Come here for all your Irish Film and TV industry news and nonsense. More importantly, come here for bitching and venting and ranting and then bitching some more.
At last, an Irish animation studio that has a strong sense of style and quality. Some of us may be a bit biased, but ‘The Secret of Kells’, directed by Tomm Moore and produced by Cartoon Saloon, is looking like the best animated film to come out of this country to date. There are certain influences that can be clearly seen from the trailer, Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack) and Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) to name two, which are not the worst guys in the world to have as your benchmark. Unfortunately only the French Trailer has been released so you can’t enjoy the smoky voice of Mike Lally and strong tones of Brendan Gleeson. But that just gives you something to look forward to this March.
Hideo Nakata, the director of 'Ringu', 'The Ring Two' and 'Dark Water', is being lined up to bring Irish writer Enda Walsh's play 'Chatroom' to the big screen. The film will mark Nakata's first original directing effort in the English language.
Walsh is one to watch. His plays are consistently ambitious from his debut Disco Pigs, which he adapted into a film directed by Kirsten Sheridan to more recent efforts like the brilliant Walworth Farce. To add extra fire to his hot streak, he recently co-wrote the screenplay for the Cannes Camera d’Or winning 'Hunger' (see what we think of that in our reviews section). Walsh himself has adapted the script for the psychological thriller about teenagers who urge each other to engage in destructive behaviour. This sounds like every teenager we know but I'm sure Walsh has found something interesting to do.
Good news for Irish Film. Eden has secured a release in the U.S.A. Eugene O'Brien has adapated his own hit stage play and Declan Recks directs. We caught this in the Dublin International Film Festival and were seriously impressed. It's particularly notable that it has managed to travel, given how there is almost no hook and no unique selling point. It's simply about a couple having relationship difficulties in Ireland. That's it.
As with any story, though, it's all in the telling. Check it out ASAP.
For some reason this movie is slipping under the radar in Ireland (and pretty much everywhere else). OTo be fair, it hasn't been released yet but scarcely a word has been said about it, while any other minor Irish achievement gets guaranteed column inches and air time. It's called I Sell the Dead, it's a stylish horror comedy and it stars a hobbit and Hellboy! Okay it stars Ron Perlman and Dominic Monaghan but close enough. The main point to note is that it was written and directed by Irishman, Glen McQuaid.
McQuaid is a digital FX and compositing specialist who made a number of notable shorts before landing funding for this, his feature debut. Now we know there are Irish people like John Moore who have broken Hollywood via the world of commercials and are making a successful living as directors (or in some cases writers for hire) and there are some who enjoy success with Irish made films that allow them to take on Hollywood projects (Sheridan, Jordan et al) but McQuaid seems to be one of the first Irishmen to go straight to Hollywood with his own project and direct it himself.
It looks inventive and original, which is a nice way of saying it will be either bold and brilliant or awful and embarrassing. Let's hope it gets proper backing and a serious release in America either way.
One acknowledgement: We say Hollywood, but we realise this is more of an independent picture and was apparently primarily made out of New York but we mean Hollywood in the general sense of that abstract world where the magic happens, cocaine flows like water and dead hookers are never a problem, as opposed to the world of Irish film where even a hot lunch for the crew is a problem.
Good news for the Irish film industry. Bad news for haters of twee Oirish clichés. Amy Adams is to star in Leap Year, a full scale Hollywood production that will be set and shot in Ireland. Given the title it should come as no surprise that she'll play a woman who plans to travel to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on that date, because according to the film it’s an Irish tradition. That's news to us and nearly every other Irish person but let's not pick at the details. Anyway, her plans are ruined by weather (presumably the most accurate part of the film's depiction of Ireland) and she’s forced to undergo a cross-country trek, accompanied by a surly Irish innkeeper, in order to make the proposal in time.
A fuckin innkeeper?! Is it set in the 1800's? Expect Guinness and Leprechauns and vomit washing down the aisles of Irish cinemas. Maybe we're being overly cynical but but the film has been written by Harry Elfont and Deb Kaplan, the screenwriting duo behind Made Of Honor , a film that managed the remarkable feat of being more annoying than it's title (okay we didn't see it but the trailer was grating enough). We'll say one good thing about this movie. Amy Adams is in it and she's a great actress and a seriously likable screen presence. Maybe she'll distract us from the crimes against Irishness.
