So, here we are.  We are back with a slightly different looking site.  We have several new writers on board (check out the About page!).  We have some new subjects we’re going to be covering.  You’ll probably get to read about more television and written materials than you used to.  But we promise it will be wonderful.

This just seemed appropriate.

In preparing for this day, we asked what the best way to relaunch the site would be.  And the answer was fairly obvious.  A Top Five List.  These are not reviews, just ramblings.  But they are our favorite films since almost a year ago.  So, without further ado, here are The Top Five Films Since We Stopped Posting On This Here Blog.

Hit the break to read on…

David’s List

5.  The Avengers

I was very hopeful, and very nervous going into The Avengers.  All of the Marvel films leading up to it had been wonderful (for the most part).  In Joss Whedon, it had a director that was almost handpicked by fans.  I mean this movie had A LOT to live up to.  No other superhero film has ever come anywhere near to attempting what this did.  Six superheroes, together in one film.  And that’s not even counting Nick Fury.

But they pulled it off!  Not only did they pull it off, they did it with flying colors.  I walked into the theater excited and very nervous.  But during the first scene I started to smile, and that never stopped.  It had action, comedy, great special effects, and (perhaps most difficultly) perfect chemistry between all of the actors.  It was just what I wanted it to be.

4.  Prometheus

OK, I know this may be a controversial choice.  I’ve talked to a lot of people that hated this film.  And even more people have told me how indifferent they were to it.  Strangely, I did not feel that way at all.  I absolutely loved it.

I can understand every criticism I have heard.  The scientists are not very good at their job.  Some of the main characters that you should be worried about are not very likeable.  And there’s really quite a bit of the story that requires a lot of assumptions and forgiveness to make any sense out of.  I understand all of that.  And none of it phased me.  At all.

I loved this movie.  I was finally back in Ridley Scott’s science fiction universe.  It may not hold up quite as well as it used to, but I’m just happy to be back.  Everything is beautiful and mysterious.  Everyone has a hidden agenda.  And you know that what you just watched has universe-changing effects, even if you’re not sure what they are.  For me, that was glorious.

3.  The Artist

I was grinning through this entire movie.  It had all of the magic that classic Hollywood had (a la Singin’ in the Rain), and, shockingly, it didn’t lose any of it being a silent film in the modern era.  This was not a movie that a lot of people were expecting.  It certainly wasn’t on my radar.

But it charmed its way into my heart, and did the same to pretty much everyone that saw it.  Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Bérénice Bejo, and Uggie (the dog) all proved what incredible actors they really are.  If you can hold a modern audience’s attention for 100 minutes without speaking at all, you are very good at your job.

My favorite part was the scene where it shows a film audience in the 1920s watching a silent movie and gasping and laughing to everything that happens on screen, because that’s exactly what happened in the theater where I was watching it.  We all reacted together, just like audiences used to.  And it was pretty awesome.

2.  The Dark Knight Rises

I had been waiting on this one for a very long time.  I always knew it was going to be the summer of Batman.  Even with The Avengers and everything else that came out this summer, it was always going to belong to Bruce Wayne.  And it did.  There was a shooting the opening night (ironic since guns are the one thing Batman has always despised more than anything else), and that definitely hurt the opening weekend, and the soul of the entire country.

But this was still an incredibly powerful film that managed to wrap up THE trilogy of this generation perfectly.  I walked out of the theater completely satisfied, which is very hard to pull off with a trilogy.  Christopher Nolan has the incredible gift of helping you forget that you are watching actors play characters.  They completely become those characters in his films.  I was very worried about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, and to be honest I was worried about Heath Ledger as Joker when I first heard about it.  But both times, I completely forgot who the actors were five minutes into the movie.  The Dark Knight Rises is all of the things I love about going to the movies.

1.  Beasts of the Southern Wild

This was another film that surprised me.  I can usually predict that I will love superhero and hard science fiction films.  Not to say that I love all of them, but I can usually make an educated guess about them before I walk in.  Everything else is a toss up.  I probably don’t have as many preconceived ideas.  And I certainly don’t have many preconceived ideas about young, single parent, children in backwoods Louisiana.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a magical and haunting story about a little girl whose entire world starts to fall apart around her.  But while a lot of films would be about the child having to grow up and face the reality of the situation, here we have an honest look through a child’s eyes.  Mythology is real.  And only be dealing with these magical and uncontrollable forces can life ever go on.  The best way to see the world is through the eyes of a child.  I believe that is the truth, and I have never seen it shown in a more beautiful way.  I’m not going to say anything else, except that you should see it if you haven’t already.

Honorable Mentions:

The Cabin in the Woods

The Muppets

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Descendants

John Carter

The Master

Lara’s List

5.  Bernie

I had the pleasure of seeing this film premier at SXSW, with Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and director Richard Linklater in attendance. Now, there are times when having the director and actors at a film cause the audience to overreact—suddenly the jokes are much funnier, the sad parts are more dramatic, and the violent bits are the most exciting thing from any movie ever—but in this instance, every laugh, every tear, and every cheer was completely merited. Bernie is a comedic telling of a true crime story, in which Bernie, a kind, church-going undertaker in east Texas befriends and takes care of a crotchety widow, Marjorie Nugent, whom he eventually kills in a moment of fury. Tiptoeing the line between reality and fiction, the dark comedy is peppered with hilarious interviews with “real townspeople” (some of which was scripted, most townspeople were actors), who have an undying devotion to Bernie, as well as the perfect amount of Texan charm. Bernie is unique in the fact that not only do you laugh hysterically amidst the murder of a real woman, but you find yourself rooting for the man who killed her! After the film, Linklater asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed the real Bernie Tiede deserved life in prison—in a packed, two story theater, about ten people timidly raised their hands. The sway in almost an entire audience’s morality was due in part to Shirley MacLaine’s impeccable portrayal of the cantankerous, malicious old bat, but the credit must be mostly attributed to Jack Black’s performance as the effeminate Southern sweetheart—his best acting to date.

4.  Hugo / The Adventures of Tintin

Okay, so I know this is cheating, but I’ve decided it is perfectly fine for me to lump these movies together. The reason is three-fold:

1. They are both children’s movies based off of something I utterly love
2. Directed by two of the best ever
3. I saw them within a week of each other—and, though totally dissimilar style and story, I’m now having a hard time differentiating my love levels.

Here are some specifics that I mostly remember: Tintin was everything I could have hoped for, living up to the comics that I grew up with, as well as the adventures Spielberg used to make. It was so much fun, and though the 3D wasn’t really necessary, it made the whole experience akin to riding a rollercoaster at Disneyland (AND THAT IS A GOOD THING). Hugo was beautiful, with gorgeous cinematography and acting. The 3D was essential during the scenes within the clock tower and those showing Georges Méliés film process. Though wiping away tears beneath 3D glasses is not an occurrence I’m used to.

