With his final foray with The Twilight Saga on the horizon, Robert Pattinson looks to be setting up a fine post-Twilight career for himself, leading Bel Ami next month and David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis later this year.

Admittedly, Bel Ami at least will be coming before the curtain opens on Breaking Day – Part 2 in November, but with filming finished on the film, Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are both looking on top form to continue with successful careers beyond the franchise’s conclusion.

We’ve now got ten minutes’ worth of clips to share with you from Bel Ami co-directed by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, who look to be making a promising directorial debut with this, with Rachel Bennette also making her writing debut, based on the 19th century novel of the same name by Guy de Maupassant.

“Bel Ami is the story of Georges Duroy (Pattinson), who travels through 1890s Paris, from cockroach ridden garrets to opulent salons, using his wits and powers of seduction to rise from poverty to wealth, from a prostitute’s embrace to passionate trysts with wealthy beauties, in a world where politics and media jostle for influence, where sex is power and celebrity an obsession.”

Along with Pattinson, the film has an impressive supporting cast headed up by Uma Thurman, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Christina Ricci, seen one-to-one with Pattinson at the end of these clips. If you’re interested in the movie already, this will no doubt only spur your excitement for its release next month.

Bel Ami will be with us here in the UK on 9th March, a week after its release in the US on the 2nd. You can catch up on all the rest of our coverage for the film here, including the first teaser trailer we caught just before Christmas. And for now, here are those ten minutes of clips with which to dip your toe in the water.

Source: The Playlist.

Powerful drama SARAH’S KEY comes to cinemas on 5^th August and to mark it’s release we have a DVD bundle of COCO BEFORE CHANEL, THE ENGLISH PATIENT and THE PIANIST to give away.

Based on Tatiana de Rosnay’s best-selling novel, SARAH’S KEY stars Kristen Scott Thomas as an American journalist on the brink of making big life decisions regarding her marriage and her unborn child. What starts off as research for an article about the Vel’d’Hiv Roundup in 1942 in France ends up as a journey towards self-discovery as she stumbles upon a terrible secret and discovers the heartbreaking story of a Jewish family forced out of their home, a home that is now her own. As she starts to see, live, and breathe through Sarah, the eldest daughter, her world is turned upside down. Can one put aside shadows from the past?

To be in with a chance of winning, just answer this question: Kristen Scott Thomas played the aunt of the young John Lennon is which film?

1. Walk The Line
2. I’m Not Here
3. Nowhere Boy

SARAH’S KEY is in cinemas 5^th August.

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 1st August at 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received
• No cash alternative is available
• Prize is non-exchangeable and non-refundable. There is no cash alternative.
• The Editor’s decision is final and binding on the entrants. No correspondence will be entered into.

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

The one-sheet for Gilles Paquet-Brenner next film, Sarah’s Key, has landed over at ComingSoon.net, depicting a contemplative Kristen Scott Thomas as she stares longingly into the distance.

Thomas’ Sarah locked her little brother in a wardrobe, you see, in a desperate bid to protect him from the anti-semetic French police intent on arresting her parents and ten-year-old self in the middle of the night.

Having promised to come back for him but unable to do so for the next sixty years, Sarah must retrace her steps, unaware of an American reported simultaneously following a trail of clues that indicate a link between the two women.

Sarah’s Key will open with a limited release in select cinemas on July 22. Kristen Scott Thomas is set to star alongside Melusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frederic Pierrot, Michel Duchaussoy, Dominique Frot, Natasha Mashkevich, Gisele Casadesus and Aidan Quinn.

This evening has been quite an eventful one. I visited the Captain America set earlier and you can see my photos and footage from the visit here. After processing all the videos and images etc, I check my email to find that a rather proactive reader of the site named James Steiner has found where they’re shooting Ewan McGregor’s new movie, and has managed to get an interview and some on-set photos from the shoot.

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is directed by Lasse Hallström and is based on the novel by Paul Torday and ironically, is one to have been supported by the UK Film Council. It seems rather topical that it appear today!

Simon Beaufoy has been responsible for adapting the novel  and has previously worked with the likes of Danny Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire and more recently, on 127 Hours. The movie also stars Emily Blunt, Kristen Scott Thomas and Amr Waked.

Synopsis: Romantic fable Salmon Fishing In The Yemen follows government scientist Dr Alfred Jones (McGregor), as a fly fishing-obsessed Sheikh (Amr Waked) tasks him with a seemingly impossible task – introducing salmon to the wadis of the Yemen. With the British government desperate for a good news story in the area, the Prime Minister’s fearsome spokesperson, Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas), seizes on the idea and makes Fred responsible for the success of the project. Finally won over by the charismatic Sheikh, Fred also begins to fall for his representative Harriet (Emily Blunt). Casting off his deep-set cynicism, Fred rises to the Sheikh’s eccentric challenge, to go on a journey of self discovery and late-blooming love.

