Saw 3 is top of the box office in the UK and the US, but in England, the East Anglian Ambulance Trust has issued a warning that the movie's torture scenes are so gruesome that they have caused viewers to pass out.
The trust says it received emergency calls to treat people watching the film at cinemas in Stevenage, Peterborough and Cambridge last weekend. Five required ambulance assistance and one had to be taken to hospital after fainting with fright. A spokesman for the trust said: "People need to be aware this film is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted. As well as collapses, we have had reports of people running screaming from the cinemas."
HandMade is remade
HandMade Films, which was owned by the late Beatle, George Harrison, and his business partner, Denis O'Brien, produced some of the most distinctive British films of the 1980s. The company, which was sold in 1992, is back in business now, having been acquired by Irish entrepreneur Patrick Meehan, who was the manager of Ozzy Osbourne's old band, Black Sabbath. Meehan's production plans include new treatments of some of HandMade's most popular successes - a remake of Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa by Kids director Larry Clark, a remake of Time Bandits, a sequel to The Long Good Friday, a Broadway production based on Alan Bennett's screenplay for A Private Function, and a London stage version of Withnail & I.
The many guises of Guevara
Steven Soderbergh is planning two movies on Che Guevara, both starring Benicio Del Toro. The Argentine will focus on his role in the Cuban revolution, and Guerilla will follow Guevera after the revolution and until his death in Bolivia in 1967. Among those who have played him on screen are Omar Sharif (in Che, 1969), Eduardo Noriega (Che Guevera, 2005) Gael García Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, 2004, and on TV in Fidel, 2002) and Karl Shiels in Anthony Byrne's Irish short film, Meeting Che Guevara and the Man from Maybury Hill (2003).
Polish films collected
Dublin's first Polish Film Festival opens at the Irish Film Institute next Friday night with Feliks Falk's award-winning The Collector and runs until November 19th with a programme of new films and classics such as the late Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love, The Double Life of Véronique and Three Colours White. Polish actor-director Jerry Stuhr will give a talk on Kieslowski's work, and he will discuss his own films after a screening of Tomorrow's Weather (2003), which he directed.
One of Poland's most prolific directors, Krzysztof Zanussi, will attend the festival, which will show his 1976 film, Camouflage, along with two of his most recent productions, Persona Non Grata and Life is a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease. There will be programmes devoted to Polish animation and documentaries. Four of the new films will tour to the Polish Film Festival at Kino in Cork this weekend and next weekend. www.irishfilm.ie
Boston bash for Brendan
Brendan Gleeson will be guest of honour at the 8th Boston Irish Film Festival, which opens on Thursday. He will receive the event's Excellence Award, and two of his recent films, Studs and the Boston-based family drama, Black Irish, will be screened. The line-up also includes Blind Flight, Pavee Lackeen and Tara Road, provided through Reel Ireland, the Irish Film Institute's department for exhibiting Irish films abroad. There will be screenings of the festival's award winners: Niall Heery's feature, Small Engine Repair; Alan Cook's documentary, Home; and Alan Shannon's short film, Badly Drawn Roy, in which a Dublin couple have a new baby boy - who is animated. www.irishfilmfestival.com
After Borat comes Bruno
As Borat opens this weekend on both sides of the Atlantic, Universal Pictures has fought off competition from several studios in a bidding battle for the international rights to Sacha Baron Cohen's follow-up film, Bruno.
Universal paid $42.5 million (€33.3m) for Cohen's comedy in which he plays another character first seen on his TV programme, Da Ali G Show - Bruno, a gay fashionista from Austria who describes himself as "the voice of Austrian youth TV".