3.  The Dark Knight Rises

Bizarrely enough, I didn’t even see this film until two weeks ago. I anticipated this film more than any other, for a solid, somewhat agonizing four years, and then farted around for 2 and a half months after its release. The human brain, huh? Anyhow, my nonsensical waiting may have actually been a good thing, for it allowed for me a chance to (unwillingly) hear people’s opinions on the film and lower my expectations accordingly. Some loathed it, others loved it, but overall I heard that it didn’t touch The Dark Knight—it was never going to sans Heath Ledger—but it solidly closed the trilogy. With that established, I was given the chance to be pleasantly surprised by The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, the execution of the film was crisp and perfect, in true Christopher Nolan style—I had no doubts about that. But I also absolutely loved the ensemble cast, including Anne Hathaway, whom I was not at all excited about playing my beloved Selina Kyle. However, Hathaway brought an entirely new angle to the character, and about five minutes in my apprehensions fell to the wayside. I’ve heard others complain that Batman himself was impeded by the multitude of characters, but I thought there was a lot more Bruce Wayne than in the previous chapter of the saga. No, we don’t get to see him in the mask very often, but I’m okay with a scene or two less of Christian Bale growly dog voice, thank you. Perhaps it’s the freshness of seeing it, but to me this was the perfect ending to one of the best trilogies in film history. Take that, Batman Forever.

2.  The Muppets

The most fun. Jason Segel, Amy Adams and Muppets—what more could a person ask for? Really. I think that pretty much says it all. I doubt anything will ever make me happier.

1.  Black Pond

This movie was by far the biggest surprise. Almost every movie on this list is here because it lived up to everything I had hoped. Not this one. I knew nothing about it—and that’s probably why it made its way to the top slot. I saw it totally by happenstance when screening films for Quality Control for South By Southwest this spring, and was completely blown away. Black Pond is an independent, British mockumentary that tells the story of a family who are all accused of murder when a strange man dies at their dinner table. Hilarity ensues. I don’t want to delve into it much more, to preserve your viewing experience When You DO See It, but it is one of the funniest, yet most poignant films I’ve seen in years. Do yourself a favor and avoid the trailer, which, for whatever reason, portrays the film as a drama, and see this film if and when it is made available to you. Why? Because it’s my favorite movie of the past year! If that’s not enough, then nothing ever will be.

Honorable Mentions:

The Master

The Artist

Sinister

Argo

The Cabin in the Woods

Moonrise Kingdom

Black Pond 

None of this means much without a good cast though, and this film is lucky on almost every count. Almost, because although Simon Amstell is an excellent stand-up and perfect in the wonderful Grandma’s House, in which he co-writes and stars, he’s a little jarring in an otherwise more naturalistic film, the part itself being more knowingly unrestrained than anything else. The most brilliant work comes from the unfortunate dinner guest, the criminally underappreciated Colin Hurley as Blake, whose name seems a reference both to William Blake’s genius, misunderstood in his lifetime, and, as an anagram of bleak, both historical and foreshadowed.

Now the difficult part…

The hyper-low budget Black Pond first came to people’s notice for casting Chris Langham in a leading role, his first work as an actor since a conviction for having downloaded images of child pornography which he claims, were research for a part. I vacillate on whether or not I think he ought to have tried or been supported in returning to his former profession, he’s an undeniably talented actor and defends himself vehemently and, apparently, persuasively, but there’s an undercurrent of tension in his presence on screen that the other actors don’t create.

You forget everything but the character Chris Langham’s playing, then remember for a moment and it throws you, particularly where the confessional style of the film offers up dialogue which could have come from the interview I linked to previously: “I was surprised at why I did it, in retrospect. I think ‘how stupid’, knowing how people react, ‘what an idiot’”. It’s especially uncomfortable when the following statement “but it’s probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done in my life”, works perfectly for the film but just can’t be reconciled with the preceding conflation of part and person.

It’s nothing new, this difficulty of having to separate art from artist to experience the idealised former without the taint of the human latter, people making for poor objects of adoration even where their work is revered. Whatever you might think of Chris Langham, Black Pond, though fractured and fragmented in terms of genre identity and aspirations, is certainly art. It’s a strange film; ostensibly a black comedy, it’s really more a mix of farce and discomforting profundity, which maybe amounts to the same thing. It’s funny and gleeful and beautiful and fragile with the loneliness and everyday madness of everyone in it.

The film won ‘Best Newcomers’ at the Evening Standard Film Awards and was made for £25, 000, shot on the Sony PMW 350 (with Canon 7Ds for coverage) on a 3 week shoot with a crew of only 4.

The Film Doctor Team are proud to share with you our conversation with the film’s directors, Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe.

 

You’ve just got back from SXSW 2012, premiering Black Pond for the North American audience. How has your US experience been so far? Have you found new collaborators or investment partners?

America was great. The audiences seemed to like the film. We did wonder whether such a ‘British’ film would translate to a US audience but the things the film talks about are pretty universal, so it didn’t seem like a problem in the end. Our next film is already set up in the UK, so we were mainly talking to studios just to say hello. And then if any ideas come up in the future we know who to go to. It was quite inspiring – the US film industry seems to have a greater sense of excitement and optimism about filmmaking than we’ve found in the UK. But obviously we were meeting people with their inspiring, exciting, optimistic faces on!

 

How did the idea of Black Pond come about? It started as a short right?

The film is very loosely based on a play we wrote at university with a couple of friends. We started trying to turn that into a film script, but realised that (what with burning castles and helicopters etc) it would be far too complicated and expensive for a first foray into directing a feature. So we decided to take the core characters from the play, strip the whole thing right down and to tell a story that was much simpler and easier to shoot. We also found an an obituary about a man who secretly crept into people’s gardens to mow their lawns or paint their sheds. We found it funny how he was doing nice things but in an incredibly creepy way. So that was a strong influence on the character of Blake, who is the stranger that befriends the Thompson family.

What we ended up with was quite unexpected in a way. But it’s a funny thing because you don’t actually have much control over how a story plays out. You need to have the discipline to throw away the ideas that are bad or unrealistic, but it’s not like you can force yourself to have a good idea. You kind of just have to wait for the ideas to arrive. It’s about getting yourself out the way. It’s a pretty simple plot overall. Something weird happens to a dysfunctional family, courtesy of a sad man.

Back in 2011, what encouraged you to follow through with the development and production of Black Pond?

We shot the film in 2010, and finished editing in February 2011. It began as an experiment to see what would happen when we made a film. We’d made a half hour film called ‘Cockroach’ in Japan in 2009. It was just the two of us, with no crew. And it turned out much better than we thought, so we hoped that approaching a feature film with a similar no-budget philosophy might work out quite well.

The script was written knowing that we wouldn’t have much money to make it. So we confined the story to a couple of houses and some woods – places that are basically free to film in. We had a crew of four, which is unusually small. We used a wheelchair instead of a dolly. We had good prime lenses but no zoom, so we were forced into shooting in a particular way. But restrictions are always helpful.

