Carnaby Feature Films PLC - ?

adam_ickle

i see the that the cowards are back throwing stones at glass windows bore off you muppets carnaby are real they make films and good films weather or not they do any good as far as investments goes is another subject but they make the films year on year and are getting better. that is an achievement and they need a pat on the back for that. what have you been up to rolling home and reaper. just another couple of boring old sad blokes. i have got it its just come to me your the two old boys out of the muppets that you to sit on the balcony. ha ha ha yawn yawn yawn


Peter Bradshaw
guardian.co.uk,


On the up ... A Lonely Place to Die
A Lonely Place To Die
Production year: 2011
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 98 mins
Directors: Julian Gilbey
Cast: Alec Newman, Eamonn Walker, Ed Speleers, Gary Sweeney, Holly Boyd, Karel Roden, Kate Magowan, Melissa George, Sean Harris
More on this film
British director Julian Gilbey, often working with his screenwriter brother Will Gilbey, has made some commercially successful pictures over the last decade, including the geezer-thriller Rise of the Footsoldier. But this looks like his best yet: an impressively realistic-looking jeopardy nightmare that dovetails with a tense thriller plot. Australian actor Melissa George plays a tough mountaineer who goes hiking with four others in the Scottish Highlands. In the middle of nowhere, they are astonished to hear the crying of a young girl somewhere under the heather. I feared a flabby supernatural outcome – something like The Descent. But no: it keeps on the side of realism, and stays more or less plausible right to the end. There are some tremendous free-climbing stunts, and breathtaking moments in which people fall, very realistically, from great heights. This is a pretty neat thriller, and it could well take the Gilbey brothers to Hollywood.

adam_ickle

Lonely Place to Die' FF Review: This Thriller Deserves to Be Seen
By John Gholson Sep 28, 2011 Comments (1)


A Lonely Place to Die is one-half of a truly great thriller and one-half of an uninteresting one, combining to create a pretty good effort that feels like a slight missed opportunity. It’s simply too good to label it a misfire, but the film starts from the gate with such a confident, breathless level of suspense that it’s a shame that it can’t be maintained.

Opening with jaw-dropping shots of the Scottish Highlands (shot by cinematographer Ali Asad, who deserves special credit for elevating this indie with a slick look that’s indistinguishable from an A-list Hollywood thriller), we’re first introduced to Alison (Melissa George) as she scales a mountain with two friends. There’s an immediate climbing accident, and coupled with the film’s title, we begin to assume that A Lonely Place to Die will be a man-versus-nature mountaintop survival movie. This is not the case.

To get into the specifics would take some of A Lonely Place to Die’s power away. The best parts of the film are in the opening incidents, with one harrowing surprise after another, before it settles into fairly standard thriller territory. The film’s problems mostly exist on a screenplay level, as the story shifts focus from the characters we’re introduced to in the beginning of the film to a group of less appealing characters that further the plot along without being well-developed. Either the film needed to cut to these new sinister characters less, or they needed more characterization to make the second half of the film work.

Still, director Julian Gilbey effectively establishes himself as one to watch. A Lonely Place to Die is just too well-made to be dismissed as mediocre, but it is a film where the parts are greater than the whole (and there are some really, really great parts). Even if it never quite delivers on its initial promise, it’s a more effective thriller than many bigger, higher-profile productions, and for that reason alone, it deserves to be seen.

adam_ickle

A LONELY PLACE TO DIE

In a word, Julian Gilbey’s A LONELY PLACE TO DIE is intense. Incredibly, exhaustingly intense! It follows a group of mountain climbers (headed by the wonderful Melissa George) who, after discovering a young Serbian girl trapped in a box buried in the ground, find themselves in the middle of an international kidnapping scheme far beyond their understanding. The manhunt begins, and what Gilbey puts his actors through is truly remarkable. The smart ways the dangerous environment is used—boulders, trees and steep hills posing as much of a threat as the trigger-happy men pursuing the characters—is truly staggering. The gorgeous George shines throughout, giving her all in an extremely physical (and undeniably attractive) performance.

I went into the film extremely tired and loop-headed, but A LONELY PLACE TO DIE woke me right and didn’t let me go. Some might be disappointed with the film’s change of setting in its third act, but I found it to be a brilliant conclusion, as brutal as it is gripping. The use of slow-motion throughout is beautifully ingenious and so is the editing and kinetic cinematography—one of the main reasons the film succeeds so well at building tension and grabbing its audience, who didn’t fail to gasp, groan and sigh at every twist and turn of the narrative.

