Pomona Rewind

Last year, at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis in Killarney, the party's national chairperson Declan Kearney listed a series of gruesome events that took place in Co Kerry during the Irish Civil War. These included the killing of five  Free State soldiers by anti-Treaty guerrillas in a booby trap bomb at Knocknagoshel on March 6, 1923. The following day, Free State forces marched nine anti-Treaty prisoners from Ballymullen barracks in Tralee to the Ballyseedy crossroads, tied them to a landmine, detonated it and machine gunned them. One of the men survived. Nine prisoners were killed a day later in reprisals for Knocknagoshel by pro-Treaty forces in two incidents where they were also tied to landmines - at Countess Bridge near Killarney and at Cahirciveen. Up to that point, 68 Free State soldiers had been killed in the county and 157 wounded and a further 17 would die before the end of the Civil War. A total of 32 anti-Treaty fighters were killed in the county i...

With the World Cup fast approaching and the Rio Olympics in 2016, it's seems the world is about to go nuts about Brazil. Not one to miss an opportunity to cash in, Hollywood has duly responded. ' Rio 2 ' files into cinemas this week from 20th Century Fox's computer animation arm, Blue Sky Studios just in time from the Easter holidays. Brazilian Carlos Saldhana's film about exotic birds is the first Blue Sky sequel outside the 'Ice Age' franchise, It follows $484 million smash hit 'Rio' in 2011 featuring Jesse Eisenberg's wimpy, domesticated Spix Macaw named Blu Gunderson who is transported from Minnesota to Rio de Janeiro to mate with Anne Hathaway's feisty Jewel to protect his endangered species. However with the help of Jermaine Clement's nasty cockatoo Nigel, a group of smugglers break into the aviary and steal the rare birds in the hope of making a tidy profit. Blu and Jewel escape but Nigel and the sm...

In 1994, some bright spark in Paramount Pictures had the idea of bringing the original ' Star Trek ' cast together with the cast of the TV spin-off ' Star Trek : The Next Generation'. David Carson's ' Star Trek : Generations' brought William Shatner's Captain Kirk together with Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean Luc Picard in what represented the handing over the cinematic baton to the newer franchise. Much to Paramount's delight, it made a very handsome profit - scooping almost four times its $35 million budget at the box office. Stewart's other signature role has been, of course, as the wheelchair confined Charles Xavier/Professor X in the 'X Men' movies - appearing in five of 20th Century Fox films based on Marvel Comics' series about a band of mutant superheroes. However unlike ' Star Trek ', the cinematic baton has already been passed on to a new generation of actors. James McAvoy became Charles ...

“Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America,” the attorney and environmental campaigner Robert F Kennedy Jr observed. “We don’t really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking.” Alex Gibney has been one of the most effective flag wavers for investigative reporting in the US in recent years. The New Yorker, who in 2007 captured the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ about the beating to death fof a taxi driver in Afghanistan by US soldiers, has carved out a reputation as a fearless documentary filmmaker. He has tackled subjects as varied as Enron, the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, Scientology and the doping scandal in cycling epitomised by Lance Armstrong. In recent years, he has also collaborated with the Belfast-based journalist Trevor Birney and his colleagues at Below the Radar and Fine Point Films. Birney and his team co-produced G...

Last Sunday, I fully intended to go to see 'Lincoln' or ' Les Miserables '. But such is the popularity of those Oscar nominated movies right now that both screenings were sold out in the Omniplex in Lisburn. Not wanting to waste my journey, I plumped instead for 'The Impossible' - a film which I had hoped to see in recent weeks but had become resigned to catching on DVD because of competing demands on my time. Based on the real life experiences of Dr Maria Belon Alvarez and her family, this Spanish-made docudrama deals with the horrific events of 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in the Indian Ocean which devastated parts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and many other nations. Juan Antonio Bayona, it's Catalan director, came to international attention five years ago with his remarkable horror movie ' The Orphanage ' about a woman who is flummoxed when her adopted son vanishes. Bayona taps into similar separation anxieties in his lates...