Video uk.movies.yahoo.com video clips Closing the Ring - UK Trailer at YouTube YouTube TIFF - Red Carpet Diary YouTube more "Closing the Ring" Links Closingtheringmovie.co.uk official site & trailer IMDB: Closing the Ring The Works UK distributor The Weinstein Company USA distributor Wikipedia Content Film Mischa-b.com Mischanews.com Film Festivals Toronto Film Festival Sept 14, 2007 gala TiffReviews.com Ghent International Film Festival     Opening Film Oct. 9, 2007 BFI London Film Festival Oct 21 & 22, 2007 Production photos Rope of Silicon Outnow.ch

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(Content Film production photo) 2853: 'Christopher Plummer as Jack in Closing the Ring directed by Richard Attenborough.'

Christopher Plummer and director Richard Attenborough on the set in Belfast April 2006

From Mischa-b.com

Irish Independent April 21, 2006

Christopher Plummer and Shirley Maclaine in Canada Durham Region News, May 23, 2006

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Dundas Star News May 26, 2006

Toronto Star May 23, 2006

Toronto Star Sept. 2, 2007

Globe and Mail, June 24, 2006

Hamilton Spectator, June 16, 2006

mischa-b.com

Paris Star, June 21, 2006

Paris Star, June 14, 2006

Dundas Star News June 2, 2006

TORONTO (CP) - Veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer has arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival at the ideal time.

His two movies, "Closing the Ring" and "Emotional Arithmetic," were slotted with galas at the tail end of the 10-day event when most of the industry types are gone, allowing the actor to skirt much of the festival fanfare that he despises.

"This is not good for publicity (but) I'm going to say it anyway - the crowd that surrounds a film festival are kind of the piranha fish that follow the shark and you never see them for the rest of the year, thank God," Plummer, 77, said Friday in an interview.

"They're the entourage, the hangers-on, the people that suddenly a festival attracts, and they're a whole other group. I'm not talking about the deal makers (or fans), I'm talking about the crowd that surrounds them, and that's depressing because it can ruin places like the South of France (where the Cannes Festival is held)."

The iconic, Emmy-winning actor with prominent Canadian lineage - Prime Minister Sir John Abbott was his great-grandfather - was born in Toronto and grew up in Quebec but now lives in Connecticut.

Plummer will close out the festival Saturday night when he walks the red carpet for "Emotional Arithmetic" in which he plays the husband of Melanie (Susan Sarandon), an internment camp survivor from the Second World War.

The film, which takes place in 1985, centres on Melanie's reunion with two of her fellow transit camp survivors - played by Gabriel Byrne and Max Von Sydow - in the picturesque fall landscape of Quebec's Eastern Townships. French-Canadian actor Roy Dupuis plays the son of Melanie and David (Plummer).

"There was a certain sophistication in it that doesn't exist in most, rather brutal, Holocaust movies," Plummer said in a hotel room with a sharp articulation refined through decades of meaty theatre roles that have earned him several Tony Awards.

"Emotional Arithmetic" is based on the novel by the late Canadian writer Matt Cohen and was directed by Montreal screenwriter Paolo Barzman, whose father wrote the 1964 film "The Fall of the Roman Empire" in which Plummer starred.

Jefferson Lewis, also of Quebec, is credited as the screenplay writer for "Emotional Arithmetic," but Barzman says he's disputing that.

"The dispute is just that I worked for two years on the script, in collaboration with that person, and then on my own twice for big chunks of time and he claims he did it alone," Barzman said in a phone interview Friday.

In January, the Writers Guild of Canada ruled that Lewis was to receive sole credit for the screenplay. Barzman then took Lewis to the Quebec Superior Court, which dismissed the case for jurisdictional reasons.

Whoever wrote the script did a fine job, giving Plummer's character some memorable one-liners that add a bit of humour to the dark storyline about how memories can linger and torture a soul.

"He did have an . . . acid sort of humour and I liked that about David," said Plummer, who has starred in countless films and TV shows and will forever be remembered for his role at Capt. Georg von Trapp in the "The Sound of Music."

Plummer planned to attend the gala screening with his cast members at Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday, but wasn't looking forward to it.

"Ghastly experience," a surprisingly self-conscious Plummer said about being amongst a discerning audience that may not like his performance.

"I hate it. I hate it. I really hate it because there's nothing you can do about it. I'm a stage actor and although I've done hundreds of movies, I'm still a stage actor and I know how to control an audience ... if I didn't like something, I can change it in a second in front of them. And sitting there with (the film audience) ... there's nothing I can do about it."

June 24, 2006

HAMILTON, ONT. -- It is 28 C in early June, and the beating sun creates the illusion of steam rising from the tarmac at Hamilton International Airport.

To escape the sweltering temperature, about 150 film extras in Lord Richard Attenborough's new movie, Closing the Ring, have assembled in a nearby hangar, men with buzz cuts in starched Air Cadet uniforms, women in their Sunday best and white gloves, and children in knickers or pinafores, carrying little flags of the red, white and blue.

Army trucks whiz by, heading to a vintage B-17G bomber, parked just beyond a banner that reads: U.S. Army Air Force, Branagan, MI. The date is May 17, 1941, and Pearl Harbor has yet to bring America into the Second World War.

Attenborough -- a spritely gnome of a man in jeans, a blue shirt and white brimmed hat -- is conferring with his long-time assistant directors, trying to size up the best angle for a shot that includes the excited arrival of four teenaged friends.

Mischa Barton, recently departed teen idol from Fox's The O.C., plays the wide-eyed, freckled ingenue Ethel Ann, the love interest of three small-town lads, (David Alpay, Stephen Amell and Gregory Smith, all Toronto-born), all of whom can't wait to get into the thick of war.

The £11.5-million ($23.5-million) film is an Irish/English/Canadian co-production that takes advantage of Hamilton's relatively low-traffic airfield. It's described by Toronto co-producer Martin Katz (Hotel Rwanda) as a multigenerational love story in which "geography, physical distance, race, religion and vanity" interfere. In the hands of the Academy Award-winning Attenborough, who turns 83 in August, is a cast that includes Shirley MacLaine (playing Ethel Ann later in life), Pete Postlethwaite, Brenda Fricker, Christopher Plummer and Neve Campbell.

Attenborough, a charming man who likes to say he arrived a screaming infant in his mother's arms only 17 years after cinema was born (100 years ago), is in his element. He is quietly manoeuvring the camera, whispering encouragement to his actors and calls everyone "darling." It's a trick he once claimed had "damn all to do with passionately adoring them. I know I'm safe calling them that."

But what soon becomes even more compelling to watch than the action on the landing strip is the juxtaposition of the veteran -- an actor and director of films such as Gandhi, Chaplin, Cry Freedom and Shadowlands -- and the ingenue -- a product of the new era of super-sized, overnight celebrity.

The two are polar opposites in age, personal style and philosophy.