Gilbey showed great wit and intellect during the Q&A, which came as no surprise: Extremely smart in its writing and execution, his film progresses with flawless pacing and logic and shows immense talent. Every shot fired, falling boulder and death resonates deeply, and you will have no time to catch your breath. A LONELY PLACE TO DIE is one of the most effective and intense films I have seen in a while and an immediate survivalist cinema highlight. Highly recommended!

adam_ickle

ActionFest Review: A Lonely Place To Die
Sunday, April 10 by Fred Topel
NEXTPREV


A Lonely Place to Die opens by showing you it’s on a real mountain. You see Alison (Melissa George), Ed (Ed Speelers) and Rob (Alec Newman) scaling a face and it looks like it’s really them and it’s really high up. You see Rob winching up his ropes so they’re safe, and an upside down point of view when Ed takes a careless fall. That’s your Cliffhanger opening.

The trio meets up with Alex (Garry Sweeney) and Jenny (Kate Magowan) at a cabin and have some bonding drinking and poker. The defining characteristics are Ed complains a lot and Alex is the group A-hole. The next day, hiking the more foresty terrain, they find a tube sticking out of the ground. It’s a breathing tube for someon buried alive so they dig out a little girl, Anna (Holly Boyd).

The nearest town is 20 miles away, but it’s okay. All they have to do is scale down Devil’s Drop for a shortcut. Only Rob and Alison can make it down the drop so they split up and the other three take the girl. Soon Anna’s kidnappers are after them with sniper rifles.

The mountain climbing is intense. Someone could fall suddenly with no telegraphing or foreshadowing. Falling rocks come really close and you don’t even see where they’re coming from. Alison can’t even shout over the roaring rapids when she’s separated from the group. The sniper rifles are ever present and the shots can come out of nowhere.

The characters talk tech really well. I believe they know what they’re doing. Managing Anna is a dilemma and one tough guy has to climb on a hurt leg at one point. Anyone can go at any time. Well, not Alison because Melissa George is the above the title star, and not Anna obviously, but that’s still four for the picking.

It’s better than Sanctum, because it actually has momentum that someone who’s not an expert mountaineer will be affected by. The character types are just as one dimensional, but at least Alex risks himself for the group when you think he’s just going to be difficult.

Action Film of the year? No, but it’s an impressive hardcore thriller that definitely stands out from the competition at ActionFest.

adam_ickle

'A Lonely Place To Die' Leads To 'Offworld'
Tuesday, September 13, 2011

By: EvanDickson

2
Comments

Helming A Lonely Place To Die has paid off (aside from the fact that the movie itself is pretty great) for director Julian Gilbey who has just signed on to direct Offworld for producer Lloyd Levin.

The film promises to have a plethora of nasty alien encounters. Per Empire, ""It's a kind of an intergalactic Naked Prey," Levin told Empire, "a pedal-to-the-metal safari movie set on an alien planet. There's lots of nasty creatures - some even on the good guys' side."

Levin has worked with directors of the calibre of Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Greengrass and Paul Thomas Anderson, so Gilbey should be in safe hands for his Hollywood debut. So why Gilbey? "A Lonely Place To Die is a movie after my own heart," Levin explained. "I loved how physical and visceral it was. "

David Leslie Johnson (Orphan, "The Walking Dead") is writing the script.






Source: Empire

adam_ickle

ActionFest Review: A Lonely Place to Die
11
Apr
2011
by Kurt Halfyard in Film Festivals, Reviews



Where has the mountain climbing thriller gone? Was it ever here? Sure there was the epic string of them in the 1930s in Germany and a 2008 adventure movie called The North Face, a couple great documentaries (Everest, Touching the Void) and an occasional action film (Cliffhanger, Vertical Limit, K2). I am even tempted to lump in Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours which has the spirit of the genre, without actually having mountains. It is the nature of the beast that any filmmaking team doing this sort of movie (particularly in modern times unless you are Guy Maddin) has to be fully committed to such a thing to make it work, green screens and CGI would likely undermine things, but when done right, few genres have such built in potential for white knuckle tension. So, it is nice to see a film in this vein that takes itself deadly serious with no frills. A Lonely Place to Die is all business. Director Julian Gilbey became an avid and experienced climber to make this film, and that kind of commitment seems to have paid off mightily. Opening with three climbers half-way up a particularly rough patch of rock in Scottish highlands, the sequences were apparently shot completely in-camera, and it looks simultaneously gorgeous and precarious. The less experienced climber in the trio, the tourist boyfriend along with his much more proficient girlfriend, fiddles with his digital camera on a ledge to get just the right angle (of himself, mind you) and indirectly causes a mishap that results in a escalating bit of intense panic. Put it this way, multi-tasking has little place on a craggy face at one thousand meters. That, and your mountaineering cohorts trust you not to screw around in these sorts of circumstances. This is mere pre-amble for a lean and mean hybrid of mountaineering the Most Dangerous Game thriller shot in the same region of Scotland as Neil Marshall’s Centurion, and ratcheting up the same level of pressing intensity and suspense as his USA set spelunking horror film, The Descent.