Irishman Terry George is to write the sequel to Spike Lee's Inside Man. The movie will be called Outside Man. Just kidding. It will be imaginatively titled Inside Man 2 but expect some convoluted subtitle like Inside Man 2: Attack of the Clive Owens or something.
No word on plot details yet but George is a top-notch scribe and an accomplished director. Besides the scripts for In The Name Of The Father and The Boxer he has directed Some Mothers Son, Hotel Rwanda and the recent Reservation Road, which failed to get a theatrical release over here and failed at the box office Stateside. This could explain him going back to the type writer for a well paid gig while he eyes up his next project.
So the films have shown, the masters have taught their masterclasses, the awards have been awarded and the rowing club has been drunk dry. Everybody returns to their real jobs with a week-long hangover from the Galway Film Fleadh.
As promised, we spent more time drinking in the rowing club than seeing films. We did catch a few though so stay tuned to our reviews section for advanced word on some upcoming films.
Peter O'Toole's public interview was fascinating and all the more impressive for his vivid recollections of tiny incidents despite his age. Some man for one man. He wasn't the only Hollywood star around. Jessica Lang gave a masterclass, Bill Pullman was skulking around town and even stopped into be part of the judging panel for The Pitching Award.
Kisses - a brave attempt to mix something of Adam & Paul with the work of Shane Meadows and Paul Fraser - picked up the award for Best Feature and the best and most profound line of the night came from its young female star Kelly O'Neill: 'I'm not saying nothing'.
There was no surprise that Anvil! The Story Of Anvil scooped the Best Documentary Award. It was one of the most talked about films of the festival and anybody who was at the screening was just blown away by it. Grown men talked about being teary eyed with admiration for the aging rockers.
The excellent DLIADT short Martin picked up best short while Barbara Deignan won the coveted Pitching Award for her story The Sunshine Group, a comedy about grieving.
We're gonna wrap ourselves up in a ball and crawl out some time next year, just in time for the 21st Galway Film Fleadh. The baby is all grown up.
The annual knees-up, booze-up and sometime film festival that is The Galway Film Fleadh is upon us. It starts today, but as always, only gathers pace towards the weekend. The programme is rich and diverse so hopefully some people will actually leave the bar in the Rowing Club to see some films. The Fleadh is different from a lot of festivals, mainly because Galway is so small and for the week that's in it, there's a sense of it taking over the town. While the Dublin International Film Festival is very much an audience festival, Galway, with its film fair, awards night, pitching competition and numerous masterclasses has more of an industry feel to it.
For this reason, the shorts are always a draw down in Galway since half the industry is still in the proverbial waiting room that is short filmmaking, but the main attractions are always the world premieres of the new Irish films. Check out the trailers for the stylish/stylised Anton and the low-budget love story Satellites and Meteorites, starring everyone's favourite secretary this side of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Amy Huberman (yer wan from the clinic! keep up at the back).
Aside from those two, we're looking forward to Ian Fitzgibbon's A Film With Me In It, starring a trio of stand-up comedians in Dylan Moran , Mark Doherty and David O'Doherty (Those guys are brothers! What's with Mark dropping the 'O' - Damn you Equity!). This one premiered at Edinburgh recently and generated some good buzz with a glowing review in Variety.
The hero that is Gerry Stembridge is also premiering his latest film, a thriller entitled Alarm starring Ruth Bradley, daughter of Charlotte. Stembridge will never have to apologise for anything after Scrap Saturday. Hopefully these can all be squeezed in between pints in the Rowing Club and general swanning about Galway. Just don't hold us to it if the weather is good.
Tom McCarthy attended a screening of his new film The Visitor in the new Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield, Dublin yesterday. McCarthy is an actor turned director whose debut film The Station Agent was a small gem that deservedly garnered critical acclaim on the festival circuit.
His sophomore film The Visitor (see trailer below) is about a lonely college professor who has effectively resigned from life until he finds 2 immigrants squatting in his apartment. The trio become unlikely friends and life lessons are learned of course but what makes this unusual for a character based indie movie is its political edge and its acute sense of anger at the treatment of asylum seekers.