Apart from the final sound mix, we did all the post ourselves. A lot of the time we had to learn as we did it. Basically we just did most of the jobs ourselves and had a very generous and hard working cast and crew. The film was edited on our laptops, and we’ve been living like students for a couple of years, putting everything we’ve earned from our day jobs into making the film.

It helped that there were two of us to keep each other going. We’ve always found that, once you start something and you’ve put a lot into it, you kind of just find the energy to see it through.

 

Who were your influences on the story and/or style of filmmaking? Past or present? If any.

Tone-wise, we didn’t set out to make a comedy. We didn’t set out to make a thriller. We didn’t set out to make a dark film. Nor do we think of Black Pond as any of the above. There were some funny lines. Funny situations. Sad lines. Sad situations. We had actors who we knew were sensitive to comedy and had good comic instincts. But some of the scenes play out funnier than we imagined and others ended up being quite unsettling when, at the time of shooting, we thought it was hilarious. It also depends on who’s watching obviously. We didn’t want to make a this-kind-of-film or that-kind-of-film or even a film-in-the-style-of-anything-in-particular. We just wanted to make a good film.

Will, you have worked as an actor. What are your two cents on being involved in all of these processes at once? Did you find it difficult?

I guess it was difficult because we were tired! But I’ve never really seen the various aspects of film making as different disciplines particularly. I didn’t train as an actor. I kind of think of it a bit like when you’re in a band. You write the songs. And then, if there’s an instrument in the song that you can play, you perform it. And if there are other instruments that you can’t play, then you get other people in to perform it with you. Tom and I between us have a wide range of skills and we just try to make the most of them in whatever we do.

 

There aren’t too many co-directing teams around, what is your collaborative process in pre-prod, prod and editing? Who does what? Is co-directing something you’d like to continue or do you have different ideas of where’d you’d like to take yourselves?

We’ve found it works really well, so we’ll carry on doing it. We’ve been working together for eight years now – we started writing and directing plays and comedy shows together when we met at university. It’s good because it makes us more independent – we can do more stuff by ourselves with a smaller crew – but most of all it means that we both have to like each idea, so the quality control bar is set a bit higher. Having two directors is quite straightforward – the months and months of pre-production and editing are where most of the creative decisions are made. There’s lots of time to discuss every aspect of the film, and so by the time we’re on set, we’re on the same page. The shoot is the shortest stage of the process by far. There’s never enough time, and new problems keep popping up the whole time – so it’s quite handy to have two directors trying to find the simplest solutions to everything.

Directing team: Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe

We understand that Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List) was a great support? What was the best advice he gave you? What did his experience teach you? 

The most inspiring thing he said was that we weren’t crazy to think we could make a film for the kind of budget and amount of time that we had. His best practical tip was to avoid having costume changes – it makes everything quicker and means you’re less likely to have continuity errors. But in general, there aren’t any great secrets as to how to make a low-budget film. It’s simple stuff like filming quickly (we took three weeks), have a tiny crew (ours was four people – two on camera and two on sound), stick to a couple of locations and do the post production yourself if you can (we did everything apart from the dub).

 

How did you find your crew? Were they people you worked with or knew before?

Will was acting on TV at the time, and most of the crew were people he’d met on set. Part of the appeal for them was that they could take a step up. For example, our DOP Simon Walton was normally a Focus Puller.

 

What was your financing process and were there any particular key points that jettisoned cashflow? 

Once we’d written the script and cast the film, we made a document that gave information about investing in the film. And we sent that, along with a letter, in the post or via email, to hundreds of people. We got bits from companies. Some bits just from random rich people! We had also been saving up from our day jobs for a year or so, and so we could cover the damage when we went £5000 over our initial £20,000 budget. The casting definitely helped. And the short probably a little too, but to a lesser degree. And check out the EIS Scheme. That was helpful.

How did you go about casting the film?

We generally cast people who we’d worked with before. It was important that we knew they were great actors, and also that they had a healthy attitude to working on a low budget film. For example, Amanda Hadingue, who plays Sophie, was touring alongside Will with the Royal Shakespeare Company – and she’s also set up her own experimental theatre group Stan’s Cafe. We didn’t know Chris Langham before filming, but we’d always thought he would be the best person for the role. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were that he agreed to take part – and it was a huge bonus that he turned out to be extremely generous and supportive on set.

 

At which stage did the sales agent jump on board?

We didn’t have a sales agent in the UK.

 

You’ve taken the self-secured theatrical release with the Prince Charles cinema and following independent theaters. Was this always the plan? Wearing the producer’s cap what are your thoughts on alternative distribution/self-distribution models?

It’s hard for anyone to make much money from a small cinema release – but you get much more out of it if you release the film independently. From what other filmmakers told us, and from the contracts we saw, distribution companies have such high overheads that they find it hard to give any money back to low budget filmmakers. So it’s much better to do it yourself – even though it is a huge amount of work. We’ve probably been much more emotionally invested in the project than a company would have been.

 

What tips/discoveries would you share with any aspiring writer/directors? What advice would you give anybody starting from scratch and looking to make waves?

Go for it. You can only learn how to make a film by making a film. Once you have access to a camera, you don’t need to spend money on anything else. Just keep making stuff. You don’t need permission to make a film, you don’t need to go to film school, and you don’t need to network. If you do good work, people will want to watch it. Don’t be afraid of the fact that you’re going to make lots of mistakes. We made loads of mistakes. But that’s the only way to learn really: to get things wrong and then to do your best to deal with it.

 

What is next for you?

Our next project is an adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide. It’s an epic adventure comedy about happiness.

BLACK POND is released today (April 16th), at HMV, Fopp, iTunes, Amazon, Lovefilm and all good stores.

Buy the film here:

http://www.blackpondfilm.com/tickets.html

View other FILM DOCTOR: IN CONVERSATION 

To me she was Dr K, Dr Lizz, Lizzbet, or just plain old Lizz. But in her life, wondrously, she was anything but plain, and in her death, too, too tragically, she was anything but old. We undertook our PhDs together as exact contemporaries at the Institute, and in our time saw several BritGrads together. While my role was invariably passive, however – turning up with metronomic punctuality for the wine receptions and only slightly later for my own panels – Lizz could be found at the entrance to the building stuffing materials into welcome packs before the bleary-eyed delegates turned up for the first session of the morning; carrying tray after tray of lasagne from Marco’s deli through the Church Street traffic; elbow deep in washing up suds, turning the dirty morning coffee cups into clean afternoon coffee cups; connecting up audio-visual equipment; arranging chairs; giving her own paper; and, most importantly of all, just being there for anyone and everyone who needed guidance, encouragement, information, directions, or anything at all (within reason), always with the kind smile that was  never far from her face. The foundations for so much of the way BritGrad is run today – the massively increased number of delegates, and, therefore, the concurrent panel sessions, the impressive number of distinguished plenary speakers, the relationships with publishers – are because of Lizz’s efforts, as is its reputation as ‘the friendly conference’. It is a supportive, generous, critically exacting environment where future scholars can cut their conference teeth and develop personal and professional relationships that will last a lifetime.

