Michael Dwyeron film
Four months after its world premiere at Cannes, Steven Soderbergh's Chefinally has been acquired for US release. IFC Films will give the two-part, 262-minute film, starring Benicio Del Toro as Che Guevara, a one-week run in New York and Los Angeles in December to qualify for Oscar nominations. It will then release Cheacross the US and simultaneously through video-on-demand in January.
Here in Ireland, the first part of Chewill open in January, followed by the second in February.
Wild Bunch, the French sales agency handling the film, ran a full-page ad in Screenat Toronto to trumpet the film's opening weekend takings of $2.7 million in Spain. It could not resist including in the ad a quote from Varietycritic Todd McCarthy: "The pic in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD."
Soderbergh is now in post-production on The Informant, a factually based drama starring Matt Damon as a whistleblower who exposed price-fixing practices at a powerful US agri-business firm. He is about to direct The Girlfriend Experience, a low-budget drama dealing with prostitution. And he has signed up Michael Douglas, whom he directed in Traffic, to play flamboyant entertainer Liberace in a biopic.
Soderbergh has asked Matt Damon to play Scott Thorson, who claimed to be Liberace's ex-lover and sued him for palimony in 1982.
Waters now a Circle Maverick
John Waters, the irreverent and inventive director of such independent gems as Pink Flamingos, Hairsprayand Serial Mom, has become the first-ever recipient of the Dublin Film Critics Circle's Maverick award.
Aware that movie folk are laden down with statuettes and crystal bowls, the Circle commissioned Brian Hackett, a distinguished jewellery designer, to fashion something unique and fabulous. The artist took the famous image of a bullet-shaped spaceship lodging in the moon's eye (as used in the 1902 Georges Méliès film Le Voyage dans la Lune), gave it a Celtic twist and incorporated it into a pair of engraved earrings.
Paul Byrne, the Circle's deputy chairman, presented the award, which is intended to acknowledge influential figures just outside the mainstream, to Waters at Dublin's Vicar Street theatre on Wednesday evening. Waters, the sort of sharp-dressed man who would appreciate a pair of smart cufflinks, was preparing to go on stage for his one-man show, This Filthy World.
'Hurt Locker' top choice for critics
Once again, I was on the jury of eight international critics invited to rate selected new movies at Toronto for the daily editions of trade paper Screen Internationaldistributed free at the festival venues. Of the 12 films we were rating, Kathyrn Bigelow's Iraq drama The Hurt Lockertopped the chart with an average score of 3.5 out of a maximum of four points. It was closely followed by Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married(3.4) and Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler(3.3).
Tied for fourth place, with an average of 2.6 each, were Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Wellesand the Ed Harris western Appaloosa. Next came Peter Sollett's Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist(2.3) and Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla(2.2).
Down in the nether regions were the war movies, Spike Lee's Miracle at St Annaand Paul Gross's Passchendaelewith 1.7 each, followed by Michael Winterbottom's Genova(1.4) and Richard Eyre's The Other Man(1.3).
Free viewings for Culture Night
As its contribution to Culture Night tonight, Light House Cinema in Dublin is presenting free screenings of Chacun Son Cinéma( To Each His Own Cinema), the omnibus film commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. Among the international directors who contributed a three-minute film with love of cinema as its theme were Palme d'Or winners Theo Angelopoulos, Jane Campion, Chen Kaige, Ken Loach, Roman Polanski, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier and two teams of brother, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Joel and Ethan Coen.
The screenings are at 6pm and 8.30pm tonight. Free tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Light House box-office from 5pm.
Among the Culture Night events hosted by the National Library in Dublin will be a presentation of Irish productions by the Lumière brothers at 7pm tonight. These films, believed to be the earliest motion pictures of Ireland known to still exist, were shot in 1897 when Alexandre Promio, a cameraman for the Lumières, travelled to Belfast and Dublin.
Film history expert Bob Monks will introduce the programme. Admission is free and booking is not required.
