`Oscar Wilde on speed' to direct in Dublin

A hot young cast of rising actors has been lined up for the feature film, Peaches, which, although set in London, will be shot almost entirely in Dublin. The low-budget film is based on Nick Grasso's hit West End play of the same name, and Grasso will also direct the film version. In its review of the stage production the International Herald Tribune said: "Grasso's style is that of a latter-day Oscar Wilde on speed."

Peaches will be the first film produced by Dublin-based Ronan Glennane through his company, Stone Ridge Entertainment. The film offers "a hilarious snapshot of contemporary urban youth starring the most exciting young cast assembled in Britain in recent years," says Glennane.

The cast is headed by Matthew Rhys, who features in the movies, House of America, Jimmy McGovern's Heart and Julie Taymor's eagerly awaited Shakespearean adaptation, Titus. Joining him in Peaches are Kelly Reilly, who is now starring in Ben Elton's Maybe Baby, Matthew Dunster, Justin Salinger, Eddie Marsan, Emily Hillier, Sophie Okenedo and Stephanie Bagshaw. Shooting of the exterior sequences will take place in London over six days from September 5th, and the production moves to Dublin from September 13th to Ocotober 2nd for all the interior scenes. The film will be lit by the Irish lighting cameraman, Brendan Galvin.

The Venice Film Festival opens on September 1st with the European premiere of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The feature films in competition at Venice include Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy, Jane Campion's Holy Smoke, Lasse Hallstrom's The Cider House Rules, Abbas Kiarostami's Le Vent Nous Emportera, Zhang Yimou's Not One Less, and the first film directed by Antonio Banderas, Crazy in Alabama. Channel 4 will screen The Last Movie, an in-depth portrait of Stanley Kubrick, over a tribute weekend to the late film-maker on September 4th and 5th. The documentary features interviews with the stars of Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and the director's widow, Christiane Kubrick, along with the outgoing head of Warner Bros, Terry Semel, and Steven Spielberg, who will direct Kubrick's major unrealised project, AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Director Sydney Pollack, who replaced Harvey Keitel in one of the key roles of Eyes Wide Shut, is to co-produce and direct the film of Vikram Seth's novel, An Equal Music, a love story involving a male violinist and a pianist who never got over the love affair they had when they were students.

Pollack will produce the film with Scott Rudin, whose imminent releases include Alan Parker's Angela's Ashes, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead. Rudin recently acquired the film rights to Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours. Pollack's latest film as a director, Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, opens here on November 12th.

Emily Watson and John Turturro, both of whom feature in the cast of the new Tim Robbins movie Cradle Will Rock, are to be reunited in The Luzhin Defence, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. She will play a young woman on holiday in Italy with her mother, when she meets a bumbling chess grandmaster played by Turturro. The film will be made by Marleen Gorris, the Dutch director of Mrs Dalloway and the Oscar-winning Antonia's Line. Watson will next be seen in the starring role of Angela's Ashes, which opens here on February 25th.

Aisling O'Sullivan, the Irish actress whose film roles include The Butcher Boy and The War Zone - and who stars in the BBC series Life Support - has been signed for a major new drama series. She is about to start work in the Cotswolds on a period drama series, The Wyverne Mysteries, which will also feature Derek Jacobi, Iain Glen, Jack Davenport and Naomi Watts. The series is described as a cross between the mysterious and ghostly The Woman In White and the unsettling contemporary drama The Dark Room, which starred fellow Irish actress Dervla Kirwan.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold are reportedly all willing to return in a sequel to True Lies, which director James Cameron is preparing. It will be Cameron's first feature film since Titanic. The original True Lies was one of the first films to cost more than $100 million and the sequel is expected to cost even more.

"Everybody is very enthusiastic about re-teaming if the story is right and everything falls into place," says Rae Sanchini, president of Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment company. "There are no deals in place, just a mutual, unanimous sense that it would be a terrific movie."

Schwarzenegger has approved the script for the long-planned Total Recall II, but director Jonathan Frakes is expecting some major budget cuts before the cameras roll. Frakes reports that in its present form the sequel to the 1990 blockbuster would cost about $150 million to film and he said: "I don't think the industry likes $150 million sequels any more."

Director John Madden will follow his Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love with an adaptation of the novel St Agnes' Stand, which was has been picked up by Miramax. Madden is working on the project with Little Voice producer Elizabeth Karlsen and if it goes ahead it will be the first of a three-picture deal Madden has with Miramax.

St Agnes' Stand deals with an injured outlaw heading for freedom in California when he stumbles across three nuns and seven orphan children who have survived an ambush.

Having won Oscars for taking on the British in Braveheart, Mel Gibson will be battling the British again in the Revolutionary War drama The Patriot which begins filming next month. He will play a reluctant hero struggling to keep his family together while fighting to gain America's freedom. Joely Richardson and Chris Cooper also feature in the film which has been scripted by Saving Private Ryan writer Robert Rodat and will be directed by Roland Emmerich, who made Independence Day and Godzilla.

When he has finished filming The Patriot, Gibson goes directly on to his next project, the offbeat romantic comedy, What Women Want. He will play a chauvinistic executive who acquires the ability to hear what every woman he meets is really thinking.

Adam Sandler, whose new film Big Daddy has taken over $150 million at the US box-office, has created a six-minute animated comedy for the World Wide Web. The film, The Peeper, about a middle-aged man who peers into a girl's window, will have its premiere next Friday on Sandler's Website - adamsandler.com - and will run exclusively on the Net. "The on-line community has always been supportive of me and I wanted to give them something in return," says Sandler. "I wanted to give them the ability to watch it whenever they get the urge. Long live the Web!"

Big Daddy opens here on October 1st

Tyrone Power, the 40-yearold son of the late film star, will play a Bill Clinton-like US President in the fictional comedy The Washington Intern, which is described as being "loosely based" on the Monica Lewinsky affair. Lewinsky will be played by an unknown actress, Kathryn JenkinsSmith, who won the role because of her facial resemblance to the former intern who nearly brought down the presidency. Because Jenkins-Smith currently weighs more than 15 stone, however, director Clyde Ware has hired a fitness coach to help her lose at least three stone by next May, when filming is scheduled to begin.

With an Oscar already to her credit, Geena Davis is now going for gold at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. She is among 32 candidates in the running to represent the US in the archery competition. To keep her hand in, so to speak, Davis has had an archery range installed on the set of her new film Stuart Little. Although she practises five hours a day, six days a week, and has set her heart on making the team, she does not intend to give up acting. "I have to keep making movies," she says. "I have yet to make a lot of money from archery."