My Reel Life cinema column from Day & Night in today’s Irish Independent

*Chloe Sevigny was in town a few weeks back on promo duties for her new TV venture, Hit and Miss, which starts next week on Sky Atlantic.

Reel Life caught up with the 37-year-old in London’s Soho hotel for a wide-ranging chat about her eclectic career, and the Oscar nominee admitted that the movie side of things tends to drive her a little cuckoo-bananas.

“I haven’t been reading that many scripts, either because I was in England shooting Hit and Miss, or my agents are really lazy and haven’t been sending me any,” she laughed. “I’ve got to go home and whip them into shape.

“You never know if it’s the business, or your agents, or if it’s you. It can really give you a complex, and make you paranoid.

“Is it that there are no parts, or is it because nobody is offering you anything? It’s hard to know unless you’re Keira Knightley or Scarlett Johansson, and I’ve heard through friends that even women in their position also find it hard.”

Yikes, sounds like it’s a career that just breeds insecurity?

“It is,” she conceded. “Actresses are crazy! I do get a lot of anxiety about the future, and what I’m doing. It’s a great job, and I love it, but it’s very competitive. It makes you treasure the good things when they come.”

*Dublin-born casting agent Ros Hubbard and her business partner (not to mention husband) John are giving a masterclass on movie casting today as part of the Coca Cola Cinemagic International Film & Television Festival for Young People.

As Reel Life discovered last week, the delightful Ros has a wealth of stories about how her agency discovered some of today’s brightest stars (well, the Hubbards have cast some 125 movies).

Example: “Orlando Bloom and my son Dan were best friends,” Ros said. “Dan had a Paul Smith suit that Orlando used to borrow for auditions. It was Dan that convinced us to give Orlando a chance to be seen for Lord of the Rings. Needless to say these days Dan waits for the care packages from Orlando in LA!”

Or how about the time a 15-year-old student named Kate Winslet left John speechless?

“We were casting Heavenly Creatures for Peter Jackson, and John found her in a stage school in Buckinghamshire,” Ros recalled.

“Kate’s read was so good that John didn’t need her to finish. The poor thing thought she’d done something wrong!”

*A quick mention for the Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival, which kicks off in Schull, West Cork next Thursday and runs until the 27^th.

Competing films will be viewed on smart devices, laptops, village halls, pubs, restaurants, shops, and even on the sides of buildings throughout the town.

One of the key attractions of the event is an open discussion with Oscar nominated writer-director Mike Leigh. See www.fastnetshortfilmfestival.com

*Lastly, good luck to Rathfarnham actress Avril Brady, who is Cannes this weekend with the low-budget post-apocalyptic movie Welcome to the Majority.

The film is screening on Sunday at the Hotel Gray D’albion, but is already creating a bit of a stir with some US viewers who deem it to be anti-religion.

Avril told Reel Life last week that the crew are hopeful that the film will pick up a distributor for international release throughout the festival.

My interview with Mark O’Halloran in Day & Night in today’s Irish Independent

Mark O’Halloran is a man with a few professional incarnations. Actor. Writer. Serial killer doppelgänger.

“I was at the American embassy this morning getting a Visa, and in the picture I look like the murderer Ted Bundy’s evil twin brother,” he laughs. “I have to live with that on my passport for the next 10 years.”

The Ennis-born star – oh, how he’ll hate that appellation – is heading to Charleston, South Carolina this weekend with a production of Noel Coward’s stage play Hay Fever, in which he has starred on two previous occasions.

“We’re going to the Spoleto Festival, which is basically the biggest arts festival in North America,” he explains to ‘Day & Night’ when we meet at the Burlington Hotel.

“They have a connection to The Gate theatre, and they like those chocolate box-y, quality productions. Charleston is absolutely stunning. They put you up in lovely apartments by the beach.” He pauses. “Work can tend to get in the way of your holiday though.”

Before that, O’Halloran has some other matters to deal with, including the ZeBBie writing awards, which he is due to attend an hour after we speak. He ended up winning the prize for his last play, Trade, about the relationship between a young rent boy and an older man.

He also has a new movie opening today, A Kiss for Jed, in which O’Halloran plays jaded cameraman Ray, who accompanies a young reality show winner named Orla (Jayne Wisener) on a trip to New York to track down, and get a peck on the cheek from, her favourite star, a country singer named Jed Wood.

As some of you will have copped by now, the premise is inspired by the early Noughties Irish TV show The Fame Game, which was hosted by Caroline Morahan (who indeed makes a cameo here).

