WOW!!! Father Geek here with the Monday Euro-AICN column fresh from the last night of Quentin Tarantino's wonderful little festival highlighting his private film collection of undiscovered and forgotten motion pictures, 10 days of viewing up to 7 films a day. It ended at 4 am this morning and this last day of treats had started at noon. The day before ran from 11am till 6am, not alot of time left for eating, sleeping or even using the restroom, it was indeed an orgy of cinema excess, a celebration of movie fandom, and for Father Geek anyway it was Heaven.

This year's event was very heavy on Euro and Asian films and I discovered and fell in love with the heavy duty works of Directors FERNANDO DiLEO and MICHELE LUPO. Of course other Euro-directors were well represented in Quentin's collection including JESUS(Jess)FRANCO, LUCIO FULCI, DARIO ARGENTO, GIULIANO(Anthony Ascot)CARNIMEO, and FERNANDO BALDI, among others. A real highlight of the fest for ol' Father Geek was the unexpected scoring of an original release German poster for ANDY WARHOL's 1968 classic LONESOME COWBOYS (Ramonia & Julian) from a reader of the site that was in attendance, its a pretty damn nice gift to receive out of nowhere. THANKS!!!

You AICN readers were well represented at this year's fest with many of you coming from as far away as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington DC, and New Zealand just to sit with us in the darkened screening room of THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA, especially since the films titles (as always) were not promoted in advance. That shows a real faith in AICN and Quentin to set you down on the right Cine pathway. You were not alone in letting your geekiness hangout however, Actors AMANDA(Pulp Fiction, Million Dollar Hotel)PLUMMER and NICKY(Boiler Room, Way of the Gun)KATT joined screenwriter TIM(Dancer Texas Pop. 81,Irongiant)McCANLIES and Directors ROBERT(Desperado, Spy Kids)RODRIGUEZ, RICHARD(Dazed & Confused, Waking Life)LINKLATER, MIKE(Bevis & Butthead, Office Space)JUDGE, TOBE(Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Crocodile)HOOPER, and Producer/Director MICHAEL(Wicked, There's Someting About Mary, Turnabout)STEINBERG in attending the week and ahalf long celebration of forgotten cinema that Quentin holds once a year here in Austin.

Now to Edgard and his regular column...

EURO AICN

Edgard here...

Another week, another report from Europe... this week we have a long report from Grozilla from the American Film Festival in Deauville; the usual news from France, Belgium, Italy and Germany; Ozymandias and a script review from an upcoming French film... so let's not wait anymore... Let's hear about Euro Movie World...

BELGIUM

* This film has been shooting for a while now, but we haven't talked about it yet at Euro AICN so here it is : after FARINELLI and THE MUSIC TEACHER, belgian director Gerard Corbiau is making LE ROI DANSE, a film about the relations between the King Louis XIV, Lully and Molière (this character will be played by Tcheky Karyo). As usual with Corbiau, music will play an important part in the movie.

FRANCE

* It's a French company that will produce the next film from Amos Kollek (his latest FAST FOOD, FAST WOMEN has just been released here). The title will be... LINDA FIORENTINO (!). No word on the script yet, and no word of the involvment of Linda herself...

* Despite the failure of VATEL, British director will make again his next film with French producer Alain Goldman : ANIMAL, a thriller about genetic experiments based on a script written by Roselyne Bosh (1492, CONQUEST OF PARADISE) in 1993. Shooting would start beginning of 2001. No casting has been announced yet.

* After working on one part of FANTASIA 2000, the brothers Gaeyan and Paul Brizzi are now developping an full animated film for Disney. So far the story is kept secret...

* For his first film alone, Marc Caro (the other half of DELICATESSEN) will adapt a Lewis Caroll poem (in French it's called "La Chasse au Snark" - The Snark's Hunting - but I don't know what's the original title). Caroline Thompson (EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) should write the adaptation. The film will be shot in DV and will need 18 months of post-production.

