Having been snapped up by Atlantic Records in the UK and touted by Hot Press as one of the most exciting bands to emerge from Ireland this year, Director prove their worth with 'Reconnect'.
Life on the road isn't always a blur of parties and groupies. Sometimes it's exhausting, and oftn plain boring, as Irish hopefuls Director found out when they went on tour with Hard-Fi.
Musicians worth their salt will be glad to learn that the live show/exhibition Music Ireland is set to be bigger than ever, with the addition of new sponsors Waltons, some illustrious industry figures on the panel and Director and The Blizzards set to play it.
Thought that’d grab your attention! Having made his name with such arthouse classics as In The Mood For Love, Fallen Angels and Chungking Express, legendary Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai is back with the eagerly anticipated 2046. A dazzling collage of existential longing, wacky sci-fi and lurid pulp thrills, it confirms his status as, well, one of the real greats of modern cinema.
Director, Republic Of Loose and the Sultans Of Ping are set to headline this year's Indie-pendence Festival, which features a host of homegrown talent - for free!
The Blizzards, Director and Dirty Epics will take over Dublin’s Olympia on April 26 for the 2009 FM104 Help a Dublin Child gig in aid of Temple Street Children’s University Hospital.
Director whose debut album We Thrive On Big Cities recently got to number two in the Irish charts, are emblematic of the extraordinary evolution of the indigenous music industry in recent years.
Malahide’s DIRECTOR may not be any kind of tabloid headline generators, but with an accomplished second album produced by Pumpkins and Placebo veteran Brad Wood in the bag, they’re confident enough to let the music make the fuss.
Part of the new wave of Irish major label signings, Director sound oddly lacklustre on their second single. The song itself is alright, even if the chorus seems to belong to a different track altogether, but the production is flat and nothing here suggests that Director having anything different to offer. Maybe the album will prove otherwise (and it would be great to see some home grown talent on the bigger stage). For now though, this is decidedly underwhelming.
Director have confirmed a major Irish tour and the details of a new song which currently doesn't appear on their platinum-selling We Thrive On Big Cities album.
After the impressive reception for their top 10 debut single 'Reconnect', Director have announced details of their new single, album and a rather large tour to boot.
The Malahide four-piece hit pay dirt in the summer with the chart-and-radio playlist hogging ‘Reconnect’; the album We Thrive On Big Cities is consummate and a refined debut, fizzing with sharp guitars and sharper bon mots. The frisson of anticipation inside Cork’s sold out Cyprus Avenue is therefore not a surprise. What is a surprise is the guarded and detached nature of their performance.
Right from the first reel, this is one of the most thrillingly self-assured Irish debuts since, well, The Thrills’. Despite being fellow Dubs, though, Director are coming from a very different place.
DAVID HEFFERNAN pays tribute to the producer/director whose many and varied professional credits included some defining images of Irish and international music
With this, their third single, Director prove once again why their album reached No. 2 way-back-when in ’06 – although those clever enough to have seen them live won’t need any more evidence. Catchier than a cold in January, ‘Leave It To Me’ sees Michael Moloney’s distinctive voice (if you’ve never heard Joy Division, Interpol or Editors) plod along smoothly over controlled guitars and a no-nonsense drum rhythm, building up to a sing-along-tastic chorus – warning: may get stuck in head! – before turning up the guitars and going all rocky on us for a bit. While not outstanding, this does exactly what it says on Director’s tin: popular rock music.
Arts Council director PATRICIA QUINN talks to SIOBHAN LONG about internal strife, Ireland s changing attitude to art, and the necessity of taking risks. Picture: Myles Claffey
If I Should Fall From Grace is the most intimate portrait of SHANE MacGOWAN yet. CRAIG FITZSIMONS meets the director of the critically acclaimed biopic, SARAH SHARE.
Shooting a fancy pop promo is harder work than you might think, as hotpress discovers when we join hotly tipped newcomers Director on a sound-stage at the home of the Irish movie industry, Ardmore Studios.
After stepping down from her position as Director of the DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE, OLIVE BRAIDEN tells KIM PORCELLI how far things have come, and how great a distance is still to be travelled to get justice for victims
The star of what s set to be the summer s hottest movie, High Fidelity, on love, obsession, movies, rock n roll, his pal Bruce Springsteen and the records he turns to when he s had his heart broken. With support from co-star Lisa Bonet and director Stephen Frears. Text: CRAIG FITZSIMONS
Spirit Store announces their upcoming gigs for the weeks leading up to Christmas and into the New Year with acts including Director, The Flaws, Declan O'Rourke and more.
In the new Hot Press, Star Trek movie director JJ Abrams – known for his work on Alias and Lost – makes the shocking admission that he's always preferred George Lucas' take on sci-fi.
Moviehouse talks to David Lynch-protegé Eli Roth about his low-budget gore-fest Cabin Fever, and also hears the garrulous director’s views on everything from flesh-eating bacteria to the lamentable absence of nudity in contemporary horror.
GAY AND LESBIAN FILM FESTIVALThe hot new Dublin-born, New-York-based director Jimmy Smallhorn, Desert Hearts and ER director Donna Deitch, and zany NY comedienne Reno will all be on hand to introduce their films at the 6th Dublin Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which runs at the IFC in Dubin from July 30th to August 3rd.
Joe Jackson talks to Paul Meade, director of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing , the hugely successful examination of sexual politics which is currently enjoying an extended run at Andrew’s Lane Theatre.
For the weekend of November 25 and 26, all musical roads will lead to the RDS in Dublin for the Music Ireland ’06 event. Jackie Hayden talks to the show director Ollie Upton about what’s in store for us at this major annual attraction for musician and music fans alike.
Having bagged an Oscar for the angst-ridden Brokeback Mountain, director ANG LEE lightens the tone with his new movie, a paean to the Woodstock festival. He explains why he chose to honour the high-point of hippy culture
He directed a young Tom Cruise in Cocktail and inadvertently unleashed 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' on an unsuspecting world. For his latest project director Roger Donaldson returns to his roots in the antipodes words.
He made his name with the excellent anti-establishment drama How To Cheat In The Leaving Cert. Now director Graham Jones is back with another challenging offering in Fudge 44
WEEK AFTER week I try to remain the right side of well-mannered when some myopic PR person or director phones and says "There's a play coming up in the blah-blah-blah theatre and it's got great music that'll really appeal to your readers."
Writer-director Christopher Smith has already curried a great deal of favour with such clever Brit horrors as Severance and Creep. Triangle, a smart and nifty psychological chiller, suggests that Mr. Smith has only been clearing his throat.
Award-winning shorts director Robert Quinn and actor Andrew Scott on their new movie, Dead Bodies, a highly touted comedy-thriller set in contemporary Dublin
Forget Beirut as a byword for urban warfare, the Lebanese director of Caramel, Nadine Labaki, is looking towards the future through the lens of a beauty salon.
Tara Brady talks to director Pete Docter about the latest Pixar mega-hit Up, which tells the story of an elderly widower who sets sail on an Amazonian adventure.
Some of the best movies currently being made are coming from the near east, specifically Turkey and Romania. CRISTIAN MUNGIU, director of the astonishing, Ceausescu-era set 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and the forthcoming Tales from the Golden Age talks about the new wave of Romanian cinema.
Sebastian Barry's new play Hinterland concerns the reflections of a former Taoiseach and his failed relationship with his family. Joe Jackson asks director Max Stafford-Clarke if the story is based on anyone in particular
Funny, frightening and just about believable, Dig! is the ultimate indie-pop rockumentary. But the movie, which chronicles a seven year rivalry between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, only tells half the story says director Ondi Timoner. Interview by Tara Brady.
It’s time for the singer-songwriter fraternity to move over and make room for the new generation of Irish guitar bands. Director, Marshal Stars and The Blizzards are just three of the acts who feature on the debut compilation from Faction Records, the new label which aims to promote and nuture the brightest stars of the Irish underground.
The brutal regime of Idi Amin is the subject of Kevin Macdonald‘s The Last King Of Scotland. Here the director explains why, to capture the real Africa, he insisted on shooting on location in Uganda.
British director Bernard Rose hit paydirt over decade ago with Candyman, but his uncompromising single-mindedness has made him a virtual Hollywood pariah. However, Snuff Movie looks like putting him back in the game.
Quantum of Solace director Mark Forester explains how he wanted to rehabilitate the James Bond franchise with a nod towards classic '70s post-Watergate conspiracy thrillers such as The Parallax View and The Conversation
Hilary and Jackie director Anand Tucker’s latest film And When Did You Last See Your Father is an even more heartbreaking version of the story first told in Blake Morrison’s memoir of the same name.
Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass on making it big in Hollywood, usurping James Bond and why Hot Press’ Eamonn McCann is one of his heroes. words Tara Brady
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are tough acts to follow, but Wes Anderson has outdone himself with his new movie, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which boasts the combined talents of Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson and some surrealist fish.
Having caused a major rumpus with his last film, Behind Enemy Lines, Irish director John Moore has gone the boy’s own adventure route with his remake of The Flight Of The Phoenix. Dennis Quaid, Kevin Costner and “arseholes working in commercials” all come under the microscope as he talks to Tara Brady.
Hunter S. Thompson gets the biopic treatment he deserves courtesy of Oscar-winning director Alex Gibny who wants to remind the world just how important a social commentator the Great Gonzo was.
Oisín Coghlan, Director of Friends of the Earth (Ireland) insists that the developed countries have to make space for the industrialisation of the developing world.
Tara Brady talks to Niels Muller, director of controversial thriller The Assassination Of Richard Nixon, which portrays the social and political factors which caused real-life ‘70s malcontent, Sam Byck, to plan the killing of Tricky Dick himself.
Ex-Python turned film-maker Terry Gilliam watched his latest movie project the man who killed Don Quixote collapse after a succession of production disasters. Yet two young film-makers who accompanied the director on the shoot have released a documentary film about the making, and un-making, of Gilliam's epic
It took ten years for debutante director Kerry Conran to complete his film, even though most part was done before he uttered the word "Action!". Tara Brady meets the brimming brain behind the film-geek opus, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Having knocked ’em dead in America, the Oscar-nominated MONSTERS INC is ready to repeat its success here.
CRAIG FITZSIMONS meets the film’s director, PETE DOCTER
Australian director Philip Noyce has directed such Hollywood blockbusters as Patriot Games and The Bone Collector yet his latest offering Rabbit Proof Fence is an altogether more considered offering. Tara Brady asks if this latest work and the forthcoming The Quiet American signifies a change in his approach to film-making?
Craig Fitzsimons talks to David Gleeson, director of Cowboys & Angels, another exciting addition to the growning canon of unapologetically youthful and exuberent contemporary Irish movies
The violent life and death of the Florida prostitute Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in 2002 for a string of murders, is the subject matter of the debut film feature monster by Patty Jenkins. Craig Fitzsimons talks to the writer-director about the controversial, Oscar-winning movie
Never ones to be left behind the times, Bono and chums have gone 3D with the release of U2 3D. Director Catherine Owens gives us the inside track on the historic project.
29-year-old director Jason Reitman might be the scion of Hollywood royalty, but the success of his satirical skit on the tobacco lobby, Thank You For Smoking, is all his own work.
A water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union might seem an unlikely springboard for a moving meditation on freedom and oppression, but Children Of Glory director Krisztina Goda has pulled it off.
Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill man Richard Curtis is back with another film that has heartstrings and funnybones in its sights. But is Love Actually any good? Craig Fitzsimons and Tara Brady endeavour to find out
Cecilia Peck, director of music documentary-political travelogue Dixie Chicks: Shut Up And Sing reminisces about her Dingle childhood and explains what it’s like being part of a great Hollywood dynasty.
Indie-hit Once director John Carney talks to Tara Brady about how to make an Irish musical, while star Glen Hansard confesses he was pleasantly surprised at the film’s success.
Hong Kong director Stephen Chow is the closest thing to an auteur in the explosive and surreal world of Far East action cinema. His latest feature, Kung Fu Hustle, could be the one to finally break him in the West. But impending worldwide stardom hasn’t erased Chow’s modest streak, he reveals in an exclusive interview.
Still on a high after his hobnob in the last issue with the Greatest Living Film Director, NEIL McCORMICK nears apoplexy as he gets to extract the closely-guarded secrets of being the Finest Actor in the World Today from DANIEL DAY-LEWIS.
Craig Fitzsimons talks to oscar-winning director Kevin McDonald about his gripping new docu-drama touching the void, chosen to open this year’s stranger than fiction festival at the IFI.
Enjoying parallels with works as diverse as Chekov’s Three Sisters and About Adam, Very Heaven looks set to be another success for dublin’s focus theatre. Joe Jackson talks to the show’s director, Bairbre Ni Chaoimh
Commitments director Alan Parker and actress Laura Linney on their new movie, The Life Of David Gale, which explores the murky territory of the death penalty.
Tara Brady talks to Renee Weldon, star of The Trouble With Sex, the new romantic drama from director Fintan Connolly which explores the rules of attraction in modern Ireland with style and panache.
In 1990, 22 year-old college graduate Christopher McCandless donated his $24,000 in savings to Oxfam and hit the road. Two years later he died in Alaska, after approximately 112 days in the wild. Legendary actor and director Sean Penn tells the story in his fourth film Into The Wild.
Catherine Hardwicke won the Sundance best director award for Thirteen, her controversial and unflinching depiction of teen queen sex, drugs, shoplifting and self-harming. Moviehouse meets the director and co-star Holly Hunter.
21 Grams’ director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guilermo Arriaga’s follow up to the acclaimed Amores Perros contains career-high performances from Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Naomi Watts. Moviehouse talks to both men about the “anatomy of pain”.
Ghost Of Mae Nak is a love story with a difference. For one thing, it’s set largely in the afterlife. It’s also the latest piece of Thai cinema to catch the attention of international audiences, says English-born, Bangkok-based director Mark Duffield.
The new installment in the Narnia franchise, Prince Caspian, is burdened by huge commercial expectations. But the film's director, Andrew Adamson, is not letting the pressure get to him.
Why the media were wrong in their assessment of Sharon Shannon’s court case; the latest musical venture from producer, director and PR ace, Mary McPartlan, plus the usual round-up of news from the world of folk and traditional music.
Having just bagged the coveted Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, John Boorman's eagerly awaited biopic of Dublin's most notorious fun lovin' criminal, Martin Cahill, has been hailed as a silver screen masterpiece. Craig Fitzsimons hears about the physical, moral and financial perils of making The General.
Having first envisaged the film in the late ’80s, director Taylor Hackford has finally realised his long-cherished biopic of legendary soul performer, Ray Charles. Here, he talks to Moviehouse about the challenges of putting the singer’s tumultuous life onscreen.
Galway company Hemp Ireland is pioneering the cultivation of alternative crop resources in Ireland. Director Terry Barman explains why there's more to hemp than tabloid headlines
having debuted with sex, lies and videotape, director Stephen Soderburgh was widely tipped as hollywood's next big thing. instead he spend almost a decade in the wilderness before returning to the mainstream with hits like erin brockovich and ocean's 11, and a fruitful new working relationship with george clooney. now, in advance of his latest movie, solaris, Tara Brady asks: where did it all go right?
Before head-butt infamy finished off his career, the world’s greatest living midfielder served as an unlikely muse to the documentary maker Philippe Parreno. Ahead of the film’s Irish premier, the director talks about the making of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.
Dundalk-born director John Moore has produced one of the most gung-ho portrayals of the US military in recent cinema history in behind enemy lines, yet Craig Fitzsimons discovers a film-maker who finds flag-waving unacceptable
Now that it has been seen by the whole world (and its Uncle Bilbo) the truth can finally be revealed – Gimli was a most reluctant dwarf. JOHN RHYS DAVIES explains how he overcame doubts about the book and an allergy to make-up and learned to love The Lord Of The Rings, voted movie of the year in the Hot Press readers poll
Words: CRAIG FITZSIMONS
Nailed is a heist movie with a difference. It’s been written, produced and shot in Belfast. Director Adrian O’Connell believes it could revitalise the north’s film industry.
Once renowned as the doyen of new queer cinema, Far From Heaven director Todd Haynes has long since infiltrated the Hollywood mainstream. In a wide-ranging interview, he speaks about updating Douglas Sirk, seeing Pulp in Dublin and the parallels between American society today and in the 1950s.
The actor, director, novelist and husband of Uma Thurman on the thrill of being a non-specialist and the challenge presented by "the greatest adventure you can have" - being in love
PETER SHERIDAN has done a remarkable job in bringing Brendan Behan s Borstal Boy to the small screen. Here he talks to hotpress CRAIG FITZSIMONS and TARA BRADY about accents, alcohol and artists
Following the lukewarm reception accorded Jackie Brown six years ago, Quentin Tarantino reached a crossroads in his career. now, following a prolonged retreat from the media spotlight, a rumoured struggle with writer’s block and his break-up with Mira Sorvino, the most influential film-maker of the nineties has made a stunning return to form with the explosive samurai thriller, Kill Bill. Craig Fitzsimons travelled to london to meet the director and discuss the film he describes as “the movie of my geek boy dreams.”
