IT SEEMS that no major film is fit to be unspooled these days without an accompanying boycott. The upcoming adaptation of Arthur Golden’s fat novel Memoirs of a Geisha is the latest picture to generate ire.
Director Rob Marshall’s decision to cast Chinese actors – notably the fragrant Zhang Ziyi – as Japanese geishas has, somewhat inconveniently, managed to irritate audiences in two massive markets. While Japanese punters have been simmering huffily, some Chinese movie fans, mindful of the horrors Japan visited on their country in the 1930s, have gone positively ballistic. “She’s sold her soul and betrayed her country,” one much-quoted Chinese blogger said of Zhang Ziyi. “Hacking her to death would not be good enough.”
Perhaps boycotting Chinese-Americans can spend the evening with those African-American neighbours who have obeyed sensitive community leaders’ calls to shun Jim Sheridan’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg’s Munich will be released here early next year.
As good as Dead
Dead Long Enough, Tommy Collins’s debut feature, has, following a triumphant screening in Donegal, where the film is set, gone on to win the audience prize at the Cardiff Screen Festival. “I’m delighted to have won the award, especially in Cardiff, as we received a chunk of change from the Welsh Film Board and Welsh Television,” Collins told Irish Film and Television Network news.
Starring Michael Sheen, Douglas Henshall and, erm, Joe Pasquale, Dead Long Enough follows two brothers as they return to the Donegal town where they worked 16 years earlier. The producers plan a commercial release in March.
There was further Irish success at the Venice International Short Film Festival, where Conor McDermottroe’s evocative A Woman’s Hair scooped joint Best International Short.
Sweet deal for Irish shorts
The strangest things happen in The Sugar Club. On 8th January and every second Sunday thereafter, that central Dublin fleshpot will host a programme of Irish shorts entitled The Sunday Ghetto. Entry is a reasonable €5, and following the films there will be music and booze till late. Anybody interested in submitting their shorts for screening should contact SundayGhetto@gmail.com for further information.
Sundance back to basics
The criticism, voiced most forcefully in Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures, that, in the era of pseudo-independent studios such as Miramax, the Sundance Festival has long ceased to engage with genuine shoestring cinema seems to have finally gotten through to the event’s organisers.
“Usually, we get our information from normal sources – producers, sales reps and agents. But a lot of this festival’s lineup will be unknown even to them,” programming director John Cooper said when announcing details of January’s jamboree.
Sure enough, a scan of the programme, which features at least three films focusing on the Iraq conflict, reveals no mention of John Turturro or Steve Buscemi.
But fear not, indie fans; that other Sundance icon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, does turn up in Laurie Collyer’s Sherrybaby. “I don’t know how broadly these films will play,” festival director Geoffrey Gilmore said. “What I’m not worried about, though, is the quality of the films.”
Believe it or nuts
Depp not to star in Burton flick shock! Tim Burton is to direct plastic-faced loon Jim Carrey in a film based on the exploits of cartoonist Robert Ripley, creator of the syndicated Believe It or Not! strip. Apparently Ripley was some sort of barmy daredevil who travelled the world seeking out eight-headed cows and babies with tentacles to include in his series. The story should suit Mr Burton quite nicely.
Royale treatment for Dench
Distraught now that we are unable to run any more stories speculating as to the identity of the next James Bond, Reel News asked our good friend Judi Dench to confirm that she would be returning opposite Daniel Craig as M in Casino Royale. “Yes, I am in it,” she said. So, is M the only woman in the films not in love with Bond? “Oh I think she is absolutely mad about him,” the Dame gushed.
Book passage now
Do readers know of any austere totalitarian regimes where cinema is still banned? The question is prompted by the news that Madonna, star of Shanghai Surprise, wife of the perpetrator of Revolver, hopes to direct a film. We shouldn’t have to emigrate to this ascetic People’s Republic until 2007 or so.