But the movie simply uses that hook as the starting point to explore the relationship between two very different characters with very different outlooks on life.

The movie was shot actually shot in 2009, but is only getting a release now. “It’s a strange one,” O’Halloran explains. “It’s not arthouse, and it’s not pretending to be a festival film, and yet it’s not a blockbuster.

“It doesn’t fit into the Irish canon of filmmaking, so I think they struggled to find the right distributor or the right time to release it. But I think this is the correct time for it to come out now. There’s a heart to it, a kindness, and a gentility, that I think people are ready to take.”

The movie also offered O’Halloran a new kind of role to play. “The parts I’m usually offered are junkies, paedophiles and idiots,” he says. “I get beaten up in things, or die, or starve myself to death. I wanted to try a role where I could pitch it very low, and try a few things out.

“Also in the last few years I’ve moved up an age bracket. My hair is greyer, and I’ve aged a bit. This seemed like a good start for exploring new kinds of roles”

For the record, O’Halloran is 42. “In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that’s the answer to life, the universe and everything,” he says, before adding with a smile: “It’s also the answer that doesn’t have a question.”

Hailing from Ennis, Co Clare, O’Halloran thought his first calling was science, but dropped out of NUI Galway “after about five minutes”. He spent a year in Amsterdam working in the office of a steel mill factory, before returning to Dublin to study acting in the Gaiety School.

By his own admission he didn’t work for three years after that, but gradually started landing small parts, before moving on to lead roles in the likes of An Ideal Husband and Dublin by Lamplight.

In 2004, O’Halloran wrote and starred in the junkie movie Adam and Paul, alongside the late Tom Murphy.

The movie became a sensation here and abroad, and it established O’Halloran as a major force in Irish writing.

He later penned Garage, which featured a revelatory performance by Pat Shortt and won a prize at Cannes, and the acclaimed TV series Prosperity, as well as appearing in movies like The Guard.

“I take myself more seriously as a writer in that I probably have more skills as a writer than I would have as an actor,” O’Halloran admits.

“I like to write characters or situations that put people in extremes, or takes people to the edge of where they don’t have language to explain who the are or what they’re doing. Adam and Paul is full of that. They don’t have the language to say, ‘I’m in trouble; I have needs and wants; I need to be loved’.”

Despite his protestations to the contrary, O’Halloran seems to be quite a multi-tasker. In addition to his acting work, he also does some script-doctoring, and is currently writing a play for The Gate, collaborating with Lenny Abrahamson on a new film script, and is developing an idea with a South American director for a gay love story set in Argentina.

O’Halloran is openly gay himself, but says writing gay-themed material hasn’t interested him until now.

“I don’t find there to be anything inherently dramatic about a character being gay and having a gay love story,” he says. “I wasn’t avoiding it in any way. I’ve never been closeted.”

So what’s his opinion on the notion that gay men can’t play straight leading men (as indeed O’Halloran does in A Kiss for Jed)?

“Nearly all gay men pretended to be straight for a long number of years,” he says, smiling. “They got their research done. It’s straight people playing gays that are always wrong because they’ve never pretended.”

He continues: “I hate closet cases in acting. I think the cowardice of it is shocking, and it’s their own fear that compounds the whole thing.”

Indeed, it was thinking about the repression of gay sexuality that inspired one of this keen traveller’s most recent jaunts abroad.

“People kept telling me I looked like [Iranian president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” he says. “When he came on TV and said “there are no gays in Iran”, I was furious, so I went there to find the gays.

“I had an amazing time. Gays everywhere. It was quite openly flirtatious on the streets because it’s a male environment.

“I discovered that it’s not so much homosexuality that they hate as femininity, so I butched it up a lot when I was there. The Iranians are an incredibly lovely people. They just have a shit government.”

PANEL:

Seeing as A Kiss for Jed is partly about a fan pursuing an idol, it’s fitting that O’Halloran recently exhibited his own fervent fan behaviour.

“I’d read this great book called We the Animals by a guy named Justin Torres,” he says. “It’s a beautiful, lyrical, and powerful book, so I stalked him down on Facebook, and sent him a message. He added me a friend, and we’ve had a conversation and everything.”

O’Halloran also has had his own embarrassing starstruck moments. “When Adam and Paul screened at the Telluride Film Festival in the US, the actor Gael Garcia Bernal came up to me after the screening and said, ‘Well done’,” O’Halloran recalls.

“And my reply was [emits girlish giggle]. I blushed all the way from my chest up to my face. I made a complete and utter idiot of myself.”

*A Kiss for Jed is released today.

