Father Geek here with Edgard's Euro-AICN column for this week, but first a couple of BOND bits thst flowed across my screen this morning...

News story, on this morning's Big Breakfast: Gerad Butler has been asked to be the next James Bond after Pierce Brosnan finishes his fourth Bond film. Hope you can use the info.

Scott

Annnnd to confirm that...

I've seen a few news sources confirming that Gerard Butler star (?) of Dracula 2001 has been asked to step into Pierce Brosnan's shoes after he completes his last film as 007. Gerard has been approached by Barabra Brocolli who has expressed an interest.

call me 'The Brain'

And then there was this bit...

Long-time reader, first-time writer... Just mailing you with some info about the next James Bond film - according to the Daily Express newspaper in the UK, Nigel Havers has been lined up for the villain's role.

In case you don't know him, he's mostly on British TV, and is your typical English smoothie type, last seen in "The Gentleman Thief" in the UK, you may remember him from "Empire of the Sun".

Cheers,

Roger

Now on the Edgard and crew...

EURO AICN

Hello folks... Edgard here, once again I am late to deliver the Euro news... I could say that's it's because Summer has finally arrived in Paris, so it gets thirsty down here and I get drunk every day with whatever I can drink in the sun... hence the delay; but it is not that...

I could say that it's because my gorgeous girlfriend is here right now visiting me from Denmark, meaning I have better things to do than collect Euro news on films, but nope... not that either...

hey, for all I know I could also tell you that I'm a superhero (Euroman or something) and right now I'm too busy saving the Euro world of the Euro evil men... but the true reason of my constant delay is not as fun : work, work, work... so good for the wine and my girlfriend, I have to finish a stupid report for the European Commission & it's soooooooooooo boring you wouldn't believe it... so once again accept my apologizes...

here're the news from Germany, France, Ireland... and see you next week !!

GERMANY

Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin on Friday, the 22nd).

* Here are the winners of the German Filmprize 2001 (

• Best Film :
• a) golden Lola : "Die innere Sicherheit"
• b) silver Lola : "Der Krieger und die Kaiserin"
• c) silver Lola : "Crazy"
• Best Director : Esther Gronenborn ("alaska.de")
• Best Actor : Moritz Bleibtreu ("Im Juli" and "Das Experiment")
• Best Actress : Katrin Sass ("Heidi M.")
• Best Supporting Actor : Justus von Dohnanyi ("Das Experiment")
• Best Supporting Actress : Antje Westermann ("Gran Paradiso")
• Best Documentary : "Havanna mi amor"
• Best Children- and Youth-Film : "Der kleine Vampir"
• Best International Film : "In The Mood For Love"
• Best Screenplay : Natja Brunckhorst ("Wie Feuer und Flamme")
• Exceptional Achievements:
• a) Photography : Gero Steffen ("Frau2 sucht HappyEnd")
• b) Editing : Christian Lonk ("alaska.de")
• c) Set Design/Art Direction : Andrea Kessler and Uli Hanisch ("Das Experiment")
• Honorary Award : Curt Linda (Animationfilm-Pioneer)
• Audience Award Best Film : "Das Experiment"
• Audience Award Best Actor/Actress : Moritz Bleibtreu

Ciao,

Simplicius Simplicissimus

FRANCE

* Some info on the FESTIVAL DU CINEMA ASIATIQUE AU MAC-MAHON (Paris) from July 4 to July 31st. A huge programme is scheduled for this festival with premiere, classics or animated films, make your choice, here are some of the highlights : AVALON (Mamoru Oshii - to be confirmed); BANGKOK DANGEROUS (Danny & Oxide Pang); H STORY (Nobuhiro Suwa); BATTLE ROYALE (Kinji Fukasaku - to be confirmed); DEAD OR ALIVE 1 and 2 (Takashi Miike); GHOST ACTRESS-DON'T LOOK BACK (Hideo Nakata); GO JOE (Ishii Sogo); BEIJING BICYCLE (Wang Xiaoshuai) (1h53); PEPPERMINT CANDY (Chang-dong Lee); CENTER STAGE (Stanley Kwan); BUTTERFLY MURDERS (Tsui Hark); CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar-Wai); THE KILLER (John Woo); with also ALL the Takeshi Kitano movies and many many more... So if you will be stuck in Paris this July, there's still some films to watch.

* Last week was released a little French , a scary one, entitled UN JEU D'ENFANTS (A Children's Game), directed by Laurent Tuel, about two young kids being possessed and haunting their parents... Interesting fact : this film is the first of a serie of B movies (called... Bee Movies). So very soon on the French screen : more "genre films".. Great News. I haven't seen the film yet but Grozilla met with the director and Karin Viard (who plays the mother), and here's a part of the interview (full version available in French only, let me know if you're interested, and my apologizes if the English here below is not good enough for you, I have no time to perfect the translation).