A small party of climbers have their ambitious climbing trip kiboshed by high winds. Opting for a less intense walk through the countryside, they stumble across a pipe sticking out of the ground that emits the panicked shouts of a small girl, speaking Croatian. This presents a few unsettling questions for those out for a day-hike. Who buried her? Why? And perhaps more pressingly practical, when will they be back? The road back to civilization (and cellphone towers) is many miles through the bush, but there is a short-cut involving some fairly rigorous climbing that would take them to a different town and possibly a rescue team. Back to the who question. Sean Harris, the creepy ginger-haired copper in The Red Riding Trilogy and emaciated Drexl-type thug in Harry Brown, is the who, and actually comes across as perhaps the lead in the picture. No fault to Melissa George (an actress who I’ve not noticed before, but is an interesting mix of Megan Fox and Maria Bello, here, to the pictures benefit, not sexualized in the least) who puts in solid, serviceable work, but lets the performance be dictated by the danger of the sheer drops, icy waters and a stalking bearded heavy. Harris transcends as the shady middleman in a kidnapping deal gone horribly wrong (if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!) who chases the crew down from the mountains into a Scottish village with Beltane festival in progress that is somewhere between the blood rave in Blade and the villagers parade in The Wicker Man, all flame and sex and primal body paint. An animal mask worn by our silent bearded hunter emphasizes the confusing mix of predator and prey that concludes the film. Everything in this film is in service of making an audience tense up – the film is breathless in its pacing. Even its few moments of downtime still bear a vibe of the ominous, the looming peak, the isolation, and complete lack of safety net. This is done at the sacrifice of character development, leaving the characters to be little more than types whose mettle is tested in quick burst of decisions and consequences, but would the film work better by stalling its momentum beyond the visceral? There is a poker match at the beginning that introduces us to the two climbing couples and their guide, in light of the structure of the rest of the film, it is rather extraneous, beyond simply setting things up. I found the films desire to tell the story purely with the action and a set of obstacles going from agoraphobic to decidedly claustrophobic to be spartan and refreshing in its focus. If there is some glue holding the film together beyond the situation it is the variety of ways that trust between characters factor into the equation. Trust that a line is secure, that a group will stay on path, trust in abilities, heck even the villains rub up against each other in terms of salvaging what is left of their kidnapping scheme. In a brief conversation after the screening, Gilbey seemed to be hesitant that such a thing was on his brain when he co-wrote the picture with his brother, but happy accident or no, it permeates every frame of the picture.

Winning the Jury award at ActionFest for both best film and best director, A Lonely Place to Die shows that the title is as accurate in describing someone trapped alone in the open with nobody to help and sniper scoping out your back, buried in a coffin with only a bottle of water and an air-pipe, or lost in a crowded town of strangers. It appears equally unsafe for the kidnappers, and their precarious situation, as it is the hunted, layering the picture in spite of its streamlined approach: There is always a bigger fish in the sea, trust me.

adam_ickle

Movie Review: A LONELY PLACE TO DIE (Fantasia Film Fest 2011)
By Devin Faraci | August 3, 2011 | REVIEWS | 10 Comments


A Lonely Place To Die doesn’t fit into any one genre. It’s survival horror, it’s high wire action, it’s international intrigue, it’s a touch of paranoid conspiracy thriller, some stalk and slash and even a little hint of pagan British weirdness, a la Wicker Man. The film slowly morphs from one kind of a movie into another, never lagging, always keeping you on your toes. It’s an incredibly fun ride.

It’s also absolutely gorgeous. The film opens with Melissa George and her annoying boyfriend played by Ed Speleers (yes, Eragon himself) climbing the side of a mountain in the Scottish wilds. Director Julian Gilbey captures the majesty of the countryside and the vertiginous dangers of the climb in stunning widescreen photography. This is the film’s first genre fake-out, as the two characters fight for their lives, hanging hundreds of feet in the air, when Speleers slips. But the real story is yet to come.

They’re headed to an isolated cabin in the woods to do some hiking and climbing with a group of friends; again we’re unsure just what kind of movie this is going to be as the squabbling group heads out into the woods. They hear strange voices calling, and go to investigate and…

Well, you should discover the rest. There’s a terrified kidnapping victim, some coldblooded murderers, a desperate chase through the forest, heroic sacrifice, big gun fights and more. The film smoothly changes gears again and again, always keeping the adrenaline flowing.