First world problems: you mightn’t think you have them, but chances are you’re demonstrating symptoms every day without even being fully conscious of it.

In case clarification is required, a ‘first world problem’ (FWP) is a complaint or frustration afflicting (relatively) wealthy, industrialised countries like Ireland that people in poverty-stricken, third world nations would give anything to have to endure.

They can also be known as “middle class problems” or, my particular favourite, “white whines”.

With that in mind, here are 50 common FWPs that you’re likely to hear, encounter, or even catch yourself saying:

1) There’s no WiFi on this train!
2) The battery life on my MacBook/iPad/iPhone/Kindle is crap.
3) Grr, Autocorrect keeps misspelling my text messages/emails.
4) I hate being at home when my cleaner is there.
5) The Facebook App on my smartphone won’t let me ‘check in’ at this restaurant.
6) I can’t find a compact wallet that’s big enough to hold my credit cards and money.
7) I’m in agony after my last personal training session at the gym.
8 ) I don’t have enough ‘bombs’ on DrawSomething.
9) I have to have two separate parties for my 30^th.
10) These TripAdvisor reviews make it impossible to choose a hotel.
11) This crisp bag is only half-full.
12) I loved New York, but it’s impossible to find decent bread there.
13) I can’t believe this coffee shop only has white sugar and not Demerara brown sugar.
14) These [insert expensive designer label here] shoes are really uncomfortable on my feet.
15) It took three days to get my broadband connection fixed! I thought I’d die.
16) It’s appalling that nobody has replaced the water cooler yet.
17) There’s too much drink left over from my house party.
18) Going out four nights in a row is really tough.
19) I hate that I can’t re-seal my carton of coconut water.
20) My 42-inch TV screen is too big for the living room
21) Sorry, I don’t have anything smaller than a e50 note.
22) I can’t get this annoying song out of my head.
23) Oh god, I can’t believe this 3D blockbuster isn’t also available in 2D.
24) Ugh, I hate when they stamp your hand on the way into the VIP area.
25) Ow! That club-entry wristband is stuck in my arm hair.
26) You don’t have quilted toilet paper?
27) It’s ridiculous that I have to use three different remotes for my TV/DVD/BluRay.
28) I have too many dates this week.
29) I don’t have the right change to pay my part of the dinner bill.
30) I can’t believe my bank’s ATM machines have a daily e400 withdrawal limit.
31) Oh man, there’s no Wikipedia entry for that.
32) That movie trailer had too many spoilers.
33) You’re too noisy during sex.
34) This jet-lag is really killing me
35) Aw man, this programme isn’t in HD.
36) This butter is too hard to spread on my toast
37) You just can’t get a good cup of coffee around here.
38) How am I supposed to say all of this in just 140 characters?
39) This is full-fat Coke; I wanted Diet.
40) I accidentally closed all my tabs while booking multiple flights.
41) I’m annoyed that (s)he didn’t attribute that Tweet to me.
42) Ugh, I have to change my bed sheets.
43) There’s not enough room on this table for all these tapas.
44) I’m so tired because I was up until 2am watching TV box-sets.
45) I lost all my contacts when I upgraded iTunes.
46) These self-checkout tills are so annoying.
47) My moisturisor doesn’t have SPF.
48) People who stop at the top/bottom of escalators are just the worst.
49) I can hear that person’s music even though they have their earbuds in.
50) None of my beauty products are 100ml or smaller.

*Reel Life sat down with British director Nigel Cole last week to discuss his new film All In Good Time (out today), a comedy-drama about a young British-Indian newlywed couple who cannot seem to consummate their marriage.

Cole, director of such crowd-pleasers as Made in Dagenham and the immortal Calendar Girls was in fine form, regaling us with tales of working with some heavy-hitting Hollywood names throughout his varied career.

For instance, he cast Sharon Stone and Christopher Walken in the 2008 movie Five Dollars a Day. Isn’t Stone meant to be, erm, just the slightest bit bonkers?

“But she’s so bonkers that she was a laugh,” Cole replied. “I had no worries with her.”

He continued: “Christopher Walken was not a pleasant person, and I did not enjoy working with him. I found him very difficult and almost impossible to work with, mostly because – and I don’t mind saying this – he was horribly drunk.”

Ouch! Cole also spoke about his disappointment at not being consulted about the stage transfer for Calendar Girls and the current plans to transform Made in Dagenham into a West End musical.

“In both cases I’d have loved to be involved, but it wasn’t deemed appropriate,” he explained.

