Variety says Irish film has spice of life

'WELCOME to the new Ireland - the fourth richest nation on Earth by GDP per capita, and a far cry from the old stereotype of a mystical Emerald Isle peopled by priests and peasants, poets, patriots and pixies."

So begins a prominent two-part feature this week in leading trade paper Variety. "The film biz is a microcosm of the Irish revolution, undergoing changes that are both financial and artistic," European editor Adam Dawtrey notes, adding: "A new wave of Irish film-makers, weaned on Spielberg more than Synge, are trying to address the new, hi-tech, consumerist Ireland."

Most of the Irish interviewees for the article offer an upbeat prognosis for the industry. Variety notes that while Neil Jordan "praises the efforts of the IFB (Irish Film Board), and the impact of the tax break," he believes that "Irish cinema is still in its infancy".

Jordan is quoted as saying: "We don't have a visual culture. It's a consequence of the history of poverty, not having a bourgeoisie that buys art. There's no great architecture. The word was the only culture that people could afford. If you think of Irish genius, you think of writers.

"Cinema has nothing like the energy or coherence that the literary tradition has here. There's no equivalent yet in film of Patrick McCabe, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle or Seamus Heaney. I don't know why Irish film-makers have not engaged themselves more constantly and aggressively with Irish writers."

A companion feature in Variety illustrates the diversity of projects in development by Irish producers and directors. Jordan is reported to be talking to Patrick McCabe about writing his first original screenplay, developing a project with Conor McPherson, and buying the rights to Hugo Hamilton's memoir, The Speckled People. Director Lenny Abrahamson is reuniting with Adam & Paul actor and screenwriter Mark O'Halloran for The Garage ("an unusual take on a small Irish town") and developing a modern version of Ivan Turgenev's First Love. Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, who produced the new Dublin comedy-horror movie, Boy Eats Girl, are developing The Horde, a thriller in which a US businessman mines for gold under an ancient Irish monument and disturbs a tribe of angry spirits.

Intermission screenwriter Mark O'Rowe is working on another Dublin drama, Perrier's Bounty, for producer Alan Maloney, who is also working with Bono to develop A Version of Las Vegas with writer Barry Devlin. It's a comedy-drama about an Irish musician who moved to Las Vegas with his showband in the 1960s, and is tracked down in the present day by the son he abandoned in Ireland. And Fiach MacConghail, the new director of the Abbey Theatre and the producer of the imminent Paul Mercier film Studs, is reported to be working with John Banville an the adaptation of his novel, The Book of Evidence.

Allen likes UK climate

Woody Allen will team up with Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and Ian McShane in the leading roles of his new comedy, which starts shooting on Monday in London, where he made Match Point, which also featured Johansson and was warmly received at Cannes last month.

Allen describes the film as a contemporary comedy melodrama with Johansson playing a visiting US student who has a love affair with a British aristocrat. "I play a low-grade American entertainer," Allen says, "which is perfect for me because that's what I am."

Lost champs have their day

Watermarks, a documentary on champion women swimmers of the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna in the 1930s, will have its first Irish screening in Meeting House Square, Dublin, next Thursday at 10.15pm. Hakoah was founded in 1909 in response to the "Aryan clause", an Austrian law forbidding organisations to accept Jews as members, and it became one of Europe's biggest athletic clubs. Director Yaron Zilberman interviewed eight surviving members of the team for his film, which also draws on archive footage. Admission is free (www.templebargallery.com).

Batman for pseuds

Stumped for something to say when conversation turns to the deeper relevance of Batman Begins? Try using this line from Edward Lawrenson's review in Sight & Sound: "The film's disquisition on justice isn't, say, on a par with The Oresteia, and yet it's cheering to see an event movie subtly handle such issues so soon after the Manichean idiocies of Revenge of the Sith."