McCarthy took part in a lengthy Q&A after the movie, which was chaired by Graine Humphries, head of the Dublin International Film Festival. McCarthy talked at length about his process, which seems to be rather organic, haphazard and unstructured as it turns out as well as his feelings and fears about making such a political movie. According to McCarthy, he never set out to make a 'message' movie but the political element naturally evolved from the characters so he found himself in the middle of an issue, which he now is happy to speak for.
He also spilled the beans on a number of his upcoming acting roles. He appeared to be excited about the work he has done on Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones and thinks the results should turn out well. He also treated the audience to an (almost) exclusive by announcing that he had taken on a role in Roland Emmerich's big-budget end-of-the-world blockbuster 2012. The news had been announced earlier that day but it was his first comment on it. He seemed excited about acting in his first blockbuster saying it would give him an opportunity to see all the toys he doesn't get to play with on his own movies.
Where to begin with this disgusting trailer for Red Roses and Petrol. When a film looks this sickening it's hard to know where to start. Maybe we're wrong and it's actually a good movie but the fact that it was made in 2003 and is getting released in 2008 doesn't give us much hope.
Let's just get out the check list of the crimes against cinematic Irishness and see how many are here. 1) Based on a play. check 2) A dead patriarch. check 3) A wake. check 4) Dark family secrets. check 5) Whiskey. check. 6) Irish dancing (or something loosely resembling it). check 7) Diddly-eye music (with a token attempt to make it feel contemporary by roping in Pogues rip-offs Flogging Molly). check 8) American director ramping up the Oirishness. check. 9) Next to no Irish actors (Susan Lynch, get out of there, you're enabling these criminals) check. 10) Accents that are meant to be Irish but sound almost Jamaican (check out Z-list British celebrity Max Beasley's woeful insult of an accent for a sample). check 11) Token shot of the Ha'penny bridge to make it seem like it wasn't shot in a studio in America - which also unfortunately highlights the fact that it is apparently set in the present day even though everybody looks like they are living in some lost year of the 50's. check. 12) The collective vomiting of the Irish nation. check
What's most confusing about these movies is that they never make money. The Irish American audience don't lap them up like the African American audience does with Tyler Perry and Martin Lawrence movies (which they're welcome to, by the way). Granted there have been successes like The Brothers McMullen but they focused specifically on the Irish American milieu and weren't selling the old country back to the savvy modern Irish diaspora.
Red Roses and Petrol eh? Maybe we could set fire to it quite easily then.
Here's the new for City of Ember the Belfast shot fantasy/sci-fi/adventure/kids movie/any-market-we-haven't-mentioned movie starring Bill Murray and Saoirse Ronan. Looks like impressively grimy and fun even though it's y'know, for kids.
One observation though. If it's shot in Belfast and has an Irish actress in the lead then why does everybody have to speak in an American accent. It's set in a post-apocalyptic underground city. You mean to tell us only the Yanks will be saved!
Debut Irish author Liam Burke has penned a guide to Superhero Movies, set to hit bookshops later this month. The book, ‘Pocket Essential Superhero Movies’, tracks the history of comic book characters being brought to life on the cinema screen.
The book focuses on over 20 superhero movies including ‘Superman’, ‘The Incredibles’, ‘Hellboy’ and ‘X-Men’, and features an interview with Stan Lee, the creator of ‘Spider-Man’, ‘X-Men’, ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Incredible Hulk’, ‘The Silver Surfer’ and ‘Daredevil’.
Burke explores how cinema’s Superheroes fit into a larger Superhero archetype, and examines how the main Superhero Movie types from Superhero Families to Vigilante Justice.
The writer, who formerly worked for the Irish Film and Television Academy, is currently completing a research PhD in the Huston School of Film at NUI Galway, studying the adaptation of comics to film.
”This summer in particular has more superhero movies coming out than ever before, with ‘Iron Man’, ‘The Incredible Hulk’ and ‘The Dark Knight',” says Burke. “There has never been a greater interest in superhero movies than now and I think a lot of people of will find this book an exciting and entertaining read."
‘Pocket Essential Superhero Movies’ is on sale from selected book shops, and on-line at Amazon, priced €6.99. For more info go to:
Evan Goldberg, the extremely cool writer of Superbad and the upcoming Pineapple Express is finishing his recent writer's residency in The John Huston School Of Film(see here for all the news on future projects he divulged during in his stay). In honour of all that, here's a clip we posted weeks ago. Damn it, it's funny so we're treating you to it again.
