Inside I'm Dancing, which won the audience award at the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival last Sunday, is Damien O'Donnell's first feature set and shot on his Dublin home turf following his two serious comedies in the north of England, East is East and Heartlands. O'Donnell's new film is stamped with his trademark blending of humanity and humour as it brings together two young men in a home for the disabled.
Michael (Steven Robertson), who has cerebral palsy and has effectively been abandoned by his barrister father, is taken under the wing of Rory (James McAvoy), a brash, coarse newcomer with muscular dystrophy. Working from an incisive screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, O'Donnell sensitively explores the impediments faced by the disabled - through lack of wheelchair access, social prejudice and condescension, and in satisfying their own sexual needs - in an unsentimental film that proves as witty as it is touching, and graced with terrific performances from its two young actors.
The Edinburgh jury named Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer Of Love as the winner of the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film, marking a double for Pawlikowski, who won the award four years ago with Last Resort. Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me took the Guardian New Directors Award, and the festival's former director, Jim Hickey, won the Grierson Award for his documentary, And So Goodbye.
The festival closed on Sunday night with Untold Scandal, South Korean director EJ Yong's lavish new treatment of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, shown as a late replacement for Wong Kar-wai's 2046, which, though screened in competition at Cannes in May, remains incomplete and continues in post-production.
Votes in for top Irish films
Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy was voted the best Irish film of all time in a poll conducted by Film Ireland magazine to mark the publication of its 100th issue today. John Crowley's Intermission came second in the poll, followed by two Jim Sheridan films, My Left Foot in third and In the Name of the Father, which tied for fourth place with Paddy Breathnach's I Went Down, and Alan Parker's The Commitments, which ranked fifth.
Full details are in the new issue of Film Ireland, along with personal top fives from film writers and critics; articles by Irish film stalwarts Bob Quinn and Lelia Doolan; and interviews with directors Damien O'Donnell, Joe Comerford and Morgan Spurlock, and Irish Film Board chief executive Mark Woods.
Back to the Quik Stop
Ten years after his début with Clerks, director Kevin Smith is planning a sequel irreverently titled The Passion of the Clerks, which is due to start shooting in January. Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, who played the leads in the original, will reprise their roles in a story that catches up with the employees of the Quik Stop convenience store after a decade. Smith himself and Jason Mewes will also re-appear as Jay and Silent Bob.
Made for just $27,575 - although said to have cost $230,000 after post-production work - Clerks was a landmark in 1990s independent US cinema, winning prizes at Sundance and Cannes and making over $3 million in the US. Smith is also working on the screenplay for a Miramax movie based on the comic book, The Green Hornet.
A zing at the Ring
Shooting is now underway in Switzerland on The Ring Thing, a parody of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It claims that Middle Earth is actually in Switzerland and will take humorous potshots at "bizarre curiosities" of Swiss life. The producers hope that it will enjoy the same success as (T)Raumschiff Surprise - Periode 1, the German spoof on Star Trek and Star Wars, which has been a massive box-office hit in Germany, Switzerland and Austria over the past few months.
