Crisis? What crisis? Any doubts about the prospects for cinema attendances during the gloom-and-doom credit crunch were dispelled when last weekend's US box-office figures doubled those of the corresponding weekend last year.
Quantum of Solace opened in the US after two weeks topping box-office charts across Europe. Despite unsurprisingly mixed US reviews, it reaped $67 million in its first three days, compared to $40 million for Casino Royale over the same weekend in 2006.
The US box-office benefits were spread across the board. Animated sequel Madagscar: Escape 2 Africa clocked up more than $116 million after 10 days on release. Slacker comedy Role Models, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, made $38 million over the same period. And Danny Boyle's exhilarating Slumdog Millionaire - my early tip as the dark horse for the best picture Oscar - registered the highest per-screen average takings of any film on limited US release this year.
Now Twilight, the first in a proposed movie franchise based on Stephanie Meyer's novels in which a reclusive teenage girl (Kristen Stewart) falls for a vampire, is building such momentum that it's expected to go through the roof when it opens in the US today, ahead of its Irish opening on December 19th.
Then again, movies have always boomed in times of recession.
Birthistle on a roll
Irish actress Eva Birthistle plays a key role in Brazuca, Henrique Goldman's film on the life and death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian mistaken for a terrorist and shot dead by police on a London Underground train in 2005. Filming completed last week on the production, featuring Selton Mello as de Menezes and Birthistle as the woman for whom he falls.
Birthistle made her mark in TV soap Glenroe in the 1980s and went on feature in Alan Gilsenan's Timbuktu, Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto and Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching. In 2004 she was voted best actress by the London Film Critics Circle for her starring role in Ken Loach's Ae Fond Kiss. She will be seen next in Tom Shankland's Christmas-set horror movie, The Children, which opens here on December 5th.
Up-and-comer proves his Worth
Australian actor Sam Worthington (32) is hardly a household name, being best known for the arthouse hit Somersault, but that's set to change over the next 12 months. He co-stars with Christian Bale in the action extravaganza Terminator Salvation, which opens in May. He takes the lead in James Cameron's first narrative feature since Titanic, the futuristic epic Avatar, set for Christmas release next year. And he joins Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet in another 2009 release, the marital drama Last Night.
In January, Worthington and Helen Mirren co-star as Mossad agents in Debt. He follows that with the starring role of Perseus in a big- budget remake of the 1981 sword-and-sandal saga, Clash of the Titans.
A shutter bug speaks out
"Real pictures on real film"
is how award-winning Irish photographer David Farrell describes his work, adding that he has "nothing against digital", in Donald Taylor Black's illuminating new documentary David Farrell - Elusive Moments.
Farrell is expansive in discussing his work, from finding apparently minor details that take on greater significance to discussing his Innocent Landscapes project dealing with the searches for "disappeared" IRA victims in rugged terrain. The film screens at the IFI in Dublin on Sunday at 1pm, after which Farrell and Taylor Black will discuss it.
Say hello to Dalí
It's not unusual to wait decades for a movie on a real-life subject, only for two or three to turn up at once, as happened with rival biopics planned on Michael Collins, Truman Capote, Wyatt Earp and Alexander the Great. Now there are three competing movies on Salvador Dalí.
Already completed is Paul Morrison's Little Ashes featuring Twilight star Robert Pattinson as the young Dalí. Gattaca director Andrew Niccol has Al Pacino attached to star in Dalí I: The Surreal Story. And Antonio Banderas is set to play the painter in Dalí, to be directed by Simon West. Surreal, indeed.
Welcome to Austrian gay TV
Actor-screenwriter Sacha Baron Cohen revealed a penchant for unusually long titles with the 12-word Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The full title of his next star vehicle, which opens next summer, is over twice as long: Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt.
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
