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Smellyharry, 2d. refers to another clue number, and abbreviations for the 'elements' which make up that material.

Thanks drxx, that makes sense. Bit convoluted. I

I never think to look at the other cluee when the reference is in words rather than numbers for some reason. Must try and be conscious of that.

This might have caught me out but I remebered a clue in 4776 6 weeks earlier which wrote out a clue number in letters. The clue to 36a was "Throw high five down" and the solution was "unseat", an anagram of 5d which was "nasute".

I must say, I agree with Granama at #92.
Unless I have gone wrong somewhere, the positioning of the smaller shape next to the larger feels like the entire puzzle would benefit from being rotated 180 degrees in order to place the smaller at ground level and on the correct side - as per the publicity photo. But this would leave the gridfill (mainly) upside-down.
I suppose it is up to Mr. Green which way he takes it out the envelope...

After an work-enforced break from this, I'm going to have a last go at this. I have the grid, the corrects, but too many compass points, I think right at the end.

Reading through the helpful hints here, I'm confident on all of them but I want to rule in or rule out 29d by making sure I've parsed it correctly. I don't see anyone else asking about it, so I'm guessing it doesn't yield a compass point, but I don't see why not.

I read it as an anagram indiator, an anagrist, and a hint to remove the first letter. If I do this I have a 5 letter work, that I can make fit the definition by removing another letter.

Am I wrong?

No, bluecormorant, you're not wrong. The clue parses exactly as you say in your 3rd paragraph.

Thanks Will37, that's very helpful. Having looked at my scribbles again it turns out I'd lost count! I've just spent a few minutes with scissors and I now have it!

Just in case anyone is still reading this, I'd love to understand the wordplay in 34a. I thought it was (relatively) obvious, but it seems not...

I'm such a numpty!!
I put this to one side for several days due to other
other more pressing tasks. Getting back to it yesterday, I solved the few remaining clues (although I can't parse 5d—does it involve an intermediate definition?) and ended up with 7 compass points...
After wading through 100+ post here, I discovered that "snakes" doesn't necessarily lead to a word ending in a superfluous "s". I worked out the compass point pairings weren't diametrically opposite ones, drew the lines then got the scissors.
That's where it all went pear-shaped!
I convinced myself that the preamble required me to use the four smallest piece to make a smaller version of the largest piece — even though I knew that I needed two of the smaller pieces to provide the missing letter from each of the actors's names.
Sitting here just now, idly putting together the pieces that created two actors' names and joining them together to create the film title, I finally had my PDM!

neophyte

"Express eccentricity" means "delete e" from omega to get the correct anagrist,