Reel news

The film news stories of the week

Tilda talks Italian in Dublin Oscar winner Tilda Swinton will join director Luca Guadagnino in presenting their new film, I Am Love/Io Sono l’Amore, at the closing night of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on February 28th.

The critically acclaimed I Am Lovecharts the fractures and fissures of a wealthy family in contemporary Milan. Swinton also co-produced the film and performs in fluent Italian.

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival runs for 10 days beginning February 18th. www.jdiff.com

Risking the wrath of Werner

Werner Herzog remains one of our most favourite people. Nonetheless, it constitutes something of a gamble for the organisers of next year’s Berlin Film Festival to appoint the great man president of the international jury.

True, Herzog may have made films as magnificent as Aguirre, the Wrath of Godand The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.He is certainly one of the few figures from the German New Wave to remain a vital film-maker in the current century. But you wouldn't put it past the old eccentric to give the top prize to a tree or a passing hedgehog. He's that odd, you see.

Keep opinions to yourselves

What happened to the notion of the review embargo? As this year’s Oscar movies have their premieres, newspapers (though not this one) have stomped ahead and published reviews weeks – and sometimes months – ahead of release.

The Lovely Bones, which played at London's royal command performance late last month, does not open in these territories until January 29th, but reviews have already appeared in the Guardian, the Sunand the Daily Mailonline. Surely, the rule is you weren't allowed to publish until the week of release.

In related news, gawker.com has posted the first "review" – from "a real live entertainment worker" – of James Cameron's Avatar. It all sounds a bit suspicious, so we won't quote a word of it. But we can't stop you sprinting towards Google.

This is not the end of the end

In several interviews (with this writer, for example) Oren Peli, director of Paranormal Activity, has confirmed that, following pointers from Steven Spielberg, he radically changed the ending of his effective, low-budget shocker. Now it has been announced that the DVD, released in the US at the end of next month, will feature that original denouement on an "unrated" version of the film.

Should they really be mucking around with something so finely tuned? Won’t many fans have already viewed the ending on, ahem, unofficial media outlets? The studio has to find some way of flogging its DVDs, I guess.

Surely they can’t be serious

Poor old Aaron Wolff, who plays the young F Troopfan in the Coens' magnificent A Serious Man, has been turned away from a screening of his own film. It seems that the picture has an R rating in the US (really?) and, when his mum came down to the cinema, the manager refused to allow the actor and his pals entry with just one adult.

"All these kids' parents knew where they were going," said Judy Kogan, Aaron's ma. So, I guess they all went to 2012 or Couples Retreatinstead. Not fair.

Will Kirk go berserk?

The dispute about William Shatner's non-appearance in Star Trekrefuses to go away. The TrekMovie.com website claims to have dug up to scenes, written for the film but later excised, featuring the mighty Captain Jim Kirk. The pages were apparently received "from one of our trusted sources and it has been verified to be the scene written for Shatner (but never shown to Shatner)." Damn, that's just going to make Bill even angrier.