Attenborough, a portly picture of quiet measured grace, puts on no airs on set. Barton, now 20, clearly works hard and is not unkind, but she is also not remotely approachable. She is precious, thin and rarely makes eye contact (unless she's in character).

At lunch hour, Attenborough stays on the tarmac to work out logistics, before finally walking slowly to a small tent where his wife of 62 years, Sheila Sim (he calls her "Poppy"), is waiting for him.

Barton, wearing a floral dress, floppy hat and flat canvas shoes, dashes off to her trailer and emerges in the Hollywood-starlet uniform of Ugg slippers and a nude-coloured slip. One small breast keeps popping out of her dress as she saunters along the dirt road carrying Ziggy, her Pomeranian/Shih Tzu whose leg is in a bright pink cast, due to a recent tumble off Barton's hotel-room bed.

All eyes follow her, especially a gaggle of teens, who have been allowed to ogle the star from a distance. The willowy Barton, whom the paparazzi have hounded with the same glee as Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, grabs a plate of greens and returns to her trailer.

Attenborough and Poppy -- who in their native Britain are close friends of the Royal Family -- pull up a chair inside the makeshift mess and eat with the masses.

Some contrasts are sharply etched: Attenborough has had decades of success and staggering personal loss. His elder daughter, Jane Holland, and his granddaughter, Lucy, perished in the 2004 tsunami.

Barton, like many stars thrust into the media circus at so young and impressionable an age, has yet to be humbled by experience.

She grants a five-minute interview. As we head off to her trailer, the leggy, 5-foot-9 beauty -- hair swept back forties-style by pins at her temples -- walks a good 10 paces ahead. Inside, Barton brightens immediately on seeing Ziggy, curled up on a Fred Segal fluffy pink bathrobe lining the dog crate. "She likes to sleep on it because I wear it," coos the actress, whose stockbroker father moved the family from Britain to New York when she was 5. "Oh Ziglet, this is so hard for you."

Her voice is deep, with no trace of the Lancashire accent of her family's provenance.

She is uncomfortable in interviews and maintains her guard. But about Attenborough, Barton is effusive: "He's incredible. He really is God's gift to actors. . . . He likes a quiet set. His style is to take care of the bigger picture first and then leave room to just work one-on-one with the actors."

Barton, whose pampered character on The O.C., Marissa Cooper, was killed in a car crash in this season's finale, has a plan to concentrate on feature film and serious roles. "It was difficult to leave the show, but it was also clearly time to move on. It felt that it came together all at the right time," she says.

Her previous film roles include the independent film, Lawn Dogs, and small roles in Notting Hill and The Sixth Sense

For Closing the Ring, Attenborough had been searching to find an actress who could convey guileless innocence on the big screen and he saw the quality in Barton.

The starlet has acted since she was 8. "I wouldn't say I've grown up on sets," she notes. "I've definitely had a normal life. . . ."

A publicist taps on the door just as Barton begins to discuss the future. "I'm just going to be taking a couple of weeks off," she says, wrapping up. "Then I'll be going to London for a month to study at RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where Attenborough is now president]. I'll take it as it comes. I'm really pacing myself."

As we head back to the set, Barton leans out of a red van and offers me a lift back to the tarmac. I decline. The actress has sometimes been reported to be painfully shy. Whatever the reason, the heat is easier to take than the mutual awkwardness.

Closing the Ring is based on a true story of 10 men in a B-17G bomber who lost their bearings in June, 1944, and crashed in fog on Cave Hill. The story unfolds after a Belfast man finds a wedding ring in the wreckage and eventually travels to the U.S. to give the ring to the dead man's sweetheart (MacLaine).

"There is a beautiful line in our movie, where one of the characters says, 'Surely it's impossible to say you'll love one person forever?' " says producer Martin Katz. "The answer to which is: 'It may be impossible to know whether you'll love one person forever, but it's absolutely essential to say so.' The film is about the absolute centrality of love in our lives."

After shooting for 12 hours that day, this is precisely where the conversation with Attenborough -- who sits down on a stool in the middle of the airfield -- finally takes off.

But first his wife, dressed in a striped cotton shirt, blue trousers and white sneakers, comes over to ask if he'd like some celery with dip.

"No darling, I'm fine. But thank you," says Attenborough, who married Sim in 1945 and starred with her onstage in London in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap in 1952.

Sim, he says, "was a movie star before I had any sort of name. We started doing plays together . . . and I remember her very clearly saying to me one day, when we were finishing in Mousetrap, 'Darling, I don't ever again want to have to go to the theatre at the time our children are being put to bed.' She told me, 'I don't believe if we are to have a successful marriage that we can both go on working. If we want our marriage to last, the marriage and the family come first.' The family working is to her credit, not mine.

"So now we have three children, or had three children." He glances across the way to see if Poppy has reached their trailer. "We lost our little daughter and granddaughter, which is the most horrible thing that's happened in our lives.

"But we bear it together. We have our periods of pain and depression, and puzzlement, and bewilderment. Sheila sometimes says, 'Darling, where is Jane?' . . . We think if we hadn't had a ridiculously successful marriage, we wouldn't have been able to endure. But we have."

Attenborough, who has acted in 72 films and directed a dozen more, goes on to explain what he loves so much about the business.

"I left school when I was 16, and I haven't great intellect. But I have instinct. And I believe that if you don't make the cry for compassion, or the plea for tolerance, within the entertainment context, then you deny the genius of the invention. This will sound totally pompous, but I feel privileged and excited, and I can't wait to come back every morning [to the set]. I can't wait to get up and think about what I want to do next. It is an ensemble operation. We work together as a group. Admittedly, I'm the conductor of the orchestra, but it is an orchestra."

Over the years, Attenborough has cast Denzel Washington, Robert Downey Jr. and Daniel Day Lewis in early, breakout roles. He casts by "instinct," he says. "I've only tested two people in my life. One was Ben Kingsley for Gandhi and the other was Robert Downey for Chaplin."

True to his history of championing actors, Attenborough calls the performances in Closing the Ring "impeccable. If the picture succeeds, it will be on the screenplay, on the genius of the cameraman and on the performances."

As the day comes to a close, the smitten airmen who flew the B-17 bomber up from a museum in the U.S. ask Attenborough's protégé, Barton, if she'd pose for a picture with them. She complies, standing between six giant men. Barton smiles sweetly, and their faces light up. Suddenly, you see what Attenborough sees -- her potential.

The blazing sun sets on the tarmac, and Attenborough begins to tire. He grabs my two hands, gives them a grandfatherly squeeze, adjusts his hat and walks slowly to where Poppy is, back under the tent, waiting for him.

Pictured above is Richard Attenborough’s (Director) closed set. The once open room was transformed into a 1941 dance hall in Belfast, Ireland. Two large scenes were filmed there last Wednesday, one outside and one inside. Photo by Cate Breaugh

June 21, 2006

Paris residents got a glimpse of the movie-making world again last week as Closing the Ring filmed two scenes at the old Needleworks building on Burwell Street.

