News

Since he was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA (which he later won) for his scene-stealing supporting performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, there’s been much talk about Barry Keoghan’s inspiring rise to fame.

As will likely be etched into Irish folklore as his Hollywood trajectory continues its sharp ascent, the Dubliner — born in one of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods — would spend seven years in foster homes as a child. It was only around 2008, aged 16, when Keoghan’s love of movies was piqued by an ad in a shop window looking for actors for a new crime drama that was being shot locally. Three years later, he landed a role in Irish TV series Love/Hate (which would become a breeding ground for young Irish talent), followed by 2014’s indie hit ‘72, before breaking out internationally in 2017 with both Dunkirk and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Good Cake Bad Cake–The Story of Lir is an Irish movie by Shimmy Marcus (Mattie, SoulBoy, Aidan Walsh: Master of the Universe). It’s having it’s premiere in the Sugar Club in Dublin on Wednesday next (March 20th) and subsequently it’ll run for four nights in The Factory Cinema. Besides the movie screening, both venues are doing a few extras which include a DJ set from the band and an after party in The Sugar Club and The Factory Cinema screenings are sponsored by Tiger Beer and will have some complimentary beer to boot! There’s a great story here especially around their ill-fated 1995 Us tour which saw the band get sued over a failure to fulfil a management contract. Either way, this should be compelling viewing!

Here’s one for Orange customers and information on how you can get the Orange Film to Go this week. Every week, Orange will be doing their Film Night Live which is an online web streaming Q&A to coincide with the movie that they are giving away for nothing (I can’t use the word ‘free’ but essentially it’s for the price of a text) on iTunes. This will be happening every week on Thursday and has the catchy title, Film To Go (we don’t want to hear people calling it Orange Thursdays!). Each week at 8pm, there will be a live webcast which they call Film Night Live. We’ve teamed up with Orange to bring you the bradcast on the HeyUGuys Facebook page here.

This week, the movie being given away is SoulBoy starring 2010 movie starring Martin Compston, Felicity Jones, Alfie Allen, Nichola Burley, Pat Shortt and Huey Morgan.

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: The word on “Like Crazy” out of Sundance this year was that it’s the film that broke the most hearts. Felicity Jones emerged from last winter’s festival as a talent to pay attention to. That’s why she’ll be honored with the “New Hollywood Award” at this year’s 15th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Film Awards.

This year’s ceremony, presented by Starz Entertainment, is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 24, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. Jones will accept the award for her work in “Crazy,” a long-distance love affair co-starring Anton Yelchin that was co-written and directed by Drake Doremus.

Paramount Vantage plans to open “Like Crazy” in theaters on Oct. 28.

In the meantime, here’s Jones’s full bio:

Felicity Jones earned a Special Jury Award for acting when “Like Crazy” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

Torino Film Festival audience members will be among the first in the world to see Darragh Byrne's 'Parked', at its world premiere on December 2nd at the Italian festival. The feature will join other Irish works such as Shimmy Marcus' 'Soulboy' and Colm McCarthy's 'Outcast'. The festival has also chosen to honour 'The General' director John Boorman and 'The Dead' helmer, John Huston.

The Last Exorcism (15)

(Daniel Stamm, 2010, Us) Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell. 87 mins

There's an epic, gothic Dennis Wheatley-style horror struggling to get out of this curiously lightweight mockumentary, in which a jaded Louisiana evangelical priest (Fabian) takes on a local case of possession to prove that demons only exist in the mind. Stamm orchestrates some good old-fashioned in-camera shocks, but the handheld format is limiting, and what ought to be a truly horrific climax ends in a tired Blair Witch fizzle rather than a bang.

Certified Copy (12A)

(Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, Fr/It/UK) Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, 107 mins

Slightly wooden but deceptively memorable meta romance, in which a woman (Binoche) meets a man (Shimell) who may or may not be her husband.

Dinner For Schmucks

(12A) (Jay Roach, 2010, Us) Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis. 114 mins

Rudd is an aspiring exec who takes Carell to his boss's who-can-bring-the-biggest-nerd dinner party.

