Neil Jordan's hotly anticipated new film, Breakfast on Pluto, receives its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow night.
Jordan's second collaboration with The Butcher Boy author Patrick McCabe stars Cillian Murphy as a young Irish transvestite and Liam Neeson as the priest who fathers him.
Isolation, the first feature directed by Billy O'Brien, who made the award-winning short The Tale of the Rat That Wrote, will have its world premiere at Toronto at midnight on Sunday. A thriller set in rural Ireland, it features John Lynch, Sean Harris, Essie Davis and Ruth Negga. Perry Ogden's Pavee Lackeen, which blends fiction and documentary material in its picture of a young Irish Traveller girl, has its North American premiere at Toronto next Thursday evening.
The Toronto festival, which has 109 world premieres among the 300-plus movies on its programme, opened last night with Deepa Mehta's Water, set in 1930s India, and closes a week from tomorrow with David J Burke's US thriller Edison, starring Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake.
Films you couldn't make up
Frederick Wiseman, arguably world cinema's most uncompromising, thoughtful and expansive director of observational documentaries, will be the guest of honour at this year's Stranger Than Fiction documentary festival at the IFI in Dublin from September 29th to October 2nd. Four of his films will be screened (Domestic Violence, Welfare, High School and Titticut Follies) and Wiseman will participate in a public interview.
Stranger Than Fiction opens with The Devil and Daniel Johnston, an award-winning portrait of the manic depressive rock musician, and closes with Mad Hot Ballroom, in which pre-teens from three New York public schools prepare for a ballroom dancing tournament. The full programme, which includes the winner of this year's Oscar for best documentary feature, Born Into Brothels, dealing with Calcutta children whose mothers work as prostitutes, will be published shortly.
Kitano beats drum for film
Versatile Japanese actor, director and TV presenter Takeshi Kitano caused considerable confusion when he presented his new film as the surprise movie in competition at the Venice Film Festival last weekend. In Takeshis', Kitano plays both leading roles, a famous TV personality and his double, an obscure grocery clerk who auditions unsuccessfully for bit parts. However, interviewed for the New York Times, Kitano insisted, "The film is not really about me".
Asked if he is an admirer of Quentin Tarantino, who has helped distribute his movies in the US, Kitano replied, "I don't like the way Tarantino treats violence. Pulp Fiction doesn't show realistic violence, but to show violence realistically, you need stamina. It's not easy." On reprising his role as the blind swordsman in Zatoichi, Kitano said: "I'm ready to make it, but it's like manufacturing a new Toyota. You know that it works and it's going to sell, but it doesn't interest me because I know all about it, and I know just where it's going."
Veteran still going strong
The remarkably prolific Portuguese writer-director, Manoel de Oliveira, who turns 97 in December, continues to eclipse the output of most directors less than half his age. Magic Mirror, his sixth movie in five years, had its premiere at Venice last week and pursues his preoccupation with the desperate attempts of the bourgeoisie to find a meaning in life. It follows a young ex-convict hired at the mansion of a wealthy family, and the materfamilias who dreams of inviting the Virgin Mary for afternoon tea. To exploit her obsession, he hires a non-virginal young woman to play the part.
De Oliveira is already in pre-production on his next movie, Belle Toujours, which will star Bulle Ogier.
Michael Dwyer's first report from the 30th Toronto International Film Festival will be published on Tuesday
