Who hoo! Excellent! The US-Ireland Alliance, a non-profit organisation set up to foster ties between the US and the auld sod, has announced that James L Brooks, creator of The Simpsons, is to be honoured at the body's third annual pre-Oscars event, writes Donald Clarke.
Brooks, who also created the peerless Mary Tyler Moore Show and directed such films as Terms of Endearment, is the first person with no immediate Irish connection to be garlanded at the Oscar Wilde: Honouring the Irish in Film bash.
"We thought there would be no one more deserving of being made an honorary Irishman than Jim Brooks," Trina Vargo, president and founder of the Alliance, gushed. "And it's been said that there are two kinds of people - the Irish, and those who lack imagination - so Jim is Irish as far as we're concerned." Mmm, canapés
Teenage kicks at Junior Galway Fleadh
The 13th Junior Galway Film Fleadh kicks off on November 6th and this year will focus closely on the trials of being a teenager. Features to be screened include Marian Quinn's 32A, recently a success at the senior Fleadh, the French hit Comme Une Image and, challengingly, Carl Dreyer's mighty The Passion of Joan of Arc.
As ever, there are also an intriguing series of workshops and imaginatively conceived special events.
For further details of the jamboree, which runs until November 10th at the Town Hall Theatre and the Cinemobile in Ballinasloe, go to www.juniorfilmfleadh.com
Behold the new Print of Darkness
Following an ecstatically received screening at last week's Horrorthon, a gorgeous new print of Terence Fisher's Dracula, buffed and primped by the British Film Institute, will begin a welcome run at the IFI from today.
The film has been reissued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hammer Films move into horror and all Smart Alecs who regard that studios output as overly twee should get themselves down to Temple Bar for overdue re-education. Don't expect Christopher Lee to turn up, though. He still stubbornly refuses to discuss his role in the reanimation of Bram Stoker's most famous creation.
Film has had its day, says Lynch
Even those of us who savoured David Lynch's recent Inland Empire were somewhat uneasy about his decision to foreswear the lusciousness of film for grainy digital video. Well, it seems the great man has no interest in returning to celluloid. "I'm never going back to 35mm cameras, never, never," Lynch said at the London Film Festival last week.
"Film has had its day and you could do interesting, beautiful things with it, but digital is the new thing. It's much better, way better for the scenes and every aspect of the story you're telling."
Cusack bowlered over
While sauntering through the foyer of the Soho Hotel last week, Reel News caught a glimpse of John Cusack wearing a bowler hat. Does he think this is still the best way of blending in when visiting the British capital? Why not go the whole hog and dress as a Beefeater?
Panic at threat of writer's strike
Panic is overtaking Hollywood as studios seek to get movies into production before the onset of a threatened writers' strike. The union representing screenwriters recently voted to grab the placards and gather round the brasier if a satisfactory deal could not be reached regarding payments for transmissions on mobile phones and other new media.
Every cloud does, however, have a silver lining. One of the productions threatened by the action is Ron Howard's Angels & Demons, the sequel to the cosmically frightful The Da Vinci Code. Don't hurry back chaps.
Canada repels cheeky US invasion
A vulgar excess of patriotism has landed Walt Disney Pictures in the soup with sensitive Canadians. Welcome: Portraits of America, a short made by the studio to be screened in airports and embassies, features gorgeous footage of mountains, lakes, waterfalls, fields and all that stuff. Sadly, one of the shots includes the part of Niagara Falls that lies within Canada. "This is an insult," Paul Gromosiak, an expert on the Falls, fumed. "This is not the US, this is 100 per cent Canada, shot from the Canadian side." Next the Americans will be claiming historic Canadian monuments such as Neil Young and William Shatner as their own.