Following on from its pilot broadcast last Christmas, Pat Shortt's hapless detective 'Mattie' will return for a new six part series starting Sunday, September 5th. Directed by Shimmy Marcus (Soul Boy) the series was shot in June 2010 around locations in Limerick.The comedy re-unites 'Garage' actor Pat with his original 'Mattie' cast members including Lesley Conroy (Eden), Alvaro Lucchesi (The Count of Monte Cristo), Sean McDonagh (Kisses) and Joe Taylor (Veronica Guerin). Shortt plays Mattie Dwyer, a country detective – who boasts a recurring ability to get into comic misadventures. Mattie's team include feisty female detective Sharon Kelly (played by Lesley Conroy), his smug fellow detectives, Tom and Felix (played by Alvaro Lucchesi and Sean McDonagh) and Superintendent O'Meara (played by Joe Taylor).

Martin Compston could have been a footballer, but gave up dreams of Celtic Park for a career in the movies. He's played the bad guy many times, but his scariest job to date? Learning to dance

It has been nearly a decade since Ken Loach cast 17-year-old Martin Compston in Sweet Sixteen, as a Scottish kid who drifts into dealing heroin. The teenager had never acted before – not uncommon for a Loach film. All he'd ever wanted was to play football. As it happens, the week he left school, he found himself with not one but two potentially life-changing offers: one from Loach and a contract with Greenock Morton Fc. It all worked out fine. Loach wangled it with the club so that he could miss a bit of training. It must have must have been a difficult decision, after a season, to hang up his boots to concentrate on acting.

With one movie out in September and another in production, plus the success of Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Janelle Monáe, northern soul is the sound that never dies. Paolo Hewitt explores the roots of Britain's most enduring subculture

Multimedia Alert! You can listen to many of the artists mentioned in Paolo's piece and trace the evolution of the northern soul sound from Brother Ray to Janelle Monáe by opening The Guide's cool, if highly subjective, Spotify playlist

Last June, the 62-year-old American singer Nolan Porter flew into Britain to perform sell-out shows in Warwick and Oldham. Fans who revere Porter's two massive northern soul anthems, If I Could Only Be Sure and Keep On Keeping On, afforded the singer a rapturous welcome. Backed by Birmingham soul outfit the Stone Foundation, Porter was so taken aback by the response, he vowed to return to Britain as quickly as possible.

Next month a new British film,...

The Illusionist and Ben Miller's directing debut, Huge, are two of the gems this year

Magicians don't exist is the forlorn message of Sylvain Chomet's beautiful animation The Illusionist, which opened the 64th Edinburgh international film festival. I should think film festival organisers often reach a similarly prosaic conclusion, for they can only work with what's in front of them. But the collection of films on show this year has certainly got some style about it, if not quite magic.

After complaining for the past few years about Edinburgh holding its gala nights in the unattractive multiplex on the edge of town, I was delighted with the transformation of the lovely old Festival theatre on Nicolson Street into an atmospheric cinema. It gave the opening night a real flourish, complete with dancing girls in feathers, a brass band and moustached mime-artists performing magic.

The Illusionist, the follow-up to the director's award-winning Belleville Rendez-Vous,...

A charming film from Shimmy Marcus, SoulBoy is the story of Joe (Martin Compston, Sweet Sixteen), an aspiring cool guy in his late-teens. Life in Stoke-on-Trent becomes more exciting when a new girl in town (Nichola Burley) introduces him to the world of Soul.

With his heart set on her, he throws himself into the Northern Soul music scene, making his first appearance at its epicentre: Wigan.

It would be easy to slap a “coming of age” badge on this film in the same way that the soul kids advertise their favourite artists on their leather bowling bags, but SoulBoy deserves a more nuanced description.

No issue is left untouched, giving Joe a place in the real world of relationships, role models, moral decisions, and demons. Its setting is tight in scope but universal in story as Joe tries to find his place in an established culture with customs, behaviours,...

London -- Former Bond girl Britt Ekland, director Mike Hodges, New York's Museum of Modern Art's senior film curator Laurence Kardish and Iranian director Rafi Pitts have all been called to jury duty as the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) is due to kick off June 16.

