Belfast-born, Oscar nominated actor and director Kenneth Branagh got smacked with a wand by Queen Elizabeth in London last week – but it was all for the good, as Branagh was made a knight.

Belfast-born actor/director Kenneth Branagh is ready to say yes to a knighthood from the Queen, 18 years after he first turned it down.

Kenneth Branagh is better known for Hamlet than for hammers.  But this week he’s being celebrated far and wide as the director of Thor, the blockbuster movie about a Norse god banished to earth to learn some humility. It’s a strange project for the man who even from his early days was called the Laurence Olivier of his era, but he’s made it work. He talks to CAHIR O’DOHERTY about his career, his new movie and Belfast, the city he will always call home.

    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.

The Bafta awards took place in Britain on Sunday night.