Probably the two films that defined British film making in the 1990’s were Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting’ and Guy Ritchie’s, ’Lock, Stock and Two Smoking barrels’. Both low budget films that caught the zeitgeist of a Britain that was coming to the end of a Tory government on its last legs after 18 years. Both films were an invigorating reminder that we had great upcoming talent.
Trainspotting was first having been released in 1996 with director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge and together their film ‘Shallow Grave’ was doing the festival circuit when Irvine Welsh’s book came into the hands of MacDonald. Its story of four drug addled youths and their friend, the psychotically violent Begbie, found them all deep into the Edinburgh drug scene but trying to get themselves clean. Not an immediately obvious commercial venture and Welsh’s episodic novel was far from easy to adapt fir the big screen.
Having already starred in the trio’s Shallow Grave McGregor took on the lead role of Renton after which they went on to cast Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle both of whom had wanted to play Renton. Instead they took the roles of the weak minded Spud and the violent Begbie respectively. After that Jonny Lee Miller and Kevin McKidd were cast as the quaalude quaffing quartet and an open casting found a star in Kelly Macdonald in what was her first film that saw her in an explicit sex scene followed by a needle drop revelation in one of the films many highlights.
Thrown into the mix Hodge’s era defining ‘Choose Life’ speech ( originally intended for the middle of the film, but moved to the opening scene) grabbed its audience by the throat and never let go for the following ninety minutes all shot with Boyle’s visual flair that used all manner of techniques and the film became a stylishly hip movie that audiences flocked to with the film earning $16m and making them stars launching careers for several into the stratosphere with McGregor going on to the Star Wars trilogy, Carlyle to Bond villain, MacDonald to a full time career and Boyle to the Brit director A-list.
This new release on 4K UHD / Blu-ray steel book is an excellent re-release full of bonus features that include:
- New 4K digital restoration of the uncut version of the film, supervised by director Danny Boyle, with 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Memories of Trainspotting
- Deleted Scenes
- Look Of The Film – Then and Now
- Sound of The Film – Then and Now
- The Beginning
- Archive Interview With Irvine Welsh
- Behind The Needle
- Danny Boyle on Trainspotting
- Ewan McGregor on Trainspotting
- Cannes Snapshot
- Cannes Vox Pops
- Trailers
- Gallery
Some of these are archive from previous discs but the ‘Memories of Trainspotting’ feature is good as are the ‘Then and Now’ featurettes and its reminder to budding filmmakers that you don’t need a big budget if you have great ideas.
Trainspotting remains one of the seminal British films of the 1990’s and pretty much everything from the film became iconic including the poster to a truly banging soundtrack that introduced audiences to Underworld’s anthemic Born Slippy which remains a floor filler to this day.
To paraphrase Renton, ‘Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f**king big television’ ………and watch Trainspotting on it.
related feature : ‘Trainspotting 2’ – review
related feature : Kelly MacDonald and the rest of the cast of Operation Mincemeat answer the audiences questions !
Here’s the Trainspotting trailer…….
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