The quartet have signed up for the festival's main draw jury, the Michael Powell jury, and will assemble under the panel's president Patrick Stewart, organizers said.

Named in homage to the U.K. filmmaker and inaugurated in 1993, the Michael Powell Award is sponsored by the U.K. Film Council and carries a prize of £15,000 ($22,000).

The prize aims to reward imagination and creativity in British filmmaking and 2009 saw Duncan Jones walk off with the prize for his debut "Moon," while the jury gave Katie Jarvis last year's best performance in a British film for "Fish Tank."

The winner of 2010's Michael Powell Award will come from Ashey Horner's "brilliantlove,...

Sir Patrick Stewart heads the jury at Edinburgh this year, with some strong British films in contention. Meanwhile, Madonna is to make a second foray into direction and lost gem Bronco Bullfrog is restored to its full youthful East End glory. By Jason Solomons

Tartan up the juries

Sir Patrick Stewart - we do not yet know if he will insist on using the full, grand title - is to head the Jury at the 64th Edinburgh international film festival. The actor, who can legitimately be called "Mr President" for the duration of the event, will sit in judgment over the prestigious Michael Powell award, given to the best British film at the festival. Competitors include: Paul Andrew Williams's Cherry Tree Lane (his searing debut London to Brighton premiered at the festival in 2006); Nick Moran's The Kid; Huge, the directing debut of comic actor Ben Miller; and Soulboy,...

Two highly-anticipated second feature films from U.S. underground filmmakers will be making their World Premieres all the way over at the 64th annual Edinburgh International Film Festival, which will run for twelve days on June 16-27. The films are Rona Mark’s The Crab and Zach Clark’s Vacation!.

The Crab, which screens on June 21, is the touching story of a verbally abusive man born with two enormous, mutant-like hands; while Vacation!, which screens on June 20, tracks four urban gals let loose in a sunny seaside resort down South.

Both Mark and Clark previously screened their debut features at Eiff. Mark’s Strange Girls screened there in 2008 and Clark’s Modern Love Is Automatic screened in 2009. Both films also ended up as runners-up in Bad Lit’s annual Movie of the Year award, again Strange Girls in 2008 and Modern Love in 2009. Sadly, these two masterpieces are still unavailable on...

The Edinburgh International Film Festival this afternoon published their full line-up for 2010, and it’s looking good. Check out the website - www.edfilmfest.org.uk

I’ll be covering the festival which runs from 16th-29th of June, so keep your eye out for reviews, interviews and insider info in our third year of coverage from Eiff.

The McHenry brothers direct Jackboots on WhiteHall an eagerly anticipated film in which Winston Churchill hides out in lawless Scotland, as an all-star cast voices an alternative animated history of WWII – I can’t wait to see this one! In Ollier Kepler’s Expanding Purple World, the brilliant Edward Hogg (White Lightnin’; Bunny and the Bull) stars in a darkly funny study of one man’s walk on the weird side. Then there’s Cherry Tree Lane, Paul Andrew Willaim’s latest thriller. Pelican Blood by Karl Golden looks pretty incredible and...

London -- This year's Edinburgh International Film Festival will close with the world premiere of "Third Star," a British tragicomedy from newcomer Hattie Dalton starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Burke, Jj Feild and Adam Robertson.

The movie will bookend the Scottish shindig with the previously announced opening gala of Sylvain Chomet's "The Illusionist" at the festival boasting 133 movies from 34 countries, organizers said Tuesday.

British galas competing for the U.K. Film Council sponsored Michael Powell Award for best British feature include world debuts for Paul Andrew Williams' "Cherry Tree Lane," "Huge" by Ben Miller, Edward McHenry and Rory McHenry's "Jackboots On Whitehall," Nick Moran's "The Kid," Viv Fongenie's "Ollie Kepler's Expanding Purple World," "Pelican Blood," by Karl Golden and "Soulboy" by Shimmy Marcus.

Organizers picked Ryan Piers Williams' "The Dry Land," Werner Herzog's "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?," Floria Sigismondi's...