The second feature film from Irish director John Moore, The Flight of the Phoenix, has been set for US release through 20th Century Fox on October 22nd, with a European opening to follow.
Fox also backed Moore's début film, Behind Enemy Lines, which starred Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman. The Flight of the Phoenix is a remake of the 1965 movie, which featured an all-male cast led by James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger, Ian Bannen and Ernest Borgnine.
Moore, who is from Dundalk, shares screenwriting credit with writer Ron Hutchinson and actor-director Edward Burns on the remake, which features Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Tyrese, Miranda Otto and Hugh Laurie. It is set in the Gobi desert when a cargo plane crashes and the crew must brave the elements to salvage the wreckage and re-build the craft.
Hubbard hates Moore
With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 topping the US box-office last weekend, and due for release here next Friday, Texan lawyer Bill Hubbard has set up a film festival to highlight opposing points of view. Running from September 9th to 11th in Dallas, the American Film Renaissance, as the festival will be known, has been bankrolled primarily by some "big-time conservative donors", according to Hubbard, who says, "conservatives complain about institutional bias in Hollywood. They need to stop whining and get out there and produce." The festival will screen Michael Wilson's film Michael Moore Hates America and talk radio host Larry Elder's documentary Michael & Me, which takes on Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Moore, who refused to be interviewed for either film, says he doubts if Wilson's film exists beyond its trailer on the Internet. "I've been waiting to see this movie," he says. "It sounds like great science-fiction."
Bank rolls in
Allied Irish Banks is developing a film financing division under Gillian Duffield, who has been appointed its London-based head of media finance. She has worked in film banking for 15 years, first with Guinness Mahon, and more recently with Dexia-BIL (Banque International Luxembourg), where she arranged financing for Gosford Park, The Dreamers and Open Range. Her appointment comes as Bank of Ireland is co-financing the new Woody Allen movie, which starts shooting in London on Monday week. It features Scarlett Johansson, replacing Kate Winslet who dropped out of the film citing personal commitments, along with Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Brian Cox.
Football footage
In a welcome alternative to mainstream television and its endless re-runs of tired old fodder, BBC Four has been poring through the archives and screening films not seen since they were first broadcast decades ago. Last Sunday night, for example, the channel complemented the Euro 2004 coverage by showing The Golden Vision, a characteristically socially concerned 1965 picture of football fans directed by Kenneth Loach, as he was credited, and followed it with John Boorman's 1963 documentary, Six Days to Saturday, which charted the lives of young Swindon Town FC players in the run-up to a crucial game against Leyton Orient. In marked contrast to the bling-bling world of present-day footballers, Boorman's film noted how the players behaved at all times with modesty, decorum and discipline.
European accession
Access Cinema, the resource organisation for Irish regional cultural cinema exhibition, has had all 12 of its 35mm venues accepted as members of Europa Cinemas, which was established in 1992 and now includes 318 cities in 51 countries, with 567 cinemas and 1,320 screens. It provides financial support to cinemas that commit themselves to programming a significant number of non-national European films. The Access Cinema 35mm circuit will expand from September with the addition of Cinemax in Bantry, Co Cork and the Abbey Centre in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.
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