During Jamie’s visit on the set, he got to see Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt shoot a few scenes which he’s videoed and I’ve placed on the site below. I believe they were done on a camera phone so the quality isn’t amazing but you’ll get the general gist.The filming took place at St. Judes church in Hampstead Garden Suburb, North London

Jamie also got to talk with co-producer Nicky Kentish Barnes (You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Cassandra’s Dream, Match Point), the audio of which I’ve placed below or you can read the transcript below also. Jamie tried to get interviews with McGregor and director Lasse Holstrom (Dear John, Chocolat) but it was at the very end of what was apparently a long and difficult shoot so weren’t up for interviews unfortunately.

• JS: I see Ewan McGregor is on set. What is his involvement and what is the basic plot?
• NKB: He’s the star. It’s adapted from a book called Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. It’s a British satire. It involves a Yemanese sheik who has a passion for salmon fishing and tries to bring salmon back to the Yemen and therefore needs the involvement of various scientists, one of them being played by Ewan.
• JS: Where will you be shooting?
• NKB: Here, Scotland and Morocco.
• JS: When will you be aiming to release the film?
• NKB: In a year.

Nowhere Boy marks the feature debut of director Sam Taylor-Wood, from a script by Matt Greenhalgh, who wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed Ian Curtis biopic Control. The film, which closes the 53rd London Film Festival tonight, deals with the coming of age of John Lennon and the complicated domestic turbulence between his Mother and her Sister, John’s guardian, Aunt Mimi. It chronicles the passions and pains of a young, angry man in a society on the brink of a revolution.  It is an impressive work, with a magnetic central performance from Aaron Johnson and a plethora of magnificent support from some of the finest British actors working today.

Based on the memoir Imagine That by Lennon’s sister, Julia, Nowhere Boy is a fresh and emotionally taut drama which captures the rage and excitement of the post war years; a time of inherited austerity feeling the initial tremors of the Rock and Rock seismic change just around the corner. It is a playful and moving character study of the young Beatle, whose life is struck repeatedly with tragedy and who searches for a foundation in the fractured family unit consisting of Aunt Mimi and her sister, John’s Mother, Julia.

John Lennon is an icon recognisable the world over and his music, with The Beatles and his tragically short solo career, influenced millions of people. Where Taylor-Wood and Greenhalgh succeed is in taking the mythology of Lennon and his fellow Beatles and find an ocean of emotional turmoil to dive into. The early tragedy of his Uncle’s death sparks the touchpaper of an already unstable young man and the film follows his life through the rebelliousness and euphoria of teenage life with a care and sensitivity which is gripping and captures the excitement of the time.

Beatles fans will spot the customary Liverpool landmarks of Strawberry Fields and The Cavern club but these are cursory nods and the film eschews the conventions of the music biopic and allow the characters, so familiar to us, to form. The streets of Liverpool are awash with dockers and bus-surfing teddy boys, and the dialogue crackles with Scouse wit and backchat dripping with sarcasm, lifting the inherent melodrama and bringing the story to life. The cold, stifled atmosphere of Mendips, home to Lennon and Aunt Mimi contrasts perfectly with the riotous colourful abode of Lennon’s Mother Julia and both are beautifully realised and peopled with actors of great capability.

Johnson does a remarkable job as our leading man, bringing a charisma and tangible excitement to John Lennon as he rampages out of control on the stage and coolly dismisses a flick-knife in the face by a local bully. His chaotic genius  and energetic sadness is captivating. He is recognisably John Lennon, but with an unformed quality that is so necessary as he is buffeted by the forces of family loyalty and the wealth of secrets that lay in repressed memories of a grey Blackpool day out long ago.

While the narrative adheres faithfully (perhaps prosaically) to the story it succeeds in capturing the moments that matter beautifully. Lennon’s rowdy behaviour in school, the uncertain rebel trying to cope with the loss of family, the arrogant showman learning his trade from a fresh faced,  tea drinking Paul McCartney, the frustrated son searching in vain for a sense of harmony to his life; all shades of Lennon are rendered impressively by a brilliant performance. For the first time in a long while Aaron Johnson made me want to be the character I saw on screen.

I cannot praise the supporting cast enough. Anne-Marie Duff continues her startling rise with a nuanced and sympathetic performance as the trouble Julia and director Taylor-Wood wisely refuses to linger on the obvious traits of her character, instead Duff is able to bring a caricature to ebullient life. In contrast the third point of the triangle is Mimi, played with precision and outstanding depth by Kristen Scott Thomas, trying to bring up the wayward teenager with a sense of discipline while keeping dark secrets at bay. Her subtleties and understanding of the drama of the story is an essential component of why this film, at one crucial point, literally left me breathless.

Nowhere Boy takes a man whose life has transcended cultural boundaries and looks back as he struggles to become greater than the accident of his birth. The token scenes of the early Beatles performances excite and the dynamics of the characters are pitched perfectly and the final shock, when it comes, is devastating. Sam Taylor-Wood has earned the praise she is rightfully receiving as an artist and now as a film maker.

This film is a perfect end to a magnificent London Film Festival, and serves to remind the world that the talent of British film makers has never been greater and a new British cultural identity is being established here and now.