The Scotsman Bulletin Monday, November 20 2023
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin
00:07 for Monday the 20th of November.
00:09 I'm Dale Miller, Head of News at the Scotsman
00:13 and I'm joined by our Arts and Culture Correspondent,
00:16 Brian Ferguson.
00:17 Brian, it's only five weeks until Christmas
00:19 and we're in the thick of it.
00:21 - Absolutely, yep.
00:22 Counting down to the Huckabee Festival and much more.
00:25 - We're here to talk about the front page
00:27 of the Scotsman firstly,
00:28 and we led on the ceasefire call,
00:32 which has gained a lot of traction over the past week.
00:35 There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow
00:38 and MSPs are due to give cross-party support
00:41 to the want for an immediate ceasefire.
00:44 Now, Scottish Labor's position
00:46 has come under question on this one,
00:49 as well as Anas Sarwar.
00:50 He was questioned on Sunday about this.
00:53 A lot of focus on how Scottish Labor will vote tomorrow,
00:57 but the word from the party
00:58 is that they will back ceasefire calls.
01:00 There is a vote that's been submitted by the SNP.
01:04 It will be one to watch over the next 24 hours
01:07 after we saw several members of Labor's shadow cabinet
01:11 effectively resign last week
01:12 because they backed an SNP amendment at Westminster
01:17 along similar lines as well.
01:19 Brian, there's a lovely front page picture there
01:22 on the front of the Scotsman as well.
01:24 That was from the BAFTAs in Scotland
01:26 and you were there last night. Tell us all about it.
01:28 Yeah, very much Scotland's answer to the Oscars.
01:31 We were back in Glasgow last night,
01:33 probably the second year really they've been back in full effect
01:36 since the pandemic really obviously forced
01:39 the kind of much scaling back of that event
01:44 into an online version for a couple of years.
01:45 But yeah, it seemed like everyone involved in Scottish film
01:50 and TV was there last night.
01:52 As you say, a great picture on the front page.
01:54 One of the great stories from the event
01:56 and also really from Scottish film in the last couple of years
01:59 has been the success of Aftersun.
02:03 It's a film that again a lot of our readers
02:05 and people watching this might not have heard of,
02:07 but there's a kind of relatively new name
02:11 on the Scottish film scene, Charlotte Wells,
02:14 a kind of writer and director from Edinburgh
02:17 who went over to New York to try and pursue a career in film.
02:21 Aftersun is a debut film.
02:22 She brought it to the Edinburgh Film Festival last year,
02:26 not so long after it was in Cannes.
02:28 Did very well in both events,
02:30 you know, got some terrific reviews
02:31 and has had huge success kind of around the world
02:35 with various festivals and awards.
02:37 And since she won a UK BAFTA for Outstanding Debut earlier this year,
02:42 the film won three awards last night,
02:45 two for Charlotte herself,
02:47 one for Paul Mescal, who is in the film with Frankie Corio,
02:52 who is a young girl from West Lothian,
02:55 who was actually only 10 when she made the film,
02:57 she's 13 now.
02:59 And Paul and Frankie play a mother and daughter
03:03 in a kind of really moving drama
03:06 about them going on holiday together.
03:09 And yeah, it's a kind of tremendously moving and powerful film
03:14 that had a great impact, like I say, when it was in Edinburgh.
03:17 And when Charlotte had a bit of a homecoming
03:20 when she brought it back,
03:22 which was a very new name to us at the time.
03:25 And, you know, it felt like another big homecoming
03:28 for Charlotte and Frankie last night.
03:32 Paul wasn't there, unfortunately,
03:33 but Charlotte was on stage three times
03:35 during the course of the night.
03:36 And yeah, she was very much the big star of the night,
03:41 as was Frankie, obviously, who was nominated as well,
03:43 I have to say.
03:44 And yeah, there were some other great stories.
03:47 There was a huge gang of people involved
03:50 in a terrific BBC drama, Mayflies,
03:53 which won the best TV scripted production award.
03:56 For people who don't know, Mayflies was a book,
04:01 or is a book by Andrew O'Hagan, one of our best authors,
04:05 which was skewered by the producer Claire Mundell,
04:10 who worked with the screenwriter, Andrea Gim, to adapt it.
04:14 And they got the chance to make it last year at the BBC
04:17 at pretty short notice.
04:19 BBC wanted it for Christmas last year.
04:22 So they had to make it really quickly.