- How did you get involved in the Bee Movies collection ?

L. Tuel : At first, Fidélité Productions wanted to create a label, Bee Movies, to get back to the serie B principles : hire some scriptwriters and get directors who would be doing their first or second film. People with who they would be interested to work, not necesseraly people in the system. For some it will be the first long film. This implies a small budget and a fast production, and that the directors can get access to a finished script without having to rewrite it. This concept of the director as a "maker", not an author, is something that doesn't exist much anymore in France. I would love to get a script written by someone else, to say "I like it, let's make it that way". But there's always a need, even minimum, to rewrite, to reappropriate the text. In this case they gave me a topic, not really a script, one of the elements of the collection. It was not bad, inspired by the Russ Meyer's films, with violent girls. But I was afraid it could not be made as such. From an aesthetic point of view I thought it was not entirely possible to make it correctly in France. So I said no. And the people from Fidélité told me they were still interested to make a film with me and they asked if I had ideas. I had indeed a project to which some british producers were interested, so I talked about it. The film was written in 5 months, got quickly into production and was the first one of the collection to be made.

- The theme of the evil or possessed child in the cinema has usually an Anglo-Saxon connotation...

L.T. : I can't explain that. If you look into the French litterature, you might find La Comtesse de Ségur who gets close to it (laughs). I wanted to make a film fantastic starting from a real situation, from the daily life, close to people. We were all children once. We most likely will have children. Starting from there, wondering on the madness, the deterioration while inserting elements of fantastic was something exciting. Good exists, Evil too. When you read horrible news, you always wonder what happened. For me it proves the existence of Evil. You can explain it with concrete reasons. I wanted to follow the idea of the Evil that lives on, that is transmitted.

- The central character is the children's mother. From your point of view where does this tradition of female character in the fantastic genre come from ?

L.T. : I have the feeling that women can better "feel" things, that men are not as discerning. A man has the same faculties than a woman to feel what's going on around him if he makes the effort to stay open. Women are not more receptive, but more attentive than men about what's going on in life. A female character will thus capture better the disorders, while for a man he has to get it in the face to understand.

Karine Viard : It's quite beautiful to film a female face crossed by fear. There's something inspiring to look at the fragility of a female's face.

L.T. : It might be a stereotype by doing this, but can a man be physically as afraid than a woman ? This being said, it could be interesting to make a film about a man filled with anxiety because of his children, while his wife wouldn't notice anything.

K.V. : There is something of that order in FACE/OFF, where all the feelings are going through the two men's faces. Still it is not as inspiring. I don't think a man's face can embody fear.

L.T. : A frightened woman who fights, you can make her an heroine. It's more difficult to make a hero from a frightened man.

- The film brings into conflict two children with two aduts. In both cases with a prevailing female character...

L.T. : It's not really to bring them into conflict with each other : the two children are really close, while the parents are not. In my opinion, these children make one entity, something close to twins. As the story goes forward, the parents get more and more away from each others while the children unite.

- Some scenes have a fantasmatic aspect, was it a way to infiltrate the B serie economy into the film, which generally brings a realistic form ?

L.T. : I could have given concrete answers yo these scenes, and say if it was reality or not, but I rather work on the ambiguity. I wanted to work on the schizophrenia of the female character, her fear to fall back in a state of depression. Does she have relations with other men from her own will or is it the children who have influence on her ? Everyone can have his/her own explanation. I believe it's a good thing not to give definitive answers. It's always complex to balance the information, to know how much you can give away. Some persons might need more elements to understand the characters, that's why I added the scene where Marianne's father appears. This scene did not exist at first.

- To be behind the first film of a collection, does it give you a spacial responsibility ?

L.T. : I wanted to make the best film possible, a film with some elegance. For the other films, each director will go towards what's interesting him/her the most. There's no will to "mark" the collection from the beginnning.

UK

* Brit Boy confirmed what of the most almazing news of the week... you probably know this already but it's too crazy not to mention about it again : John Woo is set to make a new feature length animated version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles according to British BBC teletext. The text article claims that Woo recently discussed the film and confirmed he was making it. According to the article the new anime style film has a budget of 42 million and Woo is quoted as saying he wants to return the film too the turtles "darker, edgier comic book roots."

Brit Boy Out

IRELAND

* Another interview, this time brought to you by Showbiz Ireland : ShowBizIreland.com talks to Johnny Lee Miller after the filming of his latest film, The Escapist in Dublin.

SI: Can you tell us a little about The Escapist and the character you play?

