BEHIND THE SCENES

Review 2005 / Film: More than ever the success of a movie seems based on hype more than quality, writes Michael Dwyer

PERHAPS it had something to do with the sheer predictability of so many productions off the Hollywood studio assembly line during 2005, which was dominated more than ever by sequels, remakes, franchises and TV spin-offs. Whatever the reason, the media seemed far more interested in chronicling the off-screen lives of major and minor screen personalities than in dealing with the actual content of the movies in which they appeared.

What else explains the obsession with celebrity that propels the media into overdrive to report all the tiresome escapades of the talent-free zone known as Paris Hilton, whose contribution to cinema in 2005 was a forgettable appearance in a witless remake (House of Wax)?

Miles of newsprint were devoted to Tom Cruise's extraordinary declaration of love for Katie Holmes when he was a guest on Oprah Winfrey's TV chat show, and to all the hoopla that ensued when he proposed to Holmes at the Eiffel Tower and when it was announced that she was pregnant. By coincidence, Cruise and Holmes happened to have mega-budget movies opening within weeks of each other during the summer - he in Spielberg's lavish new version of War of the Worlds, she as the token woman in Batman Begins.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie went to the opposite extreme, refusing for months to answer any questions about the relationship they were said to have formed while making another summer release, Mr & Mrs Smith. This prompted so much speculation that the public was primed to see the movie, if only to detect clues about the Pitt-Jolie relationship. As it happened, their palpable chemistry on the screen told its own story.

The traumas of the rich and famous continued when Oprah herself was very publicly outraged after being refused admission to the Hermes store in Paris because, the store claimed, it was closed for a private function. And pity teen star Lindsay Lohan: her Irish father was all over the papers in May when he was sentenced to prison on several charges, and then she fled in tears from the world premiere of her summer movie, Herbie: Fully Loaded, when she discovered her song had been stuck over the closing credits, when most people would be leaving the cinema.

There was consternation in Hollywood that people were leaving the cinema behind and waiting to see movies released on DVD. For 18 consecutive weekends this summer, US box-office returns were down on the corresponding weekends in 2004, cueing masses of analysis and scare stories.

However, if Mel Gibson's massively profitable 2004 hit, The Passion of the Christ, is taken out of the equation, US box-office returns were actually a little higher than last summer. A large proportion of the audience that flocked to Gibson's film were not regular cinemagoers and turned out in such numbers because of the movie's religious theme.

The recurring theme of this year, which first became apparent in film after film at Cannes in May, involved fathers seeking out lost sons, or sons seeking out lost fathers. It figures centrally in the new films by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (L'Enfant), Wim Wenders (Don't Come Knocking), James Marsh (The King), Duncan Tucker (Transamerica), Claire Denis (The Intruder), Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers) and Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), the latter two both featuring Bill Murray as the father.

The riveting L'Enfant earned the Dardennes the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the second in six years for the Belgian brothers, and in a generally very satisfying festival the only serious disappointment was the Cannes jury's sin of omission in passing over David Cronenberg's superb A History of Violence. For once, the Oscars electorate got it exactly right, giving four major awards - best film, director, actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman) - to Clint Eastwood's enthralling and deeply moving Million Dollar Baby. It was a far more deserving winner than the hot favourite, Martin Scorsese's handsome but sprawling and overrated The Aviator.

However, in a year which saw many fine documentaries getting the cinema release they deserved, the outstanding documentary was Scorsese's remarkable television epic, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. It was one of over 250 films screened in the wonderfully diverse programme at the Toronto festival in September, the showcase for many of the most interesting movies set for release here in the first half of 2006: Capote, Breakfast on Pluto, Transamerica, Shopgirl, Walk the Line, The Squid and the Whale, Lady Vengeance, Heading South, and my favourite film of the year, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, which had to be excluded from the accompanying panel of best films when its Irish release shifted by a week into 2006.

Walk the Line was one of many notable new movies featured at the Cork Film Festival, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in October during the city's reign as European Capital of Culture. Cork lost its oldest cinema, the Capitol, this year, but gained two new multiplexes with 20 screens between them. Galway got an additional 15 screens with the opening of two new complexes, while a new 14-screen venue opened in Limerick and the new 12-screen multiplex in Dundrum brought the number of screens in Dublin city and county to 115.

This upsurge in screen space was matched by a significant increase in the number of movies released here - 33 in September alone - but many got lost in this stampede and disappeared after a week. The year's most controversial release was Michael Winterbottom's sexually graphic 9 Songs, with vitriol poured on censor John Kelleher for his brave decision to pass the film uncut. When the movie eventually opened here, there were no protests, and it had a short run.

Very few of all the many new releases in 2005 were Irish productions, and the prospects for next year are no better after what has been a dismal year for film production here. It started promisingly enough in February with Studs and Dead Long Enough shooting, followed in the summer by Ken Loach's Irish historical drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Charles Sturridge's new version of Lassie, half of which was shot on the Isle of Man. But it was a remarkably lean year until production began to pick up in November.

