REELNEWS IN CANNES: Tristan Orpen Lynch and Dominick Wright of Dublin-based Subotica Films are back at Cannes with several projects, one of which appears certain to prove controversial. The theme is the Kerry Babies case, which caused convulsions in Ireland in 1984.
The project reunites the Subotica team with Irish director Aisling Walsh after their collaboration on Song for a Raggy Boy (2003), which dealt unflinchingly with physical and sexual abuse at an Irish reformatory school for boys in the late 1930s. Walsh is working on the Kerry Babies screenplay with writer-actor Gerard Mannix Flynn, and she plans to shoot the film in early 2007. Casting will begin later this year.
Subotica's latest production, Small Engine Repair, will be introduced to prospective buyers in the busy Cannes market. The first feature from writer-director Niall Heery, it was originally titled In Like Flynn and is described as "a wry drama about a small town country singer and male friendship." Iain Glen, who co-starred in Raggy Boy, heads a cast that includes Steven Mackintosh, Stuart Graham, Laurence Kinlan, Tom Murphy, Kathy Kiera Clark and Gary Lydon.
Headliners for hotsy docu
How about this for a cast: George Clooney, Jodie Foster, Charlize Theron, Pierce Brosnan, Morgan Freeman, Danny DeVito, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Evans and Sydney Pollack. They're all featured in the same movie, but before you get too excited, they're playing themselves, giving what are described as candid interviews in the documentary Boffo: Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters.
The "slanguage" in the title suggests a link to trade paper Variety, and sure enough, the film was inspired by Variety executive editor Peter Bart's new book, Boffo: How I Learned to Love Blockbusters and Fear the Bomb.
Paris, Je te déteste
Given its world premiere last night as the opening film in Cannes sidebar Un Certain Regard, Paris, Je t'Aime was conceived as a compilation in which 20 international directors were invited to make a five-minute romantic film, each set in one of the city's arrondissements. The film-makers include Jane Campion, Joel and Ethan Coen, Olivier Assayas, Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant, Chris Doyle, Gérard Depardieu, Tom Tykwer, Walter Salles and Wes Craven.
In a late change of plan, producer Claudie Ossard decided to drop the segments on the 11th and 15th arrondissements, directed by Raphaël Nadjari and Christophe Boe, respectively. This resulted in a public disagreement between Ossard and co-producer Emmanuel Benbihy, and in a statement from Boe, the Danish director who won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2003 for Reconstruction.
"When you're being French fucked it's not always obvious what's going to happen," Boe said. "I feel part of a conflict where I'll end up as the corpse on the finishing line." To which Ossard responded: "I'm sorry Boe and Benbihy choose to speak negatively about this. It serves nobody."
A brainy pastime (9)
The prospect of a movie about crossword puzzles may provoke yawns in some readers, but aficionados such as myself will not miss the Cannes screening of Wordplay, Patrick Creadon's documentary based around New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, whose puzzles are an essential part of my spare time.
Wordplay charts the fortunes of the contestants in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which was founded by Shortz. It features contributions from Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart and documentarist Ken Burns on their passion for the puzzle.
The Beeb's Cannes army
How many BBC staff does it take to change a light bulb? The corporation is out in force at Cannes, with dozens on the festival accreditation list, among them 15 people just for BBC2's Newsnight. The only Irish broadcaster accredited is TV3, which is sending a modest delegation of three.
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