IN a major coup, the 9th Galway Film Fleadh has secured the world premiere of the new Neil Jordan film, The Butcher Boy, as its closing night presentation on Sunday, July 13th. Adapted by Jordan and Patrick McCabe from McCabe's extraordinary novel, the film features young newcomer Eamon Owens in the title role with Stephen Rea as his father and Fiona Shaw as his nemesis, Mrs Nugent. The cast also includes Sinead O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson, Milo O'Shea, Rosaleen Linehan, Tom Hickey, Gina Moxley, Ardal O'Hanlon, Sean Hughes and Patrick McCabe himself.
The screening of The Butcher Boy will conclude Galway's retrospective programme, which will feature all the films directed by Neil Jordan and a public interview with Jordan at 6 p.m. on July 13th. The fleadh will also screen all three films directed by Anthony Minghella - Truly Madly Deeply, Mr Wonderful and The English Patient - who will present a masterclass on film directing on the afternoon of July 12th.
The fleadh will open on July 8th with the world premiere of Tom Collins's Bogwoman, which spans two decades in its story of a Derry woman's voyage of self-discovery and culminates in her involvement in the civil rights movement of the late 1960s. The film stars Rachael Dowling, Peter Mullen and Sean Mc Ginley. Three further Irish features having their world premieres at Galway will be Tommy McArdle's Angela Mooney Dies Again, starring Mia Farrow, Brendan Glecson and Patrick Bergin; Jeremiah Cullinane's action-thriller, Criminal Affairs, the Irish-directed movie from Roger Corman's Connemara studio; and How To Cheat In Your Leaving Cert, the first feature from Graham Jones.
The Irish and Irish-made movies on the Galway programme will also include Philippe Rousselot's The Serpent's Kiss, Johnny Gogan's The Last Bus Home, Trish McAdam's Snakes And Ladders, Owen McPolin's Drinkling Crude, Ronan O'Leary's Driftwood and Valerio Jalongo's Spaghetti Slow.
EWAN McGREGOR, Liam Neeson and Natalie Portman have been cast in the leading roles in George Lucas's long-planned next Star Wars film, the first in a new trilogy, which has gone into production at Leavesden Studios outside London. Such is the level of secrecy and security surrounding the production that even its title has not been revealed, although the working title is believed to be Star Wars: The Balance Of The Force. The new trilogy will be a "prequel" to the three Star Wars movies re-released this year.
What is known about the new film is that Ewan McGregor plays the young Obi Wan Kenobi, the character played by Alec Guinness in the previous Star Wars movies. Liam Neeson will play a Jedi master who is the mentor to a group of 12 knights, and Natalie Portman (from Leon and Everyone Says I Love You) is cast as the teenage girl who will become the mother of the twins, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. The young Anakin Skywalker - who grows up to become Darth Vader - will be played by eight-year-old Jake Lloyd from Jingle All The Way and the imminent Unhook The Stars.
Such is the complexity of the production - with an estimated 1,500 shots of computer-generated imagery to be added after the live-action shoot is completed - that the movie is not likely to be released until May 1999. Parts two and three, which may be titled The Rise Of The Empire and The Fall Of The Jedi, are expected to follow in 2001 and 2003. After its hugely successful re-release this year, the first Star Wars trilogy has made over $2 billion - and a further $4 billion in merchandising revenues.
JOINING Tom Hanks and Edward Burns in the cast of Saving Private Ryan, which starts shooting in Curracloe, Co Wexford this month, are Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Adam Goldberg and Barry Pepper ... Joining Kenneth Branagh in the cast of Woody Allen's untitled autumn production will be Leonardo DiCaprio and Drew Barrymore ... Joining The Spice Girls in the truly eclectic cast of Spice The Movie, now shooting in London, are Richard E. Grant, Michael Barrymore, Frank Bruno, Alan Cumming, Hugh Laurie, Jools Holland, Richard Briers, Stephen Fry and Claire Rushbrook.
YOU can't budge a movie by its trailer, but the early footage I've seen from James Cameron's epic, Titanic, marks it out as one of the most exciting-looking movies in years. There is a remarkable depth and scale to the images, suggesting that every cent of the movie's huge budget will show up on the screen. That escalating budget, estimated in the region of $190 million, has already seen the movie slagged off by some commentators, none of whom has seen the film itself.
In fact, nobody will see the finished product for quite some time. To allow Cameron to complete the exhaustive post-production process, the US release date of Titanic has been moved from July 4th to December 19th, and it is set to open in Ireland on January 9th. The film features Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Bill Paxton and Kathy Bates, with the young Irish actor, Jason Barry, playing DiCaprio's best friend.
Meanwhile, Bigas Luna, the Spanish director of Jamon Jamon and Golden Balls, is in post-production on The Titanic Chambermaid, which opens in France in November. Set in 1912, it features Olivier Martinez as a young French foundry worker who wins first prize in a contest - a trip to Southampton to see the Titanic set sail - and becomes captivated by a young woman (Romane Bohringer) who has been hired as a chambermaid on board the ill-fated liner.
THIS year's Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, which runs from August 6th to 16th, invited 30 American film-makers to select one film each for a programme that will "rediscover the most original, influential and undervalued works to come out of the US during the past half-century". Martin Scorsese went right back to 1946 for his choice, Jacques Tourneur's Canyon Passage, while the most recent production selected was Tim Burton's Ed Wood chosen by Paul Morrissey.
Francis Ford Coppola opted for Marion Brando's One-Eyed Jacks, Allison Anders for Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow, Steven Spielberg for David Lean's Lawrence Of Arabia, John Carpenter for Orson Welles's Chimes At Midnight and Wayne Wang for John Boorman's-Point Blank. Among the more surprising selections were Woody Allen's choice of Sidney Lumet's The Hill, John Waters picking Joseph Losey's Boom! and Gus Van Sant picking Robert Redford's Ordinary People. Less surprising was David Lynch opting for Stanley Kubrick's Lolita.
FURTHER to last week's report on the planned renovation of the Screen at D'Olier Street, the cinema will remain open until further notice.
A report in Screen International this week states the new Stephen Frears film, Hi-Lo Country "will start shooting in September in Ireland for nine weeks" and adds that the movie, which will star Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup, is "a drama set in the 1950s midWest". But the midWest in question is in America, and a phone call to PolyGram, who will release the movie here, said that the Screen International story was erroneous. The film will be shot in New Mexico, not in Ireland.
