The moving and superbly acted US TV film based on Colm Toibin's novel The Blackwater Lightship took two awards at the 44th Monte Carlo TV Festival last weekend: best director for John Erman, and the Prix SIGNIS award for its "promotion of better understanding between peoples".
Shot in Ireland and skilfully adapted for the screen by Shane Connaughton, the film features Keith McErlean (from Bachelors Walk and Goldfish Memory) as a young gay Irishman dying with Aids and spending his last weeks with three generations of women in his family - his sister (Gina McKee), mother (Dianne Wiest) and grandmother (Angela Lansbury). At the Monte Carlo ceremony, Erman thanked the festival for giving the award to an American director and issued an apology for the US government and its president's part in the Iraq war.
Anne-Marie Duff (from The Magdalene Sisters) took the best actress award in Monte Carlo for the Channel 4 series Shameless, which was named European production of the year. Best mini-series went to Andrei Konchalovsky for The Lion in Winter, starring Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart, and the work of Irish costume designer Consolata Boyle.
The awards for outstanding comedy and drama productions went to the HBO series Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, respectively.
'Goldfish' bowls 'em over
Goldfish Memory, Liz Gill's Dublin-set romantic comedy, received the best director award at the Peñíscola Comedy Film Festival in Spain and the audience award for best film at the Turin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Goldfish Memory has now won six international festival audience awards and three jury prizes for best film. It opens in the US later this month, in Spain next month and in the UK and Italy in September.
Family friendly box-office
No 18-cert films and just four with the PG-15 restriction figure on the Irish box-office top 10 for the first half of 2004. Leading the field with takings of €2.7 million is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PG), followed by The Day After Tomorrow (12PG) with €2.3m, The Passion of the Christ (15PG) on €2.2m, and The Return of the King (12PG) with €2m, although that took a another €2.8m in the final fortnight of 2003. Two 15PG movies, Starsky & Hutch and Troy, are next with €1.9m each.
Completing the top 10 are three PG-rated releases - Scary Movie 3 (€1.5m), School of Rock (€1.4m) and Scooby-Doo 2 (€1.3m) - and the 15PG-rated The Last Samurai, also on €1.3m.
Shrek 2 has already overtaken the entire top 10 after just a week on release here and a weekend of preview screenings, and Spider-Man 2 is expected to be hot on its heels when it opens next week.
Figures are based on data compiled by Carlton Screen Advertising and Nielsen/EDI.
Scene stealer Quentin
As he dawdles over his long-in-gestation war movie Inglorious Bastards, Quentin Tarantino has been paid $1 to film a scene in Sin City, based on the graphic novel series by Frank Miller, who co-directs the movie with Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino filmed a scene in Austin, Texas featuring Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro and Brittany Murphy. The film also stars Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood and Nick Stahl.
Earlier this year, Tarantino paid Rodriguez $1 to compose the score for Kill Bill Vol 2.
Jim's movie moments
This year's James Joyce celebrations continue at the Irish Film Institute on Saturday, July 17th, with an event to mark Joyce's role as manager of Ireland's first full-time cinema, the Volta on Mary St in Dublin, which opened in 1909.
Luke McKernan, who has written about the place of the Volta in film culture, has traced some films exhibited by Joyce at the cinema. He will introduce a selection of them with piano accompaniment by Conor Linehan. www.ifi.ie
Dogs and lampposts
Maria De Medeiros, the Portuguese actress whose films include Henry & June and Pulp Fiction, has followed her first film as a director, April Captains, with Je t'Aime.Moi Non Plus, a documentary on the love-hate relationship between film directors and critics. It addresses, among other issues, the attempts by some reviewers to influence others' opinions during post-screening chats; the relative dearth of women film critics; and the physical and psychological effects of seeing movies at film festivals, where the combination of odd screening times and sleep deprivation can result in critics falling asleep at movies and even "remembering" scenes that don't actually exist.
In one interview, Ken Loach compares the relationship between the director and the critic to that "between a lamppost and a dog". Critic Alexander Walker, who died last year, recalls being scolded and slapped in the face by Ken Russell on live television, and he explains his policy of never walking out of movies before they're over: "Like a prostitute, I never refuse a client."
