The Rocket Post bir Iskoc filmi. 2002 yilinda yapilmasina ragmen, 5 yil sonra bu sene Ingiltere sinemalarinda gosterime girdi.
Filmin kendisi hos oldugu kadar, Iskocyanin sarp kaya ve yamaclarina vuran dalgali denizi, yesil cayirlari, mavi gokyuzu ve ada halkinin karakteristik sevimliligi ile butunlesince , sinema severleri doyuran bir yapim bence.
Rocket Post arrives five years late
BRIAN PENDREIGH
IT WAS supposed to be a cinema blockbuster - the true story of a German scientist trying to deliver Scottish mail by rocket.
But five years after shooting ended, and two years after the director died, The Rocket Post has only now landed a distribution deal.
The film appears to have set the record for the longest time taken for a major production to go from the last shout of "cut" to cinema release.
During the long search for a distributor, producer Mark Shorrock quit the film business to promote wind farms and director Stephen Whittaker, whose TV credits included Nicholas Nickleby and Inspector Morse, died of cancer.
The cast of the £5m film, shot largely on the Hebridean island of Taransay in 2001, includes Trainspotting star Kevin McKidd, Gary Lewis from Billy Elliot and newcomer Shauna Macdonald.
In 2002, it won a major prize at the Stony Brook Film Festival in New York State, and there were other special screenings, including one at the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway last year. The film even came out on DVD in Scandinavia, but still struggled to find a UK distributor.
Now, more than five years after The Rocket Post was made, a deal has been secured with the UK division of Lions Gate - which recently distributed George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck - and it will be released in British cinemas later this year.
It seems the film's change in fortune is largely down to the fact that audiences are getting older and may be more receptive to old-fashioned dramas.
Nick Manzi, Lions Gate UK's head of acquisitions, believes cinemagoers are now ready for the story about an eccentric German scientist's attempts to deliver mail to the islands by rocket and his fictionalised romance with a Scottish girl.
"The audience is getting older," he said. "Films that we passed on four or five years ago we may have bought now."
Manzi previously worked for Redbus, a small British company that was taken over by Lions Gate, and he first saw the film several years ago. "It's a very good film," he said. "We liked it, but at the time it wasn't right for us and, over quite a long period, we tracked the project.
"The difficulty with theatrical films is that the market place changes so quickly. Four or five years ago who would have thought that Brokeback Mountain or Constant Gardener would have done the sort of business that they have done?"
Lions Gate struck a deal with financier Guy Hands and plans to open the film in up to 20 Scottish cinemas in November, followed by further cinemas in England, if it attracts a positive response north of the Border.
Former Bond villain Ulrich Thomsen plays scientist Gerhard Zucker, who attempted to interest the British government in a scheme to deliver mail to the islands by rocket, though he had failed to impress the authorities in his native Germany.
He arrived in the Western Isles in 1934 with the intention of firing a rocket across the water between Harris and Scarp. There was even talk of a one-minute cross-channel postal service.
In the film, romance blossoms between Zucker and a local schoolteacher, played by Shauna Macdonald. It was her first big starring role, though she has since gone on to other parts, including the central role in the horror film, The Descent.
Zucker's initial tests were successful, but tensions were growing in Europe and the Nazis refused to allow him to export his solid rocket fuel. The Scarp test ended in disaster when the rocket exploded, scattering thousands of letters across the beach and sea. Zucker returned to Germany and the scheme was abandoned.