Over the past decade, the new wave of films from South Korea has made a stunning impact on movie fans worldwide. The acclaim peaked earlier this year when the remarkable OldBoy scooped the Grand Prix at Cannes. In a Moviehouse special we look at Korea’s visceral treats and talk to ace director Chan Wook Park.
Re-telling the story of September 11 with a measured hand and lightness of touch hithertoo unhinted at, director Oliver Stone proves a more serious thinker than his paranoia-soaked canon would suggest. Here, he explains how his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam framed his outlook on life and art.
Award-winning director and actor Ed Burns talks about enjoying success on your own terms, his lifelong music obsession and the fact that he’s about to make his first big-budget Hollywood movie.
Deep Throat was a smut blockbuster and pop-culture sensation. A new documentary, Inside Deep Throat, examines its impact on feminism, cinema and – oh yes – porn. It also sheds light on the tragic truth behind the movie, explains director Fenton Bailey.
FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM is a major new six-part RTE series. Directed by DAVID HEFFERNAN, and featuring new interviews with the major players including Van Morrison, Bob Geldof, U2 and Siniad O Connor it traces the history of Irish music, from showbands to boybands and beyond. By PETER MURPHY.
From hayseed starlet to rookie director, Sarah Polley has certainly travelled a great distance, as demonstrated by her wrenching directorial debut Away From Her.
Director PADDY BREATHNACH, producer ROB WALPOLE and writer CONOR McPHERSON take time out from polishing their latest haul of gongs to talk CATHY DILLON through the making of I Went Down.
jasper carrott's days as a director of Birmingham City FC may be long gone, but despite having some 20 successful years in the comedy business behind him, there are still some people out there who haven't forgiven the Brummie for his 1975 single 'Funky Moped'/'Magic Roundabout'.
Interview: Barry Glendenning.
A few years ago it would’ve been impossible to make a movie like goldfish memory, but thanks to digital technology and film board funding director Liz Gill is celebrating a box-office hit.
HELEN SHAW has been RTE s Director of Radio for two years, ultimately charged with bringing the national broadcaster s four stations into a new era. Interview: JACKIE HAYDEN.
A disquieting true-life tale of family intrigue, child abuse and inept judicial proceedings, capturing the friedmans is one of the most compelling and acclaimed documentaries of recent years. Tara Brady talks to the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki.
After the release of HSM3, choreographer and director Kenny Ortega tells us why the restrictive family values parameters only inspire him to be more creative.
From Dr Strangelove to Eyes Wide Shut, film director Stanley Kubrick cast an enigmatic shadow over film. Since his death, the director’s widow, Christiane Kubrick, has dedicated herself to preserving his legacy. Here she offers a glimpse of the man behind the legend.
Fourteen years on and people still come up to BRUCE ROBINSON and quote chunks of Withnail & I to his face. But if you don t know more about this talented, opinionated, chain-smoking, wine-guzzling writer/director, then that may be because, to put it at its mildest, he and Hollywood have never seen eye to eye. PETER MURPHY meets the angry older man
Of the many festivals that took place over the Bank Holiday weekend, Indie-Pendence – previously known as the Mitchelstown Music Festival, but since raised a level or three in the coolness stakes – had the most to offer, yet was the most precarious.
Tara Brady talks to uber-hip actor - and scion of the Coppola clan - Jason Schwartzman about his latest film with cult director Wes Anderson, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
CATHY DILLON chats to Dubliner JIMMY SMALLHORNE, writer and director of 2by4, an acclaimed new film charting the lives of young gay Irish immigrants in New York.
The Edge talks to Bill Graham about his soundtrack album "Captive" - and about the hidden reservoirs the band are charting in their search for the follow-up to "The Unforgettable Fire"
When The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Ken Loach’s dramatisation of the Irish War of Independence, won the Palme D’Or at Cannes last month, it triggered a vociferously hostile response from right wing British pundits, who branded the director as a terrorist-sympathising Commie. Few of them, however, had actually seen the film.
A Tinsel Town director of the old school, Michael Mann goes back to his ‘80s roots in his new movie, Miami Vice. In a forthright interview he talks about working with Colin Farrell, why he insisted on shooting in Paraguay and explains he’s not as tough as Hollywood gossip would have you believe.
A superb new documentary offers an intriguing portrait of one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. Tara Brady meets the film's director Joe Berlinger (pictured, left with Bruce Sinofsky).
That's Brendan and Trudy, by the way, not RODDY DOYLE and KIERON J. WALSH, writer and director respectively of the new hit Irish film comedy. CRAIG FITZSIMONS meets them.
Although critics have discerned all manner of political and religious significance in There Will Be Blood, director Paul Thomas Anderson insists that it's a horror film about the birth of California.
Irish director Terry George has made one of the most powerful movies of the year in Hotel Rwanda, the Oscar-nominated film that tells the harrowing story of the genocide of the Tutsi tribe by Hutu extremists. Here, the ex-Republican activist – and former hotpress contributor – talks to Tara Brady about collaborating with Nick Nolte, Don Cheadle and Joaquin Phoenix, the challenges of bringing such provocative material to the screen, and why the West's failure to intervene contributed to the scale of the atrocity.
Director Morgan Spurlock has caused quite a stir with Super Size Me, the McDonald’s-baiting documentary that highlights the perils of a fast-food diet. With McDonald’s currently on the counter-offensive in an attempt to soften the impact of the movie, Spurlock discusses corporate subterfuge, media stardom, losing his libido, and the near fatal toll his super-size diet exerted on his health.
It’s been ten years since his last novel, but Neil Jordan has now reprised his role as one of Ireland’s finest contemporary prose writers with the dark gothic drama, Shade. In a wide-ranging interview with Olaf Tyaransen the Oscar-winning writer/director discusses the challenges of literary craftsmanship, swimming with sharks in Hollywood, working with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, his disinterest in celebrity and why Ireland continues to be his preferred place of residence.
Actor, writer, musician, director, and husband of Angelina Jolie, BILLY BOB THORNTON is currently a very busy man, with one album on release and no less than three movies queueing up at the box-office. All this and he’s constantly on his guard against germs
A fresh generation of bands is tearing up the rule book and redefining what it means to be Irish. To celebrate this new wave of talent, we catch up with the best of them.
In the first part of an extensive two-part interview, writer and director Jim Sheridan explains how 90% of what he creates is rooted in the tension that existed between himself and his dad. By Joe Jackson.
In the second and final part of an extensive interview, director Jim Sheridan discusses his troubles with Gabriel Byrne and Noel Pearson, explains why he could marry Daniel Day-Lewis but would fail to measure up against Richard Harris, and suggests the best way forward for the embattled Irish film industry. Plus: the ouija board prophecies which seem to have shaped his life. By Joe Jackson.
Peter Greenaway’s latest film The Baby Of Mâcon has aroused critical opprobrium due to its blend of religious imagery and unnerving violence. Here, the director defends the movie, outlines his attitude to the moral guardians who object to his work and explores the importance of ritual in cinema and contemporary advertising. Interview: Patrick Brennan
Time magazine dubbed him The Renaissance Man Of Rock . With and without Talking Heads, he s made some of the most innovative music of the last two decades, as well as being an author, photographer, director, sound-track scorer, Academy Award winner, and all-round friendly neighbourhood psycho-killer. David Byrne allowed Hot Press to put him on the couch for thirty minutes when he arrived in Dublin for his recent Olympia Theatre show.
Peter Murphy was there to hear the Head man
talking.
As founder and director of the acclaimed choral group, Anuna, MICHAEL McGLYNN has established himself as one of the country's most gifted and innovated composers. However, he has also become a figure by some elements in the Irish Music Industry and been dismissed by others as a "pig ignorant arrogant bastard" Inetrview: LIAM FAY
Whip-smart, arresting and far more fleet-footed than a two-hour plus running time ought to allow, The Inside Man is a storming heist movie from Spike Lee, perhaps not the first name one expects to find on a lavishly budgeted action thriller.
He has been hailed as a wunderkind of Irish theatre. Now, with his second feature film, The Actors, Conor McPherson brings his theatrical experience to bear on celluloid – with considerable success.
