Speeding toward completion

Filming wraps today on Speed Dating, a romantic comedy which has been shooting in Dublin, Bray and at Ardmore Studios for the past four weeks. It stars Hugh O'Conor as James Van Der Bexton, who, as he approaches his 30th birthday, remains addicted to speed dating.

When an encounter with a mysterious stranger leaves him amnesiac, he becomes implicated in the disappearance of a young woman and he has to piece his life back together.

The principal cast also features Emma Choy (pictured above with O'Conor), Don Wycherley and Flora Montgomery. A privately funded production, the film is directed by Tony Herbert, who wrote the screenplay, and the producers are Adrian Devane and the film's lighting cameraman, John Conroy, who recently finished working as first assistant cameraman on Ron Howard's movie of The Da Vinci Code. The executive producer is Ned Dowd, whose many credits include Veronica Guerin, King Arthur and the new Mel Gibson film, Apocalypto, which is now shooting in the Mayan language.

Lee's gay western tops the polls

The front-runner for this year's Golden Globes with seven nominations, Ang Lee's superb Brokeback Mountain pulled off a rare hat-trick this week when it took the 2005 awards for best film and best director from the critics' circles in New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

The New York critics voted Heath Ledger best actor for the same film, while the LA and Boston critics opted for Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote.

The New York and Boston critics chose Reese Witherspoon as best actress for Walk the Line, while the LA circle selected Vera Farmiga for Down to the Bone, shown at the Dublin festival this year but unlikely to be released in Ireland.

The New York group chose William Hurt and Maria Bello as best supporting actor and actress for A History of Violence, with the LA critics picking Hurt and Catherine Keener (Capote) and the Boston critics opting for Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man) and Keener. The award for best foreign-language film went to 2046 in New York, Hidden in LA and Kung Fu Hustle in Boston.

Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man was named best documentary in New York and LA, with Murderball winning in Boston.

A Bronx terror

Robert De Niro's sole outing as a director, A Bronx Tale (1993), is taking on ominous connotations. It was the film Martin Cahill (aka The General) was returning to a Ranelagh video store in Dublin when he was shot dead in his car. Last weekend, when the film was shown on RTÉ2, actor Lillo Brancato Jr (29) was shot twice in the chest during a shoot-out that resulted in the death of a Bronx police officer who was trying to prevent a burglary.

Born in Bogota, Brancato made his film debut in A Bronx Tale as the teenage son of the De Niro character, a bus driver who worries about the boy's association with organised crime. He went on to feature in over a dozen movies (including Renaissance Man, Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State) and in The Sopranos (as aspiring mobster Matt Bevilacqua, who was executed by Tony Soprano at the end of the 1999-2000 series).

Brancato's last public appearance was in a New York courtroom six months ago, when he was charged with possession of heroin. His co-accused in the Bronx incident last weekend, Steven Armento, a burglar with three convictions, admitted to shooting the policeman. Armento, who received multiple wounds in the shoot-out, and Brancato are both "in critical condition".

Death of Ireland's eye

Adrian Biddle, who died suddenly last week at the age of 54, was one of the most respected cinematographers working in world cinema. He had a strong connection with Ireland, having worked on five films here: The Dawning, The Butcher Boy (for which he won the European Film Award), Laws of Attraction, Reign of Fire, and on the Cliffs of Moher footage for The Princess Bride. Having made his debut as a cinematographer with Aliens, Biddle worked on, among others, Thelma & Louise (which earned him Oscar and BAFTA nominations), The World Is Not Enough, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. His last two films, V For Vendetta and An American Haunting, will be released next year.

Kong composer clunked

During the final months of pre-production on King Kong, Peter Jackson and composer Howard Shore parted company, citing the standard "creative differences" line. There was no such conflict when they worked together on all three movies in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which earned Shore three Oscars, two for best score and one for best song. Although Jackson replaced Shore with James Newton Howard as composer on King Kong, Shore has not been removed entirely from the movie. He can be seen as the orchestra conductor in the sequence where the gorilla is exhibited at a voyeuristic stage show.