Fortune’s Wheel ***
This well-research Irish documentary tells the extraordinary story of Bill Stephens, otherwise known as ‘The Fairview Lion-Tamer’. His story has become the stuff of legend in the Dublin community where he lived.
Now filmmaker Joe Lee, who grew up in Marino and wanted to tell a local story is bringing this tale – so incredible it was dismissed by some as an urban myth – to the big screen.
Bill was a young Dubliner in the 1950s who had a dream to become an animal trainer and work for the circus, travelling the world. He worked as a musician in a show band but decided to quit to become a lion tamer.
That dream became a reality for him – and a nightmare for the community in Fairview – when one of his lions escaped and wreaked havoc one night in November 1951.
Bill was working with a circus, and was caring for three lions in an enclosure during the winter period in Fairview. Sometimes he had a wagon outside his terraced house in Fairview with a lion inside it.
When he opened the cage to feed the lions, a three-year-old lioness leapt clear and made her escape.
The animal went on the rampage, mauling an attendant, before Bill managed to lasso the creature. But he was in turn attacked and suffered a severe injury to his arm. The incident even led to a dramatic illustration in infamously sensationalist Italian magazine, La Tribuna Illustrata.
Bill also had a romance with Mai (who kept snakes) from nearby East Wall and the couple wed while still in their teens. They even set up a circus double act called ‘Jungle Capers with Bill Stephens and Lovely Partner’, performing daring tricks and acts with their lions and dogs. Bill used to famously feed the lions from his own mouth, and put his head inside their mouths.
Following the escape, the story was covered around the world but it is only now that both families have come together to recall the events of that night.
Filmmaker Joe Lee has now brought this colourful local story to the big screen and the movie is showing exclusively at Dublin’s Irish Film Institute from this weekend.
Spy (15A) ****
Director Paul Feig gave Melissa McCarthy her star turn in Bridesmaids and also worked with her in the cop comedy The Heat. She’s had a patchy run since finding fame, but Feig seems to bring out the best in the unconventional star.
That’s certainly the case in this riotous comedy filled with laugh-out-loud gags, delivered with style by an on-form cast.
McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, an unmarried analyst at the CIA who’s stuck at a desk job at the less glamorous end of spying. She works remotely in tandem with Bradley Fine (an enjoyably suave Jude Law). But when a dangerous international arms-dealing gang puts Fine off the grid, exposing the entire roster of secret agents’ identities, only the anonymous Cooper is suitable to track them down.
Fellow spy Rick Ford – played by a delightfully over-the-top Jason Statham – is not happy with her assignment and decides to go rogue in a bid to take out the gang himself.
Rose Byrne again shows her knack for comedy as Raina Boyanov, the posh daughter of a Russian arms dealer who wants to sell a nuclear bomb to whoever gives her the most cash.
The put downs between her and McCarthy’s undercover agent are by far the funniest in the movie and both stars deliver the insults with aplomb.
All good comedy digs a little deeper and Cooper is portrayed as a woman who feels life’s opportunities have passed her by. It’s one of summer’s great surprises, with a witty script being nailed by a fine cast.
