as the roller-coaster speeds down the tracks.
(…)
Creed is a terrific surprise.

Source (Spoiler Warning)

Highlight of TIFF so far: “The Disappearance of Alice Creed”. Nice & tight with solid twists.

Source

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED was fantastic, great acting, believable stakes and smartly directed. Well done.

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J. Blakeson’s debut film is absolutely brilliant. The world premiere of The Disappearance of Alice Creed ranks up there with Jason Reitman’s debut film, Thank You For Smoking. Blakeson is a talented writer and director that has crafted an intelligent thriller.
(…)
***½
Films are rated from 1 to 4 stars.

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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED is terrific. Don’t let anyone tell you a fucking word about it. Except “terrific”.

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