‘My Old School’: Alan Cumming & Director Jono McLeod On Tackling The ‘Great Unmade Scottish Movie’ [Sundance Interview]

TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.

“My Old School,” a documentary by Jono McLeod, opens with an enticing montage. Interviewees speak ominously about a mysterious character who’s done something strange — a man who may even be unhinged enough to have changed his identity through facial reconstruction.

The crushing weight of debt and the stress of financial struggle have led many to find creative problem-solving methods. The Sundance crime drama “Emily The Criminal” explores one such story about a character pressed to the limits by a system intent on keeping her in the loop of student debt and marginalized job opportunities.

They Didn’t Have to Kill Him.” That’s the name of Aaron Gell’s 2018 article on which Abi Damaris Corbin’s debut feature film 892 is based. The hauntingly dark film centers on the real-life story of Lance Corporal Brian Brown Easley, who on a July day in 2017 walked into a Wells Fargo bank based in the suburbs of Atlanta and held it up, taking several hostages. In a stunning performance actor John Boyega, steps into the shoes of the desperate former Marine who, having exhausted all of his resources, made a desperate choice to get the money owed to him.

debuted at Sundance this week, unravels Lee’s bizarre story with actor Alan Cumming sitting in for the man himself by lip-syncing to Lee’s narration (Lee agreed to tell his story, but didn’t want to appear on camera). Director Jono McLeod, who knew Lee as a fellow student, tells the tale via interviews with his now-50-something classmates, animated sequences and snippets of old video. Cumming, who was originally attached to star in a now-defunct feature adaptation of the story, remembers the saga as a news bombshell in Scotland.

Premiering in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at this year’s all-virtual Sundance Film Festival, Nikyatu Jusu’s unsettling “Nanny” is a supernatural thriller that weaves together strands of domestic drama and West African folklore.

“We grew up in Atlanta and in the church. Like in the height of Southern Baptist megachurches.

student at his old school is the subject of an upcoming film.Brian MacKinnon, who attended Bearsden Academy, twice, is profiled in the upcoming feature, 'My Old School'.The 58-year-old will be portrayed by Alan Cumming for his second stint at the Academy, where the then-30-year-old posed as a kid named Brandon Lee.Lee's made-up backstory says his mum died in a car crash, prompting him to be sent to live with his grandma in Scotland.MacKinnon had already studied at the school in the 1970s, achieving grades that let him study medicine at Glasgow University.He failed the exams twice and dropped out of the course but had a change of heart a decade later. It was at this point that he had the idea of starting fresh at Bearsden Academy.Surprisingly, he succeeded, and kept the ruse going for two years when he obtained five grade-A highers, a glowing reference and a place on the medicine studies course at Dundee University.But his true identity was outed in 1995, with his story splashed across national newspapers across the country.Jono McLeod, who went to school with MacKinnon, is set to direct the film.For all the latest Daily Star news, sign up for one of our free newsletters here.Featuring an interview with MacKinnon, who did not want to appear on camera, the film relies on Cumming lip-syncing the tale of Lee's days at Bearsden Academy.In a promotional video for the film, McLeod said: "My Old School is all about my old school - that's Bearsden Academy - the high school in a fairly well-to-do suburb of Glasgow, Scotland."The film combines live action interviews with my former classmates and two teachers alongside animated re-enactments."In 1993 when we were 16 years old, my classmates and I welcomed a new kid.

Every so often, the movies like to argue with themselves by dropping two versions of the same story within spitting distance of one another: “Dante’s Peak” and “Volcano,” “Deep Impact,” and “Armageddon.” The one-two punch of Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket” and Jamie Dack’s “Palm Trees and Power Lines” is, for clarity’s sake, nothing like dueling dumb-dumb disaster spectacles, but to consider Dack’s film without considering Baker’s is both impossible – everyone at Sundance is doing it– and frankly careless (but mostly impossible).

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

Kanye West was determined to be recognized and revered for his gifts. The rapper/producer/fashion designer was determined to earn his status as a musical legend even if he ran himself into the ground to see it through. Since his acclaimed debut album, College Dropout, some 18 years ago, so much has been said about the eccentric rapper from Chicago.

In the early moments of Carey Williams’ “Emergency,” you might think that you’re in a one crazy night movie you’ve seen before. You know the kind: a long night of partying and various drunken confrontations between friends, concluded with a serene moral and emotional parting where everywhere grows up a little.

In May 1948, after the controversial approval of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, war broke out between Arab and Jewish factions in the region. The conflict began due to claims over the same land.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn 1993, six years after Johnny Depp and company were deemed too old to keep up the charade on “21 Jump Street,” Brandon Lee went back to Bearsden Academy. At least he said his name was Brandon Lee.

accused her former fiancé Brian Warner — otherwise known as the controversial goth rocker Marilyn Manson — as her abuser for the first time.But as the now 34-year-old Wood claims in “Phoenix Rising,” a feature documentary whose first half premiered Sunday night at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the signs had been apparent for years — and in at least one instance, viewed by nearly 30 million fans on YouTube.In the film, set to air in its entirety on HBO in March, Wood recalls her appearance in his 2007 music video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” which shows the couple having sex, or so it appears. While the song plays over these specific clips in the video, the documentary airs the sound of Wood, then 19, shouting in distress.“We had discussed a simulated sex scene,” Wood said.

Playing in the Premieres section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Sharp Stick,” produced during lockdown, was conceived by Lena Dunham and the film’s director of photography, Ashley Connor, starting from the base elements that were already available to them — namely a set of actors and locations. But while many quarantine-made films have appeared to embrace a “will this do?” aesthetic, implicitly relying on the audience’s sympathy and compassionate understanding to fill gaps and forgive compromises in production value, Dunham has instead created a work of art that comfortably fits within and plays with the limitations imposed by the pandemic.

I always see the nannies when I take my kids to the park. They’re hard to miss, over there on the park benches with the strollers and bags of snacks, gossiping and swapping war stories and strategies and shouting out admonishments to the cherubs they’re there to supervise.

Centuries-old grandiose red brick, white-trimmed buildings fill the frame at the start of Mariama Diallo’s striking debut feature film “Master.” Ivy-clad collegiate walls are a staple in the horror genre; the grounds are confined, and there’s something inherently creepy about old buildings. But here, Diallo uses this setting not just for aesthetic frights but because it is these very venerated walls from which the terror at the center of her story finds its origin.

Centuries-old grandiose red brick, white-trimmed buildings fill the frame at the start of Mariama Diallo’s striking debut feature film “Master.” Ivy-clad collegiate walls are a staple in the horror genre; the grounds are confined, and there’s something inherently creepy about old buildings. But here, Diallo uses this setting not just for aesthetic frights but because it is these very venerated walls from which the terror at the center of her story finds its origin.

Consider these scenarios: A woman who is unable to get an abortion even though she has a life-threatening condition because of her pregnancy. Women banding together to run underground abortion clinics because the procedure is illegal in their city or state.

On July 7, 2017, former Marine Brian Brown-Easley, dressed in a grey hoodie, brandishing a bruised cheek underneath his glasses, walked into an Atlanta area Wells Fargo bank claiming to possess a bomb. Politely he allowed the majority of the bank’s customers and employees to leave, except for two.