IRISH MOVIES 2008

We haven't posted in a while as news was pretty thin on the oul ground there, but 2008 has a wealth of Irish movies and related news on the way...

Hugh O’Conor (right) hopes to put the dreadful Speed Dating behind him with WAITING FOR DUBLIN. In a Chicago nightclub on New Year’s Eve, 1944, a drunken Lt. Mike Clarke (O’ Connor) makes a bet of $1000 with a stranger (Karl Sheils – Capital Letters) that we will become a WWII flying ace by shooting down 5 enemy aircraft. When Mike sobers up, he realises that the stranger’s uncle, the man who witnessed the bet, is none other than Al Capone! Madcap antics enuse. Frank Kelly (Father Ted) and David Wilmot (Studs, Six Shooter) co-star. After that, Hugh will star in Martin Duffy's (The Boy From Mercury) drama SUMMER OF THE FLYING SAUCER.

After playing a hitman in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (release date sometime this March) Colin Farrell will star with Ed Norton in PRIDE AND GLORY: A crime drama that sees Ed Norton’s cop investigate a scandal involving his brother-in-law and fellow cop Colin Farrell. Jon Voight co-stars.

Farrell’s co-star in the Belgian black comedy, Brendan Gleason, is to make his directorial debut adapting Flann O’Brien’s 1939 novel AT SWIM TWO BIRDS. Cillian Murphy, Colin Farrell, Sean McGinley and Gabriel Byrne are set to star alongside a who’s who of Irish actors.

Apart from appearing in the upcoming ANTON, Gerard McSorley (left) will team up with his Veronica Guerin director Joel Schumacher to star in the horror thriller TOWN CREEK, which sees two brothers caught in an occult experiment that dates back to the Third Reich.

Liam Neeson will return as the voice of Aslan in THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN and take the lead in Pierre Morel’s TAKEN. Neeson plays a spy who relies on his skills to track down his estranged daughter.

The Halo Effect writer/director Lance Daly returns to direct KISSES, which sees two kids spend a horrific night on the streets of Dublin after running away from home. Stephen Rea takes the lead (not as one of the kids of course – our special effects artists just aren’t there yet).

The lovely Nora-Jane Noone (right) and the just as lovely Olga Wehrly (left) will play the eye candy in Brendan Foley’s (The Riddle, Johnny Was) horror BOG BODIES. The plot sees a 2000-year-old murder victim unearthed from a bog and go on a bloodthirsty rampage (as you do). Vinnie Jones stars.

Adam And Paul and Garage scribe Mark O’Halloran will star in Brendan Grant’s TONIGHT IS CANCELLED. O’Halloran plays a film director who wants to make a film about a Slav couple who escaped the war in Kosovo and made it to safety in Ireland. The film was completed last year and it’s unsure whether or not it will see some distribution.

Ciarán Hinds will be a busy man: he will star in Kimberley Pierce’s (Boys Don’t Cry) drama STOP LOSS, team up with Jean Reno in the comedy CASH and lend his voice to the animated adventure THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX.

Song For A Raggy Boy helmer Aisling Walsh (left) will direct Eva Birthistle (Middletown) and Samantha Morton in THE DAISY CHAIN. The plot sees crazy things happen when a couple adopt an autistic child.

I Went Down main man Peter McDonald will star with Iain Glen in the TV series CITY OF VICE.

Colm Meaney wil star in the US version of Life on Mars, but will also star in the thriller CLEAN BREAK, the comedy and the mini series 3 AND OUT and ZOS: ZONE OF SEPARATION.

Aidan ‘Oi loved her’ Quinn will star in the romantic comedy WILD CHILD, the drama THE OFF HOURS and is rumoured to take the lead in the Eric Stoltz-directed comedy PADDYVILLE, which will star Frank McCourt and Domhnall Gleason.

Answer Me These Questions Three #6 Ciarán Foy

Ciarán Foy studied film at the National Film School of Ireland (IADT-DL), where he graduated with an honours degree. While there he worked on over twenty short films in areas such as art direction, editing, writing and directing. Some of his own college shorts have been award winners at festivals around the world such as The Puppet, Wired 03:36, and 1902. The Puppet was chosen to represent Ireland at the 2002 Student Academy Awards in Los Angeles. He also won highly commended certificates for his test spots at the Kodak Student Commercial Awards London in 2001 (for The Tired – Lucozade Solstis) and 2002 (for The Thief – Physio Sport)

Ciaráns also successfully completed five Screen Training Ireland courses with certificates in Cinematic Story Development (Bobette Buster & Beth Serlin), Visual Structure (Bruce Block) Advanced Screen Writing (Linda Seger), Dramatic Vision (Martin Daniel / David Howard) and Blocking for Camera (Mark Travis).