I was, and continue to be, extremely grateful to the BritGrad organising committee for being so proactive in helping to combat the shockwaves of grief that Lizz’s death had sent through our small community, and in trying, in the spirit of BritGrad itself, to turn it into something positive by reaching outwards to help a bigger one. It is a conference run by graduate students for graduate students, and some of the happiest times of my Shakespearean career to date are associated with it. Those associations, of course, are inseparable from Lizz, and it seems perfect to me that she is able to live on in the conference to which she gave so much.  Hers is an award that both supports (£150 is, to the average grad student eating toothpaste sandwiches a la Al Bundy, nothing short of ostentatious riches to help keep body, soul and photocopying together) and recognises burgeoning academic excellence.  Lizz was herself a great scholar – her important and original doctoral thesis on the musical repertory of the Admiral’s Men graces the collections of the Institute Library should you wish to examine it while you’re here – and a great recogniser and supporter of talent in others.

Sadly, Lizz’s career and life, which, had she been given the chance to see them out, would without doubt have sparkled with the originality and passion she managed to communicate to everyone she met, did not last for very long beyond her time in the postgraduate communities of the Institute and of BritGrad. Through the love of those left behind, and the establishment of awards such as this, however, her important legacy will.

On behalf of Lizz, the BritGrad committee, and myself I wish you the very best of luck in this year’s competition, and a happy and productive BritGrad 2012.

- Will Sharpe

[You can learn more about The Lizz Ketterer Trust and performances by the Ketterer's Men by visiting their website.]

[Will Sharpe gained his PhD from The Shakespeare Institute, and has since worked at the University of Leeds where he has completed postdoctoral work on the forthcoming Cambridge Complete Works of Ben Jonson. Will is one of the General Editors of the forthcoming RSC/Palgrave Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others, as well as a Chief Associate Editor of the RSC Shakespeare individual volumes series, for which he co-edited Cymbeline with Jonathan Bate. He is one of the General Editors of Digital Renaissance Editions, and has taught at the University of Warwick, Nottingham Trent University and The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. He is a proud former delegate, and current avid supporter of BritGrad.]

This time Film Doctortalks film exhibition and getting your film in front of an audience. Theatrical release might still be ‘the holly grail’ but if you haven’t secured one so far, why not explore alternative showcase options? Here is a list of various methods (in no particular order):

1. Distrify - a digital toolkit rather than just a platform, Distrify allows filmmakers to ‘rent out’ their work and see direct sale transaction, i.e. all money goes straight to the filmmakers. You don’t upload whole projects, but through sharing and embedding a trailer of your work on blogs/web pages/social media offer the audience an opportunity to discover, preview and, subsequently,  rent or purchase your film. Who’s used this? Chris Jones for Gone Fishing, Dom Rotheroe for Exhibit A, and… Terry Gilliam (!) for his new work, The Wholly Family (it will go online straight after the film festival run, and will be promoted by Terry and Distrify’s publishing partners)

2. Renderyard - upload and share content or get on the Renderyard Distribution deal. Unlike Distrify, Renderyard is more of your traditional destination site, where films can be viewed, free of charge. The revenue for the filmmakers comes from the number of times the film is viewed from the website on a pre-roll advert supported basis, and/or streamed/downloaded. In partnership with Dailymotion, HULU, Blinkbox, filmmakers get the choice to feature their work as either streamed paid-for titles or free advert-supported ones. Acting also as a DVD distributor, Renderyard could potentially secure your project with store sales across Europe and USA. Who’s used this? Makers Our Story; Dom Rotheroe for Exhibit A.

3. Cinovu –  Cinovu is also an online exhibition platform, but with a paid subscription model based on how much content the audience views. A subscriber pays a certain amount of money per month, and gets to see a certain amount of minutes. It’s a pay per minute model, rather than a pay per film model. So filmmakers get paid per minute of film watched, times the number of views. Who’s used this? Not actually launched just yet, but set to do a test run at some point in 2012 (date TBC). Meanwhile, filmmakers are invited to submit their work.

4. BitTorrent’s Featured Artist Programme - it offers musicians and filmmakers the ability to submit their work for consideration for special promotions. All you need to do is fill in a submission form and provide a link to your work. If reviewed as successful, your project could be shared with over 80 million BitTorrent users around the world! Who’s used this? Australian horror/thriller The Tunnel (worldwide distribution through the BitTorrent’s two software products – BitTorrent Mainline and the iconic µTorrent).

5. Dogwoof Pop-Up Cinema (f0r documentary filmmakers/lovers) - Aimed at supporters of Dogwoof‘s catalogue of documentaries, this initiative provides an opportunity for any interested party to take part in their films’ exhibition process. Anyone can screen a film by visiting 
http://popupcinema.net/
 and essentially take on the role of a film exhibitor (e.g. cinema theatre) – you would set up screenings of Dogwoof’s new releases in their communities at the same time as cinemas elsewhere in the country. You have to pay a ‘license fee’ to Dogwoof and would be responsible for sourcing out a venue, spreading the word and then hosting a screening, but in return you get ticket sales revenue and support with publicity and PR/marketing campaign. Who’s used this? This may not be a model of ‘how to release your project’ for individual filmmakers, but it could be adopted by independent production companies, when struggling to secure cinema runs – ‘cut out the middle man’ and give power to the audience to share the film with each other (Note: for this model to work, the film needs to already have admirers).

And last, but not least:

6. Hire a cinema for a week –  whether you are a team of 2 (Director/Producer) or a young production company with some revenue under your belt, there is always the option to hire a screening facility – as long as you have enough cash to cover the renting fee. Try approaching independent cinemas and negotiating several dates (ideally, 1-2 weeks run), open to the cinema’s audience along with the rest of its programmed film.  Who’s used this? Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley hired the Prince Charles Cinema for their now BAFTA-nominated debut Black Pond; Bryan O’Neil for Booked Out (for UK distribution).

Monday Prescription No.9 – There’s more than one way to showcase your film and secure an audience

Hi Oscar. Hi BAFTA. It’s London calling once more and we seem to be understanding this whole Awards malarkey a lot better than you. Yes, we may have been slightly overshadowed by the London Critics who also awarded Fassbender and Colman, but hey, AT LEAST WE NOMINATED THEM. Oh, and recognition for We Need To Talk About Kevin? Yeah, we went there. And would it be too much to mention our love for Senna, The Guard and Weekend? Ok, we’ll stop there. Check out the full list of winners below:

BEST FILM:

We Need To Talk About Kevin

BEST ACTOR:

Michael Fassbender – Shame and Jane Eyre

BEST ACTRESS:

Olivia Colman – Tyrannosaur

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMERS:

Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe – co-writers and directors of Black Pond

PETER SELLERS AWARD FOR COMEDY:

The Guard – John Michael McDonagh

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

Senna

BEST SCREENPLAY:

Andrew Haigh – Weekend

LONDON FILM MUSEUM AWARD FOR TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT:

Robbie Ryan – cinematography of Wuthering Heights

ALEXANDER WALKER SPECIAL AWARD:

John Hurt

BLOCKBUSTER OF THE YEAR – PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD:

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2

This dark comedy begins with news stories and newspaper covers with typically OTT headlines suggesting the event was in some way cannibalistic, while talking heads with members of the Thompson family explain how the event has changed their lives. The main body of the film, however, is the story of how Tom (Chris Langham) meets a man named Blake while out walking the dog near the titular Black Pond, befriends him, and invites him back to their house. This provides Tom and his wife Sophie (Amanda Hadingue) with their first proper conversation for a long time. Blake may seem a little odd but the couple see past it and soon begin to enjoy his company.

