IF Dublin International Film Festival needed just one movie to justify its existence it would by John Carney's endearing musical romance 'Once', shot on digital for a mere 100,000 last year but now taken up for distribution in the US by Fox Searchlight after winning the people's choice award at Sundance Festival. 'Once' does nothing that a Hollywood studio movie would do in telling a story, but brilliantly so. It plucks a simple encounter literally off the streets of Dublin . . . a Czech girl (Marketa Irglova) who is attracted to a busker (Glen Hansard of the Frames) and joins with him in recording a demo tape . . . and lets it unravel through songs with all the quirky spontaneity of life rather than the cliches of a scenario. Not to be missed.

A friend of Irish film

APPROPRIATELY, 'Once' is being released here on 23 March by Buena Vista, whose retiring general manager Brendan McCaul received one of the Festival's new Volta awards on Tuesday. McCaul's nononsense enthusiasm for movies made him particularly effective at promoting them. A large part of the success of 'The Commitments' was due to the eyecatching way he first launched it in Ireland. More recently McCaul has given a lead by involving Buena Vista at a production stage in new Irish movies, notably Paddy Breathnach's 'I Went Down' and John Crowley's 'Intermission', and more recently David Gleeson's 'The Front Line'. McCaul will be succeeded by Trish Long, who has been closely involved in his support of Irish movies.

IRELAND TOP FIVE MOVIES (weekend 16-18 February)

1 (-) Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright) 598,318 (-) 2 (1) Charlotte's Web (Gary Winick) 399,244 ( 1,012,454 to date) 3 (2) Music & Lyrics (Marc Lawrence) 221,288 ( 779,445) 4 (3) Epic Movie (Jason Friedberg) 152,953 ( 550,162) 5 (4) Blood Diamond (Ed Zwick) 128,782 ( 1,242,641) Compiled from Sunday Tribune industry sources.

US TOP FIVE MOVIES (weekend 16-18 February)

1 (-) Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson) $44.5m (-) 2 (-) Bridge to Terabithia (Gabor Csupo) $22m (-) 3 (1) Norbit (Brian Robbins) $16.8m (-) 4 (-) Music & Lyrics (Marc Lawrence) $14m (-) 5 (-) Daddy's Little Girls (Tyler Perry) $12.1m (-)