The Faeries of Blackheath Woods, his first film since graduating from college, has screened at over 35 festivals worldwide and taken home best short awards at festivals such as; Cork, Kerry, Brest France, Cinenygma Luxembourg as well as three ‘Claw Awards’ at The Terror Film Festival USA (Best Fantasy Short, Best Cinematography and Best Special Effects). It was also nominated for an IFTA and a Golden Méliès (European Fantasy Award). Recently it won the Diversions Short Film Award and Best Horror at the Melbourne Independent Film Festival.

Presently he has teamed up with producer Katie Holly at the newly established Blinder Films. Citadel, a council estate based psychological horror, is due to film in 2008. It will be Ciaráns feature debut as both writer and director. He is also presently represented at Blinder as a commercials director.

1. When did you first get the goo for film?

The first film I ever saw in a cinema was "Return of the Jedi" when I was 3 or 4 years old. That experience gave me such a giddy sense of awe that I became hooked on that feeling ever since. Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron etc became my dealers and I was a happy genre junkie. Then when I was 11, a friend of mine, who's brother was an usher, sneaked us into a showing of "T2", and that was that.

2. Was film always your first love?

Yes and no. Until i was about 15 I either aspired to be a video game designer or involved in movie special effects. I knew the whole history of places like ILM and used to make models and stuff and shoot them on a crappy camcorder with friends as my cast etc. Then the more I shot the more I wanted to call the shots on everything.

3. When did you first get the idea for Faeries... ?

Well "The Faeries of Blackheath Woods" was initially conceived of as a way of generating interest in a feature project called "The Horde". "The Horde" is essentially a horror about the Sidhe myth but the only similarity between it and the short is the Faerie creature itself. The main idea for it came rather maliciously when myself and my girlfriend Olwen Kelleghan were watching a movie in college called "Fairytale - a true story" (or something to that effect). It told the story of these prissy little girls who encounter beautiful benevolent fairies at the back of their garden and the whole thing made me sick. We started to talk about how the origin of the myth was Celtic and how our notion of faeries in this country are much darker. You don't piss the faeries off. I confessed that I'd love to subvert the expectations and do a really dark Faerie story where the Faeries kill those spolit kids. Olwen, who is a designer, began sketching this creature with rotten leaves for wings and a body that looked like a cross between an insect and a concentration camp victim. That's where it all started.

4. How many redrafts did Faeries go through before you were satisfied?

Two. The first version was much longer and we were with the parents on the journey to Blackheath Woods. We learned that the woods were being chopped down to make way for a road and that strange things were happening. The second version was really edited to allow it to be eligible for short-shorts.

5. Would budget constraints influence your story before you even type 'Fade In'?

Well I knew if we got the 15,000 euro from the film board for short-shorts that I couldn't have as many effects as I had wanted. I had a lot more moving shots planned, cameras circling the girl etc But the more movement you have the longer it takes to track the camera and the more expensive it becomes for CGI. Also because the Faeries look like autumn leaves when they're in a static state I had wanted a tree brimming with them to be behind the character as she backs away in the marsh area at the end. Again it would prove too expensive because such a shot would take longer to do. So in a way the budget influenced the storyboard but not the story itself. That remained the same.

6. Have you anything else in the pipeline?

Well I've spent the last year and half writing a new project called "Citadel", which is a dark psychological horror about an agoraphobic trapped in a council estate from hell. I'm directing it and Katie Holly of Blinder Films is producing. We just got production funding from the film board so its full steam ahead. We plan to shoot next winter.

6. What's your favourite Irish film?
"Bloody Sunday".

7. What Irish film do you think deserves more credit?
I'm not sure. I can certainly think of a few that deserve less credit! To be honest, I must to confess I don't end up going to see that many Irish films. A crime I know, but when you've a tenner in your pocket and you're outside Cineworld and you can go see one movie, it can be hard to choose the low budget Irish offering. Plus I'm a genre junkie so (as happened recently) if "Children of Men" is on in one screen and a particular Irish film is on in another, I'll choose "Children of Men".