Meanwhile, their two daughters, Katie and Jess, and their close friend Tim Tanaka, have moved out and are living it up in the city. However, they are forced to return home and face their family when Blake happens upon an unfortunate discovery n the woods.

This film was made for approximately £25,000, but you wouldn’t know. It looks great (shot in HD as is pretty much standard these days) and with a solid cast. Much of the films publicity has come from the fact that it’s central character Tom is played by Langham, who was convicted and sentenced to ten months in prison for downloading indecent images of children. This is a pretty much unforgivable act, however, for the films running time the thought never crossed my mind.

Chris Langham is brilliant throughout, displaying all the wit and great comic timing that he was once famous for (he starred in The Thick Of It, Help and Not The Nine O’ Clock News among many other TV and radio productions). Perhaps the reason the film-makers were able to produce the film on a such a small budget is because Langham took a tiny or possibly no wage for appearing in it? It would certainly make sense if he wanted to get back in to the public eye, and doing so in a controversial film adds even more fuel to the fire.

So yes, the film is very funny, however, there is one performance that jars – Simon Amstell’s fake-therapist. For one, his role needn’t have been any bigger than a bit part for a couple of scenes, not a constant and pointless diversion from the main story. And two, he was just playing Simon Amstell – comedian. While he is a funny guy, it didn’t work in this film, but I’m sure having his name in the credits will get more people watching it which is only a good thing.

Finally, if you’re looking for a laugh-riot, this isn’t the film for you. It’s a dark comedy where the humour comes not from the story but from various mundane  situations, and from Blake the oddball. While the actual story is a very sad one, many scenes are laugh out loud funny (see for example Tom’s rant about bananas!) Some may say that since the humour is derived from outside of the story it isn’t completely worthy, but I say, if it’s funny, it’s funny. The end may be a bit of a downer, but for a debut feature this is impressive stuff!

So it’s a breath of fresh air to see the return of the BFI Future Film Festival, back at the lovely BFI Southbank for a fifth year. Snuggled in between the BAFTAs and the Oscars, with all their calculated cynicism and over-egged glitz and glamour, the Future Film Festival is dedicated solely to the fresh, innovative ideas of young aspiring filmmakers. The festival boasts a mix of feature films (with Q&As) and awards ceremonies, as well as masterclasses and workshops from some of the industry’s movers and shakers. So if you’re 15-25 and mad on film, you’d be a fool to pass this up.

Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, directors of Black Pond

For the three feature film screenings on offer, the emphasis is squarely on first features. Black Pond, screening on Sunday, is the debut feature from recent Nottingham Uni graduates Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe. This unashamedly dark comedy charting the lives of a suburban family accused of murder stars Simon Amstell and Chris Langham. Lock Stock’s Dexter Fletcher jumps behind the camera for the first time to bring us the gritty Wild Bill on Sunday, which follows a newly-released prisoner as he’s plunged back into reality. The fantastic Eraserhead on Saturday ties the festival in nicely with the BFI’s David Lynch season and is a must-see for any aspiring director. Two of the three feature films are followed by a Q&A with the directors, but as David Lynch is most likely trapped in a red room drinking coffee with a dwarf, he can probably be excused.

No worries David, happens to the best of us.

For an insight into how to make your very first feature film, a Sunday panel discussion on the topic includes Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe (Black Pond), Debs Patterson (Africa United) and Dave Hawkins (Bound by Blue).

Short films, meanwhile, are the playground where aspiring directors cut their teeth. With a wealth of workshops on offer, aspiring short filmmakers will get a chance to learn the ins-and-outs of funding and production from some of the very best. Meanwhile, the Future Film Awards ceremonies will celebrate the shorts which have really stood out this year. Sam Haire’s hilarious black-and-white Portrait d’un Francais and Bexie Bush’s inspired stop-motion animation Ever Hear a Postman Whistle? are some of the real highlights, while the entrants really are strong across the board.

There’s a host of workshops and masterclasses to get involved in, from a Visual FX Masterclass with Ed Hall (currently working on the upcoming James Bond film) to Making Print Work in the Digital Age from the brilliant Little White Lies magazine. For more information on what’s on offer and a chance to get your day pass, head on over to the BFI’s Future Film Festival page.

Events like the BFI’s Future Film Festival are what keeps the blood pumping through the British film industry’s veins. While Cameron might see the BFI’s role as encouraging UK producers to make “commercially successful” pictures, he couldn’t be more wrong. Siding with bankable filmmakers who have already proven their Hollywood salt can only stagnate the industry, and it’s clear from what’s on offer here that British independent film has a lot up its sleeve. It’s always heartening to see festivals like this encouraging innovation and inspiration among a brand new generation of filmmakers – filmmakers who are, after all, the future of British cinema. Long may it continue.

(Article written for The Skinny Eye magazine.)

BAFTA, you really could have learned one or two things from these nominations. The fact that Best Supporting is rolled into Best Actor/Actress makes for some very interesting choices, very few of which are actually potential Oscar nominees – Branagh and Fassbender, Redgrave, Swinton and possibly Mulligan and Oldman if he’s exceptionally lucky after his pretty unexciting Awards season. But the one main difference is the three nominations for Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago, starring BAFTA Rising Star nominee, Tom Hiddleston. And hello to the overdue acting nods for Colman, Gleeson and Mullan. The addition of a ‘People’s Choice’ Award gives The Smurfs a chance to battle it out against Bridesmaids and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Tell Papa Smurf not to crack the champagne out just yet. Check out the full list of nominees below:

BEST FILM:

Archipelago
Shame
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Tyrannosaur
We Need To Talk About Kevin

BEST ACTOR:

Kenneth Branagh – My Week With Marilyn
Michael Fassbender – Shame and Jane Eyre
Brendan Gleeson – The Guard
Tom Hiddleston – Archipelago
Peter Mullan – Tyrannosaur
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

BEST ACTRESS:

Olivia Colman – Tyrannosaur
Samantha Morton – The Messenger
Carey Mulligan – Shame
Vanessa Redgrave – Coriolanus
Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Rachel Weisz -  The Deep Blue Sea

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER:

Richard Ayoade, for his directorial debut, Submarine
John Boyega, for his performance in Attack The Block
Jessica Brown Findlay, for her performance in Albatross
Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, for their writing and directing debut, Black Pond

PETER SELLERS AWARD FOR COMEDY:

