Filming kicks off on Mercier's soccer play

Shooting gets underway next Monday on Studs, the movie based on Paul Mercier's play, which was first staged in 1986. Mercier has written the screenplay and will direct the film, to be shot on location in Lucan, Co Dublin for five weeks. "The script has changed radically from the stage version," says Fiach MacConghail, who is producing it with his brother, Cuan, the film's editor, through their company, Brother Films.

Brendan Gleeson will play the new coach who transforms the lives and fortunes of a soccer team who have not won a game in 12 months, and the cast also includes David Wilmot (as the captain), Liam Carney (who was in the original stage production), David Herlihy, Eanna MacLiam, Eamonn Owens and Tomás Ó Súilleabháin. The lighting cameraman is Ronan Fox, and the production designer is David Wilson.

Funding comes from the Irish Film Board's low-budget initiative, along with TV3 and Buena Vista International (Ireland), which has acquired the Irish cinema and DVD rights. MacConghail - who has just been appointed as the new Director of the Abbey Theatre - describes the movie as "a cross between Slap Shot, Mean Streets and The Magnificent Seven - with Brendan in the Yul Brynner role."

Big noise in Hollywood

Sound mixer Tom Johnson, who is now based at Ardmore Sound in Ardmore Studios, has received his seventh Oscar nomination for his work on The Polar Express. He won Oscars for Terminator 2: Judgement Day in 1991 and for Titanic six years later, and was nominated for Forrest Gump, Contact, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and Cast Away. His many other credits include Bugsy, Quiz Show, What Lies Beneath, Requiem For a Dream, The Good Thief, The Magdalene Sisters, The Tailor of Panama, Inside I'm Dancing, Million Dollar Baby and Hotel Rwanda. Formerly based at Skywalker Sound in California, Johnson is up against Ray, The Aviator, The Incredibles and Spider-Man 2 for the sound mixing Oscar.

Closer to Curtis

Influential rock photographer and music videos director Anton Corbijn is to make his feature film début as director of Touching From a Distance, a biopic of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23. The screenplay is based on the book of the same name by the singer's widow, Deborah Curtis, who is one of the producers on the film, as is one-time Joy Division manager Tony Wilson. Sean Harris impressively played Curtis in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, which starred Steve Coogan as Wilson. Corbijhas worked extensively as photographer and promos director for U2, and with Depeche Mode, REM, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Miles Davis. The film starts shooting in the autumn in Manchester.

Afternoon delight

Irish writer-director Margaret Corkery's experimental film, Killing the Afternoon, is one of just eight selected to compete for the Golden Bear for best short film at the 55th Berlin Film Festival, which opens next Thursday. Shot on Co Cork locations, it follows beach dwellers over the course of a downcast, windy day. Produced by Gillian Morrison, it was funded by Cork County Council and the Irish Film Board. Gary McKendry's short film based on a Colum McCann story, Everything in This Country Must, which is nominated for an Oscar, will be shown in the Panorama section at Berlin and in the Dublin festival this month.

Filming the flood

Italian director Lina Wertmuller is preparing a film dealing with the South-East Asia tsunami, which will star Sophia Loren. Interviewed in Il Corriere della Sera, Wertmuller said she plans to shoot the film - which has Dream Islands as its working title - in the beach resorts that have been destroyed by the tsunami. "The idea is to use the disaster as a means of exploring a scourge that festers below the surface," she said. "These 'dream islands' are also destinations of the sexual tourism trade. There, children are sold, and there is organ trafficking and countless other evils." Now 78, Wertmuller was the first woman ever nominated for a best director Oscar, for Seven Beauties in 1975. Her latest film, Peperoni Ripieni e Pesci in Faccia, a romantic comedy starring Sophia Loren and F. Murray Abraham, will be released in Italy in September.

mdwyer@irish-times.ie