Donald Clarkeon film
Shane Meadows, director of This Is England, this week's most impressive release, is not happythat the film, which goes among racist skinheads in 1980s Britain, has received an 18 cert from the British Board of Film Classification. Meadows feels that this excludes the demographic who have most to learn from the picture.
"It's like I've somehow overachieved," he said. "By having one piece of violence and one piece of really acute verbal violence I've managed to get an 18 certificate, whereas someone else can slay thousands of people in a single film and that's OK."
This Is England also received an 18 certificate in this country. The notes from the Irish Film Censor describe the picture as containing "Strong, graphic, racist violence. Strong use of drugs and very strong language."
Brits and Italians: no Cannes do
When Gilles Jacob, president of the 2007 Cannes Film
Festival, announced the titles in competition for the Palme d'Or
last week, two countries had particular reason to gnash their
teeth. There were five US films in the list, but not a single one
from either the UK or Italy. While the successors to Michael Powell
and Federico Fellini fume silently, the jury - headed by,
ironically, the very English Stephen Frears - will consider such
delights as Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra, David Fincher's Zodiac
(pictured) and the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. The
festival opens with a screening of Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry
Nights on May 16th and closes with The Age of Darkness, the latest
from Denys Arcand, on May 27th.
Donegal hosts world's best docs
There can be few more idyllic spots in which to spend early summer than Gortahork in Donegal. The Guth Gafa Documentary Festival, which runs on May 10th-13th, offers punters the opportunity to enjoy that village while taking in some of the word's best factual films.
This year's event, the second, includes admired features such as
China Blue, an investigation of Chinese sweat shops, and Socheata
Poeuv's New Yea Baby, in which a Cambodian- American faces up to
the horrors of the Khmer Rouge years. Geoff Gilmore, director of
the Sundance Film Festival, will be the special guest and all but
one of the international directors is
also expected to attend. Details from
www.guthgafa.com.
Waiting for Quentin a real grind
What is going on with Grindhouse? After failing commercially on its US release, the violent double bill, a tributeto exploitation cinema from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, has been bumped from its projected British and Irish opening date of June 1st.
The distributors have yet to announce when it will eventually turn up, but already conspiracy theorists are beginning to mutter. Might the studios be considering releasing the two films separately in this territory?
Such is already the plan in non-anglophone European countries, so it is not as unlikely a suggestion as it sounds. We are all drumming our fingers nervously.
IFI gets a look at Peep Show stars
Fans of Channel 4's Peep Show, one of the finest sitcoms of recent years, will want to get themselves to the Irish Film Institute on May 1st, when David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the show's stars, will be talking to punters following a screening of their new film.
Magicians, which is written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, creators of Peep Show, follows a bitter duel between two rival conjurers. It will manifest itself in cinemas from May 18th. www.irishfilm.ie
Poet pics casting under dead wood
When it was announced that Lindsay Lohan was to play Caitlin Thomas, the hard-drinking, physically robust wife of Dylan Thomas, in John Maybury's upcoming The Best Times of Our Lives, more than a few sensitive readers cast their eyes to heaven.
It now transpires that the alliterative wild child has been replaced by the annoying charisma vacuum that is Sienna Miller. You may as well cast Rosamund Pike in the part.
Oh, hang on. It seems that the glacial Ms Pike is indeed essaying the role in Marc Evans's rival production, Caitlin. It's Dylan-a-go-go, folks.
Bombastic Baldwin rages at Ireland
The Alec Baldwin rant story continues to delight. The most competent of Mrs Baldwin's boys got in a bit of bother recently when an angry voice-mail to his daughter found its way onto the internet. It seems that (sigh) Ireland, his child with estranged wife Kim Basinger, had her phone turned off when he called up for their weekly chat.
"You have insulted me for the last time," he bellowed at the Hibernially named youth.
"I don't give a damn that you're 12 years old or 11 years old, or a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn't care about what you do."
It is certainly true that laying this sort of anger on a pre-teen is particularly reprehensible. But (sigh) Ireland may, if she decides to investigate the country that provided her stupid Christian name, discover that we can do phone rage with considerably greater vehemence.
Set beside that legendary Twink diatribe, Alec's fit sounds like the devotional murmurings of a nun.