Black Pond
The Inbetweeners Movie
The Guard

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

Dreams Of A Life
Fire In Babylon
Life In A Day
Project Nim
Senna

BEST SCREENPLAY:

Paddy Considine – Tyrannosaur
Andrew Haigh – Weekend
Joanna Hogg – Archipelago
John Michael McDonagh – The Guard
Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump – Kill List

LONDON FILM MUSEUM AWARD FOR TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT:

Sean Bobbitt – cinematographer, Shame
Paul Davies – sound designer, We Need To Talk About Kevin
Maria Djurkovic – production designer, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Michael O’Connor – costume designer, Jane Eyre
Robbie Ryan – cinematographer, Wuthering Heights

BLOCKBUSTER OF THE YEAR – PEOPLE’S CHOICE (Decided by online readers’ vote):

Bridesmaids
Fast Five
The Hangover Part II
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
The Inbetweeners Movie
Johnny English Reborn
Kung Fu Panda 2
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

The Smurfs
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

Having met at university, where they wrote and directed plays and comedy together, they both had a passion to make a film but struggled to fit in the time required around their current day jobs. Despite this hindrance, in 2009 they made a short called Gokiburi (Cockroach) which was set in Japan and made using only a script, reflector board and prosumer camera. As Sharpe recalls, “making the short film basically just showed us that the only way to learn how to make a film is to make a film.”

The short proved to be a success, with a production company offering them £50,000 to make a feature. Unfortunately, this fell through but didn’t deter the pair who decided to fund the film themselves. “Some of it was money we saved up from our day jobs, and the rest we raised by writing hundreds of letters and emails – trying to raise our target of £20,000. When we ended up going over budget by £5,000, we took time off during editing to do some paid work, and were able to cover the extra,” says Kingsley.

" The only way to learn how to make a film is to make a film"

Evidently a lot of determination and hard work was required to get the project off the ground, yet this in turn opened up a considerable amount of possibilities that wouldn’t have been available had they received funds from a production company. As Kingsley notes, “it can be hard working with a small budget, but in a lot of ways it forced us to be more creative. Restrictions can be helpful. Also the more money you have to make a film, the less creative freedom you have. So although we had very little money, we had total creative freedom.”

Black Pond is loosely based on a play they wrote at university with a couple of friends, but had to be changed considerably due to its inclusion of burning castles and helicopters which would have been too expensive for a first feature. Sharpe, who wrote the screenplay, comments, “we decided to take the core characters from the play and to tell a story with a more manageable plot. What we ended up with was quite unexpected in a way. But it’s a funny thing because you don’t actually have very much control over how a story plays out. You need to have the discipline to throw away the ideas that are bad or unrealistic, but it’s not like you can force yourself to have a good idea. You kind of just have to wait for the ideas to arrive in their own time. It’s about getting yourself out the way I think.”

As a means of saving money, the pair have been distributing the film themselves, organising their own screenings and dealing with the cinemas directly. This way they have been able to make sure that every penny made from the release can go straight back to their investors. Surprisingly, this method has been working, as Kingsley comments, “we’ve never done anything like this before, but it seems to be going well so far. All of our London screenings sold out, and this week in Edinburgh is the second week on our tour of British cities.”

It seems clear that their success boils down to a strong desire to achieve what they want. They represent the average Joes who get to high places through sheer determination. As Sharpe aptly points out, “we only really broke into film by making a film. Neither of us went to film school, and we didn’t meet any filmmakers or get anywhere with proper film funding organisations.” For those willing to try and get into the movie industry, Kinsley’s advice is simple, “first find a job that leaves you some free time and then fill that free time by making films. Anyone can talk about being a filmmaker but the only way to prove you can do it is by showing people the films you’ve made. Equipment has never been so cheap. As long as you have good ideas and are motivated enough to make them happen, you’ll get there eventually.”

With the world’s first low budget epic comedy blockbuster in the making, it is clear that Sharpe and Kingsley are on their way up. Their passion is nothing short of admirable and the results they achieve impressive, it is surely only a matter of time before they become household British names.

Black Pond will be showing at the Cameo from November 25th – December 1st.

Taken from The Student, published Tue Nov 22nd 2011.

And not before time, as Dr Ruth Winters is, quite frankly, out of control. The rest of the staff wasted no time in filling Nick on on her various crimes, the greatest of which is, of course, ousting Charlie up to the Psych Ward (to work, not as a patient, as I always feel I have to point out). Despite offers from other hospitals, Nick decided that he really ought to stay put at Holby, because what Ruth really needs is a worthy adversary, and he is such a man.

There’s nothing like a worthy adversary to make you up your game, though, and Ruth called in a favour from her sort-of husband (the one who’s trying to pretend he’s not gay), who immediately managed to offer Nick a surgical post in the hospital. I’ve no idea what the hierarachy is supposed to be in that place, when doctors can just find each other jobs without apparently having to go via the board or HR or anyone. And has a surgeon ever been appointed at Holby in recent years without having to fight Jac Naylor for the post first? (Yes, I know it’s a different programme, but it is supposed to be the same hospital).

Nick is wise to Ruth’s little game, and has said he’ll go to the interview as long as Ruth reversed several of her more irritating measures. It’s warming up to be a great battle between those two.

Meanwhile, Lennie resorted to desperate measures to try and find a bone marrow match for his sister, but despite some not terribly ethical or legal business involving taking blood tests without patients’ consent, he was eventually forced to tell her that he wasn’t a match, and now she’s gone back to Scotland.

Adam and Maverick Nurse Kirsty kissed, but as usual with Adam the relationship looks doomed to failure, because it seems her horrible husband has muscular dystrophy, and she feels obliged to look after him.

And Yuki has gone to Birmingham, for good! I’ll miss the little fella.

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Of course he wasn’t actually dead – he just thought he was. And, as such, he was refusing treatment. He just wanted to be parked peacefully in the morgue and be left to get on with trying to contact Derek Acorah.

Apparently current medical thinking is that if you play along with people’s delusions, it only makes them worse (this is possibly why David Walliams thinks he’s funny), but Maverick Nurse Kirsty felt it would be the best approach in this case. Adam had diagnosed Legionnaire’s Disease, and they had to get some antibiotics in the “corpse,” so Kirsty pretended it was embalming fluid. Yuki even went as far as tying a little ID tag on the man’s toe. And it was while he was doing this that he spotted some telltale signs that the problem was actually Addison’s Disease. Once again Yuki performs a bit of diagnostic genius which leaves everyone gasping with admiration  - even the lady who’d come to inspect A&E for hygiene and had found resus sadly wanting.

This was Lenny’s fault. He was being distracted by the recent death of his mother, the fact that his girlfriend is the nasty journalist who’s giving the hospital such a bad press, and looking after an adorable patient with Alzheimer’s.

Meanwhile, Nick Jordan has been spending quiet moments practising his suturing on chunks of meat, and Dr Zoe Hanna is still popping outside to top up her nicotine levels. What’s happening with these two?

