The Irish Film and Television Network has more details. Not being a film industry insider, I’ve got my terminology wrong: it’s only in development, and isn’t expected to go into pre-production until the second half of next year. Also, they’re planning an accompanying stage production and a TV documentary series on the legend.
The Irish Independent reports that Paul Bolger is to direct a film about Cú Chulainn, to be called “Hound” (terrible title to my mind), from a script by Barry Devlin (ex of 70s Irish band Horslips), for release in about 2013. Film has a very high attrition rate from announcements like this to actually getting made and released, so I’ll have to keep my eye on that, see if it comes to anything.
The report seems to sum up how Cú Chulainn is viewed in Ireland – as a “friendly superhero” or a “children’s hero” (the filmmakers are keen to dispel this, emphasising how violent their story is), who the only thing anyone knows about is how he got his name. Which is a bit sad, really.
Not everyone is so ignorant, fortunately. Over the weekend my esteemed colleague Andy Luke and myself were running our stall, The Black Panel, selling original, self-published comics by artists from all over Ireland, at Chilli Fest, a two-day American South-themed event in Belfast, and my own comics based on the Ulster Cycle were among the stock. I had to use all my (meagre) powers of salesmanship to interest some customers in them, but there were quite a few whose eyes were immediately drawn to the title The Cattle Raid of Cooley, and who were pleased that somebody was doing a comics adaptation.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that Paul Bolger is a comics artist as well as a filmmaker.
This site is still very much under construction, but I thought I’d share a couple of links for those interested.
The first is Cambridge University’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic’s Spoken Word site, where you can listen to recordings of people reading texts in Latin, Old English, Old Norse, Medieval Welsh and Medieval Irish, while following the text. There are also grammar lessons for each language, which I haven’t looked into yet. One thing I noticed when listening to the Old English of a passage from the Battle of Maldon – most of it both looks and sounds completely foreign, but the fourth line, “‘Gehyrst þu, sælida, hwæt þis folc segeð?”, is almost entirely comprehensible when you hear it spoken.
The second is Belfast’s Queen’s University’s Semantic index of early Irish, which breaks down the vocabulary of early Irish, not alphabetically but by topic.
