Exclusive: Sundance Selects plans Dec 4 release theatrically and on demand.
Sundance Selects has acquired North American rights to Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, the feature documentary written and directed by Jeanie Finlay.
The film tells the story of Jimmy Ellis, “an unknown singer plucked from obscurity and thrust into the spotlight as part of a crazy scheme that had him masquerade as Elvis back from the grave”.
The film, which had its world premiere at Tribeca and won the Grand Jury Prize in Nashville, will be released theatrically and on demand on Dec 4.
Producers are Dewi Gregory and Finlay, with executive producers Al Morrow, Suzanne Alizart, Kate Townsend, Nick Fraser, Hannah Thomas, Richard Holmes, John Tobin, Andy Copping and Alexander Preston.
Production companies are Glimmer Films, Truth Department and Met Film, and the film’s supporters include Creative England, Ffilm Cymru Wales, BBC Storyville and Broadway.
Finlay, a former Screen Star of Tomorrow, previously directed...
Sundance Selects has acquired North American rights to Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, the feature documentary written and directed by Jeanie Finlay.
The film tells the story of Jimmy Ellis, “an unknown singer plucked from obscurity and thrust into the spotlight as part of a crazy scheme that had him masquerade as Elvis back from the grave”.
The film, which had its world premiere at Tribeca and won the Grand Jury Prize in Nashville, will be released theatrically and on demand on Dec 4.
Producers are Dewi Gregory and Finlay, with executive producers Al Morrow, Suzanne Alizart, Kate Townsend, Nick Fraser, Hannah Thomas, Richard Holmes, John Tobin, Andy Copping and Alexander Preston.
Production companies are Glimmer Films, Truth Department and Met Film, and the film’s supporters include Creative England, Ffilm Cymru Wales, BBC Storyville and Broadway.
Finlay, a former Screen Star of Tomorrow, previously directed...
- 10/27/2015
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
Jeanie Finlay’s bizarre story of masked Elvis soundalike Jimmy Ellis is as moving as it is entertaining
“They say you can’t make it cos you sound like Elvis. But Elvis sounded like Elvis, and he made it…” Having previously dealt with pop fakery in The Great Hip Hop Hoax, director Jeanie Finlay strikes gold with this wonderfully weird and affectingly melancholy account of how singer Jimmy Ellis found himself at the centre of the strangest chapter of rock’n’roll apocrypha. Dismissed as a Presley soundalike during Elvis’s lifetime, Ellis resurfaced in the late 1970s as the masked Orion, taking his name from Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s fictional tale of a superstar who fakes his own death. Fruitcake conspiracy theories, the emergence of “new” duet recordings with Jerry Lee, and the Sun Records release of Reborn (initially pressed with a lurid coffin-escape cover) convinced fans that Orion was Elvis,...
“They say you can’t make it cos you sound like Elvis. But Elvis sounded like Elvis, and he made it…” Having previously dealt with pop fakery in The Great Hip Hop Hoax, director Jeanie Finlay strikes gold with this wonderfully weird and affectingly melancholy account of how singer Jimmy Ellis found himself at the centre of the strangest chapter of rock’n’roll apocrypha. Dismissed as a Presley soundalike during Elvis’s lifetime, Ellis resurfaced in the late 1970s as the masked Orion, taking his name from Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s fictional tale of a superstar who fakes his own death. Fruitcake conspiracy theories, the emergence of “new” duet recordings with Jerry Lee, and the Sun Records release of Reborn (initially pressed with a lurid coffin-escape cover) convinced fans that Orion was Elvis,...
- 9/27/2015
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Peter Bradshaw puts on his blue suede shoes to advise you to watch Jeanie Finlay’s documentary about Jimmy Ellis, a musician with a strange similarity to Elvis Presley who came into his own after Presley’s death in 1977. Wearing a mask to encourage the notion that he was actually the real Presley, disguising botched surgery after faking his own death, Ellis rose to a level of fame and acclaim that had proved out of reach when he went under his own name
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Continue reading...
- 9/25/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The tale of a talented singer and his part in the Elvis-is-alive myth is stranger than fiction, and comes with a sad, shocking ending
John Updike’s comment about celebrity being a mask that eats into the face occurred to me watching this desperately sad film. It is the story of Jimmy Ellis, a singer from Alabama who was cursed with having a voice identical to that of Elvis Presley. He travelled to Nashville and tried to break into the music business – but found that everyone was only interested in his eerie soundalike resemblance to the King. Poignantly, he even released a single entitled I’m Not Trying to Be Like Elvis.
Related: Orion review: the reluctant Elvis-alike turned pretender to the King's throne
Continue reading...
John Updike’s comment about celebrity being a mask that eats into the face occurred to me watching this desperately sad film. It is the story of Jimmy Ellis, a singer from Alabama who was cursed with having a voice identical to that of Elvis Presley. He travelled to Nashville and tried to break into the music business – but found that everyone was only interested in his eerie soundalike resemblance to the King. Poignantly, he even released a single entitled I’m Not Trying to Be Like Elvis.
Related: Orion review: the reluctant Elvis-alike turned pretender to the King's throne
Continue reading...
- 9/24/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Look of Silence and new music from members of Sigur Ros to open festival; Monty Python documentary to close.
Sheffield Doc/Fest (June 5-10) has revealed the line-up of its 2015 edition, which will open with two events.
The first is the UK premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, the follow-up to critically acclaimed The Act of Killing, in which a family that survives the genocide in Indonesia confronts the men who killed one of their brothers.
