What the Dickens . . . !!

The two-time Oscar-winning actress, Sally Field, and Seinfeld star Michael Richards feature in a new production of David Copperfield, which started shooting in Dublin on Monday and will continue through to March. A four-hour mini-series for Turner Broadcasting and Hallmark in the US, it is directed by Peter Medak, whose many credits include The Ruling Class, The Krays, Let Him Have It and Romeo Is Bleeding.

Sally Field, who won the best actress Oscar for Norma Rae in 1979 and for Places In The Heart in 1984, plays Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield. Michael Richards, who played the wacky Kramer in Seinfeld, is Mr Micawber, with Anthony Andrews and Eileen Atkins as Mr and Mrs Merdstone.

The mini-series is produced by Greg Smith and John Davis. It is the second Dickens adaptation to be produced here by Greg Smith, following The Old Curiosity Shop. David Copperfield is his third production in Ireland this year, after Anjelica Huston's The Nanny, on which he was one of the producers, and Animal Farm.

The only film selected to fly the Irish flag at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January is Southpaw, a documentary on Francie Barrett, the Galway traveller who represented Ireland as a boxer in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and carried the Irish flag into the Olympic Stadium at the opening ceremony. The film, directed by Liam McGrath and produced by the I Went Down team of Paddy Breathnach and Robert Walpole, goes on release in Ireland on January 15th.

Southpaw is one of the 30 international features selected for Sundance's World Cinema programme. The line-up also includes Beefcake (Canada) by Thom Fitzgerald, Black Cat, White Cat (Yugoslavia) by Emir Kusturica, Get Real (UK) by Simon Shore, I Stand Alone (Seul Contre Tous) (France) by Gaspar Noe, The Lovers Of The Arctic Circle (Spain) by Julio Medem, and Run Lola Run (Germany) by Tom Tykwer.

Sundance will open with the world premiere of Robert Altman's comic drama, Cookie's Fortune, starring Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Patricia Neal and Chris O'Donnell. Premiere screenings at Sundance will include Gillies MacKinnon's Hideous Kinky, Mike Figgis's The Loss Of Sexual Innocence, Errol Morris' Mr Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr, Gregg Araki's Splendor, and two films by actors-turned-directors, Tony Goldwyn's A Walk On The Moon and Tim Roth's The War Zone. Among the 16 features selected for competition at Sundance are Guinevere, directed by Audrey Wells (screenwriter of The Truth About Cats & Dogs), with Stephen Rea, Sarah Polley and Jean Smart; The Minus Man, directed by Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher and featuring singer Sheryl Crow with Owen Wilson and Mercedes Ruehl; A Slipping- Down Life, directed by Toni Kalem and starring Lili Taylor and Guy Pearce; and Joe the King, directed by actor Frank Whaley and featuring Val Kilmer, Ethan Hawke, John Leguizamo and Karen Young.

Virgin Cinemas will be the principal venue for the 14th Dublin Film Festival, replacing the event's traditional venues, the Screen and Savoy cinemas. The other venues for the 1999 festival, which runs from April 15th to 25th, will be the IFC and the three UCI cinemas. The new principal sponsor of the festival will be Miller Genuine Draft, which will also continue to sponsor the Spirit of America strand.

Among the first titles confirmed for next year's event are this year's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Eternity And A Day, directed by Theo Angelopoulos, which is showing in the Cinema Europa strand with Nanni Moretti's Aprile and Mario Martone's Rehearsal For War. Confirmed for the World Cinema programme are John Ruane's Dead Letter Office from Australia and two Canadian films, Robert Lepage's No and Don McKellar's Last Night. The first documentary set for the festival is the world premiere of Waiting For Harvey, which was shot during this year's Cannes Film Festival and follows four young film-makers as they seek a meeting with Miramax Films supremo Harvey Weinstein.

Gift vouchers for the Dublin Film Festival go on sale from tomorrow at Virgin Cinemas and the Virgin Megastore in Dublin.

The Italian actor, writer and director, Roberto Benigni, pulled off a double at the European Film Awards (EFA) in London last weekend when his film, La Vita E Bella (Life Is Beautiful) received the award for European Film of 1998 and Benigni was named European actor of the year. The slapstick comedy which permeates the movie's first half is expertly executed, and played with terrific panache by Benigni as Guido Orefice, a seriously accident-prone bookshop owner in Tuscany in 1939. The humour of the second half - set five years later when he is sent to a concentration camp - resides in Guido's elaborate attempts to save his son from the gas chambers and to shield him from the reality of their plight by pretending that it's all a game with a prize at the end. The film opens here in February.

The EFA award for European actress of the year was shared by Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier for La Vie Revee Des Anges (The Dream Life Of Angels), and that film's director, Erick Zonka, shared the Fassbinder award for European discovery of 1998 with Thomas Vinterberg, the Danish director of Festen (The Celebration).

Adrian Biddle was named European cinematographer of the year for Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy, while Peter Howitt was voted best European screenwriter for Sliding Doors. The award for European achievement in world cinema went to the Swedish actor, Stellan Skarsgard, for Good Will Hunting and Amistad. The French entry, Marie Paccou's Un Jour, was named best short film.

Jeremy Irons received the European Film Academy special achievement award. The Screen International award for best non-European film was given to Peter Weir for The Truman Show. In the three People's Choice awards, voted by film fans from all over Europe, Antonio Banderas was named best European actor for The Mark Of Zorro and Kate Winslet best European actress for Titanic. Incredibly, the German filmmaker, Roland Emmerich, was the people's choice as European director of the year for Godzilla.

Back to square one. After all the brouhaha about Leonardo DiCaprio being signed up to star in the movie of the controversial Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho, Christian Bale is back on board to play the central role. Bale was director Mary Harron's original choice for the role, but was dropped when it was announced at Cannes this year that Leo was interested in it. Most recently seen on screen in Velvet Goldmine and Metroland, Bale will be joined in the cast by Willem Dafoe and Jared Leto and the movie starts shooting in New York on March 1st.

The star of Clueless, Alicia Silverstone, is brushing up on her singing now that Kenneth Branagh has signed her to star with him in his next Shakespeare adaptation, Love's Labour's Lost, which he intends to mount as a 1930s-style musical.

Branagh, who will star and direct from his own script, is negotiating with Nathan Lane (from The Birdcage and MouseHunt) and Adrien Lester (from Primary Colors) for supporting roles in the film. He intends to leave much of Shakespeare's dialogue intact, but says the film will have the feel of a Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire musical, with singing and dancing to be done by the cast members.