TWO high-profile Danish directors are developing projects that are believed to be attacks on their country's most famous film exports - Lars von Trier and the Dogme movement.
Anders Thomas Jensen (Brothers) has written Spraengfarlig Bombe/ Explosive Bomb, in which a man takes his two children to the cinema to see a new film by a critically acclaimed arthouse director. But the film is terrible and the father asks for his money back. The film is regarded as Jensen's response to Trier's widely reported comments that Jensen was too prolific for his own good.
Meanwhile, Ole Bornedal, who made the horror-thriller Nightwatch, is working on a new family film. The Substitute stars Dogme actor-director Paprika Steen as a teacher who turns out to be an alien. It is being produced under the new Fantasia label, itself a reaction to the Dogme label, in that Fantasia films are aiming for a minimum of 350,000 ticket sales each, a feat annually achieved by just five Danish films on average.
What wubbish
"Standards have really dropped since Barry Norman's day," remarked a guest on the BBC's Film 2005 this week. Too true, even though that comment was made in jest to presenter Jonathan Ross during what was supposed to be a discussion on the UK rerelease of the original Japanese version of Godzilla. The speaker was an English actor dressed in a very tacky outfit that supposedly resembled Godzilla, and the conversation between him and Ross plumbed the depths with tired gags about Richard and Judy, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.
It's a shame, given the decades that Norman spent establishing the show, and Ross's own terrific flair as a chat show and radio programme host. It could be worse, I guess - such as Jonathan's brother, Paul Ross, who appears very easily pleased by the movies he writes about in one of the UK tabloids.
Super size me
New at Cork Film Festival is a fringe event, Silent Light, a one-day celebration of films in the Super 8 format, which kicks off at 2pm tomorrow in the Unitarian Church on Princes Street. The organisers note that that this is a festival of firsts: the first dedicated Super 8 film festival held in Ireland; the first fringe event during the Cork Film Festival; and the first arts event to be held in the 18th-century church.
The programme includes the Irish premiere of British director Ben Crowe's The Man Who Met Himself, which this year had the distinction of being the first short film shot entirely on Super 8 to be screened at Cannes. The programme includes a photographic exhibition of Super 8 stills, some vintage cartoons for children and a sale of Super 8 equipment and film-related books, along with an open-projector session where members of the public are invited to bring along and show any old Super 8 footage they may have.
[ www.corksuper8fringe.coOpens in new window ]
Writer's career is airborne
Screenwriter Billy Ray, who made the most promising directorial debut of last year in Shatterd Glass, has signed Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe to star in his second feature. Breach tells the true story of a trainee FBI agent assigned to a top secret division where he begins to suspect that his arrogant employer may represent a security risk. Ray also wrote the screenplay for the airplane thriller Flightplan, which stars Jodie Foster and Shattered Glass actor Peter Sarsgaard and has been a big hit in the US despite protests from flight attendants that it portrays them as rude and uncaring.
Close shave for Andie
It was probably just as well that plans were changed and Andie McDowell and Sinéad O'Connor did not turn up at the same time for the Late Late Show two weeks ago, when McDowell was in Dublin for the world premiere of Tara Road. In the current issue of Uncut magazine, O'Connor lists McDowell as her "pet hate".
She elaborates: "I haven't seen many films she's been in, but I absolutely hate those hair commercials she's done. They drive me crazy. She looks so prim and proper in them - if I ever get the opportunity to meeet her, I'm going to shave all her hair off."
