INTERMISSION (2004)
Plot:
Intermission is an urban love story about people adrift and their convoluted journeys in the search for some kind of love. When the desperately insecure and emotionally inarticulate John (Murphy) breaks up with Deirdre (Macdonald) to 'give her a little test' his plan backfires leaving her broken-hearted and him alone and miserable. Through chance and coincidence, their break-up triggers a roller coaster ride of interweaving escapades in the lives of everyone around them. Intermission presents a slice of life, the passage between breaking up and making up, exploring how our lives intersect, and the power we all possess to affect the lives of those around us.
Cast/Crew:
Written by: Mark O'Rowe
Directed by: John Crowley
Starring:
Colin Farrell .... Lehiff
Shirley Henderson .... Sally
Kelly Macdonald .... Deirdre
Colm Meaney .... Detective Jerry Lynch
Cillian Murphy .... John
Notes:
'Intermission' Irishmen Lay off the Sauce
Tue, Mar 16, 2004, 02:03 PM PT
By Hanh Nguyen
~from Zap2it.com
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - The filmmakers of the Irish ensemble action-comedy "Intermission" have a bit of advice about one of the film's more innocuous scenes: Don't try it at home.
In one of the film supermarket stocker John (Cillian Murphy) and his pal Oscar (David Wilmot) steal a case of the condiment known as brown sauce. At a loss of what to do with the saucy surplus, they begin adding it to everything, including their coffee, and even convince fellow conspirators (Colin Farrell and Brian O'Byrne) to try it.
Cast mate Kelly MacDonald enlightens Zap2it.com about the European condiment.
"It's spicy, kind of like ketchup ... a bit like steak sauce," she says. "Colin and a few other people tried it [in their coffee] and said it was revolting."
"It's disgusting," confirms director John Crowley, who let curiosity get the better of him.
Taking pity on his actors, Crowley even tried to replace the sauce with a prop -- a chocolate-syrup mixture -- in one key scene, which had disastrous results.
"Around take 11 or 12, they were really beginning to gag and feel sick [because they had to] swallow it during the scene," says the director. "It was the first scene we shot that day at 8 o'clock in the morning, and a few of them had 'trouble' later on. I won't go into details on that one."
"Intermission," a seriocomic tale about love, sex, death and brown sauce, opens in limited release on Friday, March 19.(US)
Colin Farrell's version of The Clash classic 'I Fought the Law' from his new movie 'Intermission' will also feature on the film's soundtrack album.
Stars attend Intermission premiere The new Irish film 'Intermission' will receive its premiere in Dublin tonight.
Among those attending the screening at the Savoy Cinema are the film's stars Cillian Murphy, Deirdre O'Kane and Michael McElhatton, director John Crowley and writer Mark O'Rowe.
The film, which also stars Colin Farrell, Colm Meaney and Kelly Macdonald, has been described as "an urban love story" following the spiral of events which occurs when a young couple break up.
Other guests confirmed for the premiere include Samantha Mumba, Patrick Bergin, Jim Sheridan and Victoria Smurfit while Irish groups The Corrs and The Thrills are also expected to attend.
'Intermission' opens nationwide on Friday 29 August.
Ted Sheehy in Galway 15 July 2003
"Intermission Takes "Best First Feature" in Galway
The fifteenth Galway Film Fleadh (July 8-13) closed on a high over the weekend, with the universally shared view that it had been one of the best years for new Irish cinema at the event.
Significantly, most of the new Irish feature films were made by debuting directors each of whom had made a virtue of local authenticity.
The audience award for Best First Feature went to Intermission, directed by John Crowley and produced by Stephen Woolley, Neil Jordan and Alan Moloney for Company of Wolves. Crowley’s deft handling of interlaced story lines and a large ensemble cast (which includes Colin Farrell and Colm Meaney) marks him out as a new Irish talent of considerable stature. Intermission will be released in Ireland by BVI on August 29.
Ted Sheehy in Dublin 27 June 2003 04:05
Galway festival confirms world premiere for Jordan's Intermission
Intermission, the second title from Neil Jordan and Steve Woolley’s Company of Wolves production outfit is to have its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on July 11.
It’s addition was welcomed by Fleadh programme director Sally Anne O’Reilly, "This is the kind of high octane, edgy drama that gives a vibrancy and vitality to the Fleadh and to the new wave of Irish filmmaking."
Intermission is the first feature from established theatre talents, director John Crowley and writer Mark O’Rowe, and the ensemble cast includes Colin Farrell, Colm Meaney and Cillian Murphy in a story about the unforeseeable fallout that ensues from a young couple’s break-up. The cast are expected to attend along with Jordan and Woolley, producer Alan Moloney, Crowley and O’Rowe.