* From Allocine : Ivana Trump (ex-wife of Donald) will play herself in JET SET 2; the sequel of this French comedy about... the clash between "normal" guys and the Parisian jet set. As always with succesful comedies, an American remake is in the works at Miramax.

GERMANY

* Next October, Franka Potente (RUN LOLA, RUN) will join Matt Damon in THE BOURNE IDENTITY, directed by Doug GO Liman, and based on a Robert Ludlum novel.

ITALY

* From Screendaily : Martin Scorsese has pulled his much-awaited Italian cinema documentary out of this year's Venice film festival, saying that the four-hour film, entitled Il Mio Viaggio In Italia is not yet ready to be screened. "Due to the nature of working with old films and elements that are sometimes forty and fifty years old, the process has been very different than that of making a new release," Scorsese said from Rome, where he is about to start filming Gangs Of New York with Leonardo di Caprio and Cameron Diaz. "There are many more steps involved in creating a print, and it takes much more time due to the care and delicacy with which we have to handle the elements. I wish there was some way we could speed this process along, but there just isn't. We’ve done everything possible and cannot have a print ready for you," the US director explained. A brief preview of the documentary, which is a tribute to Scorsese's cinematic influences and was due to be screened out of competition, was shown at last year's festival. Festival director Alberto Barbera announced that two new titles will be added to the line-up and screened out of competition: UK director David Mamet's State And Main with Alec Baldwin, produced by FilmTown Entertainment and sold internationally by UGC International, and Hal Hartley's short film Kimono, which will be screened as part of the Filmmakers of Today sidebar. Meanwhile, Hugh Grant and Johnny Depp both announced that they will not attend the festival. Depp stars in Sally Potter's competition title The Man Who Cried, and Grant is a cast member of Woody Allen's out-of-competition film Small Time Crooks.

CRAZY RUMOR OF THE WEEK

* Maybve I missed it on the AICN site this week, but this one is new for me : French magazine Studio wrote that Eddie Murphy and Jerry Bruckheimer are now working on a fourth episode of BEVERLY HILLS COP... if they keep John Landis far away, maybe I will be curious on that one (and also if Eddie Murphy doesn't play 18 characters in it).

GROZILLA STRIKES AGAIN !! - This time, he takes Deauville !!

* Here's Grozilla's first report from Deauville (France) where the Festival of American Films takes place...

We like to believe that life in Deauville outside the holidays seasons is not fun, but during these 10 September days, this little town opens its doors to the American Cinema for a Festival that - after 26 years - becomes more and more known. For the opening week-end, a few stars came by. Like Clint Eastwood and Paul Verhoeven, both coming straight from the Venise festival, who came to present their latest movies. SPACE COWBOYS and HOLLOW MAN might not be new for American audiences, but the SPACE COWBOYS press conference will stay as a big moment : a Russian journalist asked Clint if he was not giving a too negative image of the ex-Soviet Union.... Well, with its "live" remakes of U-571 and THE TOWERING INFERNO, it's hard to say that Russia is showing a lot of modernism ! The same journalist told then very seriously that she had been trying to get a pass for the Clint Eastwood ceremony (held that same night) but that the answer was : the only way to get in was to sleep with the producer. Despite the laughs from the public, she asked if there was not another way to get to that ceremony ! And even funnier, a Belgian journalist expressed his sadness that stars like Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones and others were never going to Belgium to promote their films. He then asked the stars for their phone numbers so he could contact them more easily. Answer with dry sarcasm from Tommy Lee Jones : "In Texas, we have no phones".

But let's back to the films... ANIMAL FACTORY, the second film directed by Steve Buscemi, from a Edward Bunker novel, was presented here for the first time. It's about a youg boy learning violence in a state prison. Perfect casting : Willem Dafoe as a tired Christ, Edward Furlong as the lamb to be sacrified... but the film lacks a little something to keep you really hooked. That leaves you with another "prison film", no worst or not better than the others... still very far from BLOOD IN, BLOOD OUT 'from Taylor Hackford) or AMERICAN ME...

