WITH all the negative attention Ron Howard's film of The Da Vinci Code has received from the Vatican, one would imagine that the distributors had enough to worry them.
No so, according to an article in the April 24th issue of Newsweek, which begins: "Nothing is going to stop the movie of The Da Vinci Code from being an unqualified success - except maybe Tom Hanks's terrible hairdo."
There is, it seems, "a whispering campaign" in rival Hollywood studios that the "flowing mane" Hanks wears as symbologist Robert Langdon could deter viewers. "I loathe it - it looks greasy," one rival studio executive told Newsweek. Hanks responded: "Let's just say I got positive feedback from the chicks in Ron's office."
New movies you can't see
Opening in the UK today, The Moguls stars Jeff Bridges as a man who persuades his friends and neighbours (among them Joe Pantoliano, William Fichtner and Ted Danson) to participate in making a porn movie. But don't expect to see it at a cinema near you. Even though the number of Irish cinema releases has increased significantly in recent years, many movies acquired for distribution in the UK and Ireland continue to bypass our cinemas.
Some other recent UK releases suffering the same fate are Danis Tanovic's Hell (L'enfer), based on a Krzysztof Kieslowski screenplay and starring Emanuelle Béart; Pierrepoint, featuring Timothy Spall as the eponymous executioner; London youth drama Kidulthood; Frozen, a mystical thriller with Shirley Henderson; The Mistress of Spices, featuring Aishwarya Ray and Dylan McDermott; and The Night We Called It a Day, starring Dennis Hopper as Frank Sinatra and Melanie Griffith as Barbara Marx.
A theatre near you
A weekend programme of movies exploring the theatrical in cinema - but eschewing films based on stage plays - begins at the Irish Film Centre this evening when director Eugenge Green will introduce his award-winning 2001 Flaubert adaptation, Toutes les Nuits. The attractive, eclectic line-up includes such notable rarities as Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath (1943), Shirley Clarke's The Connection (1961), Miklos Jansco's The Red and the White (1967), and Civil Life Cycle (2005), seven experimental short films made by season programmers Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, known collectively as Desperate Optimists. www.irishfilm.ie
Stars, stars and more stars
Casting around: Viggo Mortensen reunites with A History of Violence director David Cronenberg for Eastern Promise, a London-set thriller involving human trafficking and prostitution, scripted by Steve Knight, who wrote Dirty Pretty Things. Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin join regulars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Andy Garcia for Ocean's Thirteen, which starts shooting in July. And Javier Bardem and Giovanna Mezzogiornio head the cast of Mike Newell's movie of the Gabriel Garcia Márquez classic, Love in the Time of Cholera, to be filmed in Brazil from August.
Pirates of the Mediterranean
Film piracy appears to be thriving in Spain, and blatantly so. Within half an hour of arriving at a seaside town near Barcelona earlier this month, my al fresco lunch was interrupted by a young woman hawking pirated DVDs of Volver, the new Pedro Almodóvar film that opened in Spain a few weeks earlier. The following weekend, pirates took up position at both ends of one of the town's busiest thoroughfares, displaying dozens of pirated DVDs, mostly of recent releases still playing in Spanish cinemas.
Cillian's MTV honour
Cillian Murphy is the sole bearer of the Irish flag in the nominations for the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, to be presented on June 3rd. Murphy's portrayal of The Scarecrow in Batman Begins is on the shortlist for Best Villain, along with Ralph Fiennes (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles of Narnia), Tobin Bell (Saw II) and Hayden Christensen (Revenge of the Sith). Nominated for Best Picture are The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wedding Crashers, King Kong, Batman Begins and Sin City.
In the Best Kiss category, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Mr & Mrs Smith) face stiff competition from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain).
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