1 Year Birthday To EURO-AICN!!! First look at Jean Pierre Jeunet's New Effects Romance Film!!!

Hey folks, Harry here... I'm not stepping on ol Father Geek's toes... no he isn't in a hospital... actually at this moment he is at a film screening somewhere in Austin or asleep back at the house... I have set up alternate headquarters from which to operate this vast SXSW film coverage thing and AICN's day to day... The ROAD RUNNER Email hell is still going on, unfixed and terribly uncured. BUT... The great Edgard managed to send this via courier (aka The Rescuers) and right after Bianca delivered it, they went back to Paris to continue their mousy adventures... BUT THEN moments before I was to put this up... A hotel maid slipped me a telegram from Edgard with the following:

Hi Harry, Hi Jay... if you post Euro AICN now you should add this as a "birthday gift"... first teasers of the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet... I saw them at the theatre the other day and it's great,... except it's only in French but still...  

Here's what I got this morning from the guys of Premiere.fr  

I wanted to inform you that we've posted 5 teasers in quicktime for the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed film. He's back to france with a touching love story filled with special effects. The movie is called "Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" and here's the direct link: CLICK TO EXPLORE THIS NEW FILM BY THE MASTER!!!

Now, before I hand you back to Edgard and the EURO-AICN crew, I want to say this. A year ago there was no Euro-AICN... some of the news we get in these columns would have their own space, individually and there was no cohesion to the stories or a sense of where in the world they took place. At the time, Father Geek was very very very interested in taking a larger role on the site and had established a relationship with Darth Bond and Edgard... Now I haven't heard from Darth Bond in a while, but Edgard has literally become one of my favorite folks at AICN. His columns, his energy and enthusiasm over this last year has been electric. Hopefully, very very soon there could be some wondrous additions and changes and transformations to help make AICN far more international that it currently is. And on the birthday of this feature, note... Edgard is still the man that rules it all!

EURO AICN              

Happy Birthday Euro AICN !!

Edgard here... believe it or not folks, but this is already the one year anniversary edition of Euro AICN... and of course, I am late this time... sorry about it but I was in Madrid this week-end, enjoying the animated streets of the Spanish capital, the good food & wine... well I was there to work also unfortunately, you can't have everything just like that... so anyway, I just got back and I am trying to hurry up so I can post this column as soon as possible... But before going into the news, I just would like to thank again Darth Bond and Ozymandias who helped me really a lot with this Euro column, without them I wouldn't be here still... and of course I want to thank all of you who are sending news from all over Europe (Dima, Mister W, Ethan, Robert, Grozilla, Champagne2000, Vince, Kriss, Signe... and the folks from ShowBizIreland, Netribution and Premiere.fr... well and many others, it would take forever to name everyone and we're not on Oscars night so let's cut the speech, but let's thank of course also all the readers because after all if you were not there, Euro AICN would not exist either...)... so anyway here're the news... and sorry for the delay.

UK

* Will it be this year's FOUR WEDDINGS & A FUNERAL ? or this year's NOTTING HILL ?... well the much awaited British romantic comedy BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY is soon coming to a theater near you... Here's the link for the official website and the trailer :Click Here to Go check it out!!!

* From Screendaily, some news on upcoming film productions : Tiger Aspect Pictures, the film arm of leading TV comedy producer Tiger Aspect Productions, is readying a fresh slate after the company scored three hits out of three with Billy Elliot, Kevin And Perry Go Large and Bean.Steve Bendelack of surreal comedy show The League of Gentlemen is now attached to direct the darkly funny road movie Driving Big Davie from a script by Colin Bateman. Tiger is also developing Crazy Horse, a family-oriented story being written by Ashley Pharaoh of hit TV drama Where The Heart Is, and sci-fi horror title Cyclops, which Working Title Films is circling. Other projects in the works include The Suitcase Kid, a family project adapted from acclaimed writer Jacqueline Wilson's novel, and Plastic Paddy, a romantic comedy about an Englishman pretending to be Irish to get into an increasingly successful band. Having partnered with FilmFour on its recent production Dog Eat Dog, Tiger is set to collaborate again with the Channel 4 film operation on horror title The Visitor (...).  

* And this one is from Empireonline.co.uk : Crown princes of bad taste Bobby and Peter Farrelly are being kept busy these days. 20th Century Fox has just acquired a pitch for Nothing Up My Sleeve (about a magician who is mysteriously blessed with real magical powers) for the brothers to produce. They are currently working on animated feature Osmosis Jones, starring Bill Murray; another Farrelly production, the piss-poor Say It Isn't So, hits US screens this week and a couple of days ago they committed to produce a big-screen version of The Three Stooges. And if that weren't enough, they are also preparing to write, produce and direct SHALLOW HAL, a starring vehicle for hot-as-a-pistol Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow. "This is going to be a much sweeter picture than our last one (Me, Myself & Irene)," Bobby Farrelly told Empire Online. "It's gonna be a PG-13 movie. Hal (Black) is this incredibly shallow guy. When he was nine years old his dad was dying and he goes in to see him and say goodbye and his dad just gives him horrible advice about life because he's all doped up on morphine. He basically tells him not to care about anything and to judge people on their appearance. 'Later he meets a hypnotist who puts a spell on him and he begins to see the inner beauty of people. He meets this girl who everyone else sees as rather unattractive. But he sees Gwyneth Paltrow, because she's such a wonderful person on the inside, and he falls madly in love with her. Then the spell gets lifted, and what we do here is put Gwyneth in a big prosthetic suit like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor. She's this big fat girl and he has to decide whether he still loves her for who she is. It's kind of a nice story." Gwyneth Paltrow fat? Now that is an acting challenge. How did she feel about it? "She's game for it," says Farrelly. "She's ready to try some new stuff."    