The rest of the week-end was looking like a reflexive seminar on cinema. First with STATE & MAIN, the new David Mamet film, a comedy on what he must know the best : the "Hollywood behind the scenes". This will feel familiar for those who read Mamet's monthly chronics in Premiere. We can just regret that he uses too many clichés in this "Altmanian" structure : the nymphomaniac actress, the pervert actor, the greedy producer, the tyranical director... Maybe it's real, but still too much... Especially as these characters are only there to fill the story of a writer (Philip Seymour Hoffman perfect as usual) discovering the script writting job and a bookseller (Rebecca Pidgeon, aka Mrs Mamet, more attractive than usually). STATE & MAIN feels like a nasty version of Tom Di Cillio's LIVING IN OBLIVION. Even if it's a bit too long, this could be Mamet's most popular film so far...

In the same field, FAMOUS, a mockumentary from Griffin Dunne, annoys quickly... it tells what we all already know : the actor's job is not easy, and sometimes you get hurt... So what ?

More curious is TIME CODE, from Mike Figgis, which is as futile as interesting. It feels sometimes more like the exploitation of a process than a film. It feels really empty when Figgis brings in the story a conceptual artist who's trying to do something like this film : by destructurating any idea of narration. Curiously, most of the "non-speaking English" viewers did not leave the theatre as the film had no subtitle. Regarding its structure, Columbia decided not to put subtitles on that one. It will not be released in theatres in France then, but directly available to buy. Hmm, it seems clear that a general release would be a suicide, while a presentation in the Modern Art Museum could have an effect...

Monday morning: presentation of BROTHER, the new Kitano movie... we will get back on that one...

For more information on this Festival, check : Right Here

* Here below is another report from Grozilla, something we received at Euro AICN earlier this week....

More news on LE PACTE DES LOUPS / BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLVES : I was on a Canal + night at the Etrange festival last week. I met there Christophe Gans. Have a nice chat with this smart guy. He told that his film is again delayed (now on 2001 february 7th for the French release). He finished to edit all the scenes with actors. Only missing are the sfx shots. They’re currently made at Jim Henson’s workshop in London. Gans can’t praise enough their work. He was particulary amazed by one 3d logiciel which could make the set by any angle possible. He also told that his film will have a numeric digital " negatif " upon which he could make copy for screenings in theater with optimum quality. He seems very enthousiastic about the quality of numeric digital image ; he was conviced to work on this support after seeing some test scenes shot on this support from Sally Potter’s The Man who cried out. Other buzz in town says that "Le pacte…" could costs more than 200 millions FF (that's around 30 millions $). Gans seems to believe than 170 millions FF are more close to the truth.

On other subject : I saw one tremendous Korean film on this Canal + night (way much better than the japanese Ring & Ring 2, also screened there) : THE ISLE. Imagine the set of the opening sequence of Beineix’s "Betty Blue" submerged by the melt of ice caps. Now you got the set of The isle, kind of quiet space with little bungalows floating on a lake. And a woman who bring by boat to the fishermans food, drinks and …whores. Very minimalistic, with almost no dialogues, The isle’s got a haunting mood, half funny, half tragic ; quite like a version of Alex Van Varmerdam’s "The northeners" but on water. Beautifully shot, this film allies the typically asian calm broken by some cruel scenes. The wonderful " oniric " last scene achieves to make The isle, one superb study on female sexuality. I guess this film is on competition in Venise Festival. Well, it will sure get some cool buzz there, when it will be screened between the new monument of european boring form Sharunas Bartas and Manoel de Oliveira.