The 12-hours of filming was for two large scenes (one inside and one outside), said Brad Alexander, from the location department.

“The building is used as a Belfast dance hall. The Americans want to fraternize with the Irish girls and the Irish men don’t like the Americans on their turf. There is a resolution of conflict between two of the major characters that are fighting over Ethel (played by Shirley MacLaine and Mischa Barton),” explained Alexander of the scenes shot in Paris.

As for the town, he had nothing but good reviews. “We love being in Paris.”

David Flaherty, the location manager, agreed. “Paris has been really good to us and we’d love to be good in return.”

Todd Runnquist, who owns the building with his father John, said the production company approached them six weeks ago about filming.

“We’ve had people through before (for movies) but it’s hard because we’re trying to stay in business while it’s (the movie) going on,” he said of his auction business, which is at the old building roughly once every month.

Runnquist did admit that it has been interesting watching the transformation of his building. On the exterior a wall was built to resemble an alleyway and new brick and doors were added. Inside, a once open room, was transformed into a dance hall. A wall was built and a stage was added, along with many props to indicate the year, 1941.

“They have been very professional and very friendly,” he commented on the crew.

Closing the Ring is an epic love story that spans two continents and half a century and tells the story of an American woman who honors a wartime promise of love with a lifetime of heartache until the discovery of a gold ring reawakens her. The movie is directed by Richard Attenborough from a screenplay by Peter Woodward.

Other actors/actress in the film include Christopher Plumber, Pete Postlethwaite, Neve Campbell, Brenda Fricker, Gregory Smith, David Alpay, Ian McElhinney and newcomers Stephen Amell, Martin McCann, and Allan Haw.

The movie is expected to be released by Christmastime 2006.

June 20, 2006

[Photo: Lord Richard Attenborough with granddaughter Lucy, then aged five, in 1994. Lucy died in the tsunami in Southeast Asia in late 2004. Photograph by : John Stillwell, The Associated Press]

TORONTO - On a Toronto sound stage recently, 82-year-old Lord Richard Attenborough was directing a scene from his new film Closing The Ring. It is the 12th movie he has directed in a cinematic career that includes acting and producing and stretches back 64 years. He won a Best Director Oscar for Gandhi in 1982.

"The very word 'retire' makes me sick in the stomach," Attenborough said during a break in the filming. "I just couldn't do that. What I would like to do, I would like to keep going until I got to the end of a particular scene or a day's work, and say, 'Cut,' and drop dead."

Closing The Ring is a love story that begins in the Second World War. In the scene being filmed, a beautiful bride named Ethel Ann -- played by The O.C.'s Mischa Barton -- discovers that her young husband, Teddy, has died in the crash of his B-17 bomber. Ethel Ann reacts by literally walling up her memories of Teddy and refusing to think about him, although years later, the older Ethel Ann, now played by Shirley MacLaine, has that long-ago love reawakened.

After the scene was shot, Attenborough and his wife, British actress Sheila Sim, who flew from England to join her husband, sat down to watch it on video on a small TV screen behind the set.

"It's interesting that (screenwriter Peter Woodward) has written this scene with her not acknowledging that he is dead," Lady Attenborough said later. "Because that's what I've done. That's exactly what I've done."

She was referring to a family tragedy that was part of the worldwide disaster of Boxing Day 2004. Jane, one of the three Attenborough children, was vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, with her husband, Michael Holland, and their children, Sam, Lucy, and Alice, along with Holland's mother, also named Jane.

It was the day the violent tsunami hit Southeast Asia. The Attenboroughs lost their daughter, her mother-in-law, and their 14-year-old granddaughter, Lucy. Alice, then 17, was seriously injured, although she has recovered.

The Attenboroughs are still trying to make sense of what happened, and although Lord Attenborough says the themes of love and loss in Closing The Ring -- themes that mirror his own life -- were not the reason he took on the film, the parallels are there and the sense of tragedy is still very much near the surface.

"Sheila looks very much like Jane, or Jane looked very much like her mom," he said. "And the granddaughter looked very much like Jane. And so I and the rest of the children, the other grandchildren, now find Jane's loss personified in Sheila, in half measures. And the relationship now between the grandchildren and Sheila, which was wonderful anyway, is now that much more. So we have found that there are grounds for recalling Jane without total, total horror."

Lord Attenborough, who was dressed casually in jeans and a checked shirt, has been married to Sheila since 1945 -- "a disgusting number of years," he put it. They met as students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and acted together in the original cast of Agatha Christie's famously long-running play The Mousetrap when it opened in 1952. His pet name for her is Poppy.

He continued, "What we can't do, and Poppy said it the other day, 'Darling, where is Jane?' And it's no good saying, 'Oh, she's in heaven.' What is the logic? Where is she?"

He turned to his wife and said, "Beloved, we were just talking about your saying relatively recently, 'Where is Jane? Where is she?' And the answer has to be, 'She's still here.' The things that she did, the children, relationships. So of course she has gone. But she has not disappeared."

There was a catch in his voice, and he seemed to be on the verge of tears.

I apologized for upsetting him, but he said, "Not at all."

"We have bad times -- I'm talking about it now -- we have bad times, and they are very difficult, aren't they, darling? But in the main, we've found ways of dealing with it. We've a very united family. We had seven grandchildren. We now have six. We had three children. We have two. But their presence and impact is exactly the same for the other members of the family as it ever was. She's just gone away."

I asked him if he was ever so disheartened that he considered stopping working. Lord Attenborough, who fought through his emotions to talk about his daughter -- "we've never talked about this before," he explained -- seemed more shocked by that notion than by anything.

"Stop working?" he asked. "On the contrary. I wanted to work."

He's been at it for a long time, since his film debut in 1942, at age 19, in the wartime drama In Which We Serve, playing a deserting soldier. It was the kind of role for which he became known in Britain.

For years, the 5-foot-7 actor was defined by his performance as the villain Pinkie in the 1947 film Brighton Rock, based on the Graham Greene book.

Asked to look back on his acting career, he mentioned Seance On A Wet Afternoon, the 1964 drama in which he played the subservient husband of Kim Stanley, and 10 Rillington Place, the 1971 thriller that saw him as the real-life murderer John Christie.

To American audiences, he is best remembered as the leader of the British troops in The Great Escape, a paleontologist in Jurassic Park, and Kriss Kringle in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street.

He became a director in 1969 with Oh! What A Lovely War, a musical drama about the First World War.

Of all his films, he says he's proudest of Shadowlands, the drama based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis, played by Anthony Hopkins, and Joy Gresham, but there is a special place for Gandhi, because it took him 20 years to make and the very idea of it was derided, and yet it went on to win eight Oscar nominations and was his greatest success.

His personal life is likewise remarkable. His son, Michael -- who was once married to actress Jane Seymour -- is artistic director of the Almeida Theatre and vice-chairman of RADA, the school where his parents met.

The Attenboroughs' daughter, Charlotte, is an actress. Lord Attenborough has two brothers, including well-known naturalist David Attenborough.

