Trainspotting stars Ewan McGregor and Kevin McKidd are to be reunited in a film about Mount Everest. 
 

It will see them work together for the first time since the classic 1996 Danny Boyle drugs movie that made them stars.
 

The Scots will travel to Nepal to shoot on location at the world's highest mountain's Base Camp - 17,700 ft above sea level.
 

Elgin-born McKidd, 36, said: "I'm going to need to get into shape for that."
 

A source close to the project said: "It doesn't have a name yet and a lot of the details are being kept quiet but it is expected to be a really gruelling schedule for both of them.
 

"It requires a big commitment as there are weeks of preparation and acclimatisation before they can properly start."
 

McGregor, 38, and McKidd have become hugely successful Hollywood actors in the 14 years since Trainspotting.
 

It was slower for McKidd but he is now one of the industry's most in-demand leading men.
 

The star, who lives with wife Jane and children Joseph, eight, and Iona, six, stars in TV hit Grey's Anatomy as Dr Owen Hunt.
 

He has also starred in TV blockbuster Rome as well as hit movies The Last Legion and Kingdom of Heaven.
 

In his latest movie, Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, he takes the role of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea.
 

McGregor was first of the Trainspotting cast to make it big with his leading role in the 2001 hit Moulin Rouge.

He was also in the 2005 Star Wars trilogy but has since taken on smaller roles.
 

McKidd also revealed he turned down a major part in the last two Harry Potter films.
 

He said: "There was this mean, alpha-male werewolf character, who's like the big villain in the final film. My kids were like, 'Why did you have to turn that down?'
 

"But when Percy Jackson came through, it was like, 'I've got to do this. I've never done this kind of movie before'."
 

Source: sundaymail.co.uk

The changing Mallory and Irvine Story today: Cultural Imperialism on Everest.

 

By Philip Summers

 

Millenia ago in ancient Rome, after their adversaries had been defeated in battle, the Romans would parade the 'trophies' of their conquest through the city gates and then to the baying masses in a public orgy of self edification and validation on their 'self evident' prowess and divinely ordained might and righteousness.

 

The captured arms of the vanquished and other artefacts would be displayed to the 'great unwashed' and often constructed into macabre sculptures, as a maudlin symbol of imperial Rome's greatness.

 

It’s a story that’s as dismal in its repetition over time as its unseemliness both then and to the present day.

 

From the 'Elgin Marbles' now residing in Britain after being hewn from the Parthenon and still not returned to Greece, to Egyptian queen Nefertiti's bust smuggled out of Egypt and still residing in Berlin, to the systematised plunder of science, technology and experts out of Germany post World War Two by the United States for exploitation and advantage to the nascent American empire (doubtless much to the chagrin of the voiceless tens of thousands of dead slave workers who perished in the Mittelwerk for example).

 

In the latest 21st century of this cultural imperialism, the lofty heights of Mt Everest are now being plotted for new plunder by an American 'expedition' motivated by the quixotic Everest rake, Tom Holzel and a mercenary coterie of acolytes.

 

Based on Holzel's flawed analysis of high altitude photo imagery, which contrary to Holzel's frequently altered assertions since he choose to inflict his 'research' onto the Everest research community, has repeatedly failed to identify Englishman Andrew Irvine's exact location, consistent with a coherent theoretical basis that is more coterminous than Holzel's previous 'dodgy' and fraudulent theoretical reconstructions that encompass absurdly high climb rates for the pair to reach the 1924 Camp VI to the disaggregated notion that the pair would separate at the First Step, Mallory proceed alone to the Second Step and then failing to succeed there, Holzel then pretends that the pair reclimb the First Step after rendezvousing at the step base so as to better conform with Odell's 12.50 PM sighting of two figures climbing a rock step.

 

Lost in his own verbage, Holzel now pretends that the latest 'oblong blog' is Irvine where the previous instances he's proffered have all been negated, but which raises the real question of why is this latest example is any different?.

 

Convinced beyond epiphenomena, Holzel now promotes a search to his self convinced Irvine rest location by climbers in some sordid commercial money grubbing exercise to plunder the body of Irvine, with the aim of fetching any camera for examination to the United States in a 'circus' of media attention and the unseemly throng of self satisfied 'Romaneque' theatre.

 

Holzel and others seem though to be unmindful of the fact that this commercial plunder on Everest doesn't involve a deceased American.

 

Andrew Irvine, like his friend George Mallory was a British citizen who died in 1924, but still has living relatives in Britain, who may have a differing view on the plunder and exploitation of their family member.

 

Indeed the question of consultation with the British plus the Chinese where Irvine resides on their half of the mountain and the inexplicable plan to fetch any artefacts and take them back to the United States, smacks of mere 21st century 'trophy gathering' akin to the discredited practices of the past.

 

Questions such as;

 

By what right does this Holzelian American expedition have to plunder a deceased Briton for commercial and political tendentious exploitation purposes on Everest?

 

What measures for familial consultation has this American expedition made if any?

 

What Chinese sensibilities may be insulted by this American high-handedness

on their side the mountain?.

 

Why must any camera found be taken to the United States, where surely the appropriate end location should be Great Britain?

 

Absent of such simple questions being addressed by the Americans, the only conclusion that can be reached is that this sordid exercise is akin to the unsavoury 'triumphalism' of past regimes and discredited empires attempting self validation by treading on those who can't protest or stop the oppressor, be it Rome or anyone else.

 

In a spirit of reciprocity imagine the outcry in Holzel's own nation if a comparable circumstance were to occur in this hypothetical;

 

In 1969 imagine if the Apollo 11 craft reached lunar orbit on the first attempt to land on the lunar surface in another programme of political theatre.

 

However what if all radio contact and visual contact were lost and the crew never returned to Earth, leaving the hypothetical question of whether the American crew were the first to land on the moon.

 

Likely after such a disaster, the moon was abandoned until the present day where another nation decided to visit the moon to visit the Apollo craft, recover any artefacts, study the bodies and return any cameras that may reveal whether the crew reached the surface...

 

In this hypothetical, what would the reaction be in the United States to this.

 

Putting oneself in another's shoes may be an ability increasing lacking in this selfish day and age, but that doesn't mean we should be silent to that which is wrong.

 

Proper research on Everest is needed, that which is discreet, scientific and sensitive to others and to British and Chinese sensibilities who are both involved in this situation

 

The American plan on Everest will fail due to inherent flaws in the assumptions, but the principle of this expedition plan warrants criticism and censure.