Talking of Venise Festival, one of the great highlights will sure be Barbet Schroeder's "La vierge des tueurs", one astonishing film shot with the latest numeric DV in Medellin about a lobve story between an old writer and a young street killer. Violent (well, Colombia is the record coutry of killings and kidnapping) and beautiful this film got a kind of melancholia in his guts. More than a testimony on a country, it talks about the loss of time, the fear of death. La vierge... got this weird feeling between a slow pace and this sensation of emergency (maybe because it was shot in a "pirate" way). Without forgetting the incredible photography of this film, first one on DV to restitue on screen splendid colors and contrasts. Also I went to Paul Verhoeven press conference in Paris for HOLLOW MAN. He was annoyed by the Internet rumors that different versions of his film existed. Like supposedly one shown in Edimburgh a few days before. He claimed that the version released in the States and in Europe was the only one existing. That the so called "rape scene" never existed (even if frankly after watching the movie you can think that the scene with the neighbour is not complete). Someone asked if he was aware that there was 2 films in one : his and the one for the studio. Verhoeven smiled and laughed before saying he thought he made a good transition between the two... As for his next projects, BASIC INSTINCT 2 is out of the question for him. JESUS, THE MAN is in the writing process with Jean-Claude Carrière. RASPOUTINE is stopped for now as long as Roselyne Bosch's script is not improved, but he also said he could work quickly on MONT-ORIOL (from a Maupassant's text) in Europe, with European producers. At the end someone asked a question on the CRUSADES... strangely Verhoeven misunderstood and thought the journalist was talking about the HOUDINI project (Tom Cruise was attached). And looking at Verhoeven's face and reaction, it seems that this project is maybe not totally buried...

OZYMANDIAS CORNER

* From Showbizireland.com Hollywood heart-throb Luke Perry is coming to Ireland to do a comedy remake of the John Wayne classic The Quiet Man. Perry is to star in Connemara Dave, which will be filmed in Ireland next spring. The Beverly Hills 90210 star will take part in the film remake made famous by The Duke John Wayne who co-stared at the time in the movie with Irish actress Maureen O'Hara. In Connamara Dave the film is slightly different and the movie tells of a young Irish girl who falls madly in love with the assistant director of The original Quiet Man in the village of Cong, Co Mayo, fifty years ago. Perry will play the young director who is filming under the wing of the stormy director John Ford. However, his leading lady has not yet been cast but a number of other stars have including veteran actor Norman Wisdom and Irish actress Rosaleen Linehan. "It's a comedy about one of the local village girls falling in love with the assistant director, a young man who idolizes John Wayne"said producer Gareth Owen told the Irish Star newspaper.

* Now seeing as Arthur C Clarke is my favourite sci-fi author of all time and Morgan Freeman one of my fave actors of all time this one got my attention! From Empire Online (www.empireonline.co.uk) : In this month’s Empire, our Public Access interview - the one where readers get to ask questions of the stars - features Freeman talking about adapting sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama. 'My company, which is called Revelations Entertainment, has the rights to Mr. Clarke’s book, and we’ve been in the process of raising funds to make the film.' Freeman tells Empire. 'I read the book in the ‘60s and I was very impressed with it. I like the book a lot and I’ve always thought it would be a cinematic coup to bring it to the screen.' Freeman goes on to explain the movie plot [spoilers ahead] 'It’s about the countries of the world coming together and deciding that we have to give ourselves the ability to foresee a catastrophe like the meteor strike in Deep Impact. We put radar beacons on Jupiter, Mars and the moon, trained on deep space, and they pick up something headed this way that appears to be man-made – or, at least, not a natural phenomenon – which, if it managed to enter Earth’s orbit, could throw everything out of kilter. This one little thing could send us spinning into space or we could get sucked into the sun. So we send maintenance vessels out to find out what it is. And that’s pretty much the story.' Freeman went on to excite the interest of Star Wars fans everywhere when a reader asks whether he would consider playing Lando Calrissian’s dad in one of the Star Wars prequels? 'Why not? If you’re asking whether I’d consider it, sure. I’m a Star Wars fan, so I’d probably quite enjoy it. With me, everything comes down to the script, but I’d certainly contemplate the idea if it was on offer. I didn’t see The Phantom Menace though, so that might have some bearing on it.'