Among his interests are soccer -- he is life vice-president of the Chelsea Football Club -- and a project to develop a film industry in the south of Wales. He was knighted in 1976 and in 1993 was made a life peer as Baron Attenborough of Richmond upon Thames, a borough near London where he lives.

Attenborough, who turns 83 in August, spoke while sitting on one of several directors' chair that dotted the Toronto sound stage. For the interview, he had given up part of his precious daily nap, a relaxation that helps him cope with the 15-hour days of moviemaking that for Closing The Ring went on for 12 weeks in Belfast and then Toronto. "I'm very old, as you know," he confided. "And what I do is I sleep unfailingly for at least half an hour every lunchtime. And fortunately I have that gift. Sheila says, 'Oh, he has terrible trouble falling asleep. He has to count sheep. He has to go, 'One ...' " And he pretended to fall asleep.

Closing the Ring, which is due to be released next year, is his first directing project since the critical and commercial failure of the 1999 film Grey Owl, which he admits was a bitter disappointment. He said the movie -- based on the true story of an Englishman who posed as a native Indian in Canada -- was better than most critics gave it credit for. Part of the reason for its failure, he believes, was the casting of Pierce Brosnan, "who was superb in the film" but was handicapped by his image as James Bond.

"That's the pain of cinema," he said, and turned to his wife for help in remembering the name of another example of unfair typecasting, that of Sandra Bullock, who co-starred in his Ernest Hemingway biopic In Love and War.

"Sandra Bullock is a remarkably clever and fascinating actress, but she has a characterization, a credo, particularly in America in the eyes of the public, that she's a next-door girl and jokes and fooling around and so on, and I cast her as an adult extraordinary woman who had this experience with Hemingway during the First World War, and the public wouldn't accept it. So both with Pierce and Sandra, an adventurous decision in casting resulted in a lack of credibility in the subject matter, which distressed me very much."

It is particularly upsetting because he prides himself on his casting: using Hopkins in five films, finding Robert Downey Jr. for Chaplin and Ben Kingsley for Gandhi, and putting Denzel Washington into his first starring role in Cry Freedom in 1987. In Closing The Ring, he cast Shirley MacLaine, with whom he co-starred in "a movie we both agreed should be nameless" (it was The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom in 1968), as well as a large Canadian cast that includes Christopher Plummer and Neve Campbell.

The new movie, he said, attracted him because of its ingenious screenplay, which he called the best first script he's ever read. "The script is everything. You can make a reasonable picture with a good script, but with a bad script, no matter how skilful you are, you have no chance."

He also had empathy for the subject matter: Attenborough himself flew in the Royal Air Force during the war -- he was an air gunner cameraman -- and he has long been interested in stories of love, loyalty and partnerships. "The fundamental love story of relationships and loss, the ending of a life. It would be easy for me to say that I was influenced by the tsunami, but it's not so. The tsunami has merely magnified my understanding of the meaning of loss."

Still, he keeps working. He said he would return in Jurassic Park if a long-rumoured fourth episode is made. When I asked what he would like to direct next, his wife said, "I think you might be sorry you asked that question, because you're going to get an answer."

It comes quickly. It's another biography, a form for which he is best known, this time about one of the Founding Fathers of America.

"For more years than I can count, I've wanted to make a film about Tom Paine," said Lord Attenborough. "Before I die what I really would love ... I'd give anything. Probably I'll need a huge sum of money because it involves the French Revolution, the American Revolution in terms of severance from the U.K., it has Jefferson and Washington, it has Robespierre, it embodies that battle across America. It's an enormous project. This man is the most influential: The Rights of Man, etc. etc. etc., The Age of Reason, The Crisis, great, great books of the 18th century, and with Gandhi is for me one of the great heroes of our lives. I would give anything to make that movie. Anything." He looked heavenward. "I want Him to give me strength to make that movie."

He estimated it would require a budget of $60 million or $70 million, and said that because it is not science-fiction or pornography or animation, but rather a movie about "real people," it may be impossible. I reminded him that people were saying the same thing about Gandhi, but it was made.

"It was," he said. "After 20 years. But I haven't got 20 years left. I've got 10. I'll go on to 95."

At this point, the set and the actors were ready for the next scene to be shot, and Lord Attenborough was needed. In preparation, Lady Attenborough asked an assistant to get her husband a cup of Earl Grey tea, cautioning him not to leave the bag in too long. She told Lord Attenborough the tea was on its way.

"I could manage to get through the afternoon if you promise me an Earl Grey tea," he said. "Very weak. It cannot be too weak." Then he got up and went over to his wife of 61 years and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips. And then he walked off toward the movie set, ready to get back to work.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Film director Richard Attenborough looks at the tail gun section of the Lancaster bomber at Hamilton Airport on Thursday. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

June 17, 2006

HAMILTON — Richard Attenborough said it was an emotional reunion when he first laid eyes on the Lancaster bomber at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

The Oscar-winning British film director flew missions over Europe in a Lancaster in the Second World War as a cameraman for the Royal Air Force.

Now, more than 60 years later, Attenborough was including the museum’s Lancaster in a scene in his latest movie, Closing the Ring.

Shooting of the Second World War film wrapped Thursday at Hamilton International Airport with the Lanc and some of the museum’s other prized possessions in background scenes.

"Yes, it was emotional seeing one again," said Attenborough, 82, standing in the shadow of the Lancaster during a break.

"It’s bigger than I remembered. I thought that it would seem smaller now but when you actually stand by it, it is huge."

Attenborough’s memories of other aspects of his military service are still clear, but not all that pleasant.

"I have memories of suffering from severe air sickness," he said with a groan.

"It was not one of my favourite times, between breathing through the air mask and being sick."

He also has to wear two hearing aids today because of damage suffered during wartime training as a gunner, required for him to earn his place on the plane as a cameraman.

Attenborough will have more pleasant memories from a ceremony Thursday at the airport, where the warplane museum is located. He was presented with a life membership to the museum for the work he was doing to give exposure to the facility and the aircraft.

"Oh, that’s wonderful. I shall treasure this," said Attenborough, as museum chairman Bill Koyle gave him a plaque and a ball cap featuring a picture of the Lancaster.

Attenborough gently rubbed the image on the cap as he posed for pictures with the Lancaster and smiled warmly and joked with the crowd that gathered.

Dressed in jeans, a blue denim shirt and a green vest, the bearded screen veteran said his flights on a Lanc involved filming target sites, alerting the attack planes to the targets and then returning to film the damage.

"We were right in the middle. It was foolhardy to the point of lunacy," he said of the missions.

Attenborough laughed when he was asked if his wartime cameraman experiences explained why he first went into acting and not directing when he launched his long and distinguished entertainment career.

These days Attenborough may be best known as John Hammond, founder of Jurassic Park in the two Steven Spielberg movies, but another generation will remember him as Squadron Leader Bartlett in the 1963 classic The Great Escape.

Behind the camera, he won the best director Oscar for Gandhi in 1982 and also helmed Chaplin, A Chorus Line and A Bridge Too Far.

