It’s no news that Westboro Baptist Church is an organization of lunatics who are hell bent on promoting hate and prejudice within America today, but they may have outdone themselves with their latest stunt.

The bare knuckle fighter accused of murdering his wife has been denied permission to attend her funeral.

Bare knuckle boxing champion and movie star Michael McDonagh has been charged with the vicious murder of his wife Jacqueline.

The chief suspect in the deadly murder of a Louth mum, had tried to attack a priest in recent weeks, it has emerged.

Jacqueline McDonagh, 34, the wife of bare knuckle boxer Michael Quinn McDonagh, was brutally murdered in a frenzied attack in Dundalk on Wednesday night.

A medical report carried out by the family physician of Trayvon Martin found that the shooter George Zimmerman was diagnosed with a “closed fracture” on his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head, and a back injury.

Forget all those criminal Cockney cliches populating Guy Ritchie movies. If you want to see what a real life tough as nails subculture looks like take yourself along to the movies and see Knuckle, which opens in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas on Friday.

Don’t let the bandaged fist in the photo fool you. Knuckle, Ian Palmer’s documentary about the bare-fisted boxing tradition of the Irish Travellers, might be about blood, but it’s not about gore. The blood Palmer seems most interested in is the stuff that pumps through the veins of the intricately connected Traveller community he visited and filmed over 12 years, a society where cousins marry, work together and, when the occasion arises, beat each other senseless.

A new contemporary Irish screening series comes to NYU’s Cantor Film Center on Sept. 30, 2011.  The six-film festival opens with the New York premier of the documentary Knuckle, a visceral look at the violent world of bare-knuckle boxing among Ireland’s Traveler community, opening in theaters in December, 2011. HBO is adapting the documentary into a new drama series.
 
Irish Film New York (IFNY) includes the Galway Film Festival-winning feature Parked, a story of friendship, hope, and perseverance between two ‘neighbors’ living in their cars starring Colm Meaney. Also new to New York is The Runway, a real life-inspired story of a South American plane that crashes in a County Cork town and how the town comes together to send the pilot home, with Weeds star Demián Bichir.
 
Irish Film New York is partnering with the San Francisco Irish Film Festival and the Los Angles Irish Film Festival to bring the filmmakers of Knuckle, Parked, and The Runway on a tri-city tour in anticipation of each film’s U.S. release later this year.
 
“We created Irish Film New York to connect New York’s avid film audiences with the best films and filmmakers coming out Ireland today,” INFY founder Niall McKay said.
 
Established through partnerships with New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House, Culture Ireland, the Irish Film Board and the Irish Film Institute, IFNY features six feature-length films, a series of shorts including Academy Award-nominees, filmmaker Q&As, panel discussions, filmmaker receptions and industry events such as a documentary showcase.
 
For more information go to www.irishfilmnyc.com.
 

Illegal bare-knuckle fights are still held in non-sporting venus like underground car parks in London or - as the new documentary film Knuckle demonstrates - on the edge of Traveller encampments all over the UK.

The Irish documentary film “Knuckle”, shown at the Sundance Film Festival, has been bought by Rough House Pictures and will be remade for HBO.

    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.