FRANCE

* After last year's smash hit TAXI 2, Luc Besson is getting ready to release at the beginning of April a new "Besson Production" film that could make big bucks. YAMAKASI is about a group of young cool guys running and jumping from one building to another in Paris; and of course stealing money from mean rich to save a little boy's life (blablabla... Am I cynical ?...). Anyway this seems to be vintage Besson prod. : trailer is made to look cool; the cast is multi-cultural; cops are stupid; etc... The trailer is available on the Premiere website at CLICK TO GET THIS BABY!!!

* After CRIMSON RIVERS and BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLVES, it seems the genre film is really back in French cinema. Today (March 12th) starts the shooting of SAMOURAÏS, an action film, between France and Japan. Written by Matt Alexander and directed by Giordano Gederlini, SAMOURAÏS follows the story of Kodeni, a Japanese demon back from the past and using videogames as weapons (indeed I received once a PlayStation game on my head and it hurts)... he comes to Paris to get Akemi, his enemy's daughter... Nothing so exciting so far, but Philip Kwok, in charge of the beautiful fights of BROTHERHOOD... and assistant to Yuen Wo-Ping on CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, is involved so it could be a cool crazy film. Or not. We'll try to follow that one close. All I know, it's with such a plotline it will either become cult or bad... let's hope for cult...

* Some new rumours on the next Cannes Film Festival... CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN, THE PLEDGE and - yes ! - MOULIN ROUGE could bring to Cannes a nice package of stars... The rest are about the same we already mentioned a few weeks ago, but for those who didn't read then, let's recap : Nanni Moretti's new film (La Chambre du Fils), Wayne Wang's CENTER OF THE WORLD, Michael Haneke's LA PIANISTE, David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE, Neil Labute's POSSESSION and most important the Coen Brother's THE BARBER MOVIE. On the French side, a disappointing news : the new film of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMELIE POULAIN) should be released in France on April 25th so it can't be selected to the Festival (starting on May 9th) - but it's in a way a good news as I will get to see it sooner !    

IRELAND

The following news are all from ShowBizIreland...

* Veteran Irish actor Richard Harris is to follow up his role in the new Harry Potter film by taking the role of the Pope in a new Hollywood blockbuster. Noel Pearson, the Irish film producer and writer behind the Oscar winning film My Left Foot and The Field in which Harris also starred has told ShowBizIreland.com exclusively that he is planning a movie called Magnifico based on the Bach story...

* As ShowBizIreland.com told you last week the little brother of Irish pop Princess Samantha Mumba has auditioned and now he has been accepted for a role alongside his sister in the upcoming Spielberg film The Time Machine. Eleven year old Omero Mumba landed the role in the Spielberg film after two successful screen tests. He will play a Sam's on-screen brother, Kalen in the movie..

* Roddy Doyle the Irish writer behind the Hollywood blockbuster The Commitments in 1990 says that he has been asked but he won't be writing a follow up sequel to the movie. Speaking exclusively to ShowBizIreland.com last night Doyle said "I'm not interested in writing another Commitments film. They asked me a few years ago but I'm just not interested. I've heard they are planning another film at the moment and are writing a script but it's nothing to do with me as I said I'm just not interested..."

* Trainspotting star Johnny Lee Miller is to start shooting at the end of March on a new film in Ireland. The film called The Escapist will be shot in County Wicklow's Ardmore studious from March 25th with a multimillion pound budget. Miller, who was last seen in the UK comedy Love Honour and Obey, is the ex-husband of Tomb Raider star Angelina Jolie... Full Stories:CLICK HERE TO READ

* Lisa Cannon reviews the latest release, TRAFFIC, starring Michael Douglas, Catherine-Zeta Jones, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro. Finally a movie Lisa gives the green light to, go see it... Full Review:Click Here To Read!!! ITALY

* Old news but our fault... Robert sent this to us last week, so you might have seen already the pictures on other sites, but here it is anyway : I received two more pics from the set of WINDTALKERS. You can see them here: Click Here to See Them!!!  

I have also more information about the movie. John Woo has finished to shoot the 28 of february. If you remember, the 16 of january I announced that MGM wanted to stop the shooting at the end of january, whereas Woo wanted to work one month more. So, it seems he won at least this battle.  

See you

Robert

SPAIN

* From Screendaily : Spanish actress Marisa Paredes has joined the cast of first-time writer-director Carlos Molinero's feature film, SAVAGES (Salvajes). The film will reunite Paredes - who is currently the president of Spain's Cinema Academy - with Imanol Arias, her co-star in Pedro Almodovar's 1995 hit The Flower Of My Secret (El Flor De Mi Secreto). Paredes also starred in Almodovar's 1999 Oscar-winner All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) and appeared in Mother's Oscar predecessor, Life Is Beautiful (La Vita E Bella). Paredes and Arias both signed on to Savages as associate producers, agreeing to forgo their usual fees in advance, a move which allowed producer Lola Salvador to forge ahead with the $1.6m project through her start-up outfit Brothers & Sisters. A love story set against the illegal trafficking of immigrants in Spain, Savages was co-written by Salvador, director Molinero, Jorge Juan Martinez and Clara Perez Escriva. Roger Casamajor, Manuel Moron, Alberto Ferreiro and Paredes' real-life daughter Maria Isasi co-star.    

Well that's it for this week... don't forget to send us your comments, reviews and anniversary cards to Me... the coolest cat in town!