Closing the Ring begins in 1943 with the crash of an American B-17 bomber near Belfast and a dying gunner giving a ring to a local to return to his girlfriend (Mischa Barton) in the United States. The story moves ahead to 1993 and unfolds around the ring being finally delivered to the girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). It also stars Christopher Plummer and Neve Campbell.

[Photo: Film director Richard Attenborough gets emotional as he stands by a Lancaster bomber at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Gary Yokoyama, the Hamilton Spectator]

Richard Attenborough said it was an emotional reunion when he first laid eyes on the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum's Lancaster bomber.

The Oscar-winning British film director flew missions over Europe in a Lanc in the Second World War as a cameraman for the Royal Air Force.

Now, about 60 years later, Attenborough was including the warplane museum's Lancaster in a scene in his latest movie, Closing The Ring.

Shooting of the Second World War film wrapped yesterday at John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport with the Lanc and some of the museum's other prized possessions in background scenes.

"Yes, it was emotional seeing one again," said Attenborough, 82, a knight and peer of the realm, standing in the shadow of the Lancaster during a break.

"It's bigger than I remembered. I thought that it would seem smaller now but when you actually stand by it, it is huge."

Attenborough's memories of other aspects of his military service are still clear, but not all that pleasant.

"I have memories of suffering from severe air sickness," he said with a groan.

"It was not one of my favourite times, between breathing through the air mask and being sick."

He also has to wear two hearing aids today because of damage suffered during wartime training as a gunner, required for him to earn his place on the plane as a cameraman.

Attenborough will have more pleasant memories from yesterday at the airport, where he was presented with a life membership to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum for the work he was doing to give exposure to the facility and the aircraft.

"Oh, that's wonderful. I shall treasure this," said Attenborough, as museum chairman Bill Koyle gave him a plaque and a ball cap featuring a metal picture of the Lancaster.

Attenborough gently rubbed the image on the cap as he posed for pictures with the Lancaster and smiled warmly and joked with the crowd that gathered.

Dressed in jeans, a blue denim shirt and a green vest, the bearded screen veteran said his flights on a Lanc involved filming target sites, alerting the attack planes to the targets and then returning to film the damage.

"We were right in the middle. It was foolhardy to the point of lunacy," he said of the missions.

Attenborough laughed when he was asked if his wartime cameraman experiences explained why he first went into acting and not directing when he launched his long and distinguished entertainment career. That career began at age 12, took him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and into film at age 19 in the movie In Which We Serve in 1942.

These days Attenborough may be best known as John Hammond, founder of Jurassic Park in the two Steven Spielberg movies, but another generation will remember him as Squadron Leader Bartlett in the 1963 classic The Great Escape.

Behind the camera, the Cambridge native won best director Oscar for Gandhi in 1982 and also helmed Chaplin, A Chorus Line and A Bridge Too Far.

Closing The Ring begins in 1943 with the crash of an American B-17 bomber near Belfast and a dying gunner giving a ring to a local to return to his girlfriend (Mischa Barton) in the United States. The story moves ahead to 1993 and unfolds around the ring being finally delivered to the girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). It also stars Christopher Plummer, and Neve Campbell, who filmed scenes at the airport and the DeLuxe Restaurant in Dundas.

Attenborough said filming went smoothly and he praised the Canadian crews and cast. "The Canadian co-operation was fantastic," he said. He must have equally impressed those working on the shoot because he was affectionately referred to as Lord A.

dfoley@thespec.com
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Pictured above is the old Needleworks building, which will serve as a dance hall from 1941 in Belfast Ireland. Bikes, presumably from 1941, are already lined up for today’s shooting of Closing the Ring. To the right is a newly constructed wall, specifically built to fit the characteristics of the script.

June 14, 2006

An old Paris landmark will be transformed into a dance hall in Belfast Ireland in 1941.

Beginning today, for one day, CTR Canada Ltd., is shooting Closing the Ring in Paris, a film directed by Richard Attenborough.

The old Needleworks building (also the old town hall), located on 13 Burwell St., will be the site of the movie shoot, which is expected to wrap up by midnight or 1 a.m., said location manager, Brad Alexander.

The building was scouted because of its old architect, said Alexander. “It matched the architect from Belfast, Ireland and it looks like a building from 1941. It fit specific to the script.”

The characteristics in the script call for a building with no foyer, where the doors open up to an alley way, which is why residents passing by may notice a newly constructed wall.

Closing the Ring is an epic love story that spans two continents and half a century and tells the story of an American woman who honors a wartime promise of love with a lifetime of heartache until the discovery of a gold ring reawakens her.

In 1941, in Branagan, Michigan, Ethel Ann Roberts captures the hearts of three friends, Teddy Gordon, Jack Etty and Chuck Harris, all young airmen. But Ethel Ann only has eyes for Teddy. Their romance is full of passion, and dreams for the future, until the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and Branagan’s boys are called to war. After a secret wedding, Teddy leaves with Ethel’s ring, her promise of eternal love - and a pact with Chuck that he will take care of Ethel if Teddy doesn’t make it back.

Two years later, Teddy’s B-17 Bomber crashes into Belfast’s Black Mountain. Ethel buries her pain, marries Chuck and lives with her heartache. When Chuck dies in 1991, a rift grows between Ethel and her daughter, Marie, who knew nothing of her mother’s past. Only Jack, whose love for Ethel has never waned, knows the secret she carries in her heart. And when a young Irish boy in Belfast unearths a gold ring inscribed with Ethel and Teddy’s names, the discovery finally brings Ethel’s past crashing down around her. Marie discovers the truth about her mother’s past, and Jack makes one last attempt to heal the pain of a lifetime. Now Ethel must travel to Ireland - either to end her life, or to begin it again.

Closing the Ring stars Oscar-winner Shirley MacLaine (In Her Shoes, Terms of Endearment), Christopher Plummer (A Beautiful Mind, The Insider), Mischa Barton (television’s The O.C.), Oscar-nominee Pete Postlethwaite (The Constant Gardener, In the Name of the Father), Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, The Field), and is directed by Oscar-winner Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), from a screenplay by Peter Woodward.

The film features a supporting cast that includes Neve Campbell (The Company, Scream), Gregory Smith (television’s Everwood), David Alpay (Ararat), Ian McElhinney (The Boxer, Hamlet), and newcomers Stephen Amell, Martin McCann, and Allan Hawco.

Closing the Ring is produced by Richard Attenborough and Jo Gilbert (Brylcreem Boys) with co-producer Martin Katz (Hotel Rwanda). The film is a production of Closing the Ring Productions and Prospero Pictures with Scion Films, a presentation of the UK Film Council and the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission in association with ContentFilm International and Alliance Atlantis.

The film’s behind-the-scenes team includes long-time Attenborough collaborators cinematographer Roger Pratt and editor Lesley Walker, whose previous outings with Attenborough include Shadowlands and Cry Freedom. The production designer is Tom McCullagh (Mickybo & Me) and the costume designer is Hazel Webb-Crozier (Mickybo & Me).

