Scottish stuff on BBC

ONE NIGHT IN EMERGENCY, mentioned here a few times before, will air at 9pm on Monday the 4th of January, on BBC1 (Scotland only). This one-off drama is written by Gregory Burke (he of "Black Watch" acclaim) and boasts an impressive roster of Scottish acting talent including Kevin McKidd, Gary Lewis, Ewen Bremner, James Cosmo, David Hayman and Jamie Sives. Impressive or what? Other familiar faces include Michelle Ryan and Sanjeev Kohli.

Coincidentally, at 8:30pm on the same night, BBC2 will be showing the Edinburgh-set period drama DEATH DEFYING ACTS.

Joyce films in Edinburgh

The Filmhouse's January programme includes a Joseph Strick retrospective. This season will include screenings of both of his Joyce adaptations, ULYSSES and PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.

See Filmhouse for details.

SALTMARK viewable online

The BBC Film Network is currently streaming the Scottish short film SALTMARK (which recently screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival). Click here to view it.

RED ROSES AND PETROL

This new Irish feature is now available to pre-order on DVD. You can order a copy as well as find more information and a trailer at the official website.

Scottish films at the Hippodrome

Looking ahead quite a bit here... the Hippodrome in Bo'ness is showing a collection of material from the Scottish Screen Archive under the umbrella of "Working Life in the Forth Valley" on Wednesday 17th February at 11am. It'll be accompanied by a commentary from historian John Hume.

Before then, on Thursday 4th February at 8pm, Alan Bissett will be reading from his latest novel, filmmaker/musician Alan Stafford will be playing some live music and together (and the reason it gets a mention here) they'll be showing some of the short films they've collaborated on, including the fantastic short THE SHUTDOWN, which I've raved about here before.

New issue of Rough Cuts available

The new issue of Scottish Screen's magazine Rough Cuts is now available. Click here to order your copy or download the PDF version.

It contains coverage of the BAFTA Scotland awards, Scottish views on various film festivals and articles on Scottish and related films such as VALHALLA RISING, CRYING WITH LAUGHTER, WASTED, ONE DAY REMOVALS and a lot more. There's also various Scottish industry related news.

Your thoughts on BBC Alba

The BBC Trust are currently carrying out a review of BBC Alba, the corporation's Scottish Gaelic language channel, with an aim to establishing how well it is achieving its goals and the scope for increasing the potential audience within Scotland.

It's an important source of Gaelic filmmaking in Scotland, so have your say at the BBC trust's website.

Irish releases update

Friday December 4th sees a number of Irish films hitting either DVD or cinema screens.

The quite brilliant ADAM AND PAUL is being re-released in a special edition featuring various extras that were not available on the previous bare-bones release.

Plenty of special features will also appear on the DVD release of ANTON released the same day.

On the cinema front, SITUATIONS VACANT gets a limited release in Ireland from Friday and the Irish co-production CRACKS opens in the UK on the same day.