IRISH costume designer Consolata Boyle is an Oscar nominee for The Queen this year, and she received an Ifta last weekend for her work on that film. However, in the edited version of the Ifta ceremony shown on RTÉ last Saturday, while she was interviewed on the way in to the show, her acceptance speech was edited out and her award presentation was glimpsed only fleetingly in a roll of winners.
There was also no mention in the RTÉ programme that Cillian Murphy received the best film actor Ifta for Breakfast on Pluto, presumably because he was not there. Murphy had a longstanding prior commitment as one of the cast of the London stage play Love Song, which closes tomorrow night.
Brideshead Revisited again
Ben Whishaw, who starred in the recent Perfume, and Matthew Goode, from Match Point and Imagine Me & You, have been signed for the movie version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Goode will play Charles Ryder and Whishaw the flamboyant Sebastian Flyte, the roles played by Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, respectively, in the celebrated 1981 TV series.
Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock are working on the screenplay adaptation for the new version, which will be directed by Julian Jarrold, who made Kinky Boots and the Irish-shot Becoming Jane, due for release here next month.
De Menezes drama goes ahead
Although a recent BBC-TV project on Jean Charles de Menezes was abruptly scrapped after four weeks of pre-production, UK-based company Mango Films is proceeding with plans for a feature about the innocent Brazilian electrician shot and killed by London police in a tube station in the days following the July 2005 bombings.
Brazilian-born director Henrique Goldman, who lives in London, will direct, and Stephen Frears will executive-produce, the film, which goes into production this summer. The film-makers are working closely with the de Menezes family. The treatment will be a dramatisation in the style of United 93 and will incorporate archival material, including footage of the huge funeral for de Menezes in Brazil. Wagner Moura, who starred in Lower City, is in discussions to play the leading role.West of Kerry on show
West of Kerry will have a special screening at 6pm next Wednesday in Dublin's National Library in conjunction with the library's current exhibition on singer Delia Murphy, who plays a supporting role in the 1938 film. West of Kerry was shot in Dublin and on the Great Blasket Island before it was evacuated. Sunniva O'Flynn of the Irish Institute and Bob Monks of the National Library will introduce the screening. Admission is free on a first-come, first-served basis.
Mystery casting
With the new Nancy Drew movie due here in the summer, the trend towards teen sleuths continues with a spin on the Hardy Boys, who featured in 58 books written by various ghost writers under the pseudonym Franklin W Dixon. The twist in Hardy Men is that the brothers are adults who have not spoken for years and are drawn back together to solve a mystery. Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller will play the Hardys in what is described as an action-comedy to be directed by Shaun Levy, who made Night at the Museum.
Earth to Cate: take it easy
Does the ubiquitous Cate Blanchett never stop working? She has been in two movies released in the past four weeks: Babel, where she lies on a floor for most of her scenes, and Notes on a Scandal, for which she has been going from one awards ceremony to another. Next month she stars with George Clooney in The Good German, and has completed work on two autumn releases: The Golden Age, a sequel to Elizabeth, and the Todd Haynes movie I'm Not There, in which she is one of seven actors playing Bob Dylan.
And today Blanchett turns up in an uncredited cameo in Hot Fuzz as the embittered ex-girlfriend of the Simon Pegg character and wearing a boiler suit, a face mask and goggles. She agreed to it because she is such a fan of Pegg's movie, Shaun of the Dead.
