AL PACINO gives his finest performance in years and Johnny Depp comes of age in Mike Newell's moody, taut and deeply involving gangster drama, Donnie Brasco, which opened in America three weeks ago and had its first screening outside the US when it was shown as the surprise film at the Dublin Film Festival last week. The film's incisive screenplay by Paul Attanasio (who scripted Quiz Show) is based on the hook, Donnie Brasco. My Undercover Life In The Mafia by Joseph Pistone, a daring FBI agent who successfully infiltrated the Mafia in New York in the late 1970s.
Johnny Depp plays Pistone, who operates under the pseudonym of Donnie Brasco, and Pacino is the minor gangster who warms to him as a surrogate son and leads him into the inner sanctum of crime. Pistone's dilemma is compounded by the deadly secrecy of his work, the long periods he has to be away and out of contact with his wife and three daughters, and the bond that grows between him and the Pacino character he intends to betray.
Depp, who shares screen space with Pacino for most of the movie, acquits himself admirably in the company of a brilliant actor on terrific form. The movie marks an assured departure for its director, Mike Newell, who skilfully builds the power and the tension while capturing an authentically sleazy 1970s look. Look out for Donnie Brasco when it opens here in May.
MULTIPLE Oscar nominees this year for Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen have started work on their new movie, The Big Lebowski, in Los Angeles. The cast features Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and a raft of actors from earlier Coen movies: John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Peter Stormare and Jon Polito. The Coens are making the film with Working Title, the London-based company which produced The Hudsucker Proxy and Fargo.
Asked about The Big Lebowski Working Title co-chairman Eric Fellner told Reel News: "It's set in 1992, just after the Gulf War, it's very hard to define. It's more Coens madness. It deals with bowling. Jeff Bridges plays a character called The Dude. It's closer to Raising Arizona than any of their films. It's a bizarre comedy."
LIMERICK's third Irish Film Festival takes place from April 23rd to 27th, promising the premieres of two new Irish films along with screenings of recent productions such as Snakes And Ladders, Nothing Personal Spaghetti Slow, The Disappearance Of Fin bar and November Afternoon. For the first time the festival will have a competitive short film section with prizes for best screen-play and best fiction film.
An archive programme will showcase the work of the late cinematographer and director, Patrick Carey, and will include a screening of Peter Lennon's 1967 The Rocky Road To Dublin. Other events will include a photographic exhibition on the making of Ryan's Daughter in West Kerry, a music soundtrack seminar, a video competition for schools, and an audience participation forum on the future of the film industry in Ireland.
STEVEN SPIELBERG has commenced principal photography on Amistad, his first film for his new studio, Dreamworks SKG. Based on a true story of an uprising by slaves aboard the Spanish slave ship, Amistad, and their subsequent trial in the US, the film features Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey, Nigel Hawthorne and Pete Postlethwaite. Very soon after finishing Amistail, Spielberg starts Saving Private Ryan, a second World War rescue drama starring actor-directors Tom Hanks and Edward Burns.
The very busy Anthony Hopkins, who has been co-starring with Antonio Banderas in The Mask Of Zorro, is set to follow Amistad with Meet Joe Black, a remake of the 1934 movie, Death Takes A Holiday. Brad Pitt will costar with Hopkins in the remake which shoots in June under director Martin Brest, who made Scent Of A Woman.
THE US indie director Todd Haynes follows Safe with Velvet Goldmine his picture of glitter rock in 1970s Britain, which starts shooting next week with three exceptionally busy young actors in the leading roles: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Toni Collette. Meanwhile Gary Glitter, the man who put the glitter into rock is set to play a bigamous taxi driver in the comedy, Iloveyoulovemelove, which takes its title from one of Gary's greatest hits and will be shot in Blabkpool with Jamhs Cellan Jones directing. The cast also features Ray Winstone, Anna Chancellor and Pauline Quirke.
ROBERT DE NIRO and Dustin Hoffman, both of whom were in Barry Levinson's Sleepers, will also feature in Levinson's next movie, Wag The Dog, to be made by New Line Cinema with De Niro's company, Tribeca Productions, Hoffman's Punch Productions and Levinson's Baltimore Pictures. Others in the movie's large cast are Woody Harrelson, Anne Heche, Denis Leary, Catherine O'Hara and country singers Merle Haggard and Wlllie Nelson.
Boaz Yakin who made Fresh, has started shooting A Price Below Rubies, a drama about the conflict between individual and society in a Jewish community in New York. The interesting cast includes English actor Christopher Eccleston (from. Shallow Grave and Jude), Renee Zeliweger (Jerry Maguire) and Juliana Marguiles (er).
AFTER Jane Austen and Henry James, will Oscar Wilde be the next literary source for filmmakers? William P. Cartlidge, who produced Educating Rita, is producing a film of An Ideal Husband, which will feature Simon Callow, Greg Wise and Juliet Stevenson. And the biopic, Wilde, starring Stephen Fry as Oscar, is due to have its launch at Cannes.
