ALTHOUGH Neil Jordan is set to direct Borgia, starring Colin Farrell and Scarlett Johansson, he is also in talks to direct a revenge thriller, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Brave One will star Jodie Foster as a woman who survives a brutal attack and seeks vengeance. The detective caught up in the case will be played by Terrence Howard, a best actor Oscar nominee this week for his portrayal of a pimp-turned-rapper in Hustle & Flow.
Sundance awards in sync
In an unusual display of unanimity, the juries and audiences at Sundance voted the same films for the principal awards. The winner of both awards in the dramatic competition was Quinceañera, a "neo-sink drama" about young people caught in the warp of Latino tradition and gay gentrification in Los Angeles. Both awards for best documentary went to Christopher Quinn's God Grew Tired of Us, following the new lives of three Sudanese "lost boys" in the US.
Dublin junkies win prize
Irish actor and writer Mark O'Halloran took the best screenplay award for Adam & Paul at the Evening Standard British Film Awards in London this week. Natasha Richardson was named best actress for the Irish-made feature, Asylum.
Ralph Fiennes, who opens in Faith Healer at the Gate in Dublin next Tuesday, was named best actor for The Constant Gardener, which was named best film and won the best screenplay award for Jeffrey Caine. His screenplay also received an Oscar nomination this week.
Animated win in New York
Irish animator Paul Donnellon took the Silver Award for Best Main Titles sequence at the New York Festivals for the end titles sequence on Nanny McPhee. Donnellon runs the London-based company VooDooDog with his brother Noel and business partner David Z Obadiah. Last year they took the Gold Award for their dazzling opening title sequence in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
www.voodoodog.com
Branagh back with the Bard
After a six-year break from the director's chair, Kenneth Branagh has wrapped one film and started directing another. As You Like It, Branagh's sixth Shakespearean adaptation for the cinema, is now in post-production and stars Romola Garai, Bryce Dallas Howard, Alfred Molina, Janet McTeer and Kevin Kline. Last week Branagh started filming Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, working from a libretto freshly adapted by Stephen Fry. The $27 million production features rising opera stars Joseph Kaiser, Ben Davis and Amy Carson along with with established performers Rene Pape, Thomas Randle, Sylvia Moi and Lyubov Petrova.
Meanwhile, Opera Theatre Company presents screenings of the documentary In Search of Mozart at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin tomorrow, Town Hall, Galway on Sunday, and the Armagh Market Place on Wednesday.
German drama on Irish tour
Sophie Scholl, Marc Rothemund's Oscar-nominated German wartime drama, starts an Irish tour next Sunday at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. The tour, organised by accessCinema, will continue to venues in Sligo, Roscommon, Bray, Bantry, Wexford, Letterkenny, Portlaoise, Manorhamilton and Carrick-on-Shannon.
The film is also one of five selected for accessCinema's latest Zoom tour of movies aimed at young audiences aged 15 to 18. The Zoom programme includes Murderball, Pavee Lackeen, Thumbsucker and Stanley Kubrick's 1957 Paths of Glory.
www.accesscinema.ie
Manson's mad tea party
Goth rocker Marilyn Manson is to make his directing debut with Phantasmagoria - The Visions of Lewis Carroll, in which he will also play the title role, as the author of Alice in Wonderland. Manson also wrote the screenplay for the movie, which he plans to shoot over the summer, and he will compose the score. The film's producer, Alain de la Mata, describes it as "kind of arthouse horror - what people expect from Manson, they're going to get it here."
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
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