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Yuki’s response was quite similar to what mine would be – he drew a screen around himself  (literally) and spent his time peering into a microscope. He wasn’t just being geeky, he was actually diagnosing the parasitical infection, but it did mean he left Mads to do all the nasty tasks. That’s men for you.

Meanwhile, after resisting Dr Ruth Winters’ amorous advances last week, her new husband Edward said he’d take her out somewhere nice by way of an apology. Only then he got a better offer from the Dean, and told Ruth to go out and have “fun” with her “girlfriends.” The fact that Edward thinks Ruth has “fun” and/or “girlfriends” shows just how little he knows his wife. She spent the evening doing a bit of filing for Nick Jordan.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Nick and Dr Zoe Hanna these days. Since he found out she wasn’t pregnant things have gone a bit quiet with them, and I couldn’t help noticing she’s back on the fags again. And Nick’s health is a bit worrying, too.  I wish they’d sort themselves out.

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This was a real shock in an episode that was full of shocks, including a couple of  scenes that made even my Casualty- and Holby-hardened stomach feel a tad queasy, when a man beat up and sexually assaulted another man who already had several broken ribs. Ouch. And ugh. And disturbing.

Meanwhile, Charlie was dealing with a little boy who’d suffered the classic “Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary” injury.  “That man pulled my willy out!” the boy told his dad. Charlie had to act quickly to correct that little confusion.  Charlie spent the entire episode wanting to be somewhere else – namely, at court with Shona – but he failed and she arrived back at the hospital to tell him she’d been put on probation, and to thank him for his “tough love” approach. It remains to be seen whether Shona, who has turned over more new leaves than a professional leaf turner, will really mend her ways.

Lennie and Yuki resorted to a bit of housebreaking and computer hacking to find out the truth about the Crypto project. This is even more maverick behaviour than that of maverick nurse Kirsty, and it didn’t endear them to Nick Jordan, who was trying to sort things out his own way. It hasn’t endeared Lenny to Yuki, either – Yuki is realising he’s always the one who gets dumped on.

And Dr Zoe Hanna failed yet again to come clean to Nick about her fertility issues.

Next week: “Adam deals with a traumatic day but finally forgives himself for Harry’s death.” What – again?

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High on your new-found lease of life, you realise that you must tell the woman you love that she’s the woman you love, and that you want to spend the rest of your new lease of life with her. That’s a really good day.

Then you discover she’s about to get married. You rush off via ambulance (they’ve got that handy siren thing for traffic situations), spot her lurking on a staircase in her bridal-wear but alone, and declare your love. Brilliant day! Apart from the fact that she just got married. Bad, bad day. The worst.

This was the fate of Lovely Staff Nurse Faldren in last Saturday’s Casualty. There were some touching moments in an episode that was filled with reminders of the fleeting nature of our span upon the earth (numerous references to time, and clocks). As if Jay wasn’t having a hard enough time facing up to his own mortality, he also lost a patient (played by Corrie’s lovely Rita May), who died thinking her daughter didn’t care about her. It was this that made him face up to his feelings for Ruth.

It was quite odd that Ruth was getting married. We glimpsed her betrothed a few weeks ago – he was the awkward man who spoke to her after the conference that she messed up.  I thought it was pretty implausible that Ruth would already be at the tying-the-knot stage in a few short weeks, but thinking about it Ruth does have a tendency to rush into things like that – almost as if she sees the world in binary, so she’s either A or B with no shades of indecision in between. I hope Jay doesn’t give up on her, though, as I can’t help thinking Conference Man is not really the man for her.

Meanwhile, Dr Zoe Hanna got angry with her own body for letting her down, as the fertility treatment she’s been taking apparently hasn’t worked. Charlie got angry with Shona for being drunk while pregnant. And Tess got angry with Nurse Kirsty for being a maverick.

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Carl Jackson (a very menacing Maurice Roeves) was a particularly horrible child killer with his own line in gallows humour. “Is there any history of haemophilia in your family?” Adam asked him, as the toothbrush wound gushed far more blood than he’d predicted.  “They didn’t bleed much when I killed them,” Jackson replied. He made it his mission to get inside Adam’s head, in a very similar manner to the way Hannibal Lecter gets in Clarice Starling’s head. And, like Clarice, we know that Adam is something of a tortured soul, and hence rich pickings for a psycho enjoying a day out (it became clear that the injuries were self-inflicted just so Jackson could go to hospital for the day).  “You’re like an ice cream parlour in the desert,” he told Adam – almost certainly the first time this comparison has been levelled at Dr Trueman. “I just want a taste.” Jackson refused to have treatment until Adam told him something about himself, which forced Adam to confront baby Harry’s death, which might even have helped his tortured soul become a little less tortured. Every cloud has a silver lining, after all.

A much-needed shot of comedy relief this episode was provided by Big Mac, who believed he’d been cursed a couple of weeks ago. This sent him into hypochondriac meltdown. When Noel and Jay realised he was sending samples of his own urine for tests, and booking himself for CT scans (surely porters can’t just do this without a doctor’s say-so? No wonder the NHS is financially precarious), they realised it was time to do something. Jay pretended he had gypsy blood, and that a sure-fire way to lift a curse is to draw a chalk ring around the place you were cursed. Big Mac therefore spent much of the episode bent double, drawing a circle around the entire hospital. He’ll probably be cursed with a bad back now, if nothing else.

Actually, it looks as though it could be Jay who’s cursed. It turns out that he took part in a double-blind trial of this crypto thing that’s been killing people on Casualty for the past few weeks. Please, no – not Lovely Staff Nurse Faldren…

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Ruth had an excellent week this week. She had a female patient with stomach and liver cancer, who had only months to live. Just possibly there was a surgical procedure that could save her life. Spurred on by the fact that the woman’s daughter was about to be orphaned as her father had just pegged out in the ED, and encouraged by Nick Jordan, Ruth went off to confront the surgeon who was refusing to contemplate the procedure because it was risky. She stood in front of his car and wouldn’t budge till he listened to her. She not only changed his mind, but quite possibly bought herself a ticket to a future career in surgery as well.

Meanwhile, new nurse Kirsty continued to be a loose cannon. This week she drove a patient (the ex-husband of Ruth’s cancer patient) off to try and replace some money he’d stolen before anyone found out (because otherwise if his ex-wife died of cancer, their daughter would be left an orphan… but as mentioned above, he later died anyway).

While all this was going on, Dr Zoe Hanna was consulting medics herself, to find out whether there was any chance she could ever have a baby with Nick Jordan (or anyone, in fact, but it’s Nick Jordan she wants to settle down with). It turns out there is some surgery she could have, which will give her a one in four chance of conceiving. She’s decided to take those odds.

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With a cut on his head, Nick valiantly continued with his shift and fended off the questions of Dr Zoe Hanna. It wasn’t an easy shift, either. There was a girl in a coma whose father appeared to have TB but crashed and died in the ED of something mysterious. And there was a man with mental health issues who was found by the paramedics with wounds on his arms and a young man tied up in his cellar. It’s not what you think, either. The young man had killed the other man’s dog, so he’d tied him up in a fit of anger.