The film was originally set to shoot in Paris yesterday, but was pushed back to today as the crew was shooting in Ashburn, Ont., yesterday. The OPP will be on hand to assist the crew during shooting and in a notification to the county and area homes, the crew said there “will be little disruption as possible.”

Residents hoping to get a close glance at the movie in the making, like Away from Her, shot in Paris a few months ago, will only get a view from afar. The director has ordered a closed set. “Crew members can’t even bring their family members to the set. That is the way Lord Attenborough likes it,” said Alexander.

The movie is expected to be released by Christmas 2006.

And in a movie-star galaxy not so far away ...

The stars were close to the stars last Sunday. That's when an out-on-a-limb Shirley MacLaine, the don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful Mischa Barton and a very merry Von Trapp Christopher Plummer joined many others for a lovely dinner, indeed, at Toula. That resto high, high up in the Westin Harbour Castle.

Front-and-centre too: Lord Richard Attenborough, who's here to helm a movie called Closing the Ring. With him was his special Lady, Sheila Attenborough. (Dontcha just love it when you get a Lady named Sheila?)

The cast of thousands -- minus a few thousands -- dined on a meal meant for Roman nobility. We're talking steamed white asparagus in truffle sauce, handmade gnocchi in classic pesto with asiago shavings, beef filet with green peppercorn pearls, wild mushrooms and red snapper perfumed in lemon and oil. Dessert, of course, followed, and it was composed of wild berries in Grand Marnier with vanilla-bean gelato.

There was wine, there was grappa, and there was conversation that flowed like the Trevi Fountain. A good opportunity, definitely, for Mischa -- who's playing the young Shirley MacLaine -- to get to know the grande dame just a little better.

Barton, as some of you may have heard, pretend-perished just last week in primetime when her long-suffering character was killed off on The O.C. Having literally died and gone to Toronto, we hear she arrived here on the set of Closing the Ring having watched an entire slew of old Shirley MacLaine movies. (Memo to Mischa: don't miss The Apartment! They really don't get much better than that!)
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GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Shelley Page, CanWest; CRAIG KIELBURGER,...;
Colour Photo: Warner Bros.; ... SHIRLEY MACLAINE...;
Colour Photo: Mario Anzuoni, Reuters; ... AND MISCHA BARTON: Guess which one wasn't eating filet atop the Westin.

David Stell/ Metroland Durham Region Media Group PORT PERRY -- Christopher Plummer and Shirley MacLaine go through a scene during the production of 'Closing of the Ring' Friday afternoon at the home of Larry and Linda Emmerson of Port Perry. The movie, directed by Richard Attenborough, was expected to move production the next day to another Port Perry location. Also starring in the movie and on hand Friday was Neve Campbell.

PORT PERRY -- A small but captivated crowd of onlookers kept vigil outside of the Emmerson home on Rosa Street Friday, enjoying glimpses of Hollywood at work.

With heavyweight stars such as Neve Campbell, Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Richard Attenborough, as director, on hand, they got what they wanted as the actors performed for the camera, mostly filming scenes in the driveway of the older style home. And many in attendance, kept back from the set at the request of the film crew on the other side of the street, have keepsakes of the experience, shooting pictures of the actors as they came and went from the set.

Deborah Tiffin, film liaison for the Township of Scugog, said the crew of 'Closing The Ring' was at the home most of the day, until dusk. There throughout the day to ensure the crew had what it needed from the Township while it worked, she summed up the event as a fairly regular day for filming.

"They were very pleased with their day," she explained. "There were small crowds, nothing obtrusive. And the Emmersons were great hosts."

Closing the Ring is expected to be released sometime in 2007. It tells the story of a dying gunner in 1943 who gives a ring to a local to return to his girlfriend in the United States before being involved in a B-17 plane crash. Fifty years later, a man finds the ring and tracks down the girlfriend and the history of the ring. The film is set in both Belfast, Ireland and North Carolina.

Larry Emmerson explained he was contacted by the production company of the film which spotted his home and determined it was just right for their needs in the film.

The crew is now working on filming construction of a duplicate version of the Emmerson's home for more shots over the next couple of weeks at a private location outside of town.

Cannes, May 16th, 2006 – After five weeks of filming on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland, production on Richard Attenborough’s Closing the Ring has shifted to Toronto, Canada, where filming will continue through June 13. “We enjoyed a very successful shoot in Belfast,” says Attenborough. “The local actors and crews were exceptionally talented and hard-working, and the people of Belfast welcomed us with open hearts. It’s always an extraordinary opportunity for a filmmaker to be able to film in locations rich with history and culture and Belfast did not disappoint. We were sorry to say goodbye, but look forward to continuing our adventure in Toronto.”

Closing the Ring is an epic love story that spans two continents and half a century and tells the story of an American woman who honors a wartime promise of love with a lifetime of heartache until the discovery of a gold ring reawakens her.

In 1941, in Branagan, Michigan, Ethel Ann Roberts captures the hearts of three friends, Teddy Gordon, Jack Etty and Chuck Harris, all young airmen. But Ethel Ann only has eyes for Teddy. Their romance is full of passion, and dreams for the future, until the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and Branagan’s boys are called to war. After a secret wedding, Teddy leaves with Ethel’s ring, her promise of eternal love - and a pact with Chuck that he will take care of Ethel if Teddy doesn’t make it back.

Two years later, Teddy’s B-17 Bomber crashes into Belfast’s Black Mountain. Ethel buries her pain, marries Chuck and lives with her heartache. When Chuck dies in 1991, a rift grows between Ethel and her daughter, Marie, who knew nothing of her mother’s past. Only Jack, whose love for Ethel has never waned, knows the secret she carries in her heart. And when a young Northern Irish boy in Belfast unearths a gold ring inscribed with Ethel and Teddy’s names, the discovery finally brings Ethel’s past crashing down around her. Marie discovers the truth about her mother’s past, and Jack makes one last attempt to heal the pain of a lifetime. Now Ethel must travel to Northern Ireland - either to end her life, or to begin it again. Closing the Ring stars Oscar®-winner Shirley MacLaine (In Her Shoes, Terms of Endearment), Christopher Plummer (A Beautiful Mind, The Insider), Mischa Barton (television’s The O.C.), Oscar®-nominee Pete Postlethwaite (The Constant Gardener, In the Name of the Father), Oscar®-winner Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot, The Field), and is directed by Oscar®-winner Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), from a screenplay by Peter Woodward.

The film features a supporting cast that includes Neve Campbell (The Company, Scream), Gregory Smith (television’s Everwood), David Alpay (Ararat), Ian McElhinney (The Boxer, Hamlet), and newcomers Stephen Amell, Martin McCann, and Allan Hawco. Closing the Ring is produced by Richard Attenborough and Jo Gilbert (Brylcreem Boys) with co-producer Martin Katz (Hotel Rwanda). The film is a co-production between Closing the Ring Productions and Prospero Pictures with Scion Films, is supported by the National Lottery through the UK Film Council’s Premiere Fund and is a presentation of the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission in association with ContentFilm International. Bank of Ireland is providing production financing.

