Recent website musings have rekindled speculation that Jack Palance erred in announcing Marisa Tomei as the winner of the 1992 best supporting actress Oscar for My Cousin Vinny - and that it was intended for Vanessa Redgrave in Howards End. The other nominees were Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives), Joan Plowright (Enchanted April) and Miranda Richardson (Damage).
When the rumour first surfaced in 1994, the Hollywood Reporter attributed it to "the former son-in-law of a prestigious Academy Award winner". Claiming there had been "a massive cover-up", veteran critic Rex Reed promulgated the theory that Palance was "drunk" or "stoned" and read out the wrong name. The Academy insisted that only one name - that of the winner - is inside the envelope opened by an Oscar presenter, and that two Price Waterhouse officials have been in the wings at every Oscar ceremony since 1953 to make an immediate correction if such a mistake is ever made.
De Niro and Pacino get quality time
Having shared two scenes together in Heat (1995), Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are reuniting for Righteous Kill, Jon Avnet's US remake of the excellent French thriller, 36 Quai des Orfevres (released here as 36), taking the roles played by Daniel Auteil and Gerard Depardieu. Producer Randall Emmett described the pairing of Pacino and De Niro as no less than "an event in world history", adding excitedly: "In this movie they're in the whole thing together."
Hilton's hotel awaits Hollywood hardman
Paris Hilton is out, but Tom Sizemore is going inside. He was given a 16-month sentence this week when a Los Angeles judge ruled that the discovery of metamphetamine in his car violated his parole in a 2004 drugs possession case. Sizemore awaits sentencing on other charges, for which he faces up to six years in prison. He is best known for playing tough guy characters in True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Heat, Saving Private Ryan, Bringing Out the Dead and Black Hawk Down.
From burgers to bin Laden
Having made his mark with Super Size Me, in which he lived on McDonald's cuisine for a month, Morgan Spurlock is finishing his documentary on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. He shot 800 hours of footage, which he is editing down to a feature film for the Toronto festival in September. It is already the subject of aggressive bidding battles among international distributors, who have offered higher prices than Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 achieved.
Busy Spurlock has also been working on the third series of reality TV show 30 Days, which he presents on the FX channel. The Emmy-nominated series has observed a campaigner against illegal aliens living with an immigrant family for a month, and Spurlock and his fiancée trying to survive on the minimum wage for 30 days.
Putting documentary making in focus
Martina Durac and Sé Merry Doyle of Loopline Film, in association with Screen Training Ireland, have organised an intensive course focusing on the process of getting documentaries made and seen, to be held in Dublin from July 3rd to 6th and July 17th to 20th. The speakers includes producer John Sinno (Iraq in Fragments) and directors Nick and Mark Francis (Black Gold), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and Ove Nyholm (The Anatomy of Evil). www.screen trainingireland.ie
Guilfoyle on Gehy
Producer Ultan Guilfoyle will take questions from the audience after this evening's 6.40 screening of Sketches of Frank Gehry, at the IFI in Dublin.
Older readers may recall Guilfoyle as a presenter on the RTÉ TV series, Youngline. More recently, he has been head of the film department at the Guggenheim in New York. At the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao, Guilfoyle came to the rescue when director Sydney Pollack could not get in without an invitation. That led to their collaboration on the documentary about architect Gehry, which opens today and is reviewed on page 13.
Dún Laoghaire feted on world stage
The recent Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto celebrated the National Film School at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) in Dún Laoghaire. The school's creative director, Donald Taylor Black, attended with film lecturer Barry Dignam, whose graduation film, Dream Kitchen, was screened in the retrospective. Recent shorts by IADT graduates were shown in the festival competition and one, Farewell Packets of Ten, directed by Ken Wardrop, was voted best documentary. The event is the largest short film festival in North America.
