As part of the World Of Books event, presented by The Irish Times and Random House, a discussion on books and the big screen will be held at Temple Bar Music Centre, Curved Street, Dublin, on Saturday, April 19th, at 3 p.m. The line-up of writers on the panel is Neil Jordan, Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh and Sleepers author Lorenzo Carcaterra, and the discussion will be chaired by this writer. For further information call 01 671-5717, or check out the special supplement in The Irish Times next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes, who received Oscar nominations for his performances in Schindler's List and The English Patient, will be at Waterstone's in Dublin next Wednesday with his sister, Sophie, to read from and discuss the novel, Blood Ties, written by their mother, Jennifer Lash. The event starts at 6.30 p.m. and tickets, which cost £3 each, are redeemable against the price of the book.
Fiennes, who recently completed Oscar and Lucinda, starts shooting The Avengers in England on June 2nd. Directed by Jeremiah Chechik, this cinema treatment of the venerable old television series will feature Fiennes as John Steed and Uma Thurman as Emma Peel. Sean Connery is tipped to play the villain of the piece.
The talented young Irish director Kieron J Walsh is making his feature film debut with The Perfect Blue, a romantic comedy which went into production on location in London last week. A graduate of the Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design, Walsh made his mark with a number of fine short films: Goodbye Picadilly, Bossanova Blues and Out Of, The Deep Pan.
Written by Nick Thomas, The Perfect Blue is being made for the BBC 2 Love Bites season of films. It deals with two ex-lovers, Sunny, a West Indian woman and Tom, a white man, who are about to get married to other people. Then they meet at a wedding fair...
Newcomer Inday Ba is cast in the role of Sunny and Tom is played by Philip Glenister, who featured in the soccer violence movie, i.d., and in Translations at the Abbey Theatre last year.
Denis Leary, who recently co-starred with Janeane Garofalo and David O'Hara in Mark Joffe's The Matchmaker - which was filmed in Roundstone, Co Galway turns screenwriter with Noose which starts shooting in Boston next Monday. Co-written by Neary and Mike Armstrong, the movie is described as "a gritty Irish-American drama", to be directed by Ted Demme. Leary heads a cast that includes Kelly Lynch, Ian Hart, Colm Meaney, Billy Crudup and Billy Zane.
A tantalising cast is shaping up for Ridley Scott's project, RKO 281, scripted by John Logan and inspired by the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.
The script has generated a great deal of excitement in Hollywood and the possible cast includes Edward Norton as the young Orson Welles; Marlon Brando as newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst; Madonna as Hearst's lover, Marion Davies; Dustin Hoffman as Herman J. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote Citizen Kane; and Meryl Streep as, the powerful gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper. First the movie has to persuade a Hollywood studio to put up the budget of $40 million.
The new Alan J. Pakula movie, The Devil's Own, has been getting some flak for being soft on the IRA. The film features Brad Pill as a Provo on the run in New York and Harrison Ford as the unsuspecting detective who gives him refuge. However, the British financial and political magazine, The Economist, over-stepped the mark in its March 22nd issue by claiming the movie was "suffering" at the box-office. The movie did not open anywhere before its US release on March 26th.
