Saoirse Ronan (featured in our Top 100, page 44) didn’t take home an Academy Award at the big show on February 24, but the 13-year-old Hollywood star has a busy 2008 planned. Ronan was nominated as a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Atonement. Prior to the Oscars, Ronan was happy just to be going to the show, which was nearly canceled because of the prolonged … [Read more...] about Irish Eye on Hollywood
Archives for April 2008
Emotional Return to Belfast for Liam Neeson
By Mary Egan
April / May 2008
April / May 2008
New York-based movie star Liam Neeson flew home to Northern Ireland in January to take part in the final curtain call at Belfast’s historic Lyric Players Theatre on the banks of the River Lagan which is closing to make way for a $30 million redevelopment. Liam’s appearance on stage earned him a standing ovation from a delighted capacity crowd. Afterwards he went backstage to … [Read more...] about Emotional Return to Belfast for Liam Neeson
Oscar joy for Once and Day-Lewis
It was a victorious night for the Irish independent movie Once, as its stars and songwriters Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova picked up an Oscar for best original song for “Falling Slowly” at the ceremony held at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles on February 24. It was the first nomination and win for both, and Hansard could hardly believe what was happening as he accepted the … [Read more...] about Oscar joy for Once and Day-Lewis
The Greening of Silicon Valley
By Chris Ryan, Contributor
April / May 2008
April / May 2008
Scan the upper ranks of some of Silicon Valley’s top technology powerhouses and you’ll find them strewn with Irish names like gorse on a Kerry hillside. These executives have helped pick their companies up from the dot-com bust and already are developing the next phase of the Internet era, the socially connective technologies known as Web 2.0. But even as they help to build … [Read more...] about The Greening of Silicon Valley
Please Treasure Our History
By Cormac MacConnell
April / May 2008
April / May 2008
Many of you out there in the diaspora are in possession of treasures of our history which we here at home either carelessly lost or callously threw away into the footprints of the Celtic Tiger. That reality was hammered home to me an hour ago. I was in my neighbor Jimmy’s house and his Limerick mother was there. Her eyes were glowing as she showed me an aerial photo of the … [Read more...] about Please Treasure Our History