SHOOTING is now underway in Dublin and London on The League of Gentlemen - Royston Vasey, a feature film spin-off of the UK TV series. Directed by Steve Bendelack, it comes from the team behind the award-winning series, which was created by and stars Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson.
The movie sees the fictional world of Royston Vasey facing apocalypse. The only way to avert disaster is for a nightmarish cast of characters to find their way into the real world and confront their creators. From present-day Soho to 17th-century Britain, the residents must overcome countless bizarre obstacles in their bid to return Royston Vasey to safety.
The film is a Universal Studios and FilmFour presentation of a Tiger Aspect Pictures production in association with the Irish company, Hell's Kitchen International.
A surprise in the US Top 10
US distributor Eamonn Bowles, a regular visitor to Galway Film Fleadh, scored a surprise box-office hit in the US last weekend when his low-budget Woman, Thou Art Loosed made over $2.3 million from a release on just 408 screens, enough to place it seventh on the top 10 for the week. The last film to enter the US top 10 while playing on so few screens was Steven Spielberg's Amistad in 1997, and this is the first film from Bowles's company, Magnolia Pictures, to achieve such success.
Aimed primarily at African-American churchgoers and adapted from the self-help book of the same title by Bishop T.D. Jakes, the film features Jakes as himself as he counsels a young woman (played by Kimberley Else) who is on Death Row and helps her to reconcile herself with her past abuse and drug addiction.
Magnolia's biggest hits to date have been the documentaries Capturing the Friedmans and Control Room.
An offer he could refuse
Director Antoine Fuqua has made an abrupt exit from American Gangster, the factually based story of Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, who won an Oscar for Fuqua's Training Day. Set to start shooting next month, the film is scripted by Steve Zaillian and features Benicio Del Toro as a dogged New York detective. Fuqua left the production last Friday, citing that old reliable, "creative differences". A Universal spokesman said that the studio remains committed to the project.
Fuqua, who made King Arthur on location in Ireland last year, will now probably direct The Untouchables: Capone Rising, a prequel to Brian De Palma's 1987 blockbuster.
Bushites have an anti-Moore
As US election day looms, a Republican riposte to Michael Moore has emerged in Celsius 41.11 - The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die, a documentary made in six weeks and billed as "The Truth Behind the Lies of Fahrenheit 9/11!" The film, which had its US première last week, offers a point-by-point defence of President Bush by politicians, journalists and scholars.
"We could have gone wall to wall with red meat on this, but we purposely didn't," says the film's writer and producer, Lionel Chetwynd, whose credits include the screenplay for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and documentaries on D-Day, Vietnam and September 11th. "The cheap shots may be entertaining in Moore's film, but we wanted to make the intellectual case and go beyond lecturing to the converted."
Financed and produced by conservative group Citizens United, the film juxtaposes an image of the World Trade Centre burning with Moore declaring, "This needs to be said on national television. There is no terrorist threat."
Wringing laughs from Iraq
Having dared to make a comedy set during the Holocaust in Life Is Beautiful, Italian actor-writer-director Roberto Benigni is now planning a comedy, La Tigre e le Neve, set during the Iraq war. Benigni will take the lead, as a poet caught up in events in Iraq during March 2003, when the US launched its attack.
"War is the background of the film," Benigni told Italian radio, "and my character is involved in it after this poet ends up in Iraq by pure chance. What is extraordinary is his vision of the world. This is one person representing all the people in the world."
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