George is fine but I think the impressive performance comes from Speleers. He begins the film as a completely despicable !!!! but slowly, and without being too showy about it, changes into a character you kind of like. It’s subtle work in a movie that isn’t always too subtle – a quiet moment can be invariably followed by a head exploding from a massive round of ordinance – and you barely even notice the shift. I like that a lot, and it’s a rare movie that can take a character you’re wishing will die and transform him into someone you’re rooting for.

Eamonn Walker has a smaller role, coming into the film about halfway through, but he has such a badass presence you welcome him right in. To be honest I would have liked to see more of Walker, and the film slightly drops the ball by not giving him a bigger set piece at the end, but that’s a minor quibble.

A Lonely Place to Die slow burns for the first fifteen minutes or so, but then it goes right into overdrive. Gilbey keeps the action coming while ratcheting up the suspense; I would have liked the full reveal of the story to come later, but that’s just because I really enjoyed the way the film kept throwing in new elements. Once the situation and stakes are firmly established,

adam_ickle

by Jay Seaver
"The very definition of a cliffhanger."

SCREENED AT THE 2011 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: There is a certain joy to a move that takes the word "cliffhanger" literally, as "A Lonely Place to Die" does in its very first scene. Director Julian Gilbey will go back to this well another time or two as the movie goes on, at which point it is clear that this isn't going to be the sort of breezy, winking adventure often associated with the word, but a hard-edged thriller with a mean streak, one looking to augment its vertigo-inducing thrills with other forms of terror.
The climbers in the opening scene are Rob (Alec Newman) and Alison (Melissa George), experienced mountaineers, and the much greener Ed (Ed Speleers). After this bit of danger is past, they meet up with friends Alex (Garry Sweeney) and Jenny (Kate Magowan), a married couple on their first vacation since their daughter was born. They've got an ambitious outing planned, but things change when, while hiking the the peak they intend to attack, they hear a girl's voice and find Anna (Holly Boyd) buried under the ground in a box with a breathing tube. Anna speaks no English and thus cannot tell them what exactly is going on , but this group is smart enough not to stick around. They head toward the nearest village, the bulk following a ridge while Rob and Alison plan to take the direct route, cutting twelve miles from their trip by climbing down the well-named "Devil's Drop" in the hope that the police rescue choppers will be able to follow the others' path before Anna's kidnapper's find them.

It is, from the start, a desperate plan, easily recognized as such before we get a direct look at what nasty pieces of work the kidnappers are. Granted, we can deduce this right from the start just by considering how callous and efficient their means of holding Anna is, but that's just an example of how Gilbey and his brother/co-writer Will choose to roll: This isn't a movie where the audience is lulled into a false sense of security only to have the rug pulled out from under them; this is a movie where things are established as difficult and then get pushed right up to (and sometimes beyond) unfair.

Gilbey doesn't cheat the audience, though. The scenes of action and suspense set on and around the sides of cliffs are staged and shot remarkably well, with cameras stuck in what seem like impossible positions, doubles avoided except when absolutely necessary, harrowing point-of-view shots, and enough knowledge of the mechanics of the activity to make things that the audience may take for granted, like relatively small falling rocks, a genuine threat. The filmmakers make absolutely excellent work of terrain; from the contour-map big picture that splits the party, to how exposed the characters are in an open area, to just how close and far away every craggy handhold might be, every bit of peril has been measured and set before the audience, putting the situation within their grasp and the danger much more immediate.

It does, perhaps, become a bit much toward the end - without spoiling anything, Anna's disappearance has hardly gone unnoticed, which allows a set of characters who have been lurking in the margins to take a more central part. By this time, though, we're too attached to the main groups of predators and prey to have quite the same enthusiasm for a new group being injected into the mix. The environment is also changed up a bit, and while Gilbey handles it well, it's not quite what the audience had come for and what excited them up until that point.

The cast does their part as well, even as they spend a good deal of time on the run. First-billed Melissa George's Alison at least starts off as a bit more focused and even harsher than in typical for the female lead in this sort of movie; she's the one who can make her boyfriend Ed feel small and less capable. Speelers, meanwhile, does nice in signalling that Ed is the group's outsider, even without any sort of posturing between him and Alec Newman's composed and capable Rob. Garry Sweeney and Kate Magowan, meanwhile, play off each other nicely, with Magowan's warm maternal presence also making a good match for Holly Boyd's perfectly terrified Anna. And, on the other side, there are a handful of excellent villains, with Sean Harris being particularly effective.