All this was sorted out by new nurse Kirsty, who ticks many Casualty nurse boxes. She’s pretty (of course), a bit of a maverick (aren’t they all?) but under the feistiness beats a heart of gold (full house!). Lovely Staff Nurse Faldren has taken a shine to Kirsty, and let’s hope he has more luck with her than with Dr Ruth Winters. He’s made a bold attempt to get into her good books by buying the man a new puppy to replace his beloved dead doggy. True, he used the money that he’d made taking bets on why Kirsty left her previous job, but if there’s anything cuter than Lovely Staff Nurse Faldren holding a puppy, I’m not sure I’ve seen it yet.

Unless – it’s Nick Jordan and Dr Zoe Hanna eating hot dogs at twilight. What a lovely, romantic scene. Nick told Zoe that he’d collapsed that morning. He might well only have a short time to live. And he’d quite like to fill that time by settling down with Zoe, with a nice house, a pretty garden, a bunch of adorable kids.

And about time, too. She’s obviously the woman for him, he’s clearly the man for her, and I’m sure she can cut down on the fags and the Bacardi Breezers, and he can learn to loosen his tie and relax occasionally, and everything will be perfect. Except… Dr Zoe Hanna can’t have kids. Will she tell him? Will it be a deal breaker? Ooh, the suspense.

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When May opened a letter addressed to Yuki in resus, a lot of white powder fell out. And a note. Apparently in revenge for May breaking someone’s neck a few weeks ago, someone had decided to send a package of anthrax to the hospital.

What could be worse that anthrax in resus? Well, you could have a stupid F2 (May again) posting it through the hospital system to the lab. Way to spread it around. And you could have a dying boy, no access to the blood or operating theatre he needs, and the woman who ran him over while trying to kill his mother, who when she was a child had killed the first woman’s daughter. Are you following this? And the hysterical mother of the boy and former child killer barging her way in as well.

And I haven’t mentioned yet that Yuki was also there. He’d been found in a skip, in a confused and dehydrated state, and hadn’t said anything since he arrived, only pointed at May with a trembling and accusatory finger once or twice. It turned out it was lucky that Yuki was there, because he was the only one present (including the sainted Charlie) who knew that it was possible to manually test different peoples’ blood for compatibility. Thus even from his sickbed Yuki managed to outsmart his fellow F2′s, and save the life of the little boy when it turned out that the woman who’d run him over was a blood group match.

I should probably mention at this point that the white powder turned out not to be anthrax, but a hoax. The little boy survived, Yuki was on the mend – and finally May’s conscience got the better of her. She went to Nick Jordan and ’fessed up that it was she, and not Yuki, who’d broken a patient’s neck.

While all this was going on, Adam and Jessica had time to get to grips with how they felt about losing Harry. At one point, it looked like they might get back together again – they were calling each other “Mr and Mrs Trueman” and making cocoa. But when Jess found Harry’s little spoon in the cutlery drawer and said every day she felt she was losing more and more of him, Adam realised that even if she stayed now, at some point in the future she’d have to leave again. So poor Adam is alone yet again.

Nick Jordan and Dr Zoe Hanna were in the car park for most of the episode, what with the hospital being under precautionary lock down and so on. But did I see them briefly squeeze hands under the desk once they were allowed back inside? I think I did, you know. Bless.

And Shona, the former girlfriend of Charlie’s waste-of-oxygen son Louis, turned up. Guess what? She’s still pregnant.

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Dr Ruth Winters once had the love of Lovely Staff Nurse Faldren, but she’s repeatedly let her own ambitions get in the way. This week his career was on the line because he was being blamed for overdosing Ruth’s patient with her experimental bone drug. The case notes were lost, and Jay was desperate to find them, knowing that he’d done nothing wrong. The notes did turn up in a box addressed to Ruth and the man in charge of the trial. He read them and -we assume – discovered that Jay hadn’t done anything wrong. At the case conference he pretended he hadn’t found the notes. Ruth started to say something, but kept quiet, and was persuaded to keep quiet afterwards by the promise of having her name as co-author of the paper. Once again, Ruth has put her career before any loyalty to Jay.

It was a similar story for May and Yuki. She eventually told him that it was she and not he who’d accidentally  broken the neck of last week’s table-dancing patient. Yuki is similar to Ruth in that he’s a brilliant doctor with not fantastic social skills, but there the similarity ends. Where Ruth would put her own career first, Yuki is so hopelessly devoted to May that his reaction was for them both to pack a bag and head for the Kent seaside. As he waited on the station platform, May was in Nick Jordan’s office, allowing him to give Yuki the blame for injuring the patient. Poor Yuki.

The most well-balanced and supportive relationship in the ED is currently the marriage of lesbian Dixie and her bezzie mate Geoff. When Dixie’s dad took a turn for the worse and collapsed, he refused to talk to Dixie because he can’t cope with the idea that she’s lied to him for years about her sexuality. In the ambulance on the way to hospital, Geoff had a quiet word with his new father-in-law and told him that Dixie was only trying to make him happy. When it turned out that her dad’s cancer is even more advanced than she thought, Geoff was there to give Dixie a shoulder to cry on.

So – is Ruth really ruthless, or will she have a change of heart about Jay? And will Yuki continue being May’s doormat, or will he finally assert himself? Only time, and the whims of the Casualty scriptwriters, can tell.

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So when Adam Trueman left his pager behind when he popped out to see Jessica’s  son’s hip-hop nativity play (so modern), Nick seized his chance to take control of the ED. Just as well, considering there was literally a coach-load of smashed-up people to piece together, as well as an amnesiac who’d walked all the way from Plymouth just to see Jordan in action.

Adam and Sean were still locking horns over Jessica – in fact, when Sean’s pager went off to summon him back to the ED to cope with the coach crash victims, he deliberately didn’t mention to Adam that he might be needed too. On arriving at the nativity play, Sean gestured towards Adam and said to an acquaintance: “The affair.” As Adam took his seat, he added to the same man, “More of an upgrade.” And he is, too.

Talking of grades, which of the F2′s is going to win the fellowship? The other staff are talking bets, and favourite so far is Yuki. He has an encyclopaedia of a brain, but his people skills are a tad lacking. Luckily he is being mentored by Dr Zoe Hanna, who is extremely good at being warm and approachable, particularly after a couple of Bacardi Breezers. She set young Yuki the challenge of asking May (for whom he hankers) out on a proper date. Before he had the chance to do this, he had to go and help out at the scene of the coach crash, and later on found himself facing the pointy end of a knife when he discovered that the crash had been caused by sabotage. The mild-mannered semi-Japanese F2 held his nerve remarkably well, and came out of it a bit of a hero. So high was he on all the adrenalin and success that he did manage to ask May out, and made it clear it wasn’t to do revision with him, it was for a proper drink. Progress indeed, as Dr Zoe Hanna looked on approvingly. Then Lenny invited himself along too. Oh well. Two steps forward and one step back is still one step forward, if you see what I mean.