The Oscar-winning American actor, Kevin Spacey, will be the special guest at the first in a series of public interviews sponsored by The Irish Times and the Film Institute of Ireland. The public interview with Kevin Spacey will be held at the Irish Film Centre on Monday evening, November 16th, and will be preceded by a special preview of the new American thriller, The Negotiator, in which Spacey co-stars with Samuel L. Jackson.
Born in New Jersey in 1959 and raised in Los Angeles where he began acting in school plays, Kevin Spacey studied for two years at the Julliard School of Drama. He made his New York debut in Joseph Papp's 1981 production of Henry IV, Part One in Central Park, and a year later made his off-Broadway debut opposite Liv Ullmann in Ibsen's Ghosts. His roles on Broadway have included Mickey in David Rabe's Hurlyburly, directed by Mike Nichols; Jamie Tyrone opposite Jack Lemmon in Jonathan Miller's 1986 revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night; and his Tony Award-winning performance as Uncle Louis in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers in 1991. Most recently, he starred in the critically acclaimed London production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.
His formidable body of work in film included roles in Heartburn, Working Girl, Henry and June, Consenting Adults, Glengarry Glen Ross and Swimming With Sharks, before he received the Oscar for best supporting actor for his enigmatic performance in Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects.
His notable films since than have included Seven, Looking For Richard, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and his first feature as a director, Albino Alligator, the story of a bungled robbery. At present, he is shooting in Ireland, taking the leading role in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's Dublin crime movie, Ordinary Decent Criminal.
Full details of the public interview with Kevin Spacey, to be conducted by myself, will be featured in tomorrow's Weekend supplement.
Neil Jordan's film, The Butcher Boy, has received two nominations, including best European film, in the shortlists for this year's European Film Awards. Erick Zonca's French film, The Dreamlife of Angels, leads the field with three nominations.
The Jordan and Zonca films are both nominated for best European film, along with Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run, Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh, Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe, Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful and Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration.
Both Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier are nominated for European actress of the year, as are Dinara Drukarova for the Russian Of Freaks and Men and Annet Malherbe for the Dutch Little Tony. The best actor nominees are Javier Bardem (Live Flesh), Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe), Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful) and Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration).
The Butcher Boy received its second nomination when Adrian Biddle was short-listed as best European cinematographer, along with Joseph Vilsmaier (Comedian Harmonists), Dany Elsen (The Red Dwarf) and Thierry Arbogast (Black Cat, White Cat). The nominees for European screenwriter of the year are Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnes Jaoui (On Connait la Chanson), Peter Howitt (Sliding Doors), Lars von Trier (The Idiots) and Alex van Warmerdam (Little Tony).
For his performance in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Comes, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan is nominated in the category European Achievement in World Cinema 1998. The other nominees here are Antonio Banderas (The Mask of Zorro), Gerard Depardieu (The Man in the Iron Mask), Stellan Skarsgard (Amistad and Good Will Hunting), Emma Thompson (Primary Colors) and Kate Winslet (Titanic).
The six nominees for the Screen International award for best non-European film are Peter Weir's The Truman Show, Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski, Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, Rob Sitch's The Castle and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
The European Film Awards, along with the three People's Choice Awards, will be presented at the Old Vic theatre in London on December 4th.
With programming at an advanced stage, the line-up for the 10th Dublin French Film Festival is looking as strong as ever. Set to open the event on December 3rd is Claude Miller's La Classe de Neige, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, while Eric Rohmer's Conte d'Automne, which earned the veteran writer-director the best screenplay prize at Venice two months ago, is the closing film on December 13th.
The festival's exciting line-up of 25 new French features includes such attractions as Patrice Chereau's stylish, multi-charactered drama, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train; Gaspar Noe's provocative and shocking I Stand Alone; Francois Ozon's outrageous black comedy, Sitcom; and the new Alain Resnais film, On Connait la Chanson.
Isabelle Huppert - who, filming schedules permitting, may attend the festival - has chosen four of her own recent films for screening in Dublin, among them Claude Chabrol's new Rein ne va Plus, his 50th feature, and Benoit Jacquot's L'Ecole de la Chair (The School of Flesh).
To celebrate the festival's 10th anniversary, the programme will showcase 10 outstanding French movies of the past 10 years, among them Au Revoir les Enfants, Delicatessen, Romauld et Juliette, Toto the Hero and Three Colours: Blue.
The festival booking office opens in the IFC on November 23rd.
The fourth Junior Galway Film Festival runs from November 11th to 14th with an international programme which includes new Irish films such as Joe O'Byrne's Pete's Meteor, featuring Mike Myers and Brenda Fricker, along with the first three Irish-language films in the Oscailt initiative - Lipservice, Cosa Nite and Aqua. There will be a workshop with Brian Kelly, director of the Connemara-filmed feature, A Very Lucky Leprechaun, which will be screened. The programme also features Roman Polanski's film of Macbeth; Joao Bothelo's black-and-white Portuguese film of Dickens's Hard Times; Alain Berliner's award-winning Belgian picture of a boy who dreams of being a girl in Ma Vie en Rose; and the next Irish Times/Film Institute of Ireland Cinema in the Classroom screening of Tim Burton's magical Edward Scissorhands.
