Director David Lynch and singer-songwriter Donovan are touring with a presentation to be staged in Dublin on October 20th, at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Trinity College, in association with Trinity's School of Drama, Film and Music. On the following afternoon, they will present the show at Elmwood Hall in Belfast, as part of the Belfast Festival at Queen's.
Lynch will talk about his movies and his book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Donovan will perform hits featured on his recently- recorded concert DVD, Donovan Live in LA.
Proceeds will benefit the David Lynch Foundation, which brings stress-reducing transcendental meditation to at-risk schoolchildren. www.davidlynchfoundation.org
We need to talk about Cavan
The new Ramor Film Festival in Virginia, Co Cavan explores social change as depicted in Irish film, with an emphasis on emigration. Tonight Luke Gibbons introduces Desmond Bell's Hard Road to Klondyke and Gerard Stembridge's Bad Day at Black Rock.
Tomorrow's programme includes workshops on screenwriting with Bachelor's Walk co-writer Tom Hall and film-making with Accelerator director Vinny Murphy, and a screening of Jim Sheridan's In America.
Sunday screenings include: Kevin McCann's Cavan-set Suile Cara; My Left Foot, introduced by screenwriter Shane Connaughton; and two Cathal Black films based on John McGahern stories, Wheels and Korea. The festival closes on Tuesday with Brian Kirk's Middletown. www.ramorfilm.blogspot.com
Ranelagh bells toll for Maureen
The Cinemobile arrives at Ranelagh Arts Festival in Dublin tomorrow for a day of screenings. The event will pay tribute to Maureen O'Hara (see right), who was born and raised in Ranelagh, with a 2.30pm screening of William Dieterle's 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which she plays Esmeralda opposite Charles Laughton's Quasimodo.
The programme also includes animated feature The Ugly Duckling and Me; a rare screening of the 1941 Nazi propaganda film, Mein Leben für Irland (My Life For Ireland), introduced by Jeremiah Cullinan, director of the documentary Hitler's Irish Movies; and Federico Fellini's 1957 classic La Strada, introduced by Garage director Lenny Abrahamson, and preceded by three shorts from producer-director team Ken Wardrop and Andrew Freedman. www.ranelagharts.org
4.0 months for Die Hard director
John McTiernan, the director of the first and third Die Hard movies and the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, has been sentenced to four months in jail and given a $100,000 fine for lying to an FBI agent about hiring private investigator Anthony Pellicano to wiretap the producer of his remake of Rollerball. The judge stated that McTiernan considered himself "above the law" and had shown no remorse. The director is appealing.
Royal film hits a brick wall
The Royal Film Performance, an annual fixture in London for over 60 years, has been cancelled for the first time. Sarah Gavron's film of Monica Ali's 2003 bestseller Brick Lane had been chosen for the event next month, which was to be attended by Prince Charles. The organisers claim that the planned date "no longer works in the Royal diary".
However, it's believed that the film was regarded as too contentious for the event. It deals with the life of a Bangladeshi immigrant to London, trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage. Community groups condemned the book for portraying Bangladeshis living in the Brick Lane area as backward and uneducated. The film opens here in November.
Cronenburg buzzing about opera project
Kevin Macdonald, who directed The Last King of Scotland, has lined up a strong cast for his US remake of the excellent BBC mini-series State of Play. Brad Pitt, Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman play the reporters, with Helen Mirren as their editor, Edward Norton as a congressman and Robin Wright Penn as his ex-wife.
In one of the more intriguing adaptations of a movie for another medium, David Cronenberg will direct an opera based on his riveting 1986 movie The Fly, in which Jeff Goldblum played a scientist transformed into a fly-man hybrid after a botched experiment. "I've never directed an opera before and thought it might be quite fun," he said.