The second is the world premiere of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s The Greatest Shows on Earth: A Century of Funfairs, Circuses and Carnivals – a music and archive film that will feature a new score by Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós and the head of the Pagan Church in Iceland, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.
The film centres on the lives of travelling showpeople and has been created with exclusive access to the University of Sheffield...
Sheffield Doc/Fest (June 5-10) has revealed the line-up of its 2015 edition, which will open with two events.
The first is the UK premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, the follow-up to critically acclaimed The Act of Killing, in which a family that survives the genocide in Indonesia confronts the men who killed one of their brothers.
The second is the world premiere of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s The Greatest Shows on Earth: A Century of Funfairs, Circuses and Carnivals – a music and archive film that will feature a new score by Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Rós and the head of the Pagan Church in Iceland, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.
The film centres on the lives of travelling showpeople and has been created with exclusive access to the University of Sheffield...
- 5/7/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Z-Cars star Jimmy Ellis has died, aged 82.
The Northern Irish actor was best known for playing Bert Lynch in the police drama, which aired from 1962 to 1978.
He died following a stroke at Lincoln Hospital on Saturday morning (March 8).
His son Toto told BBC News of his father's death: "It was sad to watch him slip away. The last words he heard were that he was a hero, a legend and we all loved him.
"He blazed a trail for Northern Ireland actors, in that he was the first character not to change his accent. Dad was so proud of his roots and his beliefs."
Ellis was also known for playing Norman Martin in the BBC's Billy trilogy of plays in the 1980s, alongside a young Kenneth Branagh.
Branagh said of his former co-star: "I was blessed to begin my career working with him, and I will never forget his generosity to me.
The Northern Irish actor was best known for playing Bert Lynch in the police drama, which aired from 1962 to 1978.
He died following a stroke at Lincoln Hospital on Saturday morning (March 8).
His son Toto told BBC News of his father's death: "It was sad to watch him slip away. The last words he heard were that he was a hero, a legend and we all loved him.
"He blazed a trail for Northern Ireland actors, in that he was the first character not to change his accent. Dad was so proud of his roots and his beliefs."
Ellis was also known for playing Norman Martin in the BBC's Billy trilogy of plays in the 1980s, alongside a young Kenneth Branagh.
Branagh said of his former co-star: "I was blessed to begin my career working with him, and I will never forget his generosity to me.
- 3/10/2014
- Digital Spy
An Original Voice
“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.
But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...
“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.
But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...
- 10/11/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
His life burned as brightly as the "inferno" he and his bandmates left on the dance floor. Jimmy Ellis, lead singer for the Trammps—the Philadelphia band that helped fuel the disco revolution with their classic anthem "Disco Inferno"—died Thursday in a South Carolina nursing home. He was 74. Ellis' daughter, Erika Stinson, told the New York Times the cause of death was complications of Alzheimer's disease. Led by Ellis' booming baritone, the Trammps had their first chart success with 1972's cover version of Judy Garland's "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," but it wasn't until the release of the 1973 single "Love Epidemic" that they became...
- 3/9/2012
- E! Online
Jimmy Ellis, the lead singer of the hit "Disco Inferno" from '70s R&B/funk group The Trammps, died Thursday in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He was 74. Ellis's daughter, Erika Stinson, told the New York Times the singer died from complications from Alzheimer's disease. Ellis and The Trammps were a Philadelphia-based group, formed in the early 1970s. The group's biggest hit, "Disco Inferno," reached number 11 on the Billboard pop chart in 1977, after being featured in the John Travolta hit "Saturday Night Fever." Also read: Notable Celebrity Deaths of 2012 The song was included...
- 3/9/2012
- by Kimberly Potts
- The Wrap
Jimmy Ellis, who sung lead vocals for The Trammps on their 1970s classic "Disco Inferno," died yesterday in South Carolina. He was 74.Eliis died from complications due to Alzheimer's disease, his daughter told the NY Times."Disco Inferno" was featured on the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever," which sold 15 million copies -- making it the second biggest selling soundtrack ever behind only "The Bodyguard."Ellis toured with The Trammps as recently as 2010.A memorial service...
- 3/9/2012
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
Jimmy Ellis, the voice behind the dance floor anthem "Disco Inferno," passed away Thursday in South Carolina. He was 74. Ellis died of complications from Alzheimer's Disease, his daughter told the New York Times. Ellis was the lead singer of Philadelphia-based funk band The Trammps, which released several R&B singles in the 1970s, including their Top 10 hit "Disco Inferno." The song - with its infectious "burn, baby, burn" refrain - helped propel sales of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack to 15 million, making it the second highest selling soundtrack of all time (behind The Bodyguard). The band toured together until 2010, according to the Times.
- 3/9/2012
- by Liz Raftery
- PEOPLE.com
With her flame-red locks and a weeklong international tour, you would be forgiven for thinking Jeanie Finlay was picking up where Santa Claus left off. However, the occasion isn't Christmas, but another annual tradition worthy of merrymaking and good cheer -- Record Store Day, which Finlay is celebrating this week with a whirlwind tour of England and America, including stops at the Cimm Fest in Chicago on April 16th and the Webster Film Series in St. Louis (April 22-24), and the centerpiece of her Stateside appearances, a screening at the Walter Reade Theater in New York on Saturday evening, to show her latest film, "Sound It Out," a documentary about the last record store in the small North East England town of Teesside that our own Matt Singer wrote after its premiere at SXSW "isn't just good - it's important."
As with most things that carry such weight, "Sound It Out...
As with most things that carry such weight, "Sound It Out...
- 4/15/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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