The hubbub surrounding the disappointing US returns for Michael Bay's The Island continued last week with the producers - husband and wife team Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald - blaming stars Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor for the flick's comparative failure.
"[Scarlett] is not owned by this sort of young generation at all," Parkes mused. "Those are superstars of the future, those two actors, they're not superstars of the present."
Ms Johansson's people were not amused. "This is a clear-cut example of the producers passing the buck and not taking responsibility for their part in making calculated mistakes throughout the film's marketing," an unnamed someone from Scarlett Inc pouted. While all this was going on the picture was quietly accumulating a perfectly respectable $63 million (€51 million) at the international box office.
Irish shorts suit US
Irish short films continue to be seen in the best places. Derry O'Brien, managing director of Network Ireland Television, has announced the sale of shorts packages to both a Canadian broadcaster and a US internet distribution company. Bite TV, a new Toronto-based station, has picked up nine live action and five animated shorts from NITV. Atomfilms, who make movies available online, are set to buy at least 10 shorts, including Ken Wardrop's Undressing My Mother and Brendan Muldowney's The Ten Steps.
High king of screenplays
Screenwriter Mark Mahon, who hails from Cork, has won the best unproduced screenplay award at the International Action on Film Awards in Los Angeles. The stirringly titled Freedom Within the Heart is set in AD 952 and follows the early life of Brian Boru, high king of Ireland. Mark received the gong from David Carradine, who is proud of his Irish roots and - should Mark's producers be amenable - could still wield a battle-axe with dignity.
Shelley faces 85th winter
Our friends in Hollywood tell us that the great Shelley Winters - fatally dunked by Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun, and later damp again in The Poseidon Adventure - will be celebrating her 85th birthday this week with a massive party at her Beverley Hills home. We salute her.
Vince and Jenny up a tree?
While ice caps melt and the world's great cities cower, we turn our attention to the most important question of the day: is Vince Vaughn having it away with Jennifer Aniston? Last week some tabloid or other produced photographs of the couple laughing while in each other's company. Unmoved by publication of this persuasive evidence, Vaughn sought to quash any suggestions of hanky panky. "I've never been that big on having to go home with the same girl every night," the 9ft-tall star bragged.
Nun bashes Brown's bible
The film version of Dan Brown's preposterous The Da Vinci Code, which posits that Jesus was involved in the Kennedy assassinations, began shooting in Lincoln Cathedral last week. Not everybody was celebrating. A group of disgruntled Christians, led by one Sister Mary Michael, held a prayer meeting outside to protest Brown's potentially sacrilegious depiction of the Virgin Mary as a KGB mole (or something). "I just don't think it is right that they are filming this story here. I know the Bishop and Dean argue that it is fiction - and it might even be brilliant fiction - but it is against the very essence of what we believe," she said. Ron Howard's film should reach us next year.
Greengrass to depict 9/11
Paul Greengrass, who demonstrated an ability to deal with tragedy sensitively in Bloody Sunday, has been signed up to direct a film based on the experiences of the hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11th, 2001. Titled Flight 93, the Working Title production will take us through the passengers' realisation of their plight and their decision to take control of the plane.