The film’s behind-the-scenes team includes long-time Attenborough collaborators cinematographer Roger Pratt and editor Lesley Walker, whose previous outings with Attenborough include Shadowlands and Cry Freedom. The production designer is Tom McCullagh (Mickybo & Me) and the costume designer is Hazel Webb-Crozier (Mickybo & Me).

PORT PERRY -- Film crews will roll into town once more this week when shooting begins on a new film which will feature Canadian Neve Campbell and stars Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer.

Crews will be filming exterior shots of a home in the area of Balsam and Rosa Street throughout the day on Friday and it is expected most cast members will be on hand. Filming was originally scheduled for next Tuesday.

'Closing The Ring,' which is expected to be released sometime in 2007, tells the story of a dying gunner in 1943 who gives a ring to a local to return to his girlfriend in the United States before being involved in a B-17 plane crash. Fifty years later, a man finds the ring and tracks down the girlfriend and the history of this ring. The film is set in both Belfast, Ireland and North Carolina.

After filming wraps up in Port Perry on Friday, crews will continue their work in the area of Townline Road and Lakeridge Road where they're expected to construct a duplicate version of the Port Perry home for more shots over the next couple of weeks. As well, a facsimile of the interior has been built at a Toronto film studio.

The film, written by Peter Woodward, will be directed by Richard Attenborough.

Lord Richard Attenborough, the Academy Award winning director of Ghandi, will bring the feature film Closing the Ring to Dundas' DeLuxe Restaurant for two days of filming this month.

Joining him could be stars Mischa Barton, Neve Campbell, Christopher Plummer, Shirley MacLaine, Brenda Fricker and Pete Postlethwaite. Production staff would not confirm which members of the star-studded cast would be in Dundas and said the set will be closed to the public.

The movie will span a period of 50 years, and the DeLuxe Restaurant will first be used as a 1941 soda fountain. The crew will return for a second day of filming, and reconstruct the DeLuxe into a 1991 bar.

DeLuxe owner John Paul Yuen said this week Closing the Ring is scheduled to film in the former restaurant, once owned by his grandmother, on May 17 and May 29.

"They're prepping today," Mr. Yuen said Tuesday. "They're here two and a half weeks. The DeLuxe will change completely. There will be an extra bar, and extra booths."

Karen Pidgurski, a publicist for the feature film, wouldn't release much information because the crew doesn't want a big crowd at the DeLuxe.

But Ms. Pidgurski acknowledged the public can try watching and taking pictures from King Street West, outside the restaurant.

"We needed a period diner," Ms. Pidgurski said. "We looked at a few different places throughout Ontario and this one was just perfect.

"We were able to dress it down for the 1991 scene, when it's been turned into a bar."

Closing the Ring tells the story of an American gunner whose B-17 bomber crashes in Europe during World War Two.

Before he dies, the American gives a ring to a local and asks her to return it to his girlfriend in the United States.

The story continues 50 years later, when a man finds the ring and tracks down the gunner's girlfriend to find the ring's history.

Closing the Ring is set in Belfast and North Carolina.

Two-day shoot

The crew spent five weeks filming in Belfast and returned to Toronto this week to complete six more weeks of filming around Ontario, including two days in Dundas.

The two-day shoot marks the continuing, and increasing, popularity of downtown Dundas - in particular the DeLuxe - as a destination for film production companies seeking period buildings and a tax credit for filming outside Toronto.

Last month, Jennifer Grey of Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off filmed scenes for a television movie at the DeLuxe.

Robin Williams filmed Man of the Year at the DeLuxe and other downtown locations. And The West Wing filmed scenes for several episodes around Dundas.

A Warner Brothers television movie called Molly is scheduled to film at the DeLuxe in early June.

David Flaherty, location manager for Closing the Ring, also worked on the television mini-series Haven which filmed in downtown Dundas for several days in June 2000.

That shoot took over much of the downtown core and created mixed emotions among local business owners during their first real brush with filmmaking.

"It's a great thing," Mr. Flaherty said, about returning to film here. "It's good for us and it's good for Dundas."

The six main stars of Closing the Ring have a long, award-filled history between them, while Richard Attenborough, producer and director, has appeared in at least 72 feature films as an actor, produced more than a dozen movies and directed another 12, including Ghandi in 1982 and Chaplin in 1992.

April 22, 2006

A grieving woman huddled over a dying soldier would hardly seem to be a sign that Northern Ireland is moving out of the dark shadows cast by the Troubles.

Nor, at first glance, would the re-fortification of Belfast or the return of soldiers to the streets appear to indicate a cultural renaissance.

But a new era must be dawning when one realises the only shooting being done is by the Oscar-winning director Lord Attenborough and that the grief-stricken woman is another Academy Award winner, Shirley MacLaine.

This week, residents of a Protestant housing estate in north Belfast have had their daily routine interrupted by staged explosions, gun wielding extras playing soldiers and a procession of film stars.

Such a scenario would have been unthinkable a few years ago when Belfast was engulfed in terrorist conflict and the closest locals came to Hollywood was on day trips to the nearby Co Down garrison town of the same name.

Within range of the set is the Antrim Road, where an IRA machine gunner killed the SAS officer Capt Herbert Westmacott in May 1980.

Also nearby is the New Lodge district where Gunner Robert Curtis became the first British soldier to be killed in the Troubles 35 years ago.

In these relatively peaceful times, however, Ulster has become one of Europe's busiest film locations and Belfast has attracted one of the industry's biggest names in Lord Attenborough, 82, the director of Gandhi, Shadowlands and Cry Freedom.

Lord Attenborough's Closing the Ring is the most glamorous film produced in Northern Ireland and is becoming one of the most high-profile productions of the year.

It is one of eight films to have been shot in the province over the past 12 months and is part of an industry that has brought in £5.6 million in the past three years. Middletown, a Northern Irish drama of love and betrayal, opens in New York within days.

Also in production is Puffball, a thriller adapted from the Fay Weldon novel, starring Donald Sutherland and Miranda Richardson.

Starring with MacLaine in Closing the Ring, are Dublin-born Brenda Fricker, who won an Oscar for My Left Foot, and Misha Barton, the half-Irish 19-year-old star of the television show The OC. They are joined by Christopher Plummer and Pete Postlewaite.

"There is no doubt this is part of the rebirth of Belfast," said Richard Williams, the chief executive of the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission, which is partly funding the project.

"This is massive. Richard Attenborough is the grandfather of British film.

"The creative industry has some part to play in most redevelopments, but in the context of Northern Ireland it is even more important.

"We have always had actors, writers and expertise, but we have been a huge exporter of talent. Now we are able to give them opportunities at home."

In addition to north Belfast's Fortwilliam Parade, the film is being shot in the city's new Titanic Studios and in Toronto.