“Okay, I didn’t write either project, but there’s a lot of my ideas and writing even in the films. I have to accept that that’s the way the business works, but I’m going to keep a sharper eye on that in the future.”

Cole finished by hinting that we mightn’t have seen the final incarnation of Calendar Girls either.

“We made the movie for Disney, and part of the contract is that you give Disney the rights for the theme-park ride,” he explained, smiling. “I was always very disappointed that there was never a Calendar Girls theme park ride!”

*Avengers Assemble star Chris Hemsworth was also enthusing to Reel Life recently about his role as 70s racing driver James Hunt in the upcoming Rush.

“Hunt was the rock star playboy of that era,” Hemsworth gushed. “I really admired his passion and dedication, and the visceral approach he had to life on and off the track.

“He was such a contrast to Niki Lauda (played in the film by Daniel Bruhl), who was much more intellectual. James was more intuitive. It made for a great rivalry, and fact gave us a better story than we could have ever come up with in fiction.”

Hemsworth also joked about the demands that his physically gruelling roles have made on his body over the past few years.

“I was saying to my wife that I had all the symptoms of a pregnant woman over that period,” he said. “I was hungry all the time, I was really tired, and really moody. My hair was falling out. I just went from one extreme to another.”

*From Sunday until Thursday, the Lighthouse Cinema is hosting ‘Fight House’, a celebration of global action films selected by Gareth Evans, director of the highly-acclaimed The Raid, which opens everywhere next week.

In addition to a special preview of The Raid on Sunday, the week will see screenings of classics like Merantau Warrior, Hard Boiled, Akira, Shogun Assassin, Old Boy, The Wild Bunch, and a Jackie Chan double bill comprising Police Story and Project A, Pt 2. See www.lighthousecinema.ie

My Reel Life cinema column from ‘Day & Night’ in today’s Irish Independent

*Jason Statham is pistol-whipping and neck-snapping his way back onto screens in his new action flick Safe, released today. In it he plays a former cop who must save a 12-year-old Chinese child genius from the nefarious clutches of the Russian mafia, not to mention his corrupt ex-colleagues.

“It’s a relationship movie without it being a relationship movie,” the 44-year-old Londoner told Reel Life recently. “The core of the story is quite real, with all of this crazy, entertaining action stuff happening around it.”

He also touched upon his upcoming role in The Expendables 2. “It was a great day for me,” he beamed. “Sylvester Stallone is a good inspiration. He has done some of the greatest franchises we’re every likely to see. It’s a privilege to be under his wing.”

But, we wondered, does he ever fancy trying his hand at other movie genres? “You mean swapping roles with Hugh Grant?” he asked by way of an answer.

“I suppose you have to match man with material. I feel like I’m better at this than I would be at playing a lawyer.”

So we won’t be seeing Statham as King Lear anytime soon? He guffawed, and replied: “It’d be an excuse to put on the chain-mail, eh?”

*Reel Life also caught up with Zac Efron last week during the promo tour for his latest movie, The Lucky One (out today), in which he plays a former US marine who finds love with the sister of a dead comrade.

Rather randomly Efron started off by revealing that he had been to the Arsenal-Chelsea game the day before. “It was ‘nil-nil’, as you guys say, but I love the game,” he said, somewhat unconvincingly.

Presumably, he slipped into the grounds unnoticed, which led onto the question of how someone as insanely famous as Efron copes with being mobbed everywhere he goes.

“If you think about anything too much you can get yourself into a rut,” he said. “What I try to do is remember the days when I was auditioning for community theatre with 100 other kids just like me. I have pretty small problems compared to other people in this world.”

*Another film opening today is the real-time frightener Silent House, starring the extraordinary Elizabeth Olsen, as a young girl terrorised by unseen forces in her father’s isolated lake-house.

Last weekend Reel Life spoke via Skype to the movie’s New York-based co-director Laura Lau, who wrote and helmed Silent House (as well as the 2003 aquatic shocker Open Water) with her husband Chris Kentis.

The movie is filmed as one continuous shot, which is central to its delivery of brutally effective scares. “That was extremely challenging,” Lau admitted. “The thing about filming in one shot is that all the usual tools you have as a filmmaker are off the table.

“There was no way to control pacing, sculpt performance, or to draw the viewer’s attention with close-up or fast editing. That meant we had to be really prepared in advance, so we had a two-week full rehearsal of the script.”

So intense was the experience that Olsen started having nightmares during the 15-day shoot. “We actually put some of Lizzy’s nightmares into the film,” Lau revealed. “So much of the film is about the unconscious, so that seemed like the right move.”