The Irish Film Board was without a chief executive for much of the year, following the resignation of Mark Woods in April after just 18 months in the job. A thorough selection process - which took almost as long as the casting of Daniel Craig as the new James Bond - saw widely experienced producer and former British Screen executive Simon Perry appointed in November, and he takes up his new post next month.

Irish and international cinema lost four highly respected veterans with the deaths of Oscar-nominated actors Geraldine Fitzgerald and Dan O'Herlihy, producer Tony Adams, and set decorator Josie McAvin, the only Irish person with the distinction of winning both an Oscar and an Emmy award.

The year also marked the passing of such talents as producers Ismail Merchant, Debra Hill and Humbert Balsan; writers Arthur Miller, Hunter S Thompson, Ernest Lehman, Gavin Lambert and Willis Hall; cinematographers Tonino Delli Colli and Adrian Biddle; art director John Box; TV presenter Johnny Carson; directors Robert Wise, Guy Green, Wolf Rilla and George Pan Cosmatos; and actors Anne Bancroft, Richard Pryor, Virginia Mayo, Sandra Dee, Eddie Albert, Constance Cummings, Teresa Wright, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jocelyn Brando, John Vernon, Ossie Davis, Pat Morita, Suzanne Flon, Jacques Villeret, Simone Simon, Don Adams, John Larch, Lloyd Bochner, Geoffrey Keen, Sheree North, David Kossoff, Ruth Hussey, Brock Peters, James Doohan, Dana Elcar, Kay Walsh, James Booth, Maria Schell, Lane Smith, Frank Gorshin, JD Cannon and John Mills, who won an Oscar for the Irish-made epic Ryan's Daughter.

PICK 2005

TOP 20 MOVIES RELEASED IN IRELAND IN 2005

1. Million Dollar Baby

2. Downfall

3. A History of Violence

4. Crash

5. The Beat That My Heart Skipped

6. Merry Christmas/Joyeux Noel

7. Kinsey

8. The Sea Inside

9. Moolaade

10. Maria Full of Grace

11. Mysterious Skin

12. Hotel Rwanda

13. Broken Flowers

14. Brothers

15. Sideways

16. The Producers

17. Vera Drake

18. The Woodsman

19. The Keys to the House

20. King Kong

Near misses: 2046, House of Flying Daggers, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, 5X2, Kings and Queen, King's Game, The Machinist, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, The Jacket, Lord of War, The Chronicles of Narnia, Untold Scandal, Ray

TOP 10 TURKEYS of 2005

1. Cursed

2. A Hole in My Heart

3. Monster Man

4. Hide and Seek

5. The Dukes of Hazzard

6. Bewitched

7. Ma Mère

8. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

9. Man of the House

10. Sahara

(Note: Sadly, I missed the reviled Revolver on its brief release)

THE BEST AND WORST OF 2005

Film of the year: Million Dollar Baby

Director of the year: Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby

New director of the year: Paul Haggis, Crash

Irish film of the year: Pavee Lackeen, Perry Ogden

Irish director of the year: Terry George, Hotel Rwanda

Best actress: Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby

Best actor: (tie) Javier Bardem, The Sea Inside and Kevin Bacon, The Woodsman

Best supporting actor: Gary Beach, The Producers

Best supporting actress: Corinna Harfouch, Downfall

Comeback of the year: Matt Dillon, Factotum and Crash

Most promising new actress: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace

Most promising new actor: Eugene Hutz, Everything Is Illuminated

Best Irish actor: Liam Neeson, Kinsey

Best Irish actress: Renee Weldon, Trouble with Sex

Best Irish actress in a supporting role: Susan Lynch, Mickybo & Me

Best Irish actor in a supporting role: Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins

Best animal actor: Mickey and Mouse as Sammy Davis Jr, "the seeing-eye bitch" in Everything Is Illuminated

Best documentary: Murderball

Best animated feature: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Best original screenplay: Kinsey

Best adapted screenplay: Million Dollar Baby

Best cinematography: A Very Long Engagement

Best original score: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Best compilation soundtrack: The Business

Best film editing: Million Dollar Baby

Best art direction: 2046

Best costume design: The Producers

Best make-up: The Sea Inside

Best casting: Downfall

Best sound: King Kong

Best visual effects: King Kong

Best direct-to-video/DVD release: (tie) Errance and Stander

Laziest sequel: Ocean's Twelve

Worst TV spin-off: The Dukes of Hazzard

Best remake: The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Worst remake: House of Wax

Most disappointing film from an auteur: Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan)

Most underrated film: The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Most overrated film: Battle in Heaven

Most misconceived film: Bewitched

Most imaginative adaptation: Untold Scandal, based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Most botched adaptation: A Good Woman, based on Lady Windermere's Fan

Most long-winded film: Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Scariest movie: The Machinist

Most miserable movie: A Hole in My Heart

The Jude Law Award (most ubiquitous actor): Tilda Swinton in Broken Flowers, Thumbsucker, Constantine and The Chronicles of Narnia

The Laurence Olivier Award (most undiscriminating actor of a certain age): Robert De Niro for Hide and Seek and Meet the Fockers

Most miscast actor: Elijah Wood as a football hooligan in Green Street

Worst film: Cursed