Sundancing to success

When the Sundance Film Festival awards were presented at last Saturday's closing night ceremony, Tony Bui's Three Seasons, which was developed at a Sundance Institute Feature Film Lab, won three awards, including the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition. The first American film to be shot in Vietnam since the war, it also took the Audience Award for dramatic competition, and earned Lisa Rinzler the cinematography award. The film's executive producer, Harvey Keitel, stars in this inter-linking of three stories set in present-day Vietnam.

Chris Smith's American Movie, which was co-produced by Michael Stipe, won the festival's best documentary award. It deals with a manic Wisconsin director's obsession to make the big time with his short horror film. The Audience Award for documentary went to brothers Roko and Adrian Belic for Genghis, which accompanies an American blues singer to the Central Asian republic of Tuva to participate in a nation-wide throat singing competition.

The Audience Award for World Cinema was shared by Tom Tykwer's exhilarating Run Lola Run and Radu Mihaileanu's Holocaust comedy, Train De Vie. The Directing Award for drama went to Eric Mendelsohn for Judy Berlin, an ironic look at relationships deteriorating and reforming during a solar eclipse in the Long Island town of Babylon.

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award was shared by actor Frank Whaley who turns writer and director with Joe the King, about a boy's miserable life in yet another dysfunctional family, and screenwriter Audrey Wells for her directing debut, Guinevere, featuring Sarah Polley and Stephen Rea.

Congratulations to Jim Sheridan whose film, The Boxer, has won the best European Film Award in the Goyas, the Spanish film industry's annual prizes. The other nominees for the European film award were Nanni Moretti's Aprile, Pavel Chujrai's The Thief and Robert Guediguian's Marius Et Jeanette.

The big winner on the night was the new movie from Belle Epoque director Fernando Treuba, The Girl Of Your Dreams, which took seven Goyas, including best Spanish film and best actress (Penelope Cruz).

The Tricycle Cinema on Kilburn High Road will host London's first Irish Film Festival this month, opening on February 21st with Liam McGrath's documentary on Francis Barrett, Southpaw, which goes on cinema release in London next month. The festival will close a week later with a very different Barrett movie, Stephen Bradley's surreal debut feature, Sweety Barrett, starring Brendan Gleeson and Liam Cunningham.

The festival, which will screen 18 features, six documentaries, 28 short films and some animation, has been programmed by Cork Film Festival director, Mick Hannigan. The features on the programme also include Night Train, Titanic Town and Vicious Circle. The festival's illustrious roll call of patrons includes Brenda Fricker, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, Daniel DayLewis, Sinead Cusack, Pierce Brosnan and Edna O'Brien. Meanwhile, entries are now invited for the 3rd Kino Festival of Irish Cinema, which runs at Kinofilm in Manchester from March 15th to 20th. For further information, call (0044) 161-2882494.

The nominees for the 13th annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards, which regularly anticipate the Oscar nominations in that category, have been announced. Robert Richardson receives his fifth nomination for The Horse Whisperer.

John Toll, who has been nominated twice and won both times (for Legends Of The Fall and Braveheart) is on the shortlist for The Thin Red Line, while Janusz Kaminski earns his third nomination for Saving Private Ryan. The remaining two places go to first-time nominees, Remi Adefarasin for Elizabeth and Richard Greatrex for Shakespeare In Love. The previous three ASC winners - Toll (Braveheart), John Seale (The English Patient) and Russell Carpenter (Titanic) - all went on to win cinematography Oscars. The ASC will announce this year's winner on February 21st. Meanwhile, this year's Oscar nominations will be announced in Los Angeles on Tuesday next.

After recovering from a heart ailment, Sophia Loren is set to return before the cameras in England with a project that will team her with the 86-year-old director Michelangelo Antonioni. Loren's husband, the veteran producer Carlo Ponti, is backing the film, Destination Verna, which is based on a story by science-fiction author Jack Finney about a woman who buys a ticket to live on a distant planet. Their son, Edoardo Ponti, will serve as back-up director in case Antonioni, who has been unable to speak since suffering a stroke several years ago, falls ill.

Nick Nolte, a strong Oscar contender for both Affliction and The Thin Red Line, is set to star in White Jazz, an adaptation of James Ellroy's 1992 novel about a tortured, corrupt police lieutenant. Like most of Nolte's films in recent years, it will be made without frills on a minimal budget. He continues to receive offers from the major studios to star in big-budget productions but, he says: "The seduction there is always money, which is an addiction I've tried to swear off."

Robert De Niro, who earned £8 million for his last film, Ronin,is to take considerably less for his next project, the thriller 15 Minutes, in which he will play a famous detective who teams with a fire department investigator to solve a murder. This time De Niro will receive bonuses linked to the film's box office performance. His co-star in the new movie will be the Irish-American actor-director, Edward Burns, most recently seen in Saving Private Ryan.

Rod Steiger is to make his film directing debut at the age of 74 with Thanksgiving, in which he will also star as one of three old friends who get together for a holiday reunion. The Oscar-winning actor intends to ask some of his friends in show-business to play roles in the film, which will be shot in the desert heat of Palm Springs this summer.

Joan Collins is joining Mark Addy (from The Full Monty) in a follow-up to the 1994 film of The Flintstones, to be titled Viva Rock Vegas. Collins will play the shrewish Pearl Slaghoople, who was played in the first film by Elizabeth Taylor, while Addy takes over from John Goodman as Fred Flintstone, with Stephen Baldwin as Barney Rubble.

The new film, which begins shooting at Universal Studios in April, will be a prequel to the original and will focus on the newly married Flintstones as they and the Rubbles visit Stone Age Las Vegas.

The producers wanted an all-new cast for the film, so none of the stars of the original will be returning. Kristen Johnson from 3rd Rock From The Sun will play Fred's wife Wilma while Jane Krakowski, who plays Elaine, the receptionist in Ally McBeal, has been cast as Betty Rubble.

Quote of the week: from Steven Spielberg after his good friend George Lucas gave him an exclusive preview of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace - "I looked at George and said, `Ooooh my God!'."