One of the 19 Samuel Beckett plays being filmed by the Gate Theatre, RTE and Channel 4, Neil Jordan's short film, Not I, has been selected for screening in the International Critics' Week programme at the 53rd Cannes Film Festival. It features Julianne Moore, who starred in Jordan's recent The End of the Affair.
Cannes opens on May 9th with Roland Joffe's period drama Vatel, starring Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman, and closes on May 21st with Stardom, the new movie from Denys Arcand, the Canadian director of Jesus of Montreal. Among the 23 films selected for competition at Cannes this year are Lars Von Trier's musical Dancer in the Dark with Bjork and Catherine Deneuve; Ken Loach's first US film, Bread and Roses, Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty with Morgan Freeman and Renee Zellweger; Nagisa Oshima's picture of gay samurai in Gohatto; Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou? with George Clooney; James Ivory's Henry James adaptation, The Golden Bowl, featuring Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman and Anjelica Huston; James Gray's The Yards with Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize Theron; and new films from Olivier Assayas (Les Destines Sentimentales), Liv Ullman (The Faithless, written by Ingmar Bergman) and Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood For Love).
As part of the annual Bealtaine arts festival for older people, the Film Insititute of Ireland, the Federation of Irish Film Societies and UCI Cinemas are presenting special screenings of High Society next month. The endearing musical, first released in 1956, stars Grace Kelly (in her last acting role), Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm. May screenings are set for the IFC in Dublin on the 2nd, UCI Coolock (4th), UCI Blanchardstown (9th), UCI Tallaght (11th), Galway Town Hall (12th), Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford (15th), Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (16th), Briery Gap Cultural Centre, Macroom (18th) and Orchard Cinema, Derry (22nd).
The fast-rising young Irish actor Colin Farrell is set to follow his starring role in Joel Schumacher's recently completed Tigerland with the title role in the western, Jesse James. Farrell, who played Danny in Ballykissangel, was chosen by Schumacher to play a roughneck Texan in Tigerland which deals with the experiences of young American soldiers in a Louisiana boot camp before they go off to war in Vietnam.
Farrell begins shooting in June on cinema's latest treatment of the Jesse James legend, to be directed by Les Mayfield. It will focus on the period when the outlaw and his gang go up against the greedy railroad barons and find themselves wanted by the law but revered by the public.
The record number of downloads set by the trailer for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace has been eclipsed by the Internet preview of Peter Jackson's epic movie trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which was downloaded almost 1.7 million times in the first 24 hours when it became available this month. The Star Wars trailer registered one million downloads in its first day online.
The two-minute Lord of the Rings preview features battle footage and brief interviews with director Jackson and star Elijah Wood. Additional trailers will be posted at www.thelordoftherings.net as the movie's release date approaches. The first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, is set to open at Christmas 2001, with The Two Towers and The Return of the King due in successive years. The films, which are shooting consecutively in New Zealand, also feature Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen, Viggo Moertensen and Liv Tyler.
Michael Apted's film of the Robert Harris novel Enigma is the first production from Jagged Films, the company formed by Mick Jagger and Victoria Pearman. Their future productions include The Map of Love, dealing with the love story of Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin, and The Long Play written by Jagger, Rich Cohen and Martin Scorsese, who is to direct this insider's look at the music business.
Enigma, which started shooting in England last week, is a romantic thriller set among code breakers in 1943, and it stars Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam and Saffron Burrows.
Michael Dwyer can be contacted at mdwyer@irish-times.ie