These both come from WENN:

* Michael Caine is such a big fan of animated film-maker Nick Park that he jumped at the chance to appear in his latest movie. The Tortoise and the Hare will be the next animated feature to hit the box office following the runaway success of smash flick Chicken Run. The project, based on the famous Aesop fable, is so far advanced Caine has already voiced the part of the hare. An insider says, "He's just finished doing it. The voices are always recorded before the animation so they can get the mouth movements in synch. When Caine was offered it, he jumped at the chance. He's a big fan of Nick Park's." The acclaimed Oscar winner actually had to raise his voice a few octaves to play the 26-year- old hare, making the movie a real challenge. The project, which has been in development for five years, will be backed by Dreamworks.

* Harris Wants Harry Potter Share - Legendary Irish actor Richard Harris is battling for a share of the merchandising profits as part of his fee for a role in the new Harry Potter movie. Harris is first choice for the part of Duymbledore, the headmaster of the Hogwarts school, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Rather than taking a flat fee for his appearance in the film, Harris's agent is demanding a percentage of merchandising from the sale of products tied to the film. The star is currently based in Dublin, where he is making his new movie The Count of Monte Cristo.

L8r,

Ozymandias

Euro AICN Ireland/UK Office, Penthouse Suite, Ozymandias Towers, Dublin, Ireland.

If you're involved in the Irish or UK movie industries I want to hear from you!

Mail me at ozymandias@dublin.com

QUESTION OF THE WEEK :

Can you help Alex ? Aidan Quinn was spotted on location, filming in Budapest, around the 22/23 August. Possibly an action/comedy film? can you confirm any of this? And if so, the proposed name of the film?

EDGARD'S SCRIPT REVIEW - BELPHEGOR (see the film website at this location

Nyah sent me this script from a French movie called BELPHEGOR (The Phantom of the Louvre) which should be released here this fall (october I think). The story is very simple, think THE MUMMY in Paris, more precisely in the Louvre museum. This film is in fact the remake of a popular French TV serie from the sixties. It tells the story of a cursed mummy (how original) that take possession of someone and then... very bad things happen. Even before reading the script, I was worried about two things. First, Sophie Marceau is one of the lead character... and frankly after the last James Bond, I don't want to see her in apopular movie again. Second, such a project means special effects... and in the mainstream French cinema, special effects are often used for bad reasons (especially in comedies like ASTERIX or LES VISITEURS, they overuse effects "à la THE MASK" all the time). So my concern was, I hope this movie is not made as a comedy... Well now I read the script and to be honest I still don't know if it will be a comedy or not. You see a lot of dialogues are supposed to be funny but at the most it's lame and pathetic (it reminded me dialogues from the TAXI movies, still Besson has nothing to do with that phantom story). On the other hand you have murders (or more precisely accidents) that are described in a "gore" way... so what will come out of this mix ? I don't know really. Of course I don't know if the script I had was final or not, so I don't know what will be on screen. Sophie Marceau's character is made totally for her : independant, but in need to be helped; rebel, but asking for love; looking for danger, but vulnerable; in other word extremly annoying... For what I could read, it seems like a big "salad" with a lot of things thrown in for everyone : love, humor, horror, action, drama, old people, young people, bad guys, good guys, angry mummy, dead grandmother, a funny black guy, a hero (?... that I am not sure about).... Again, as it is my first script review, I can only talkabout what I read and hope that the film will manage to take the best out of this. But this kind of project is rare in the French cinema, there's is a good reason for that : it is usually very bad... let's hope that only the mummy is cursed here, not the film !

That's it for this week... please send us any reports, comments, critics... to the EURO AICN Offices in wonderful Paris, France.