SUMMER blockbusters dominate the June release schedules at Irish cinemas, with one new arrival a week jostling for screen space. First off next Friday there's Simon West's high-octane hijacking thriller, Con Air, featuring Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack and Colm Meaney. A week later, Luc Besson's futuristic The Fifth Element, which opened Cannes this year and stars Bruce Willis, arrives, as do the Oscar-winning documentary, When We Were Kings, and the Whoopi Goldberg picture, The Associate.
Heading a very busy release schedule on June 20th is Alan J. Pakula's controversial The Devil's Own featuring Brad Pitt as a Belfast Provo in America and Harrison Ford as the New York police officer who treats him like a surrogate son - for a while, at least.
Opening simultaneously, with Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, is the filmed play, Marvin's Room; Julie Walters and Rupert Graves in the Ortonesque Intimate Relations, set in 1950s England; US shock-jock Howard Stern in a custom-built vehicle, Private Parts; Bertrand Blier's Mon Homme with Anouk Grinberg and Mathieu Kassovitz; and James Foley's John Grisham adaptation, The Chamber with Gene Hackman and Chris O'Donnell.
O'Donnell is back in tights as Robin, with George Clooney as the new Caped Crusader, in Joel Schumacher's Batman And Robin, which opens here on June 27th, a week after its US release. In it, too, are Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. And on the same day Tim Allen follows The Santa Clause with Jungle 2 Jungle.
Meanwhile, the blockbuster of summer 1997, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park sequel The Lost which has been annihilating records in the US since it opened last Friday, is not due here until July 18th.
Following the huge success of Cinema Day during last year's Cinema 100 celebrations, film exhibitors all over Ireland have decided to repeat the exercise this year. Sunday, June 15th is designated Cinema Day and there will be a single admission price of £1 to each movie showing in Ireland on the day.
ENJOY a weekly film festival your home when BBC 2's cultish movie season,
Moviedome, returns next month with a new presenter - the artriculate commentator, Mark Cousins, taking over from film-maker Alex Cox and a stimulating, wide-ranging programme of international cinema programmed in imaginative double bills.
Opening the season on June 8th is Brian De Palma's Scarface, showing on its own. The themed double bills which follow deal with rites of passage (Dazed And Coufused and The Sexual Life Of The Belgians), sci-fi dystopia (Logan's Run and Fahrenheit 451), the joy of sex (Exotica and Spanking The Monkey), rock'n'roll (The Girl Can't Help It and Take Care Of Your Scarf Tatjana), small town scandals (Liebestraum and Kiss Me, Stupid), "melo-ing out" (All That Heaven Allows and The Reckless Moment), urban warfare (La Haine and The Warriors), Schrader and Schrader (Blue Collar and American Gigolo), mad machines (Westworld and Demon Seed), paranoia (The Conversation and Seconds), natural born killers (Targets and Le Samourai) and law and disorder south of the border (Touch Of Evil and Highway Patrolinan), the latter directed by Alex Cox.
Six international directors, among them Paul Schrader and Atom Egoyan, have made short films inspired by paintings of their choice for the new BBC 2 series, Picture House, which runs over three consecutive nights next month. The series begins on June 10th with Egoyan's A Portrait Of Arshile, which explores Gorky's A Portrait Of The Artist With His Mother, and Ann Turner's Bathing Boxes, based on a painting by her fellow Australian, Jeffrey Smart.
On June 11th, The Wrong Address by the Polish director, Krzysztof Zanussi, deals with Leonardo Da Vinci's The Lady With An Ermine, and The Eye Like A Strange Balloon Mounts Towards Infinity by Canadian director Guy Maddin takes its title and inspiration from an etching by the 19th-century artist, Odilon Redlin. Finally, the programme for June 12th will consist of Paul Schrader's exploration of a painting by Manny Furber in New Blue, and Raul Ruiz's Wind Water, a dreamlike treatment of the Velasquez masterpiece.
The Swedish director, Bo Widerberg, who died earlier this month at the age of 67, will be forever linked with his 1967 film, Elvira Madigan, which became a huge art-house success around the world. A date-movie embraced even by couples who shunned foreign films, its picture of a doomed love affair between a tightrope artist (Pia Degermark) and a married army officer (Thomy Berggren) was famously accompanied by Mozart's Piano Concerto No 21.
There was more to Widerberg than the soft-focus lyricism of that movie. His more personal pictures - Adalen `31 and The Ballad Of Joe Hill - were marked by a firm political commitment, and he showed considerable flair as a thriller director in The Man On The Roof and The Man From Mallorca. His final film, All Things Fair, nominated for an Oscar last year, starred his teenage son as a boy involved with his 37-year-old teacher.
The Italian director, Marco Ferreri, who also died this month, aged 68, was as provocative as he was self-indulgent, and his excesses collided to startling effect in the outrageous 1973 La Grande Bouffe (Blow-Out) in which four middle-aged men meet and vow to over-indulge themselves in food and drink until they drop dead.
