The Oscar-winning American animator John Lasseter will be in Dublin next Thursday for a tribute day at the IFC and to give a masterclass to animation students, which is already fully subscribed. The IFC will screen A Bug's Life at 12 noon, followed by five short films directed by Lasseter, including his Oscar-winning Tin Toy, at 1.30 p.m., and Toy Story at 2 p.m.
A very limited number of free tickets will be available to IFC annual members for the 3.45 p.m. preview screening of Lasseter's latest film, Toy Story 2, which opens here on February 11th and has taken over $220 million at the US box-office since it opened in late November, making it the third highest-grossing Disney picture to date, after The Lion King and The Sixth Sense. It is hoped that Lasseter will introduce this screening. The event is organised by the Film Institute of Ireland and Buena Vista International (Ireland).
The latest development in the protracted saga of bringing Thomas Harris's novel Hannibal to the screen is that Cate Blanchett is now tipped to take the female lead vacated by Jodie Foster. Last week Universal Pictures executives contemplated waiting for Foster to finish her current film, Flora Plum, before reprising her Oscar-winning role of Clarice Starling, shelving the film completely, or compiling a list of replacement actresses.
Universal has now ruled out a return engagement by Foster. While considering an offer by producer Dino De Laurentiis to pay back the more than $10 million spent by Universal on book and script costs, Universal seems likely to make an offer to Cate Blanchett to play the female lead of an FBI agent put under Hannibal Lecter's spell.
Variety reports that Blanchett, an Oscar nominee for Elizabeth last year, is one of two actresses on the shortlist, and that Universal wouldn't name the other. Blanchett's position is complicated by an imminent production start on Sam Raimi's The Gift with Keanu Reeves, and an engagement to play a role in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Her latest film is The Talented Mr Ripley with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Hannibal screenwriter Steven Zaillian will need to engage in some script surgery to explain the presence of a new character, but it is believed he can use most of the same storyline from his current script.
Twelve documentary films are under consideration for the five Oscar nominations for Best Documentary Feature which will be announced next month. They include such high-profile films as The Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders), Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr (Errol Morris), Genghis Blues (Roko Belic), The Source (Chuck Workman) and American Movie (Chris Smith). They were selected by a new committee of Academy-member documentarists that includes Michael Apted, Charles Guggenheim, Taylor Hackford, Barbara Kopple, James Moll and the aforementioned Erroll Morris.
The Millennium Film Festival organised by Down County Museum, dealing with different responses to religious and spiritual ideals, continues on January 27th with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1946 Black Narcissus. Completing the eclectic programme are Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (February 10th), Tim Robbins's Dead Man Walking (February 24th), Syd Macartney's A Love Divided (March 9th), Mark Robson's The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (March 23rd), and Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew (April 6th). All screenings are in the Upstairs Film Theatre, Downpatrick.
George Clooney has been signed to star in Steven Soderbergh's remake of the 1960 Rat Pack movie, Ocean's 11. He will play Danny Ocean, who leads a gang of 11 thieves intent on robbing several Las Vegas casinos at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. The role was first played by Frank Sinatra.
Malcolm McDowell has been cast as the father of the former pop star David Cassidy in the television film The David Cassidy Story. "I was hurt by the fact that my father was bitter and jealous of my success," says David Cassidy, who is co-executive producer of the film, which is based on his 1994 autobiography C'Mon, Get Happy . . . Fear and Loathing On The Partridge Family Bus.