Unhappily, W.C. has little to recommend it. Perhaps if the writer-director-multi-hyphenate was more collaborative, there would have been someone around to say ‘when’ and knock it into shape.
Whatever your views on Oasis, there’s no denying that their singles are instant anthems. ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ is one of those to a tee - and less grating that ‘Lyla’, you’ll be glad to know. This time they don’t bother trying to be different at all, merely making up in melody what they lack in complexity. And check out the video for it too, where Welsh actor Rhys Ifans gets his groove on as a funeral director. It works, honest.
What were the highlights of 2006? We asked the cream of Irish music - including Royseven, Director, The Blizzards, Lesley Roy and Neosupervital - to give us their lowdown!
With a thriving scene developing in Cork, local three-piece rock outfit Eve of Mind have steadily attracted acclaim. Their latest release sees them treading similar angular terrain to Editors and Director, particularly on the EP's title track. Lyrically, however, Ger Buckley and company fail to impress. Minimalist production presents problems, too. A darker, more menacing tone creeps into b-side ‘Come On Down’, though again poetic naivety scuppers proceedings.
Nauseating and insidiously compelling in equal measure, writer/director Minahan’s debut opus Series 7: The Contenders is the filmic equivalent of channel-surfing all night long on American network telly.
The director plays the crime for maximum grisliness, though long before the final atrocities, there is the horror of helplessness, of civilians sandwiched between German and Russian troops in Kraków, of terrible events happening faster than anyone can process.
The Managing director of Treasure Island, Robert Stephenson, is encouraging a ‘concerted youth movement’ to highlight the issue of discrimination against teenagers by adults.
Those of us in the trade have long been familiar with Mary McPartlan as a producer, director, PR ace and general impresario. But there was something else about Mary that only a select group of friends and acquaintances knew: the lady can sing.
Stop the presses. Ed Zwick, director of such dreary though lavish efforts as Glory and The Last Samurai, has made a reasonably exciting film. No, really. At its best, there are shades of the shackled escapee movie about Blood Diamond.
Subtitled The Medieval Dead, Army of Darkness represents the third part of perhaps the oddest movie trilogy ever. Evil Dead was the source of the original video nasty controversy, an extremely low budget, deeply nasty and frankly scary haunted house movie that introduced not only director Raimi bu the even more talented collaborators the Coen brothers.
Getting inside the head of one of modern music’s deepest enigmas was both a challenge and a privilege, says documentary maker Stephen Kijak, director of Scott Walker 30 Century Man.
Dublin’s music station FM104 have announced that The Coronas and Ruth-Anne have been added to the bill for their Help a Dublin Child ‘The Gig’ this April.
Better known these days as a shlocky horror film director, Rob Zombie’s first album since 2001's The Sinister Urge draws from a wider frame of music, with glam rock and sleek, smooth electronic grooves infusing the most potent of these new songs.
Film buffs will be more familiar with the name Vincent Gallo as the producer, director and writer of Buffalo 66, which incidentally he scored and performed the music for, being the Hollywood Renaissance man that he is.
If you break film down into the smallest possible grammatical units, then there’s a very good argument for saying that French director Claire Denis (with considerable assistance from DoP Agnes Godard) is the planet’s greatest living filmmaker.
High with the same menacing swagger that characterised Gangster No. 1, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead reunites Croupier director Hodges with Clive Owen, here playing a bearded hermit retired from the ‘scene’. When his coke-dabbling, skirt-chasing younger brother (Meyers) cuts his own throat having been raped down an alley by – wouldn’t you know it – Malcolm McDowell, the scene is set for his elder sibling to seek horrible revenge.
An extremely belated comeback from Paper Moon and Last Picture Show director Peter Bogdanovich, who had Hollywood at his feet about a quarter-century ago, The Cat’s Meow is a textbook case of over-reaching ambition. Eminently missable stuff.
An extremely belated comeback from Paper Moon and Last Picture Show director Peter Bogdanovich, who had Hollywood at his feet about a quarter-century ago, The Cat’s Meow is a textbook case of over-reaching ambition. Eminently missable stuff.
This excellent biopic from Bill Condon (who, as you may recall, delved into the psyche of director James Whale in Gods And Monsters with similarly successful results) has seen various noted puritans wailing, gnashing and getting their presumably heavily reinforced knickers in a twist. Weirdos.
There is more than enough class on that cast list to delude you into thinking that Playing By Heart would be a decent flick at the very least, but for whatever reason, writer/director Willard Carroll's ambitious debut suffers from a total absence of magic.
A new documentary "Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the story of SmiLE" will be given a special screening in Dublin this month followed by a Q&A session with Brian Wilson and the director
The haunting under-belly of a small-town Ireland in transition is probed in Patrick McCabe’s new play, The Revenant. The result is both a chilling piece of theatre and a barbed social commentary, says its director Joe O’Byrne.
Shane Meadows, the ace writer-director behind A Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes hasn’t steered us wrong yet, but This Is England is almost certainly his best work to date.
Superficially, director Olly Blackburn’s debut conforms to the morality play template - somewhere in the low budget murk, there’s a neat little boat thriller.
To be fair, director Justin Lin does a mean car-chase and makes terrific use of gaudy J-pop. Sadly, whenever the film slows down to include frivolities like dialogue, things are neither fast nor furious, but duller than a factory car manual.
Turtles Can Fly is the first post-Saddam film from Iraq. This will undoubtedly ensure plenty of backslapping and ‘well done old chap’ coverage for Bahman Ghobadi, the director previously best known for A Time For Drunken Horses. That’s almost a shame.
The Frames and David Kitt are the latest additions to the Hot Press Irish Music Awards bill. And with TV3 as well as BBC NI broadcasting it & a potential audience of 20 million, it's a good job we've no less than ex-Live Aid director David Croft at the helm
Director Fintan Connolly’s sophomore effort is a rather more contemplative exercise than his previous buzzy urban thriller, Flick. Trouble With Sex is a low-key modern Irish romance in much the same vein as Karl Golden’s The Honeymooners or Liz Gill’s Goldfish Memory – a pleasing will-they-won’t they strut set by the banks of the Liffey.
This remake of Takashi Shimuzi’s creepy hit, The Grudge belongs firmly within this sub-genre’s successful tradition and happily, the project’s godfather, Sam Raimi has retained the services of the original director and the spooky Tokyo setting.
In Letters From Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood mirrors Flags Of Our Fathers with a Japanese version of events on a formerly obscure rock in the South Pacific.
After the misfire that was Blow Dry, director Paddy Breathnach returns to the bawdy, zippy humour that characterised his earlier hit I Went Down with this tale of likable, luckless losers from the Ardoyne out to beat a villainous tough-nut bookie (Hello Sean McGinley!) down at the dogs.
The dream team behind zombie revivalist hit 28 Days Later – director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Alex Garland and ace thespian Cillian Murphy – reunite for a metaphysical speculative spectacle.
Watching a gentleman carrying rabid rats as weaponry, then banging out Haydn pieces, suggests that youthful masculinity is a kind of psychosis one must conquer and Duris does incredible work conveying the madness and the contradictions, as does the director, whose deft touch carries a plot which might otherwise look schematic.
Canadian director John Fawcett last dropped by with Ginger Snaps, a pleasing rush of lycanthropy, menstruation and goth angst in suburbia. Excluding the Nicole Kidman bits from Moulin Rouge, it was the best horror show of 2000. His delayed sophomore venture lacks the chic indie innovation of that earlier film, but it’s an intriguing knot of Celtic mythology, girl-ghosts and killer sheep just the same.
Hunter S. Thompson gets the biopic treatment he deserves courtesy of Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney who wants to remind the world how important the Great Gonzo was.
Having scored an arthouse goal with Pot Luck, director Cédric Klapish has reunited the same incredibly annoying characters for this equally sophomoric sequel.
Dave Pennefather, the prominent Managing Director of Universal Music Ireland, is to step back from the day-to-day running of the company after 24 years.
Dermot Carmody talks to Richard Cook, director of the Smithwick's Cat Laughs Festival, about the challenges of organising an event that remains Ireland's premier showcase for both new and established comedic talent.
A DELICIOUSLY subtle, slice of cinema at its most unhurried and carefully-crafted, Cider Rouse Rules represents a resounding return to form for Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, best known for his supreme coming-of-age drama My Life As A Dog
In Brotherhood Of The Wolf, former film critic turned director Christopher Gans has created a wholly original work, although there are occasionally touches of the too clever-by-half, particularly evident in the film’s camerawork.
From Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War I memoir, director Sam Mendes has purposely fashioned a film that closely replicates the experience of being stuck in an eternal stationary queue. Jarhead is a war movie with no combat whatsoever and no real war to speak of.
Competent, professional and workmanlike – but inescapably dull, and never especially engaging – Con Air director Simon West’s first “serious”, flick isn’t a bad movie by any means, but it isn’t exactly thrilling stuff either, and while it swallows up a couple of hours effectively enough, it leaves little to remain in the memory.
UNBELIEVABLY TOUTED in many quarters as a serious contender for Oscars glory, Ride With The Devil – an elegiac Dixie/Western set during the American Civil War – marks a sharp change of territory for its highly-respected director Ang Lee, a man more commonly associated with fine-lined character dramas such as the impeccable Ice Storm.
Always possessed of a more obviously childlike sensibility than almost any other director working in Hollywood – Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and his take on Roald Dahl in James and the Giant Peach would prove the point - Tim Burton’s output has always been a twisted delight, like the grimmer tales of the brothers Grimm.
After the dreadful Batman & Robin, the prospect of the Caped Crusader making a triumphant return to cinema seemed unlikely. Still, if few beyond the rank and file at Warner Brothers were cheered by news of Batman’s resurrection, the involvement of director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Following, Insomnia) seemed to guarantee that, at the absolute worst, we were in for a fascinatingly messy ride.
THE OBVIOUSLY dark and troubled mind of screenwriter supreme Paul Schrader has been responsible for some of the century's most compelling cinema (he penned the scripts to Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, the latter being almost better in screenplay form than it was as a movie.) Now an increasingly confident director, Schrader has gifted us the first must-see arthouse flick of the season.
It is never a particularly auspicious sign when a film hangs around in post-production for over a year, and in The Thirteenth Warrior’s case, the process has been so protracted that director John McTiernan’s subsequent feature (the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair) has already beaten it to the big screen.
Unfolding like a freak show for the very best and worst of humanity, the ridiculously precocious director has fashioned historical grievances and iniquities into a modern classic.
How you take toward the latest bit of aggro from Football Factory director Nick Love depends entirely on your tolerance for hearing phrases like “Oi, you cants”.
If you imagined that writer-director Guillermo del Toro couldn’t top the occultist Nazis, demon-spawn puppy love and super kitsch of the original film, then think again.
In theory, The Ring 2 ought to have been a ridiculously safe bet. Gore Verbinski had already delivered a clinically efficient Hollywood remake of the original J-horror Ringu, and the involvement of the original surviving cast (Watts and Dorfman) plus Hideo Nakata, the Japanese director behind Ringu, Dark Water and Chaos, promised chills, if not something more audacious. So what the hell happened?
Simultaneously an autobiographical cine-scrapbook, a boy’s heartbreaking love letter to his mother and a screaming-comes-across-the-screen instant (appropriate that) post-modern classic, Tarnation was assembled from family home-movies, tape-recordings, video-diaries, stark inter-titles and pop-culture fragments to create a cubist portrait of the director as a young man, reflected primarily through his relationship with his mentally-traumatised mother, Renee.
New Dublin station Spin FM (103.8) will soon be wrapping up their first day on the air. How did they do? Well, we'll tell ya. Also: "Dublin is a cosmopolitan city," programme director Liam Thompson tells us in this exclusive interview. "We don't need to play it safe. We can afford to take risks."
New Dublin station Spin FM (103.8) will soon be wrapping up its first day on the air. How did they do? Well, we'll tell ya. Also: "Dublin is a cosmopolitan city," programme director Liam Thompson tells us in this exclusive interview. "We don't need to play it safe. We can afford to take risks"
New Dublin station Spin FM (103.8) will soon be wrapping up their first day on the air. How did they do? Well, we'll tell ya. Also: "Dublin is a cosmopolitan city," programme director Liam Thompson tells us in this exclusive interview. "We don't need to play it safe. We can afford to take risks"
Inspired by Colm Toibin's novel about Henry James, director Liam Halligan has brought one of the horror master's most singular ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw back to the stage.
Now here’s something you don’t happen upon everyday. Rian Johnson’s sui generis debut feature, a high school noir of all things, took a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance. All told, the writer-director spent six years getting Brick into a cinema near you, and no wonder. Potential investors must have thought him quite mad.
Lacking serious competition, Paul Verhoeven must stand alone as the most misogynistic director in existence, an auteur of sleaze without parallel in the known universe
A rock star having sex with his 19-year-old girlfriend whilst drenched in blood – no, it’s not Sam Snort’s latest escapade, it’s the new collaboration between God of Fuck Marilyn Manson and Titanic director James Cameron.
…Unless, that is, you live in Belfast. Colin Carberry talks to Sean Kelly, director of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, about the exciting and diverse range of events lined up for this year’s programme.
WE ARE pleased to report that following the second anniversary of the Murphy’s Corduroy Comedy Club (The Norseman, Temple Bar, Thursday nights), resident compere John Henderson has decided to move upstairs (metaphorically speaking, of course – the Club is already upstairs) in order to oversee Corduroy affairs from his new position as Director of Comedy.
Silent Grace, the new movie about the hunger strikes and dirty protests by women in armagh prison, brilliantly confounds expectations. Tara Brady meets its director Maeve Murphy
Music Piracy is a continuing problem, and it s not just internet innovation which is fuelling its rise. COLM O HARE spoke to some of those trying to
preserve legitimate music
At the precise moment that TOWER RECORDS are celebrating their 30th anniversary, they have the youngest managing director in their history – ANDY LOWN. Since assuming his present post in July 1996, he’s masterminded the expansion of the company in Ireland, and is about to preside over the opening of five new outlets in this country. Interview: STUART CLARK.
They say that he was among the most powerful – and the most ruthless – Republican activists of them all. Here the legendary Bobby Storey, reputed to have been Director of Intelligence for the IRA, talks for the first time about his role in the struggle, and about some of the critical events that led to the IRA ceasefire and the Peace Process.
Running – appropriately enough – from the 26th to 29th of October in Dublin's IFC, the Horrorthon weekend is without doubt the ultimate word in non-stop guts and gore. The gruesome endurance test gets underway on the night of Friday 26th in IFC Screen One with a preview of John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars, a sci-fi/horror hybrid set 175 years into the future. Horrorthon highlights are as follows:
Joe Jackson talks to Apres Match’s Risteard Cooper, currently starring in the Abbey’s production of Frank McGuinness’ acclaimed First World War play, Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme.
Still most famous in this part of the world for ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, la rapper Coolio has certainly kept himself busy in the eight years since that hit. Movies, charity work and an appearance on Open House are all in a day’s work for the artist formerly known as Artis Leon Ivey Jr.
Having previously worked with directors of the stature of Danny Boyle and Anthony Minghella, and with a role as the main villain in the next Batman movie in the offing, Cillian Murphy is one of the hottest young actors around. Joe Jackson caught up with murphy to discuss his central role in Garry Hynes’ version of Synge’s famous play, the Playboy of the Western World.
From child actress to Emmy and Oscar-winning veteran, Helen Hunt exhibits Streep-like intelligence and versatility. She's now about to make her directorial debut with Then She Found Me.
Caitlin Murphy's darkly comic new play imagines the relationship between Joyce's daughter and Beckett's wife, one which would have been fraught with tension and sexual jealousy
The enigmatic pied-piper of psychedelic rock Donovan is to be honoured with a festival and a new documentary. Long based in Ireland, he talks about working with David Lynch and his plans to bring a new movie project on the road.
By releasing an album in association with Phantom FM, EMI/Virgin records have placed a question mark over radio play for their artists – and have risked a clash with the ODTR
Mike Leigh’s latest project all or nothing continues his fascination with the everyday mundanity of working-class life, but as usual there is warmth and a genuine humour at the film’s core
As New Queer Cinema pioneer TOM KALIN returns with his long awaited second film Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, he reflects on the mainstreaming of the marginal.
Playwright Michael Harding explains why his newest play, Birdie Birdie, is about how “the only way to survive, as an individual or as a society, is to mind each other.”
Mexican maestro Alejandro González Iñárritu hasn’t wasted any time capitalising on the critical and commercial success of Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, is being hailed as another masterpiece.
Watching an Oscar Wilde play in full flight is one thing, right? As in Alan Stanford s meticulously directed version of An Ideal Husband, now running at Dublin s Gate Theatre.
Charlotte Hatherley doesn’t do stockings, but she would like to have it off in a thunderstorm. And she wears nothing in bed but a smile. Oh, sweet Jesus.