Although the scenes filmed this week had strong links to the Troubles, Closing the Ring is a far cry from the genre of political films usually associated with Northern Ireland with their gritty portrayal of sectarian conflict.

It is an "epic love story" that crosses continents and spans half a century.

"This reminds us of the Troubles," said Annie Cook, 77, who has lived in the area for 33 years. "It was rough during those times, but this is very exciting. Our houses are going to make history.

"Richard Attenborough shook my hand and everyone has been very helpful and down to earth."

It is not every day that a Hollywood actress gets down on her knees in the streets of North Belfast. But that is exactly what happened on Thursday.

Hollywood actress and Oscar winner Shirley MacLaine is starring in the film Closing the Ring, a production based on a true story about a wartime fighter plane crash on Cavehill.

Some of the movie is being shot on the streets of north Belfast, with Somerton Road and Ligoniel Road transformed into a film set this week.

Closing the Ring is an epic story of a woman who honours a wartime promise of love after the discovery of a gold ring.

The movie spans two continents and half a century.

Filming has generated much excitement among the residents of north Belfast, who are enjoying the buzz of seeing director Lord Richard Attenborough and Hollywood superstar Shirley MacLaine on their doorsteps.

Shirley MacLaine, sister of famous actor and director Warren Beatty, who starred in the classics Splendor in the Grass and Bonnie and Clyde, is pictured filming an especially moving scene from Closing the Ring.

Watched by director Lord Attenborough, Shirley is crouched on her knees holding the hand of a dying British soldier.

Miss MacLaine's previous films include Terms of Endearment, Sweet Charity,Postcards from the Edge and Madame Sousatzka.

THE RING GETS CLOSER: After years of delays, filming has finally begun in Belfast, Ireland, on Richard Attenborough's Closing The Ring, starring Shirley MacLaine, The O.C.'s Mischa Barton and Christopher Plummer.

The story revolves around an American B-17 bomber that crashes near Belfast during World War II and the dying gunner who asks a local to return a ring to the flyboy's girlfriend in America.

Fifty years later, the lost ring is found again by Gollu - er, by a man who learns of its story and tracks down the woman. Barton and MacLaine play the character in 1943 and 1993, respectively. Better start cleansing your chakras now, Mischa.

The dapper and delightful Mr. Plummer will be a lot closer to home next month when the Closing The Ring shoot moves to Toronto, where Hogtown and area will stand in for North Carolina.

The movie will be filming here from early May to the first week of June.

Shooting begins in Northern Ireland today on Richard Attenborough’s anticipated feature film ‘Closing the Ring’. The love story features an all star cast, headed by Mischa Barton and Shirley McLaine, and also includes; Christopher Plummer, Pete Postlethwaite and Irish actress Brenda Fricker. Principal photography begins today at an undisclosed location in Northern Ireland. The five week shoot will take in various locations across the province as well as studio shoots at Belfast’s Titanic Studios.

The film is set in Belfast and North Carolina during two time periods: 1943 and 1993. The script, by Peter Woodward, begins when a U.S. B-17 crashes near Belfast, a dying gunner asks a local to return his ring to his girlfriend, Ethel, in America. Half a century later, a young man finds the ring, learns its history and tracks down the girlfriend. Barton and McLaine will play Ethel at different times in her life.

Christopher Plummer (A Beautiful Mind, Syriana) plays a man in love with old Ethel, Pete Postlethwaite (The Omen 666, The Constant Gardener) plays a witness of the B-17 crash and Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot) plays the grandmother of a young boy who finds the ring.

Crew working on the feature includes Attenborough’s long time collaborators; DOP Roger Pratt (Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire, Shadowlands) and Editor Lesley Walker (The Brothers Grimm, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas). Irish head’s of department include Production Designer Tom McCullagh (The Mighty Celt, Wilderness) and IFTA winning Costume Designer Hazel Webb Crozier (Mickybo & Me).

Following the five week NI shoot, production will move to Canada where it will finish on the 8th of June.

Closing the Ring (Contentfilm Intl.)
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Mischa Barton, Christopher Plummer, Chris Evans, Pete Postlethwaite
Status: Pre-production
Romantic epic set in present day and WWII about an American woman who honored a wartime promise with a lifetime of denial and how the discovery of a gold ring on a distant Irish hillside brings her back to life.

Richard Attenborough returns to directing movies with "Closing The Ring" to start March 27 in Canada.
Shirley MacLaine, Chris Plummer and Brenda Fricker are among those so far set to star in the pic produced by Jo Gilbert. Oscar-winner Attenborough ("Gandhi" -- best picture, director, actor) was in L.A. a week ago meeting with his longtime CAAgent and friend Martin Baum and film financers. "The Ring" has been in the works three years. Attenborough's last film was 1999's "Grey Owl" starring Pierce Brosnan.

Closing The Ring

Oscar winning Director Richard Attenborough helms a deeply moving love story, beautifully interwoven between present day and World War 2, about how an American woman honored a wartime promise, with a lifetime of denial - and how the discovery of a gold ring on a distant Irish hillside brought her back to life...

In Kentucky, 1941, the wild and beautiful Ethel is courted by three friends, Jack, Chuck and Teddy, all of whom, unsurprisingly, are smitten with Ethel. But it is Teddy who becomes her sweetheart, and when the three friends are sent to the war in Europe, Teddy wears a gold ring given to him by Ethel as her promise of eternal love.

On their last night together, Teddy makes his friends swear that if anything should happen to him, one of them must look after Ethel. Choosing the ever reliable Chuck, Jack is crushed.

When Teddy’s B-17 bomber crashes in Belfast, a young Irish boy named Quinlan is witness to Teddy’s dying wish, to return the ring to Ethel and tell her she’s free to make her own choice. As the flames engulf the plane wreck, the frightened Quinlan is unable to snatch the ring in time and never speaks of the event again.

Ethel never comes to terms with her loss, yet marries Chuck, who remains true to his word, despite knowing deep in his heart that Jack should have been the one for her. Jack, also keeping his promise and filled with remorse that he should have been on that plane, holds back his feelings, and does so for 50 years...

Now in 1991 a teenager called Jimmy, caught up in Belfast’s civil war, meets Quinlan, now in his sixties, and they investigate the site of the B-17 crash. Jimmy finds the ring, inscribed with Ethel’s name, and when he is forced to escape from Ireland, he heads for America to track down the owner of the ring.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Ethel’s daughter Marie understands nothing of the loss that has shaped her mother’s life. When Chuck dies, Jack is left as the last of the three friends still alive, and remains deeply in love with Ethel. But with the sudden arrival of Teddy’s ring from what feels like another lifetime, Ethel’s walls come crashing down around her. Marie finally discovers who her Mother really is, and Jack makes one last attempt to heal a lifetime of pain.

Inspired by true events, and akin to The English Patient and The Notebook, CLOSING THE RING is an epic romance about loss and closure, love and reconciliation, and the ability to find happiness when it seems all but gone...