Ireland gets the focus group treatment

Test screenings, the controversial process whereby producers seek to discover what it is the public thinks of their upcoming releases, have, till lately, proved beyond the means of most smaller productions.

A new initiative by the Irish Film Board seeks to rectify that situation. The free scheme will allow producers to show a finished or almost complete feature to an independent audience with no previous knowledge to gauge which parts of the film work best and which audiences are likely to want to see in the final cut.

"This is one of several programs BSE/IFB shall be initiating or strengthening to further our support for the effective distribution of Irish films at home and abroad," says Mark Woods, the Film Board's executive officer.

Oh, be quiet you at the back. Let's give it a chance, at least.

Dublin & the great Beyond

In an up-and-down year for the Irish film industry, good news comes with the announcement that Beyond International, one of Australia's leading production and distribution companies, has decided to locate its head office for multinational activities in Dublin.

Beyond, the company behind such hits as Strictly Ballroom, Lantana and Chopper, appears to have been attracted to Ireland by its sophisticated telecommunications networks and what is still seen as a stable economic environment. Michael Murphy, the former Director of Programmes at TV3, has been appointed a director of the venture. "Ireland's relationship with the EU," he says, "the largest TV market in the world, makes it an ideal location."

A tuxedo for the Hulk?

And, now, the latest from the 007 tickertape. "I haven't got a bloody clue where this all started," Aussie hunk Eric Bana said, denying reports that he had agreed to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond.

Maybe the story emerged because he was one of the few actors under the age of 60 with four working limbs who had yet to rule himself out. Ricky Tomlinson may still be in with a shot.

Another fine mess

Laurel and Hardy fans learned this week that the duo had achieved a feat previously thought beyond even their considerable comic gifts: being funny in German. Russian archivists have uncovered a 1931 film, previously thought lost, named Spuk um Mitternacht (Spook at Midnight), in which Dick and Doof, as the boys were known in Germany, trade ill-tempered quips in the language of Goethe.

Laurel and Hardy were enormously popular in Germany up until 1938, when their films fell foul of the Nazis' trade ban on US movies. History does not relate if Goering took particular offence at the team, whose German names translate as Fat and Stupid.

KKK classic can't get a break

A controversial dispute came to a close in Los Angeles earlier this week when the excellent Silent Movie Theatre was forced to cancel a proposed screening of D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking The Birth of a Nation. Proprietor Charlie Lustman had made clear that he regarded the 1915 movie, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan and features horribly racist caricatures, as a "shameful stain" on race relations, but that this did not diminish his view of its historical importance. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was unconvinced. "It runs the risk of creating unrest and hate crimes," NAACP president Geraldine Washington said. "It's just too risky to take a chance."

In a twist which lent irony to Washington's remarks, Lustman was forced to relent after receiving threatening phone calls.

Remakes to DC: drop dead

Each week news reaches Reel News of another re-imagining of some ghastly cinematic atrocity best left to the worms, but nothing prepared us for the twin catastrophes announced separately over the last few days. Which would be most likely to encourage you to ram your head into a threshing machine? A film version of Flash Gordon, directed by Stephen Sommers, perpetrator of The Mummy and Van Helsing, or a Broadway exhumation of Pink Floyd's horrific The Wall, produced by Harvey Weinstein? Death just lost its sting a little, didn't it?