A graduate of art-house cinema and experimental theatre, Cork actor Cillian Murphy is set for the a-list following his chilling turn as Scarecrow in Batman Begins. Interview by Tara Brady.
Fifteen years after winning an oscar for his Les Liaisons Dangereuses screenplay, Christopher Hampton has finally managed to make his dream project Imagining Argentina, which investigages the plight of ‘the disappeared’ in 1970s Argentina. The response has been controversial to say the least.
Driven out of India while filming her latest film. Water, Deepa Mehta talks about protests, effigies and the controversy that follows her wherever she goes.
The enfant-terrible of Korean cinema, Chan-wook Park, is back with perhaps his most challenging and surreal feature to date. Yest, amidst the gore and torture, he says, lies a serious moral message.
After a lengthy Facebook campaign by fans of leading man Rupert Grint, gritty Belfast-based drama Cherrybomb has finally secured a cinema release for 2010. We catch up with co-director GLENN LEYBURN to find out about the movie that the world nearly didn’t see.
Frank Oz may be the man behind those cuddly muppets, but he’s no pushover in person. Now, his chequered career as a director culminates in the darkly comic Death At A Funeral.
Six Semesters could be the first independent Irish feature film with an entire cast and crew made up of students from an Irish university. Jackie Hayden goes behind the casting couch with director John McKeown.
MIDI are a major force in the distribution of musical instruments in Ireland. Managing director Lesley Kane reflects on the importance of supporting local dealers rather than going overseas.
A surreal journey into the inner life of an Irish transvestite in ‘70s London is the basis of Breakfast On Pluto, the latest cinematic collaboration from writer Pat McCabe and director Neil Jordan.
Film director Todd Solondz has a well-earned reputation for exploring the controversial issues his rivals studiously ignore. Tara Brady gets the lowdown on his new effort Palindromes.
The Centre for Public Inquiry is a new Dublin-based and privately-funded organisation recently established in Ireland to monitor aspects of public importance in our political, public and corporate spheres. Frank Connolly, the investigative journalist given the role of the Centre’s executive director, helps Jackie Hayden with some inquiries of his own. Photography by Cathal Dawson.
Playing a character "full of loneliness and happiness" proved something of a challenge for actress Marie Bunel in the Oscar-nominated French film The Chorus. But as she tells Tara Brady, working with director Christopher Barratier helped her discover that acting can be much like using an instrument.
"This is very much my love-letter to wine," says trained sommelier and film director Jonathon Nossiter. So why then is his new documentary Mondovino coming under fire from the global wine industry? Because, as he tells Tara Brady, it exposes how the globalisation of the wine industry is destroying thousands of years of heritage.
Actress, writer, director, singer and not quite so archetypal French heroine Julie Delpy renders terms like ‘renaissance woman’ positively anaemic. Currently back on the map with Before Sunset, one of the cinematic highlights of the year, she talks art, sex romance and Gallic caricatures.
When Martin Scorsese made Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis an offer he couldn’t refuse, the result was the British component of an unprecedented film history of the blues.
Kill Bill is widely seen as a vehicle for director Quentin Tarrantino to express his deep-seated fascination with his favourite leading lady, Uma Thurman. But the character of The Bride – the super-deadly vixen played by Thurman in Kill Bill – is based on the blood-thirsty heroines of a bevy of B-Movies with which modern cinema’s most deadly talent is obsessed. So, as Kill Bill 2 hits the screens, we ask who are these foxy ladies, and what makes them such ruthless killers?
Why has a festival in the Nevada desert become one of the hippest happenings in the world? Irish director Dearbhla Glynn went “beyond camping” and survived to film the event and tell Olaf Tyaransen the tale
While they may disagree about context and certain details, the two new television documentaries about Bloody Sunday, far from being the "bloody fantasy" alleged by critics, offer accurate and powerful recreations of the events of that tragic and pivotal day. EAMONN McCANN, an eye-witness on Bloody Sunday, reports
Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee On Racism and Interculturalism, outlines the urgent and necessary response to racism in ireland
In the same week that an Amnesty International report highlighted the alarming incidence of RACISM in Ireland, NIALL STOKES offers one eye-witness example of just how unwelcoming this country can be. Additional reporting: PHIL UDELL
CRAIG FITZSIMONS speaks to young Irish director DAMIEN O'DONNELL, whose debut feature East Is East takes a controversial look at Pakistani immigrant culture.
During a career spanning almost forty years as a professional musician, Van Morrison has created an extraordinary body of work. A masterful musician, songwriter, producer, arranger and musical director, he possesses one of the most uniquely recognisable and powerful voices in music. His influence on contemporary music has been profound but far from resting on his laurels, his latest work Back On Top ranks among his finest albums to date. For Van Morrison, the search goes on. It was particularly appropriate, therefore, that he was chosen to become the first inductee into the Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame, at a special ceremony there last week. Report: Niall Stanage.
CRAIG FITZSIMONS talks to KURT JONES and DAVID KELLY, writer/director and star respectively, of Waking Ned, a gentle comedy set in Ireland, but shot in the Isle of Man. Pics Cathal dawson.
With the second part of The Gallery Of Photography s Robert Mapplethorpe Exhibition running until January 31 in Temple Bar, paul o mahony takes a look at the photographer s raison d jtre and talks to the Gallery s Director, christine Redmond.
John Walshe talks to the most exciting British band of the year, the decidedly Latin-monikered Gomez about their meteoric rise to fame and how shaggy-haired studenty types are suddenly going for the boy band look.
With heroin use spreading beyond Dublin, the country faces a new outbreak of drug addiction. But does the government have the will to tackle the crisis before it spins out of control?
The Dublin Theatre Festival is fast approaching its 50th anniversary, but the organisers haven’t let anticipation of next year distract them from the task in hand. There’s a rake of quality shows to check out over the coming weeks, from Ibsen to Leonard Cohen.
The son of a certain well-known ’70s rock star, DUNCAN JONES is clearly something of a chip off the old block: his new movie is a sweet, low budget space oddity that harks back to the golden age of sci-fi. He talks about growing up in the Bowie household and escaping his father’s shadow.
She’s worked with film makers as diverse as Alan Parker and Quentin Tarantino. For her latest role Bronagh Gallagher found herself in a Middle Ages love triangle. No wonder she kept breaking out in giggles.
Having re-invented television drama with Lost and Alias J.J. Abrams now turns his attention to the Mission Impossible franchise. But what’s all about this about him saving Star Trek?
Kevin Rowland, whose Dexy's Midnight Runner's album Don't Stand Me Down has just been re-released in a radically new version tells Stephen Robinson "Never say never" when asked about a possible Dexy's reunion
After research into the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse Amy Berg was shocked to uncover the story of Father Ollie, the serial paedophile who agreed to participate in her film Deliver Us From Evil.
He brought the plight of the Guildford Four to the silver screen and shot a weepy film about the Irish diaspora. Now Jim Sheridan has made a movie with the sultan of bling, rap star 50 Cent. It’s all Bono’s fault, he tells Tara Brady.
Welsh actor Rhys Ifans is best known for his role as the easy-going slacker Spike in Notting Hill, but in reality he's a driven actor who's more concerned about imminent war than the state of the British film industry. But he still enjoys a pint, and yes, he did sing with the Super Furry Animals
"I've made another great movie, and the critics have already said it's a great summer hit," Arnold Schwarzenegger declared at Cannes recently, promoting his latest bid for world domination, "The Last Action Hero".
A new compilation album charts DONAL LUNNY s extraordinary musical journey to date but Colm O'Hare finds that the COOLFIN founder still has his eye fixed firmly on challenges to come
Mickybo And Me is a sensitive but unsentimental examination of two boys' cross-denominational friendship. Actor and screenwriter Adrian Dunbar sings its praises.
He’s swapped the American Office for Hollywood, been touched by the hand of George Clooney and scrawled his name all over a house in Kerry. Tara Brady meets awesomely nice Away We Go star John Burke Krasinski.
He is best known as a musician and a songwriter, but Nick Kelly has a parallel career as a very successful advertising ‘creative’. So much so, that he was recently asked to be a judge at one of the advertising industry’s big international events, the annual Shark Awards.
In her latest movie, the supernatural gothic thriller Underworld, Kate Beckinsale plays a slick vampire warrior entrusted with fending off maurading lycanthropes. with love entanglements, engagements and sniping press coverage to deal with off-screen, her personal life has been no less eventful recently.