04:24 Got an absolutely terrific cast together,
04:27 including Tony Curran and Ashley Jensen,
04:29 who were both nominated for awards last night.
04:33 And, you know, it's very much a story
04:36 based on Andrew O'Hagan's own life,
04:39 and a kind of lifelong friendship,
04:41 and a kind of big dilemma that he and another friend faced.
04:47 It was, again, a very moving and powerful piece.
04:51 Tony Curran and Ashley Jensen spoke at length
04:55 about some of the issues involved in it,
04:58 which is a little bit the impact of a kind of cancer diagnosis
05:01 and how people cope with that.
05:03 So Tony was saying himself that even a lot of friends of his
05:07 haven't been able to watch the film as yet.
05:11 But yeah, that was one of the great stories of the night.
05:15 And then a rising star, relatively new name
05:18 in Scottish film and TV,
05:20 but has certainly been making a big name for herself,
05:22 is Lauren Lyle, who won two awards
05:24 for her terrific performance in "Carrie and Perry,"
05:28 which is, again, another book adaptation,
05:30 really interesting,
05:32 kind of a relatively big theme of the night.
05:37 Last night was the success of "Carrie and Perry"
05:41 and Lauren's performance.
05:42 "Carrie and Perry" is a series of novels
05:44 by the author Val McDermott.
05:46 I think there's seven now, a new one just out.
05:49 You know, there's just been one made for TV so far,
05:53 but as Lauren was saying last night,
05:55 that they've been commissioned to make a new one
05:59 in the new year.
06:00 So that'll be something we very much look forward to,
06:03 but she won the Audience Award
06:06 and Best TV Actress as well.
06:09 There's a couple other ones to mention.
06:10 There was a great true life story brought to the screen,
06:15 a story from the '90s, actually,
06:16 that a guy called Jonah MacLeod,
06:20 he was actually based on his bizarre experiences at school,
06:23 where it turned out one of the classmates at school
06:27 had managed to get back into the school
06:30 that he had been in, obviously, when he was a teenager,
06:33 but he was in his 30s when he managed to get back in
06:36 and re-enroll as a pupil.
06:37 So the incredible story,
06:39 which hit the headlines in the '90s,
06:40 and a lot of people remember,
06:42 he has revisited what happened,
06:45 and the absolutely bizarre,
06:48 the bizarre the way that this guy managed to dupe
06:51 as a lot of his old teachers,
06:53 who actually taught him the first time round,
06:55 he managed to get back into the school.
06:57 There's a great documentary that Alan Cumming stars in,
07:01 lip syncing a kind of real life interview
07:05 with Brian McKinnon,
07:06 this undoubtedly Scotland's most famous schoolboy imposter.
07:11 And then a couple of new stars,
07:13 it was really great to catch up with them last night.
07:15 I'd met one of them before, Lewis Gribbon,
07:18 who is the star of a Channel 4 drama, "Somewhere Boy".
07:22 Yeah, again, a kind of father-son drama this time.
07:27 And Lewis is very much a kind of new star
07:29 of Scottish film and TV.
07:30 He's been really making a big name for himself.
07:32 He made one of the absolute best speeches of the night.
07:36 As did Lucy Halliday, who's a new name,
07:40 when the BATA nominations came out for me,
07:42 and she was nominated for,
07:44 and won Best Actress for her role in the feature film,
07:48 a queer identity drama, "Blue Jean",
07:51 which was her first onscreen performance.
07:53 And intriguingly, she was telling me that
07:56 she almost gave up.
07:57 She was doing acting with a youth theatre group
07:59 in Paisley versus Robin.
08:01 She almost gave up,
08:02 but she actually happened to spot a post on Instagram
08:06 for auditions for this production,
08:09 and went along, got the audition,
08:11 and not so long later,
08:14 she's won a BAFTA Scotland Award,
08:16 so that was an incredible moment for her last night.
08:19 But those two young actors made terrific speeches.
08:22 Yeah, it went down an absolute storm with the audience
08:28 in Glasgow last night.
08:29 So it was a terrific event, all in.
08:32 - You can read Brian's full report at scotsman.com.
08:37 You can also read his exclusive about the stands
08:40 pulling out of the Newtown Theatre
08:44 for the festival next year,
08:45 a significant step as the festival and its partners
08:49 continue to battle with rising costs as we head into 2024.
08:54 Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,
08:57 and go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow
08:59 and support local journalism.
09:01 Brian and everyone else, thanks for joining us.
09:04 (upbeat music)
09:06 (upbeat music)