The Year That Was

2007 was a banner year filled with extraordinary new Irish plays, films, concerts and novels, and a sack full of Tony and Oscar nods lie ahead for many new and seasoned Irish artists. CAHIR O'DOHERTY takes a look back at some of the year's highlights (and inevitable lowlights).

FILMS starring Irish actors will dominate the awards season this year. In fact, there's so many to choose from that 2007 must represent a high water mark for Irish film making internationally.

Daniel Day-Lewis (who won the 1989 Best Actor Oscar for his performace in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot) looks all but certain to walk away with another golden man for his performance in There Will Be Blood. And newcomer Saoirse Ronan's turn in Atonement, the film most likely to win Best Picture, ensures that Irish talent is dominating the 2008 Oscar race.

In There Will Be Blood the English-born but Irish citizen and resident Day-Lewis gives the performance of his career as a madly driven businessman in pursuit of riches through oil. Loosely adapted from the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair and featuring a spine tingling score from Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood is almost certain to result in a Best Actor nomination for Day-Lewis.

Two 2007 films likely to be passed over for an Oscar nod this year but nonetheless important in themselves were director Neil Jordan's controversial offering The Brave One (starring Jodie Foster in a career defying role) and Terry George's harrowing though ultimately uplifting film Reservation Road (starring the gifted Joaquin Phoenix).

In The Brave One, Foster plays a character driven almost mad by grief when her lover is brutally murdered. Jordan told the Irish Voice, "I was attracted to the script because of the character and the transformation she went through. Quite simply I was interested in the idea of this civilized, sophisticated liberal woman who finds this monster insider her, really. The way she kept challenging her moral perspective with these horrible, bloody killings she kept doing."

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