JLM: The Escapist is basically about a man who really can't handle the murder of his wife and runs away from this, fakes his own death and puts himself into the prison system in order to enact revenge upon the man who killed her. He goes off the rails, and decides to leave his life behind, including his baby daughter. He's not dealing with the things he should be dealing with. He has a very twisted look on how he should make things better. He just sees the injustice and he's running away from people who need him.

SI: You've worked with this director before, what's it like working with Gillies Mackinnon?

JLM: My main reason for wanting to do this film was the fact that Gillies was attached to direct it. I'd made a film called Regeneration with him and I had a great time making that. He's very easy going, very passionate, with a kind of special view on things, a different way of looking at things. He also challenges me quite a lot. He's completely involved and absorbed in the project at any time and is very open to suggestion and discussion.

SI: Tell us about any fun scenes during the shoot?

JLM: I guess one of the most fun scenes so far was when we were at Wicklow Bay. There's a parachute jump at the end of the film and I had to do the end of that. I end up in the sea so we had a big crane with a parachute sort of attached to the top of the crane, 70ft up and I was swinging around on that. Then they lower it down and drop me the last little bit into the water and it was freezing but still good fun.

* Irish singer Andrea Corr looks set to play Lara in a TV remake of Dr Zhivago. Andrea, lead singer with the The Corrs alongside two sisters Caroline and Sharon and brother Jim, is believed to have already done a screen test for ITV for the role. Lara was played by Julie Christie in the 1965 David Lean film. The new TV film has been readapted from Boris Pasternak's novel by Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay for the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. "Andrea is being strongly considered for the role," says an ITV source. "It will be very interesting to see her play Lara." In the past, Andrea had a small part in the Hollywood blockbuster Evita and an even smaller part in Roddy Doyle's The Commitments. It is not thought that either of her beautiful sisters were considered for the part (what? not even Jim!!).

More Irish news on http://www.ShowBizIreland.com

SPAIN

* From Screendaily : Spanish director Enrique Gabriel (Fading Memories) has signed on to direct ambitious English-language project The Seagull. The project, billed as a "Mediterranean adaptation" of the classic Chekhov play, is in development at Barcelona-based start-up TSP. World rights excluding Spain have pre-sold to LA-based Independent Artists (IA) as part of a five-year mutual first-look deal that TSP and IA signed last year at Cannes. Budgeted at up to $12m, Seagull is scheduled for a 2002 shoot. TSP producers Eva Baro and Antoni Sole co-wrote the script, which is currently in rewrite stages. Casting is yet to be announced, although high profile talent linked to the project at various stages has included Ethan Hawke, Catherine McCormack, Julie Christie, Paco Rabal and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon. Gabriel has directed three feature films: Fading Memories (Las Huellas Borradas), which won three top awards at the 1999 Malaga film festival including best film and best director, En La Puta Calle (1998) and Krapatchouk (1992). He got his start in cinema as second assistant director in Spain on Warren Beatty's Reds.

* Still Screendaily : Spain's youth-oriented International Cinema Jove Film Festival closed its 16th edition this weekend with top awards going to Iranian feature film Sanam and Danish short 2 Juledag. The festival, which takes place in the Mediterranean coastal town of Valencia, awarded the Valencian Moon prize and $16,500 (PTS3 million) to director Rafa Pitts for Sanam. The film is Pitt's second feature, following 1998's Cinquieme Saison, which also won Jove's top award. Dedicated to films made by directors aged 35 or under, the festival also gave special mentions to Berlin Is In Germany, by director Hannes Stohr, and Pablo Stoll and Uruguayan Juan Pablo Rebella's 25 Watts.Spaniard Rodrigo Cortes, director of short film 15 Dias, was granted the Studio Universal Filmmaster award, which will place Cortes in a 15-day internship at Universal Studios' LA headquarters.

RUSSIA

* Also from Screendaily : Milla Jovovich is to star opposite Russian star Vladimir Mashkov in Red America, a Russian-American co-production from Academy Award-nominated director Pavel Chukhrai. The $6m-$7m production will be produced by Peter Hoffman's Seven Arts with Front Line Entertainment. Shooting is to start in Russia and the US in autumn. The film marks Chukhrai's first since The Thief, which was nominated for a foreign language Oscar. The script, written by his wife Maria Zvereva, follows the adventures of Alexander, a "new Russian" who comes to America to do business but gets involved in a love affair and drawn into the criminal underworld. Mashkov, who is one of Russia's biggest stars and its leading sex symbol, has recently broken into international roles and just completed starring roles in several English language films. The latest is The Quickie, directed by Sergei Bodrov, where he stars opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh.

The film screens in competition at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Well that's it... again forgive me for my non-professionalism right now... but I need to prove to my boss I deserve my salary (that's why I am editing these news from my office actually), so anyway send us your reports & news to the Euro AICN offices in sunny Paris at euroaicn@yahoo.com