These days he may be more famous for his movies than his prose, but in conversation Neil Jordan remains linguistically precise as he dissects the Hollywood machine, reveals his love for Lord Of The Rings and discusses his latest movie The Good Thief, starring Nick Nolte.
The creator of cinema’s lost peyote sacraments, mime master, graphic novelist, the man who married Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese, and the secret architect of Dune and Alien, 78-year-old Alejandro Jodorowsky is a counter-cultural legend.
The Alien vs Predator movie has resurrected two of the most successful action movie franchises of recent years. You’ll kick yourself – in slow motion, and with gratuitous blood loss, of course – if you miss it, according to the film’s star Colin Salmon.
Guitarist richArd hawley explains why legal wrangles and a lack of media exposure have not affected the meteoric rise of Sheffield s longpigs. Askin t questions: peter murphy.
Watch custom-made videos for the likes of Royseven, The Butterfly Explosion and more, courtesy of the students from the Tisch School of Arts in New York.
Modesty doesn't forbid us drawing your attention to a new book on Irish comedy, in which this here organ plays a small but, dare we say it (and yes we do),
significant role. By our special correspondent E. Gomaniac.
Nobody actually shouted “hit the bitch” during the previous Dublin run of Oleanna – as happened on Broadway – but Irish audiences were sharply divided in terms of the male and female adversaries in David Mamet’s controversial play. Personally, I found the polemical exchanges at the heart of the production a little ham-fisted.
Having come to prominence as an Oscar-standard character actor in films such as American Beauty, Adaptation and Capote, straight-shooting Chris Cooper now plays America’s worst ever spy in Breach
B*spoke’s Jane Brennan on Tom Murphy’s adaptation of The Drunkard – and the family connections which make this production all the more meaningful for her.
Ang Lee mightn’t have been the most likely candidate to put the jolly green giant on the big screen, but he has rendered Stan Lee’s Incredible Hulk as a greek tragedy.
Long gone are the days when appearing in a play in the Gaiety rather than the Abbey or Gate was seen as “slumming it”. Or that's how Ronan Smith, who plays a priest in Groundwork’s latest production of John B. Keane’s Moll, which opens on March 9th and runs till April 9, sees it anyhow.
He was supposed to be the new Tarantino. But Troy Duffy’s rampant ego destroyed his career before it ever really began. To make him feel even better, some friends caught his rise and fall (and fall..) on camera. The result is Overnight one of the most compelling documentaries in year.
Having sent up the zombie flick on Shaun Of The Dead comic duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have trained their sights on the cop movie with their new feature, Hot Fuzz.
IN THE NEW DAVID MAMET COMEDY STATE AND MAIN, AS IN HER LIFE IN GENERAL, SARAH JESSICA PARKER COULD HARDLY BE FURTHER REMOVED FROM HER SEX AND THE CITY ALTER EGO. TARA BRADY REPORTS.
Joe Jackson talks to Peter Hanly, currently starring in the Pulitzer Prize winning play Dinner With Friends, which explores the minefield of contemporary conjugal relationships.
With feelgood fables like Jerry McGuire and Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe has forged a reputation as one of the Good Guys of American cinema. His new film Elizabethtown does nothing to change that perception, no matter how much he protests. "I'm more caustic than you think," he tells Moviehouse.
The sex lives of flamingos may seem an unusual premise for a Disney nature film but documentarians MATTHEW AEBERHAND and LENDER WARD weave cinematic magic from this most unlikely of source materials.
In between attempts to appease her one-year-old daughter, Angeline Ball talks to Hot Press about her part in Bloom, Sean Walsh’s ambitious adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
This year’s Cannes Film Festival is set to be the most successful yet for the Irish film-making community, according to film board chief executive Mark Woods.
The plight of Ireland’s migrant community is explored in the new heist flick The Front Line. The movie’s stars Eriq Ebouaney and Fatou N’diaye explain why the Irish need to be more open to newcomers.
In August of this year, Hot Press photographer Emily Quinn undertook a unique journey to Uganda to document the lives of people touched by the efforts of the A-Z Children’s Charity.
Galway has a proud history of involvement in the arts - a fact which is mirrored in the strong emphasis on the Humanities in the city's most prestigious college, NUI Galway. But the President, DR. PAT FOTTRELL promises that there's more to come in the future. By OLAF TYARANSEN
Buffy creator Joss Whedon was devastated when his follow-up project, a Western-tinged space-opera, was cancelled without warning. Rather than sulking, Whedon brought the show back to life in movie forkm, as the sci-fi pulp extravaganza Serenity.
He's famed for his method-acting obsessiveness and supposed reclusive streak. But could the real secret about Daniel Day-Lewis be that he's actually rather normal?
Scandinavian alterna queen Stina Nordenstam is determined to keep the hype to a minimum and let her music do the talking – and so far the plan is paying off in spades.
The Price is widely regarded as playwright Arthur Miller’s most personal work. Joe Jackson speaks to actor Lorcan Cranitch about brotherly love and hate and his co-star, ex-Hill Street Blues veteran Robert Prosky
He might be quite the cove but Leslie Phillips is also an enduring presence in British cinema. Here he talks about co-staring with Peter O'Toole in Venus and explains why he had to leave his working class background behind to get a foothold in acting.
Flora Montgomery is one of Ireland's brghtest stars of stage and screen. She may have achieved a career high as the curvaceous criminal lead in When Brendan Met Trudy. But, as Stephen Robinson discovered, you don’t want to ask her about her nude scenes
Perhaps no men have gone further in the name of daft entertainment than the Jackass team. And certainly no woman has taken on a more testing assignment than Tara Brady when she gatecrashes their stag party.
Sound engineering, accountancy, teaching, health and beauty . . . you name it, we've got it. In this special Hot Press feature, PATRICK BRENNAN looks at the many courses currently available to graduates, young school-leavers or anyone simply considering a change of career.
FANS OF this column have complained that in my preview of the Dublin Theatre Festival, in the last issue of Hot Press I paid only lip service to the "most prestigious and biggest show on offer," the RSC's production of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale (Gaiety Theatre).
AIDAN KELLY’S latest stage role in blasted, as a psychotic soldier, is a far cry from his last TV role in the RTE sitcom 'TheCassidys'. Interview: JOE JACKSON
“Goth groove” hopefuls Angel Pier are only a year in existence but already they’ve wooed audiences from Galway to New York. Might they be Ireland’s next break-out success?
KATHRYN BIGELOW is one of the few women directors to break through the glass ceiling in Hollywood. What’s more, she makes action movies of a kind not normally associated with ‘girls’. The release of her latest meisterwerk, The Hurt Locker, an extraordinary movie about the activities of a US Army bomb disposal unit in the war in Iraq, sees her being tipped as a contender come Oscar season next year.
Controversy is already swirling around the forthcoming Abbey Theatre production, Barbaric Comedies. JOE JACKSON finds out what it s all about and talks to one Irish actress who decided against appearing in the play
The Murphy's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival returns to Kilkenny from May 30th-June 3rd. This year's line-up includes the cream of Irish and International stand-up talent and a plethora of extra attractions
Fresh from the success of ‘Shrooms, in which she has a leading role, Lindsey Haun shoots the breeze about music, film and growing up as the daughter of a soft-rock legend.
The outlaw French directors’ leading man of choice, Vincent Cassel is also a mainstay of the Kourtrajmé collective, husband to Monica Bellucci and the star of the comic-horror guerilla feature Satan.
His dreamy electro-pop is winning Ulrich Schnauss an international fanbase. In his native Germany however, they’re still not convinced. Maybe it’s something to do with all those guitars.
Annual article: Bright young things like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen captured the HP critics’ hearts this year, though they somehow neglected Johnny Cash and Mark Lanegan...
After close to a decade of neglect, Pinter’s classic play The Birthday Party is currently enjoying a long-overdue renaissance thanks to directorial debutant, Michael Donegan
Joe Jackson talks to John Kilby, founding member of famed French theatre company Footsbarn, who are set to light up the George’s Dock Festival this June with Perchance To Dream, their lively and imaginative reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s most famous plays.
Snowman FC from Cork won the Irish heat of the JD Sets, played live in the legendary Jack Daniel's Distillery in Tennessee and recorded with REM man David Barbe in Nashville.
Joe Jackson talks to Arthur Riordan, author of Improbable Frequency, the hit musical comedy which examines Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War in humorous and insightful fashion.
Joe Jackson talks to Arthur Riordan, author of Improbable Frequency, the hit musical comedy which examines Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War in humorous and insightful fashion.
