Never known for shirking from controversial material, Ken Loach is preparing an Irish Civil War drama, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which is scheduled to start shooting in Cork next month. Casting has yet to be announced for the film, which is scripted by Loach's regular collaborator, Paul Laverty.
It revolves around a family and one of the flying columns, the Irish guerrilla units that lived rough as they fought the British between 1919 and the early 1920s.
"The film is based on real events, but it is the war in microcosm, not historically word perfect," says producer Rebecca O'Brien. "It is based on events that did happen, but it is not going be God's own truth. That would be presumptuous."
Dosh for arts docus
The Arts Council and the Irish Film Board have engaged in a joint initiative, Documenting the Arts, which will provide funding towards the production of five or six documentaries a year that "examine, in an exciting way, the diverse issues of art and culture in a contemporary or historical context". Each agency has allocated at least €200,000 towards the project, and between the two agencies, a maximum of €90,000 is available for the production of an individual documentary.
The deadline for the first round of entries is June 7th. Filmbase is administering the scheme on behalf of the Arts Council. See www.filmbase.ie, www.filmboard.ie, or www.artscouncil.ie.
Adam and Paul go large
A critical and commercial success on Irish release last autumn, Lenny Abrahamson's Adam & Paul has been acquired for UK distribution following its enthusiastic reception at the recent Berlin Film Festival. Guerilla Films will release the movie on June 3rd in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Pegg's bad trio
Simon Pegg will follow the entertaining Shaun of the Dead by teaming up with Woody Harrelson and Brendan Fraser for Paul Weiland's comedy-thriller, Three Bad Men. They play a trio of hit men who relocate to the edges of suburbia to try to start a new life as model citizens. The film's five producers include Anthony Minghella, while Sydney Pollack is one of the six executive producers.
Soderburgh bubbles up
Tentatively titled Bubble, Steven Soderbergh's new movie features a nonprofessional cast drawn entirely from the residents of the West Virginia town of Parkersburg and the nearby Ohio town of Belpre, where it is shooting.
Soderergh will follow it with The Good German, a romantic thriller featuring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Clooney will play a journalist covering the Allied summit meeting after the second World War who gets caught up in a murder mystery when the body of a US soldier is found in the Russian zone.
The Good German will be the fifth Soderbergh film for Clooney, who is at present directing and starring in Goodnight, and Good Luck, featuring David Strathairn as the celebrated and outspoken CBS journalist Edward R Murrow, and Clooney as his producer, Fred Friendly.
Faking Fonda
Noting that Variety is "the only US newspaper that has not carried a Jane Fonda interview", the trade paper's editor-in-chief, Peter Bart, "thought it appropriate to publish a hypothetical Q&A", from which the following is an extract.
Q: Your new autobiography, you've told interviewers, sets a precedent for books about celebs in that it tells the truth. Why did you decide to take the wraps off?
Fonda: I need to sell books. Ted Turner gave most of my alimony to the UN.
Q: But you even apologise for what you did in 'Nam 30 years ago ...
Fonda: Ever been on a book tour? You need to give those assholes some red meat.
Q: You write that having sex with Turner was like being in Versailles with all the fountains lit up.
Fonda: I meant to write that, after he sold out to Time Warner, Ted was about as irrelevant as Versailles.
Q: So let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Who are you really? Fonda: I'm a celebrity. Celebrities are people, too. Just not real people.
