Michael Dwyeron film.
Go ahead Cannes, make Mr Eastwood's day
Clint Eastwood is in competition for the fifth time at Cannes next month with Changeling, a 1920s-set thriller starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich.
Steven Soderbergh will present his two films on Che Guevara (played by Benicio Del Toro), The Argentineand Guerilla. The other US film in competition is screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directing debut Synecdoche, New York, featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are aiming for a record third Palme d'Or - they won for Rosettaand L'Enfant- with The Silence of Lorna. The competition includes the new films from Atom Egoyan ( Adoration), Wim Wenders ( The Palmero Shooting), Arnaud Descheplin ( A Christmas Tale), Nuri Bilge Ceylan ( Three Monkeys) and Jia Zhangke ( 24 City).
Among the official selection showing out of competition are Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, animated DreamWorks comedy Kung Fu Panda, Marco Tullio Giordana's Sangue Pazzo, Terence Davies's Of Time and City, Emir Kusturica's footballer documentary Maradonna, and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelonawith Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson.
Sean Penn is president of the jury, which includes Natalie Portman and Alfonso Cuaron. The Festival de Cannes runs from May 14th-25th.
One of the outstanding film soundtrack composers and the winner of six Oscars, John Barry will be guest of honour at the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's performance of some of his finest scores at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on June 20th.
The enticing programme includes suites from Dances with Wolves and Barry's James Bond scores, along with his superb themes for Zulu, Somewhere in Time, Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa, Born Free and Chaplin.
Presented by RTÉ Lyric FM's Movies and Musicals show and hosted by Aedín Gormley, the concert will be broadcast live on Lyric.
An event not to be missed. www.nch.ie
From Kathmandu to Edinburgh
Neasa Ní Chianáin's controversial Fairytale of Kathmandu, dealing with poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh's activities in Nepal, is one of 22 films competing for the best documentary feature award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June. It was the subject of extensive media debate when shown at the Dublin festival and on RTÉ this year.
Documentaries competing at Edinburgh include Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, on the Abu Ghraib prison; Werner Herzog's Antarctica-set Encounters at the End of the World; James Marsh's Man on Wire, detailing a Frenchman's progress eight times across a wire suspended 1,350 feet above ground between the former Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in 1974; and Chris Waitt's reflections on his disastrous affairs in A Complete History of My Sexual Failures.
Edinburgh opens on June 18th with John Maybury's The Edge of Love, featuring Matthew Rhys as Dylan Thomas, with Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy.
Odeon-UCI acquires more Irish multiplexes
The Odeon and UCI Cinemas Group, the market leader in UK exhibition, has acquired the five Irish multi-screen complexes owned by Storm Cinemas. The venues are in Cavan, Limerick, Naas, Portlaoise and Waterford. Odeon UCI now operates and manages 61 screens at eight sites in Ireland.
Ireland's First Wave at the IFI
"The First Wave of Irish Filmmakers" is the theme of a five-week evening course beginning at the IFI in Dublin next Tuesday night with Poitín, followed by a discussion with its director, Bob Quinn.
The programme continues on consecutive Tuesdays with Cathal Black's Pigs, Pat Murphy's Maeve, the late Kieran Hickey's Exposureand Joe Comerford's Down the Corner.
www.irishfilm.ie
Lee switches from Lust, Cautionto comedy
Versatile Taiwanese director Ang Lee will follow his sexually charged wartime drama Lust, Caution, set in early 1940s Shanghai, with a US comedy, Taking Woodstock. It's set in the summer of 1969 when a Greenwich Village interior designer is working at his parents' motel in the Catskills and inadvertently sets in motion the celebrated music festival. It's based on Elliot Tiber's memoir, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life.
Brand and Hill back in business
Jonah Hill and Russell Brand are reuniting with the director (Nicholas Stoller) and producer (Judd Apatow) of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which opens today, for another comedy, Take Me to the Greek, in which Brand again plays a rock star with Hill as the insurance adjuster hired to accompany him from London to a gig at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
