Planning for the 43rd Cork Film Festival is at an advanced stage, with a formidable showcase of new Irish cinema already in place. Running from October 11th to 18th, the festival will open with Divorcing Jack, an acerbic black comedy based on Colin Bateman's novel set in 1999, in the run-up to the election of Northern Ireland's new prime minister. The central character, an abrasive Belfast newspaper columnist, is played by David Thewlis, who hopes to be in Cork for the screening, along with David Caffrey, the young Irish director who makes an assured feature debut with the film.
Stephen Bradley's Sweety Barrett, featuring Brendan Gleeson and Liam Cunningham, which has its world premiere in Toronto tomorrow night, is also set for Cork, as is Joe O'Byrne's Meteor, starring Mike Myers and Brenda Fricker. Paul Tickell's Dublin drama, Crushproof - shown under the title of Hooligans at Galway Film Fleadh - is on the schedule, too, along with Roger Michell's Titanic Town, set in Belfast in 1972 and starring Julie Walters, and Jimmy Smallhorne's picture of a bisexual young Irish immigrant in New York, 2by4.
There are hopes that the prolific and fast-rising young Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers will return to his native Cork, where he is represented in the festival with two movies, the Todd Haynes glam-rock picture, Velvet Goldmine with Ewan McGregor, and the period drama, The Governess, with Minnie Driver. The centrepiece of the Irish documentary programme at Cork will be Southpaw, Liam McGrath's film of the Irish boxer Francie Barrett. The international line-up at Cork will include the Sundance prize winner, Pi.
Pat O'Connor's film of Dancing At Lughnasa, which opens here on September 25th, had its European premiere last night at the Venice Film Festival, where it is showing in competition. Among the other films in the running for prizes at the Venice awards ceremony next Sunday night are Warren Beatty's Bulworth, John Dahl's Rounders, Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat, Eric Rohmer's Conte d'Autumne, Gianni Amelio's The Way We Laughed, Tony Drazan's Hurly-burly, Julio Medem's Lovers Of The Arctic Circle, Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, and Anand Tucker's Hilary And Jackie.
Ettore Scola chairs this year's Venice jury, which includes his fellow directors Hector Babenco, Kathryn Bigelow and Reinhard Hauff, along with producer-director Ismail Merchant and actress Tilda Swinton. While Meryl Streep must be among the frontrunners for the Venice best actress award, the British critic Derek Malcolm is tipping Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths for their performances in Hilary And Jackie.
That, by the way, is not a misspelt title for a movie about the present First Lady of the US and one of her predecessors; in fact, it features Emily Watson as the cellist, Jacqueline du Pre, and Rachel Griffiths as her sister. "If either Watson or Griffiths, or both, don't get the best actress Lion at Venice," Derek Malcolm declared in The Guardian, "I'll eat my spaghetti out of my shoe."
Following his awards-laden and very witty short film, Thirty Five Aside, Irish director Damien O'Donnell is set to make his feature debut next month with East Is West, adapted by Ayub Khan Din from his own successful stage play. Om Puri and Linda Bassett will take the leading roles in the movie, a Film Four production in association with the BBC. The lighting cameraman is Brian Tufano, who lit Trainspotting. Film Four describes the movie as "the riotously funny story of an Anglo-Pakistani family coming to terms with the hurly-burly of life in the north of England in the early 1970s".
The Galaxie Lounge, a new enterprise devoted to bringing classic movies back to the big screen, gets under way in Dublin next Wednesday night with Peter Yates's superb thriller, Bullitt, featuring the super-cool Steve McQueen. It will be shown at Virgin Cinemas at 8.45 p.m. The season continues on consecutive Wednesdays with Arthur Penn's masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde (September 22nd), the Bruce Lee movie, Enter The Dragon (September 29th) and Brian De Palma's Scarface, starring Al Pacino (October 6th).
The long-in-gestation project, The Million Dollar Hotel, written by U2 lead singer Bono, is about to go into production with Wim Wenders directing. The story of a murder in a sleazy hotel, it will star Jeremy Davies from Saving Private Ryan, and Milla Jovovich from The Fifth Element. It will be produced by Icon, the company owned by Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey, and word has it that Gibson may be joining the movie's cast. Gibson intends to direct and star in the remake of Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 next year.
Neil Labute follows his abrasive In The Company Of Men with an even more provocative picture of male-female relationships in Your Friends & Neighbors, featuring Ben Stiller, Jason Patric, Catherine Keener and Nastassja Kinski, and due here in November. In a perhaps unlikely but very interesting choice of film-maker, LaBute has been assigned to direct the film version of A.S. Byatt's novel, Possession, which deals with the developing romance between two scholars investigating the clandestine love affair between two Victorian-era poets. LaBute is also planning to write and direct an updated remake of John M. Stahl's outstanding 1945 melodrama, Leave Her To Heaven, which starred Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde.
In another intriguing choice of director, Patricia Rozema, the Canadian film-maker who made I've Heard The Mermaids Singing and White Room, is about to film Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in London this month. The cast includes Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Frances O'Connor and Harold Pinter.
Billy Bob Thornton, who starred in and directed Sling Blade, for which he received a screenplay Oscar, is set to direct Daddy And Them, a low-budget American picture of a dysfunctional "white trash" family. It will feature Thornton himself, along with Laura Dern, Ben Affleck, Kelly Preston, Andy Griffith, Brenda Bleythn and Diane Ladd. Thornton will follow it next year with the movie of Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, which will star Matt Damon.
Applications are invited for the next round of Galway Film Centre/ RTE short script awards. RTE has increased its funding of the awards by £7,000 to £21,000. Three short films of five to 15 minutes' duration will be made, with a maximum grant of £7,000 each and the use of equipment and facilities of Galway Film Centre. For further details, telephone (091) 770748.
