Channel 4 has lost its two senior film executives to an exciting new company announced in London this week. David Aukin, head of film at C4 for the past seven years, and Colin Leventhal, a founding director of C4 and chairman of Film Four Distributors since 1995, have teamed up with Trea Hoving. The latter, a former executive vice-president of acquisitions at Miramax, will have joint responsibility for the new company, which will develop, produce, co-produce and acquire feature films.
The company has set up a long-term partnership deal with Miramax, the leading US distributor of specialised cinema, and Miramax will provide revolving funds of $50 million for production and an initial $3 million for development. The new company, which starts operations early in the New Year, is the most significant development for the British film industry for many years, and could very well prove a boon to Irish film-makers.
Colin Leventhal and Harvey Weinstein first met when Miramax acquired the US rights to the C4-funded Neil Jordan movie, The Crying Game, which became a major hit in the US. At C4 David Aukin has been responsible for such films as Shallow Grave, Four Weddings And A Funeral, The Madness Of King George, Trainspotting and Secrets & Lies. At Miramax Trea Hoving was responsible for acquiring such films as Like Water For Chocolate, Enchanted April, Trainspotting and Brassed Off, and she was an executive producer on Flirting With Disaster.
The Progressive Democrats TD Des O'Malley makes his acting debut - playing himself - in John Boorman's Dublin crime drama, I Once Had A Life. The cameo role features him giving a Dail speech attacking crime, and to his surprise, he says, the scene was completed in just two takes. But it's not the former minister's acting debut, he told Reel News at The McCourts Of Limerick party hosted by the US ambassador, Jean Kennedy Smith, at her Phoenix Park residence last Monday night.
Back in his twenties, Des O'Malley acted with the College Players in his native Limerick, and he recalls how his performance in the title role of Richard III earned him the rebuke of one reviewer that Richard 1/3 would have been more appropriate to describe his performance.
Filming is now under way in Derry and Donegal on Sunset Heights, a futuristic thriller written and directed by Derryman Colm Villa. "From the murder of Luke Bradley's son unfolds a story of lawlessness, resurrection and finally redemption," according to the movie's synopsis. Toby Stephens, son of Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens and star of the current release, Photographing Fairies, heads a cast that includes Jim Norton, James Cosmo, Patrick O'Kane and Joe Rea.
The African Cultural Project presents a weekend of Southern African films at the IFC in Dublin, starting tonight with Ross Devenish's 1973 South African apartheid drama, Boesman And Lena, based on the play by Athol Fugard. Tomorrow's programme includes two documentaries, The Water War from Mozambique and Angano . . . Angano . . . from Madagascar; the 1972 Angolan liberation drama, Sambizanga, will be introduced by its director, Sarah Maldoror. The programme concludes on Sunday with two South African films, the 1987 documentary, Have You Seen Drum Recently?, and the new Les Blair drama, Jump The Gun, which views the changes in present-day Johannesburg through the eyes of disparate characters.
The Bandit Films production, The Last Bus Home, written and directed by Johnny Gogan, has taken first place at the Irish and British Film Festival held in Cherbourg this month. The award was voted by the audience and the prize is worth FF20,000 plus the costs of sub-titling the film in French. "We are in discussion with a number of French distributors as a result of the win," the film's producer, Paul Donovan says. "The film is due for an Irish cinema release this winter."
Meanwhile Stephen Bourke's short film, 81, has been awarded the prestigious Prix Europa for television programme of the year in the Young Europe category at the awards ceremony held in the Babelsbourg Studios in Berlin. This is the eighth award won by the film following its victories at festivals in Valencia, Melbourne, Houston, Cork, Rome, France and Greece.
Busy Ewan McGregor follows his starring role in the new Star Wars movie with The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice, now shooting in England. A contemporary comedy based on Jim Cartwright's West End stage production, the film is directed by Mark Herman, who also made Brassed Off with McGregor. Joining the ubiquitous Scottish actor in the new film are Jane Horrocks, Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent.
Ewan McGregor will follow it with Rogue Trader, playing Nick Leeson, whose crooked dealings brought down Barings Bank. The film, which starts shooting next month, will be directed by James Dearden, who has adapted the screenplay from Leeson's book on his part in the Barings crash. Leeson is now serving a jail sentence in Singapore. The $15 million film will be produced by David Frost and Claire Chapman.
Hundreds of established and up-and-coming Irish actors auditioned for leading UK casting directors, producers and film-makers at last week's London Irish Screenings - via computer on the Screensearch interactive database, which combines live action video clips with specific search criteria. The showcase event, held at the Irish Club in Belgravia, attracted representatives from, among others, BBC, Cartlon TV, LWT and Granada, along with dozens of casting directors including Susie Figgis, Mary Selway and Julia Duff.
Diners at the Los Angeles restaurant, Ago, witnessed a brawl last week when Quentin Tarantino "got medieval" on Don Murphy, one of the producers of Natural Born Killers, which was based on a Tarantino screenplay. Tarantino was dining with Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein when he spotted Murphy and delivered a number of blows to Murphy's face before Weinstein intervened. "I really think I slapped some respect into that guy," Tarantino told Variety.
"We shook hands and agreed not to badmouth each other any more." Apparently Tarantino was less than pleased with Jane Hamsher's just-published book, Killer Instinct, which deals with the making of, and fall-out, from Natural Born Killers and has few kind words to say about Tarantino. Hamsher is Don Murphy's producing partner. When the L.A. County sheriff's deputies arrived at Ago, Tarantino apologised to Murphy, who decided not to press charges.
Tarantino's eagerly-awaited third movie, Jackie Brown, opens in the US on Christmas Day and in March on this side of the Atlantic.
Gerard Depardieu is lined up to play Charles De Gaulle in a biopic written by Jean Cosmos. The actor is also planning to make his second film as a director with Un Pont Entre Deux Rives, a road movie set in northern France in the 1960s. Depardieu directed a film version of Moliere's Tartuffe in 1984.
Now shooting in south-west France and in Granada is Alice Et Martin, the new Andre Techine movie which stars Juliette Binoche, Carmen Maura and newcomer Alexis Loret and deals with a family no longer able to live with the skeletons in its closet.
Ex-rapper Mark Wahlberg, so impressive in Boogie Nights which is due here in January, is in talks to co-star with Robert De Niro in the boxing drama, Out On My Feet, to be directed by actor Barry Primus. Andrew Davis, who made The Fugitive, is to direct A Perfect Murder, the remake of Alfred Hitchock's Dial M For Murder; Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow will take the roles originally played by Ray Milland and Grace Kelly.
Having won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay back in March, Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade has finally been picked up for distribution in Britain and Ireland. It will be released by Buena Vista early next year.
