Opinion

David Roy: The Banshees of Inisherin's existential themes hit home a little too hard for a man currently staring down the barrel of 50...

The Banshees of Inisherin is up for best picture – no doubt to the absolute bafflement of its many naysayers, including the gentleman behind me in the cinema who declared "they should have called that 'The Bansh*ts of Inish*te-in'"

David Roy

David Roy

David has been a features reporter at The Irish News since 2001, writing about music, cinema, comedy, theatre, books, art, TV, travel, motoring and more....

Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Padraic Suilleabhain in The Banshees Of Inisherin
Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Padraic Suilleabhain in The Banshees Of Inisherin Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty and Colin Farrell as Padraic Suilleabhain in The Banshees Of Inisherin

YOU will surely have been unable to avoid the news that a big chunk of Irish acting and film-making talent has been recognised by this year's Academy Awards, mostly thanks to The Banshees of Inisherin.

Stars Colin Farrell, Barry Keoghan, Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon are all Oscar-nominated for their roles in writer director Martin McDonagh's darkly comic slow-burning drama, which is up for best picture – no doubt to the absolute bafflement of its many naysayers, including the gentleman seated somewhere behind me in the cinema who loudly declared "they should have called that 'The Bansh*ts of Inish*te-in'" as the end credits rolled.

  • Colin Farrell ‘beyond honoured' to receive first best actor Oscar nomination
  • An Irish Goodbye actor ‘burst out crying’ over short film’s Oscar nomination
  • The Banshees of Inisherin for the best film? No feckin' chance
  • Sci-fi hit Everything Everywhere All At Once leads the field at this year's Academy Awards

I enjoyed Banshees at the time – it's certainly well made and packed with powerful performances – but I have to admit I'm in no rush to see Ireland's latest Oscar magnet again any time soon. Quite apart from all the [SPOILER] gruesome finger chopping and chucking [/SPOILER] that makes it somewhat 'unconventional' Oscar nomination fodder, some of its 'mid/late life crisis' themes also hit home a little too hard for a man currently staring down the barrel of 50.

I've not yet watched the as Gaelige drama An Cailín Ciúin, the first Irish language film to be nominated in the best international feature film category, or the locally shot An Irish Goodbye which is shortlisted for best live action short, but I have seen the excellent Aftersun.

Its Maynooth-born star Paul Mescal is up for best actor – pretty good going considering Aftersun is only the 26-year-old's second feature film role and he already has a best actor Bafta on the mantelpiece for BBC hit Normal People.

Good luck to them all.

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SPARE a sympathetic thought for Frank Lampard, former England and Chelsea star (on the pitch at least) who's just got the boot as manager of Everton FC thanks to the Merseyside club's ongoing win-free death spiral.

Former Everton manager Frank Lampard pictured at Goodison Park
Former Everton manager Frank Lampard pictured at Goodison Park Former Everton manager Frank Lampard pictured at Goodison Park

We're constantly reminded that football is a 'results business' and having been a top tier talent on the pitch is no guarantee of success on the game's management side, as Lampard's fellow former England team chum Steven Gerrard also discovered last October when he was sacked by Aston Villa after just 11 months in charge of the Midlands' finest footballing institution.

While the Holte End massif had largely turned against 'Stevie G' by the end of his tenure, the ire of Everton fans has mostly been directed at owner Farhad Moshiri and the club's board of directors rather than poor old 'Lamps' himself – who now has two failed Premier League management stints on his CV, the other being his 18-month stint as Chelsea's head coach.

One Farhad-aimed banner wielded by Everton fans at West Ham last Saturday afternoon at the end of what proved to be Lampard's final match in charge read simply: "This is our club, not yours. It's time to go."

However, so long as fans keep forking out for tickets and replica kits and that oh-so-lucrative Premier League TV money keeps flowing into the club coffers in its millions, rich owners will be happy enough to brazen out bad vibes on the terraces and let the odd manager (or, in Everton's case, six managers in the past six years) take the fall for their own failings.

The loss of income involved in a relegation to the Championship might finally force Moshiri out at Everton, meaning it might not be long until fans finally get what they want – in terms of ousting the hated owner at least.

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ON THE subject of 'time running out', this week we learned the cheery news that the Doomsday Clock has moved closer to 'midnight' than ever before thanks to ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The clock, which measures how close we are to total global annihilation, has just been moved forwards to 90 seconds to midnight – where 'midnight' equals 'game over'.

Russian President Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin Russian President Vladimir Putin

Doomsday Clock masters The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who have been monitoring 'global existential threat levels' since 1947, say that "Russia's thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict – by accident, intention, or miscalculation – is a terrible risk.

"The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone's control remains high."

Probably the only person on the planet who will have welcomed this spine-chilling news is Vladimir Putin.

We can only hope that his destructive reign in Russia is also entering a final countdown of its own, where 'midnight' equals 'Siberian gulag'.

:: Mary Kelly is away