Irish director John Moore has lined up two-time Oscar winner, Gene Hackman, to star in his first feature film, the action drama Behind Enemy Lines. Moore deservedly received many awards for his highly imaginative short film, He Shoots, He Scores, on the international festival circuit. Scheduled to start shooting in September, Behind Enemy Lines features Gene Hackman as a US Marine veteran and Owen Wilson as a young pilot who are downed over hostile territory in Eastern Europe and must fight for survival. The most recent draft of the screenplay is by Zak Penn, who wrote Inspector Gadget, and the movie is backed by the Hollywood studio, 20th Century Fox.
Parodying self-parody has proved extremely lucrative in the case of Scary Movie, the surprise hit of the year to date in the US. Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans and starring and written by his brothers Marlon and Shawn, the film employs gleefully gross humour to spoof hit movies such as The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, I Know What You Did Last Summer and, inevitably, Scream.
Made for $19 million by Miramax's Dimension Films division, Scary Movie has taken more than $89 million on its first 10 days on release in the US, where it had the highest opening for an R-rated film - and had the second highest opening weekend figures of the year, after Mission Impossible II - at least until Bryan Singer's X-Men was released last weekend and racked up $57.5 million.
The surprise hit on the US arthouse circuit this summer is the Mike Hodges movie, Croupier, featuring Clive Owen as a would-be novelist who becomes immersed in his work as a croupier at a London casino. Released at the IFC in Dublin last summer, the movie has been steadily building strong word-of-mouth in the US where it has taken more than $2 million on a limited release which continues to expand. An Irish-German-French-British co-production, it was produced by Jonathan Cavendish of the Irish company, Little Bird.
Say goodbye to the unattractive wooden surrounds framing the screen at Cinema 1 in the IFC. They are about to go in a significant improvements programme which will see substantially larger screens going up in both IFC cinemas, and the installation of the only functioning 70mm projector in the country. During the renovation IFC1 will be closed from August 8th to 13th and IFC2 from August 14th to 17th.
3345 is a new monthly event at Vicar Street in Dublin which showcases graphic design, web design, photography and short movies along with live bands and dance music. Screening at the venue tomorrow night are three short films with Galway connections: Ian Gilroy's dark poem, Brood, P.J. Dillon's offbeat office-clerk picture Headwrecker, and, finally getting its first screening in Dublin, Mike Casey's controversial Dole Eireann, a former best documentary winner at Galway Film Fleadh.
Even though Terry Gilliam's 1998 movie of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was such a mess, Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the film, plans to play him again in The Rum Diary, which deals with a love triangle in 1950s Puerto Rico. Nick Nolte has already signed on to co-star in the film, while John Cusack and Steve Buscemi are reported to be interested in joining the project.
Although it has been open for less than a year, Ireland's largest multiplex, Ster Century at Liffey Valley, Dublin, registered its millionth customer this month. Jim McCabe from Clondalkin, who brings his two children to the cinema every weekend, was taking them to Chicken Run when he bought the millionth ticket. His prize includes a trip for two to South Africa, a £500 Liffey Valley shopping voucher, a Ster Century gold pass, and one million M&Ms from Mars Ireland.
Action director John Woo is likely to be reunited with Chow Yun-Fat for King's Ransom, which deals with a troupe of acrobats-turned-thieves. Woo wants Gwyneth Paltrow to co-star, a casting choice which the film's writer, Jessica Bendinger, enthusiastically supports. "Gwyneth would be great as the angry gymnast," she told Entertainment Weekly. "Don't you want to see her on a motorcycle giving people the finger?"