He doesn't mess around, and neither does the movie in general - it hits hard and fast, but always has its eyes clearly on the characters and what they can do, making for a frequently riveting thriller.

adam_ickle

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FANTASTIC FEST REVIEW | “A Lonely Place to Die” Does ‘90s Action Movies One Better, Until It Doesn’t
by Eric Kohn (September 29, 2011)

Melissa George in "A Lonely Place to Die." IFC Films.
The setting is vast but the tension is tight in British director Julian Gilbey’s “A Lonely Place To Die,” a first-rate outdoors suspense yarn about a couple of mountaineers facing off against cold-blooded killers. Gilbey’s fourth feature, written with his brother Will, has a frantic pace set against the minimalist environment of the great outdoors, giving the impression of a constricted take on “Cliffhanger.”

At its best, Gilbey’s enjoyably fast-paced excursion harkens back to the character-driven American action vehicles of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, including “Cliffhanger” and “Die Hard.” At times, it even outdoes those movies with the skillful execution of its speediest moments. It only loses traction when it slows down long enough to become predictable.

The story revolves around five athletic pals on vacation in an isolated region of Scottish Highlands. During a hike, they come across a young schoolgirl named Anna (Holly Boyd) trapped beneath the ground. Having freed her, they discover the Serbian captive speaks no English. When a pair of gun-toting kidnappers come out of the woodwork to prevent the theft of their young human prize, it kickstarts a survival story that, at least initially, promises not to quit. As bullets fly and ropes are cut, no fate is certain.

It’s not just the title that creates the lingering feeling of dread. Impressively cinematic from its first shot, “A Lonely Place to Die” begins with spectacular images of the vast, empty mountain plains, ensuring the characters’ isolation and the long drops they face while scaling the rocky terrain. These sprawling images meet an effective contrast in POV shots of feet dangling inches above the rocks, the distant ground barely visible below. Casual dialogue before the danger strikes establishes the stakes: As one adventurer explains, a tumble along the north side of the mountain means 30 seconds of free fall.

Appropriately, the toughest of the bunch, Alison (Melissa George) endures the harshest environmental challenges while the rest of her colleagues gradually drop out of the picture. Hurtling across angular landscapes without the aid of a harness, careening down a waterfall and speeding through the trees, she emerges as Anna’s fearless protector. Alison’s hardened survival skills render moot the question of why she puts so much effort into saving the young girl instead of simply heading to safety. She does it because it’s fun to watch her pull it off.

The movie sustains its energy for the duration of the outdoor scenes with clever angles and well-timed edits that accentuate the rapid pace. When Alison and her remaining friends sprint across the empty woods, the restless camera chases them alongside, sometimes spinning out of control. “A Lonely Place to Die” sets itself apart from the chaotic montage style of contemporary action blockbusters for the sheer physicality of its direction. While bodies fall hard and fast, Alison never sits still. However, when “A Lonely Place to Die” broadens its plot to include a group of militant rescuers intent on tracking down the missing girl, it busies up a narrative that benefited from simplicity.

That makes the final act particularly troublesome. Gilbey maintains genuine fear with his stripped-down environment and the resulting lack of safety associated with it. The mountains contain more cliffs than solid ground. But once the final act shifts to a more populated area for the climactic battle, it sets the stage for a lesser movie we’ve all seen before.

That’s particularly unfortunate given the swift maneuvers leading up to the final cop out. “Complacence is a killer out here,” someone says about the mountain range and “A Lonely Place to Die” takes that advice so long as it avoids clich!s. Then it curiously embraces them, running into the only wall that its fierce heroine can’t traverse: Mundanity.

criticWIRE grade: B

HOW WILL IT PLAY? “A Lonely Place to Die” swept the awards at North Carolina’s ActionFest earlier this year and was picked up for distribution by IFC Films ahead of its premiere at Fantastic Fest, where it won an acting award.

rockitup

Reaper wrote: »

Heaven James you are remarkably good at trotting out the company line. A official company spokeman could not have done any better.

Are you not at all worried about the huge investments you have allegedly made and the 0% return every investor has made to date regardless of the success of the film?.

Sounds more like Mr Heaven James "Investments" reclaimed to have placed into Carnaby films, and lost are imaginary in my opinion....

All the praise of the films so far does seem a bit over the top really. For me personally if I see a interesting trailer for a film, yeah I will go and watch it. If it is really good I would buy the DVD for viewing again later but I would definitely not be happy to lose such a serious amount of money through such a risky investment (even with tax advantages of EIS, never let the taxation benefits affect investment risks and choices)

Off now to see my solicitor for a Deed Poll to change my name........ just in case