IRISH costume designer Consolata Boyle, an Oscar nominee for The Queenthis year, is moving from one Churchill project to another. Last month she worked on James MacDonald's BBC film of Caryl Churchill's cloning play, A Number(staged at the Peacock in Dublin last February), which features Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans.
She is now in pre-production on Churchill at War, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's HBO film starring Brendan Gleeson as Winston Churchill. Produced by director brothers Ridley and Tony Scott, it's a follow-up to The Gathering Storm, which featured Albert Finney as Churchill.
Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, the Irish costume designer whose recent credits include Breakfast on Plutoand The Wind That Shakes the Barley, is now working on Julian Jarrold's cinema treatment of Brideshead Revisited, which stars Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Sebastian Flyte, with Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon and Hayley Atwell.
News of his demise greatly exaggerated
Media reports that the new Woody Allen movie Cassandra's Dreamwas turned down for Cannes this year and has been rejected by all the major US distributors have proved to be unfounded. It transpires that Cannes offered the closing-night slot to the film, but Allen opted to wait for the Venice festival in early autumn. And the Weinstein Company has acquired the US distribution rights to the movie, which stars Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell and Tom Wilkinson, and will release it towards the end of the year.
Born Free composer in the Green Room
Prolific English composer John Barry is the subject of a special edition of Green Room Cinema at 8.30pm tomorrow on RTÉ Lyric FM, in which presenter Aedin Gormley interviews Barry at his New York home. Now 73, Barry has won four Oscars for his soundtrack music - on Born Free, The Lion in Winter, Mary, Out of Africaand Dances With Wolves- along with a fifth for the title song of Born Free. His many other credits include the memorable scores for The Chase, Midnight Cowboy, Somewhere in Time, Chaplinand 11 James Bond movies. Gormley also recorded an interview with stage and screen veteran Elaine Stritch in New York, to be broadcast tomorrow week on Green Room Cinema.
The bitches are back
The remakes keep on coming. George Cukor's scintillatingly bitchy 1939 classic The Womenfinally has the green light for a contemporary make-over, with Diane English directing a cast led by Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Candice Bergen, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith - and Mick Jagger is one of the producers. Reese Witherspoon will produce and star in the remake of another 1939 movie, Mitchell Leisen's comedy Midnight, which starred Claudette Colbert and John Barrymore; Michael Arndt, an Oscar winner this year for Little Miss Sunshine, is writing the screenplay.
Myers does a Mitty
The long-in-gestation plan to remake The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which had been developed with Jim Carrey in mind, is going ahead with Mike Myers cast as the fantasist originally played by Danny Kaye in the 1947 movie. And indie stalwart Lodge Kerrigan, who directed Claire Dolan and Keane, has been signed to write and direct Thieves, which transposes Andre Techine's 1996 French thriller Les Voleurs, which starred Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil, to a New Orleans setting.
Kickin' ass in Temple Bar
Action choreographer, stunt co-ordinator and actor Roger Yuan will present a masterclass, organised by Filmbase, at the Ark in Temple Bar, Dublin at 2pm tomorrow. Yuan's many credits include Escape From LA, Lethal Weapon 4, Batman Begins, Bulletproof Monk, Shanghai Noonand Mark Mahon's recently completed Irish production Strength and Honour. During tomorrow's event, The Art of Action, Yuan will rehearse action sequences with actors, after which cameras will be introduced and the dynamics of shooting stunts and choreographed action will be deconstructed. Yuan will take questions from the audience afterwards. Tickets cost €20. www.filmbase.ie