Intermission is a Euros 4m Ireland-UK co-production backed equally by the Irish Film Board (its largest investment in an Irish film) and the UK Film Council, and utilising Ireland’s Section 481 and the UK’s Sale &Leaseback funding schemes.
Buena Vista invested £300, 000 in the film for the UK and Irish distribution rights and US rights were pre-bought by IFC.
Grand Pictures’ Spin The Bottle will be the closing film in Galway on July 13. A spin-off of the popular RTE ‘mockumentary’ series Paths To Freedom, the film is a further chapter in the life of Rats, a hapless Dublin chancer who wants to send his obese aunt to Lourdes for a miracle cure.
Co-written by director Ian Fitzgibbon and lead actor Michael McIlhatton, Spin The Bottle has an Irish distribution undertaking from Buena Vista and a uniquely large investment from rental chain XtraVision for Irish video and DVD rights.
The film also marks the return of RTE to feature film financing after an absence of two years. RTE’s investment is believed to be twice that of the Irish Film Board which twice refused the film a production loan but has recently confirmed an offer of completion funding.
"Intermission"
to make Canadian Premiere at 28th Toronto International Film Fest
The film fest runs Sept 4-13, 2003.
Full story HERE
Reviews:
Sep. 23, 2003
Intermission
By Michael Rechtshaffen
Bottom line: A fresh, briskly energetic look at love and loneliness, this effervescent Irish film is a darkly comedic delight.
Screened Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Sharing Robert Altman's enviable dexterity with sprawling casts, John Crowley's "Intermission" is technically a film about the quest for love and acceptance among an extended grouping of Dubliners that in practice turns out to be anything but gentle and meditative.
Instead, this bracing blast of creative energy kicks off with an unexpected jolt and keeps ticking away, often flirting with outrageousness without ever losing sight of its main objective.
A respected theater director, Crowley makes the most of Mark O'Rowe's intricate, smartly written script and coaxes terrific performances from all of his 11 principal players (54 in total).
Enthusiastic reviews as well as the presence of the very busy Colin Farrell among the ensemble should result in some decent word-of-mouth coin while easily establishing Crowley and O'Rowe as filmmakers to watch.
One of the first productions to come out of Neil Jordan and Stephen Woolley's newly formed Company of Wolves, "Intermission" is populated by so many colorful characters that it's hard to decide where to begin.
A good start would be Farrell's off-kilter Lehiff, a morally bankrupt punk of a petty thief who is planning the quintessential "one last score" before intending to go straight.
That is, if he can avoid the ever vigilant gaze of tough-guy detective Jerry Lynch (the always memorable Colm Meaney), an overly zealous loner of an anticrime crusader who also happens to have a deep interest in Celtic mysticism.
Meanwhile, supermarket employee John ("28 Days Later's" Cillian Murphy) has the boneheaded idea of testing his girlfriend Deirdre's ("Trainspotting's" Kelly Macdonald) devotion by suggesting they break up.
Initially brokenhearted, she rebounds into the arms of the older Sam (Michael McElhatton), a bank manager who is smack dab in the middle of a midlife crisis. Full of understandable hostility, Sam's freshly estranged wife, Noeleen (Deirdre O'Kane), ends up having a rather heated affair with John's lonely buddy Oscar (David Wilmot).
Then there's also Deirdre's emotionally scarred sister (Shirley Henderson), who wears the dark hair on her upper lip like a coat of armor, and their concerned widowed mother, Maura (Ger Ryan), not to mention John and Oscar's bullying, American catchphrase-spewing supermarket boss, Mr. Henderson (Owen Roe), and bus driver Mick (Brian F. O'Byrne), who is determined to track down the culprit who threw a brick at his bus window, causing a potentially tragic accident.
Armed with playwright O'Rowe's fresh dialogue, the characters are a treat to get to know, but the most intriguing thing about the film is the always inventive way in which their lives intersect.
While director Crowley keeps it all moving propulsively with a contemporary pop/rock song selection that complements the pace and those darkly comedic edges, he still manages to accommodate some vulnerable, touching truths about everyday life in the big, scary world.
Trailers:
- Windows Media Player [HIGH]
- Windows Media player [LOW]
DVD info:
Soundtrack:
Track Listing:
1. I Fought the Law - Colin Farrell
2. Out of Control - U2
3. One Horse Town - The Thrills
4. Painkiller - Turin Brakes
5. These Days - Ron Sexsmith
6. Get Down, Move Over - Relish
7. Scooby Snacks - Fun Lovin' Criminals
8. Bumble A, Bumble B, Bumble C, Bumble D - Fonda 500
9. I Don't Want To Get Over You - Magnetic Fields
10. Disappearing Act - Ron Sexsmith
11. Newgrange - Clannad
12. Two Buses/Intermission - John Murphy
- Details from Amazon.co.uk