Cannes Diary: A promisingly eclectic cast was announced in Cannes for the new movie of Lassie, which starts shooting in Ireland on Monday.
Globetrotting Irish veteran Peter O'Toole will be joined in the cast by Samantha Morton, a best actress Oscar nominee for Jim Sheridan's In America, and US actor Peter Dinklage, who played the title role in The Station Agent and who told me last year that he traces his lineage all the way back to Wolfe Tone.
The director is Charles Sturridge, whose notable credits include the films A Handful of Dust and Where Angels Fear to Tread, and the TV series Brideshead Revisited, Longitude and Shackleton. The new version of Lassie is set in late 1930s, pre-war Britain, when the dog is sold by her poverty-stricken owners to a duke who lives hundreds of miles away. Ed Guiney of Dublin-based Element Films is producing the movie with Sturridge and Francesca Barra, in conjunction with Classic Media and Isle of Man Film.
Looking for a Bull hit
Marion McKeone, who until recently was the US correspondent of the Sunday Tribune, was in Cannes this week wearing a different hat - and a Stetson would have been apt as she was promoting her first movie as producer and director, Bull Trouble. A documentary, it deals with bull riding, which, she says, is the fastest-growing spectator sport in the US. It follows three cowboys and an Indian as they try to win the biggest prize on the bull riding circuit. Described as "often harrowing, occasionally hilarious and utterly compelling", Bull Trouble completed editing just three days before Cannes started. McKeone, who also acted as music supervisor on the project, has assembled a kicking soundtrack that includes Gloria Gaynor, Hank Williams III, Evan Foster, Joe Ely and Alabama 3.
Le Brocquy in the market
An Iranian student is working illegally in an Irish restaurant under the strict condition that she remains hidden in the kitchen. When the curious young woman makes a peephole in the wall to observe the world "outside", a customer becomes aware that she is watching. That's the premise for Bluebird, one of seven feature films for which Irish producer Julie le Brocquy was seeking interest from sales agents, co-producers and investors at Cannes this week. Having collected a Golden Globe award last year for the powerful Afghan drama, Osama, she has a wide range of projects in development, ranging from an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's first novel, Almayer's Folly, to a portmanteau picture in which five of the Islamic world's leading film directors tell stories reflecting the current moods in their countries.
Those foolish banks
Hotels, however glitzy, are now firmly dismissed as too 20th-century for a party venue at Cannes. Villas are still hot, because the hills of Cannes are dotted with them - the location for the Sony/MTV party last Saturday night was a luxurious villa larger than some Irish villages. However, boats have become the new party venue of choice. For starters, they're not at all as accessible to gatecrashers. Among the companies with a boat at Cannes this year was Bank of Ireland, which hosted a well-publicised party for the new movie, These Foolish Things, attended by Terence Stamp, who stars in it with Anjelica Huston and Lauren Bacall. Before BoI account holders fly into a tizzy, I hasten to mention that the hosts were the UK division of BoI, which registered no less than 10 executives with the Cannes market this year, four of them from the bank's "corporate media team". By contrast, Allied Irish Banks (UK division) fielded a single executive, head of film finance Gillian Duffield.
The deal with the Queen
Stephen Frears is about to ruffle some more feathers in the British establishment, following on from his TV film, The Deal, which dramatised the succession arrangement allegedly struck by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown over dinner at an Islington restaurant back when things, we were told, could only get better. This time Frears is shifting his sights from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace with The Queen, a project announced in Cannes this week and scheduled to start shooting in September. It is set in the week between the death of Princess Diana and her funeral, and it will explore the relationship between Tony Blair and the Royal Family at the time. Michael Sheen, who played Blair so convincingly in The Deal, is expected to reprise his role, and Dame Helen Mirren is said to be in line to play Queen Elizabeth II, although I, for one, can't see a trace of physical resemblance. It's amazing what you can do with make-up and special effects these days, I guess.
Faith and begorrah
Some interesting perceptions of Ireland appeared in the Cannes daily editions of the Hollywood trade papers distributed widely and free of charge at the festival. In an article on the move towards digital projection technology in cinemas around the world, the Hollywood Reporter commented: "Some might be surprised to learn that the pioneering territory in Europe is Ireland." Meanwhile, in Variety, the paper's chief film critic, Todd McCarthy, was reviewing Woody Allen's movie, Match Point, and remarked of the central character, a tennis professional played by Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers: "Although identified as Irish, the terribly attractive athlete speaks with an impeccably posh accent that allows him to fit in seamlessly." Just fancy that!