Irish and British audiences will have to wait until January to see Alan Parker's movie of the Frank McCourt Angela's Ashes, which finished shooting in Dublin just before Christmas. Parker originally considered rushing the film to have it ready for Cannes but, as he explained on a flying visit this week, he chose to bide his time - not least because composer John Williams, who has earned over three dozen Oscar nominations, will not be in a position to record the score until next month.
The movie, which stars Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle, will open in the US in December, timed to qualify for next year's Oscar nominations, with Ireland one of the first countries on the release schedule. At a press lunch hosted in Cannes by United Pictures International, which has non-US distribution rights, Parker was the guest of honour - and all the other guests were presented with a pack of 10 handsomely produced stills from the film.
Meanwhile, Michael Legge, the young Newry actor chosen by Parker to play the late-teenage Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, has been starring as a young man obsessed with disco and falling for an exotic punk rock fan in the 1977-set romantic comedy, Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?, which also features Laura Fraser, Stephen Fry, David Thewlis, singer Lulu and, from Queer as Folk, Charlie Hunnan.