The Best Film Ever has just gone into development. Think we've gone mad? Well listen to this. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, progenitors of South Park and the mighty Team America: World Police, are set to make a picture entitled Giant Monsters Attack Japan!
The movie, which will, indeed, feature men in rubber suits stomping on a tiny Tokyo, is just one of two films Parker and Stone are currently working on. The other, a high-school comedy named My All-American, doesn't sound like the Best Film Ever. Still, you never know.
The movie mentor
The Screen Directors Guild of Ireland has named the four young film-makers who are to participate in the body's ambitious new mentorship scheme. The plan, which has been organised in conjunction with the producers of The Tudors, a Showtime TV series currently shooting in Ireland, will permit the lucky few to see how the director of a big-budget production goes about his or her business. The chosen four are Patrick Kenny, Paul Bolger, Ian Murphy and David Lawless. One of the directors they will be working with on the set is Brian Kirk, whose forthcoming feature Middletown, a poisonously delightful exercise in Ulster gothic, is the best Irish film this writer has seen for quite some time.
Rock me dEUS
When rock stars take time off to direct films the results are rarely happy. But Tom Barman, lead singer of dEUS, everyone's favourite hyper-eclectic Belgian beat combo, has received significant praise for his first feature, Any Way the Wind Blows. Barman, whose band will be doing their thing at the upcoming Electric Picnic, will be introducing a screening of the film, an ensemble piece set in Antwerp, next Thursday at the Irish Film Institute. Go to the IFI's website for details. www.irishfilm.ie
Blank regeneration
The explosion of avant-garde art, discordant noise and unclassifiable performance that hit downtown New York in the aftermath of punk remains - for people of a certain age, anyway - one of the most exciting cultural phenomena of the last century. Next month, No Wave, as the movement was dubbed, will be celebrated by a tantalising series of films at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Among the seven movies being screened we find The Blank Generation, featuring numerous delicious performances from CBGB, and TV Party, a study of Glenn O'Brien's legendary punk cable show. The season runs from September 15th September to October 1st. Details can be found at www.imma.ie.
Temple of doom
Is George Lucas having us on or does he really just not get it? Last week, while speaking to Empire magazine about the long-rumoured fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, the oddly bearded recluse made a chilling reference to another film cycle. "We're basically going to do The Phantom Menace", he said. "People's expectations are way higher than you can deliver. You could just get killed for the whole thing. We would do it for fun and just take the hit with the critics and the fans." That sounds promising. Industry murmurings suggest this grim prospect may become celluloid reality some time in 2008.
Suits you, Sir Ian
Anybody teaching English as a foreign language may wish to use the following story when explaining the meaning of "counter- productive". In the upcoming second series of Ricky Gervais's hilarious Extras, Sir Ian McKellen appears as an unbelievably self-important version of himself. The relevant episode, referencing notorious strictures laid down by Ben Kingsley, was to have McKellen insist on being called "Sir Ian".
"As I'd been invited to comment on the script to suit my personality, I called RG to suggest the script had got me wrong, a little," McKellen writes on his website. "I am one of those knights who prefers not to use the title professionally." The script was duly altered. Surely this whole exchange only serves to make McKellen look notably more pompous. Reel News never thought it would use these words, but - keeping in mind a spectacularly uncomfortable episode of the first series featuring a once-popular comic - Sir Ian should take a leaf out of Les Dennis's book.
dclarke@irish-times.ie
