Reel News

Today's other film news in brief

Making odds on the Iftas
The nominations for the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards, due to take place on February 20th, saw Neil Jordan's Ondine and Conor McPherson's The Eclipse leading the pack with eight nods each. Also doing well were John and Kieran Carney's Zonad and Brendan Muldowney's Savage.

In The Irish Timeson Monday, this writer napped Let the Right One In as a reasonable bet to win best international film at an attractive 8/1. Bookmaking sources tell us the odds immediately shortened to 3/1. Our apologies to those readers who didn't make it to Paddy Power in time.

Tangled web of Spidey rumours

To lose a star might be regarded as misfortune; to lose two stars and a director looks like carelessness. We mangle Oscar Wilde as way of highlighting worrying developments in the Spider-Man camp. It seems that director Sam Raimi and actors Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have all been dropped by that division of Columbia Pictures dedicated to bringing us Spider-Man 4. It has now been suggested that the studio plans (somewhat prematurely, it must be said) to reboot the series and send Peter Parker back to high school.

Interestingly, Raimi had suggested that he did not have a free hand on the slightly underwhelming (though still hugely popular) Spider-Man 3. “There were different opinions on the third film and I didn’t really have creative control, so to speak,” he said archly.

Let’s hope the men in suits don’t replace Sam with some tame, easily bullied drone. As if.

Mel gets cons out of jail

Mel Gibson involved in a controversy, you say? I refuse to believe it. The latest Mel hullabaloo blew up when it emerged that the Australian cop-botherer had cleared some 200 inmates from a Mexican prison to accommodate the shooting of his latest film as director. Many of the convicts’ families now face huge, prohibitively expensive journeys to more distant jails on visiting day. Gibson’s film, How I Spent My Summer Vacation. follows the friendship that grows up between a prisoner and a nine-year-old boy.

Hang on, that doesn’t sound like nearly as much fun as Apocalypto.

World according to Stone

You’ve got to love Oliver Stone. Well, you don’t really, but his upcoming 10-hour TV history of the 20th century does sound like a paranoid delight. Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America sets out to clarify certain misconceptions concerning vilified figures such as Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin and – you’re way ahead of me – Adolf Hitler.

“Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it’s been used cheaply,” Stone said. “Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person.”

Don’t pretend you won’t watch it.

Brangelina stay off the red carpet

So, it seems that, annoyed at not receiving a nod for Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt will be watching the Golden Globes at home on Sunday. His wife won’t be there either. Given that the directors of such shows tend to cut to Brad and Angie every 30 seconds, this must be regarded as a serious calamity.