Next time you visit Cork City, take a cool look around, for the vista is likely to undergo a major facelift over the next 20 years thanks to the planned development of the Cork Docklands area.
Tara Brady talks to Catalina Sandino Moreno, star of Maria Full Of Grace, the gritty Colombian drama which tells the story of a seventeen year-old girl attempting to escape the dead-end environs of backstreet Bogota.
From indie shy-boys to multi-platinum chart toppers, it’s certainly been a long, strange journey for The Shins. By now, we all know that Natalie Portman played a part in their success – but what’s Elliot Smith go to do with it?
Cult actor Crispin Glover talks about his taboo-busting directorial debut What Is It?, playing George McFly in Back To The Future and meeting Andy Warhol at Madonna and Sean Penn’s wedding.
Aimee Mann is one of the most interesting and distinctive songwriters of the past 20 years. Just don’t ask her what she thinks of the Mercury shortlist!
BEING OUT of the country on holidays means I have yet to see the latest interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Gate Theatre) but one fellow journalist did describe it as "a menopausal sex fantasy".
How did a non sci-fi fan end up producing the most famous interplanetary blockbuster of all time? Red FM’s Victor Barry talks to Rick McCallum about his relationship with George Lucas, the logistics of shooting in 17 different countries – and the health of his liver.
She has spent her life being defined by the men around her - as daughter of Arthur Miller and wife of Daniel Day Lewis. With the release of her big screen adaptation of her novel, The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller proves that she is very much her own woman.
A new row has broken out between computer giant Apple and record labels, with IRMA boss Dick Doyle telling Apple’s Steve Jobs to “wake up and smell the coffee”.
From the profound and the insightful to the weird, funny and just plain daft, Paul Nolan rounds up what the famous and infamous had to say for themselves in 2004...
ANOTHER YEAR is upon us. You probably noticed. New Years don’t creep in quietly, they descend with a thud that leaves your head ringing for days (It’s called a hangover – Ed).
Amid very public images of violence and allegations of intimidation and brutality on the part of members of the force, public confidence in the Gardai has plummeted. Imogen Murphy reports on what needs to be done.
Under the direction of Joe Devlin, the Focus Theatre has taken on an impressive range of projects – not least two plays that tackle burning contemporary issues. Devlin tells us how he’s been carrying on the Focus tradition.
Pop star, movie star, UNICEF youth ambassador – Samantha Mumba has already packed a lot into her young life (including a secret boyfriend!) and the stakes are constantly being raised
He used to be an actor but there's nothing showbizzy about Johnny Flynn's baroque folk-pop. He tells us what it's like to grow up in a thespian household and of his friendship with Kevin Spacey.
Controversial Welsh filmmaker Marc Evans discusses his new project, violent reality-TV parody My Little Eye, and fondly remembers the mayhem his last one caused
As the summer blockbuster season ends, the average cinephile can look forward to a trickle of left field treasures. Echo Park L.A. is one such worthy specimen.
On the eve of the release of their highly anticipated debut album, Dublin quartet Delorentos take five from their latest video shoot to discuss playing with Gang of Four, hanging with Steve Albini and playing football in Texas.
GEORGE MARTIN was intrinsic to much of The Beatles brilliance. Now he s coming to Dublin for a series of special concerts. GEORGE BYRNE sets the scene.
Rising Irish star ANTONIA CAMPBELL HUGHES talks about her starring role as a sulky teenager alongside Jack Dee in the BBC’s Lead Balloon, her ringside view of the Pete Doherty circus and being ogled by Bryan Adams
All told, the last ten action-packed years have seen Mary Black release nine solo albums - from her eponymous debut Mary Black through to the recent chart topper The Holy Ground. Here Chris Donovan takes a retrospective look at what's on offer - and concludes that herein lies the true meaning of the words Black Magic.
ED BYRNE can t wait to do The Late Late Show. Hopefully then, Irish people might realise who he is. BARRY GLENDENNING meets a young Dubliner who s being hotly tipped to win this year s Edinburgh Festival Perrier Award.
Seven years after his last solo LP, David Holmes lost his father. That trauma, and working on the Bobby Sands-era drama Hunger, seem to have brought a new humanity to his work.
During the days of protest at last month's G8 summit in Italy, police raided the Independent Media Centre in Genoa and tried to seize video footage. Journalist and documentary-maker Eamonn Crudden was among a group of twelve who travelled from Ireland to Genoa for the protests. He told ADRIENNE MURPHY about the experience.
From Shakespearian thesp to sitcom star in Black Books, Nina Conti has proven herself to be one of the most versatile actresses around. But, as she tells Phil Udell, what she’s most interested in is reviving the lost art of ventriloquism
From Shakespearian thesp to sitcom star in Black Books, Nina Conti has proven herself to be one of the most versatile actresses around. But, as she tells Phil Udell, what she’s most interested in is reviving the lost art of ventriloquism
"This is hell, dude!"
- Ascanio Pignatelli. L.A. based graduate student and would-be actor, interviewed during the Malibu fires by the Los Angeles Times.
Belfast superstar DJ David Holmes has once again produced the goods with his soundtrack for Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve, this time finding inspiration in sleazy European electro and superfly acid jazz. But not, however, elephant porn.
An Irish human rights campaigner travelled to Colombia recently – and returned with an alarming picture of a society where activists face the constant risk of murder by paramilitary gangs.
He was one of the most controversial figures in the history of Irish broadcasting, turning Radio Nova into a money-making machine and courting confrontation with the gardai, RTE and the NUJ. With the end of the pirate era, he moved to England, where he came unstuck, following a scam that deprived Rupert Murdoch of millions. Many a colourful adventure later, Chris Cary is back in the news - and determined that he can convince the powers-that-be to let him operate the national long-wave frequency that once housed Atlantic 252.
AND THAT WAS JUST IN THE HOLLYWOOD BOARDROOMS! NEIL McCORMICK LOOKS BACK AT THE MOVIEMAKING YEAR IN WHICH ARNIE TOOK A TUMBLE, DINOSAURS CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD AND MICHAEL JACKSON’S PETER PAN DISAPPEARED OFF TO NEVER NEVER LAND.
Hard-drinking cinematographer Christopher Doyle's latest film, Gus Van Sant's dark drama Paranoid Park, saw him make a rare excursion Stateside, but he certainly hasn't curbed any of his excesses
As the station nears the end of its first year on the air and celebrates the two-year extension to its licence, any appraisal of Anna Livia Radio has to be made in the context of the current debate on the ethnic music cleansing at RTE Radio 1, Minister Higgins' plans for the revamping of the Broadcasting Act, and the general despair at the failure of the current Irish radio network to deliver on the promises made to sell us the deal in the first place. Report: JACKIE HAYDEN.
Now that it has been seen by the whole world (and it's Uncle Bilbo) the truth can finally be revealed – Gimli was a most reluctant dwarf. John Rhys Davies explains how he overcame doubts about the book and an allergy to make-up and learned to love The Lord Of The Rings, voted movie of the year in the Hotpress Readers Poll
Cast as fictional conjoined twins who start their own punk band Harry and Luke Treadaway have delivered one of the year’s funniest and most moving performances in the mocumentary Brothers Of The Head.
This Is My Father is a new Irish film which manages to be commercial but not patronisingly Irish. CRAIG FITZSIMONS spoke to one of the stars, PAT SHORTT.
Twenty-four-year-old ANDY VOTEL is the man behind Badly Drawn Boy s Twisted Nerve label, and he s just released a self-penned new album. COLIN CARBERRY gets jealous RICKY ADAMS gets pics
As a pregnancy counselling agency in receipt of state funding, Life would appear obliged to offer non-judgemental advice to its clients. But does the organisation retain what is an essentially anti-abortion stance? Imogen Murphy investigates.
Comic book genius Alan Moore, who was also the original author of the big screen Jack the Ripper yarn, From Hell, has now turned his attention to fellow visionary/madman, William Blake. Peter Murphy reports
The bright lights of Toronto beckoned for Leeside electro-poppers Fred as they kicked off their North American tour with a turn at the prestigious North by Northeast festival.
That a bonefide Irish film industry actually exists is no small achievement, but with a new Minister For The Arts now in place, this is hardly the time for complacency. To ascertain how best the industry can be maintained and developed, Hot Press film critic, cathy dillon, canvassed the views of a number of key players.
Pre-Christmas unrest in the Balkans brought unpleasant memories of late '90s ethnic cleansing back to the soldier turned singer-songwriter James Blunt.