Foyle Foils Foy

TToH had big hopes for Ciaran Foy's short horror The Faeries Of Blackheath Woods at the Foyle Film Festival but it was not to be. Foy's film was nominated for Best Short at the recent IFTA awards, picked up Best Irish Short at the Diversions Festival in Temple Bar, the Cork Film Festival, the Kerry International Festival and Best European Short at the Luxembourg Film Festival. It also scooped Best Horror at the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival and ran away with the Brest European Short Film Festival. Foyle proved a bridge too far, however.

Other Irish entries did well, though: Steph Green's New Boy took best Irish short while Simon Fitzmaurice's Sundance entry The Sound Of People came 'Highly Recommended'; as was Matthew Talbot-Kelly's feature Blind Man's Eye. The same accolade was bestowed on Angus Hubbard's documentary The Silver Sufari and John Collins's Kings just missed out on the Stella Artois Best Feature Film.

We hope to have a Q&A with Ciaran pretty soon and hopefully he'll allow us post his short.

Can He Fix It? Yes He Can

After writing and directing Cowboys And Angels and The Front Line, David Gleeson (right) will leave the script duties to A. Nother when he takes on Chuck Wachtel's novel Joe The Engineer; that A. Nother is none other than Wachtel himself, who debuts to adapt his own debut.

Tagged as a 'blue collar novel', the plot follows the titular character, a meter reader for a water company, who, after a tour in Vietnam, is tired of his meaningless life and tries to figure out what is going on on this crazy planet. Brad Renfro (Apt Pupil, The Jacket) is rumoured to play the lead.

Reviews for the book have been good ("a great, rough, sympathetic ode to real people"), but one worrying critique was that "the reader isn't it in for the plot" (that review can be read here). After two linear-plotted movies, is Gleeson about to direct an (whisper it) arthouse film? What is strange is that Wild Eye, David's own production company, are not behind it (that role falls to US house Toulillian Films), elbowing long-time partner Nathalie Lichtenthaeler into the cold. Oh, is there trouble in the Dutch camp?

You can catch David's interesting 'Writer's On Writing' interview with Irish Playwrights And Screenwriter's Guild here.

No One Will Sleep Through This Alarm

You've a better chance of finding your baggage in Lockerbie than seeing a decent psychological thriller set in Ireland but lo - there's one on its way. Not for another year, however...

Guiltrip and About Adam director Gerry Stembridge has just finished a five week shoot of Alarm. The plot sees a young woman, Molly (Ruth Bradley - Love Is The Drug), who moves from her idyllic suburban Dublin life to a housing estate way outside the city and her life begins to unravel.

Co-produced by Venus Film And Television, the film will star Owen Roe (Intermission), Tom Hickey (Garage), Anita Reeves (Adam And Paul, The Butcher Boy) and Emmet Bergin (Veronica Guerin).

Although shooting has wrapped, the film is unlikely to hit our screens until late 2008/early 2009. Now TToH will admit that we don't know a lot about post production, but surely a mentally-retarded snail would edit the film faster than that. Come on, guys - get the finger out.

An Irish Opera? And It's A Comedy? Starring Ronnie Drew? You're On A Giraffe!

So obscure IMDB don't even have it, O'Donoghue's Opera was made in 1965 but it wasn't seen until veteran filmmaker Tom Hayes restored it ten years ago.

Directed by Kevin Sheldon and starring Ronnie Drew (right) and The Dubliners, the comedy is based on the ballad The Night That Larry Was Stretched and sees Ronnie in a hangman's noose for being the best burglar in Ireland.

With nods and winks to all sorts to beat the band, the 37 minute O'Donoghue's Opera will screen in the IFI from Tuesday 11th December.

Oh Wow, Sir...It's A ...Oh, It's A Grammy

We all remember The Simpsons parody (The Barbershop Quartet one), which brought to light that the Grammys aren't the most respected award a musician can receive, but it's just one more string in the bow for John Carney's Once, the little film that could.

Once has been nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack while the song Falling Slowly is nominated for Best Song. Written by The Frames's Glen Hansard and Czech diminutive singer/songwriter Marketa Irglova, it sounds like a tune The Grammy's would go for; James Blunt won last year.

With Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan shutting up shop and heading out west when they made it big, will John Carney be seen this side of the water again? And if not, would you blame him? Please post your thoughts below.

Falling Slowly, with some visuals from the film, can be heard below...