One of the more highly-anticipated crime dramas of the new TV season is NBC’s Prime Suspect starring Maria Bello (A History of Violence, Coyote Ugly). Also starring in Prime Suspect is Irish-American actor Aidan Quinn (Michael Collins), seen recently in indy movies such as Sarah’s Key and Flipped, as well as Jonah Hex. Quinn plays Lt. Kevin Sweeney in Prime Suspect, which is a re-imagining of the acclaimed British series of the same name, which starred Helen Mirren.

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Carlow actress Saoirse Ronan apparently enjoys playing a killer. In April, Ronan starred in the action flick Hanna, which should be out on DVD soon. Ronan played a teenaged assassin raised by her dad (Eric Bana) to be a ruthless killer.

It’s still early in 2011, but so far the Irish newcomer of the year has to be Colin O’Donoghue. The Drogheda native starred alongside Anthony Hopkins in the Exorcist-style thriller The Rite, which should be out on DVD soon. It was O’Donoghue’s film debut, and though some critics were a bit rough on the film, The Rite spent a week as the number one movie in America in January. O’Donoghue, 30, had previously starred (alongside fellow Irish thespian Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in the Showtime drama The Tudors. Prior to that, O’Donoghue had simply done theater work and television shows for Ireland’s TV network RTE. With his performance in The Rite (which also stars Irish screen veteran Ciaran Hinds), O’Donoghue certainly opened some eyes and set himself up for an interesting career. What’s next for O’Donoghue? He’s playing things coy. “I’ve got something else in the works,” he told About.com. “But I can’t talk about it.”

    When the bigwigs of the movie industry gathered in Park City, Utah, at the end of January for the annual Sundance Film Festival, the Irish were well represented.
    Brendan Gleeson’s new film The Guard, which also stars Fionnula Flanagan, Don Cheadle and Mark Strong, opened up the festival’s World Dramatic Competition.  The Guard was directed by John Michael McDonagh – brother of acclaimed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh.
    The Guard features the always-brilliant Gleeson as a small-town Irish cop known for his bad attitude and dark humor.  His mother is dying, and he may be involved in a drug-smuggling ring, which has attracted the attention of an FBI agent (Cheadle).
    Guard producer Ed Guiney recently said: “I’m delighted that Sundance has selected The Guard as the opening film of the world competition this year. It’s the most high profile slot in one of the world’s great festivals and we cannot think of a better way to launch the film.”
    Meanwhile, Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition featured Knuckle, an intimate look at the brutal world of bare-knuckle boxing among Irish Travellers.  Travellers, of course, are the nomadic tribe of people who wander through Ireland and other countries and live by their own set of rules.
    Director Ian Palmer followed a group of Travellers for over 10 years and focuses on James, a member of a group known as the Quinn McDonaghs. James often finds himself asked to defend his clan against the rival Joyces.
    At Sundance, Knuckle was described as follows: “Disturbingly raw, yet compulsively engaging, Knuckle  offers candid access to a rarely seen, brutal world where a cycle of bloody violence seems destined to continue unabated.”
    Two Irish shorts, meanwhile, were among the 81 short films featured at Sundance. Small Change, starring Nora Jane Noone (The Magdalene Sisters), is about a bored, young Mom while the animated The External World is about a little boy learning to play the piano.

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READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/IrishAmerica/Irish-Eye-On-Hollywood-82159037.html http://www.irishcentral.com/IrishAmerica/Irish-Eye-On-Hollywood-82159037.html Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:04:48 PST
By: TOM DEIGNAN

Controversy may be on the agenda when Pierce Brosnan’s new film is unveiled at the Berlin Film Festival this February. Brosnan will star in The Ghost Writer, one of the films slated to open the fest. The film has been directed by none other than Roman Polanski. Polanski, of course, was recently placed under house arrest and is back in an L.A. courtroom, the latest episode in a decades-old saga that began when he was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s. Since then, the director of classics such as Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby has split Hollywood into two camps. Supporters feel the case is complex and the aging director should be shown some leniency. Others believe it is about time Polanski faces justice. 

This holiday season, audiences will see Saoirse Ronan – the Northern Irish wunderkind actress – in the intense drama The Lovely Bones, also starring Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Mark Wahlberg. Ronan plays a girl who is brutally murdered and, afterwards, watches from beyond the grave as her friends and family try to come to terms with this horrific turn of events.

This December, look out for “The Lovely Bones,” based on the best-selling novel by Alice Sebold and starring wunderkind Northern Ireland actress Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement,” “City of Ember”), as well as Irish-American actor Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon.

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