Latest news with #Lollipop
Irish Examiner
5 days ago
- General
- Irish Examiner
'You have to smile': Lollipop person of the year says he enjoys the craic with all his little charges
'My two knees are knocking, I'm just blown away by it all,' Lollipop person of the year and Corkman Ger Gleeson said after his win. The retired firefighter is now hoping for a 'double win for Cork' with the hurling final in the coming weeks, he said with a grin. Mr Gleeson has worked as a much-loved lollipop man at Bunscoil Mhuire in Youghal, Co Cork, since 2015. His wife died after a long illness almost 11 years ago and the job 'did help me cope' with her tragic loss. Lollipop man Ger Gleeson celebrates with children at Bunscoil Mhuire, Youghal, Co Cork, after he was named the Tonstix Lollipop Person of the Year 2025. Picture: Dan Linehan 'Work keeps the mind going, keeps the body going, and keeps everything going,' he said. 'We married when we were 19 years old. We were together ever since, we were together in the heydays. But she got sick at 43 and died when she was only 56, so she was a very young woman.' Previously, Mr Gleeson served his local community as a firefighter in Youghal for almost 30 years. 'I had been retired from the local fire service for 12 months when I saw an advert for the lollipop job," he said. Senior infant Luke Cliff with Lollipop man Ger Gleeson at Bunscoil Mhuire, Youghal, Co Cork. Ger says of Luke: 'He has own little lollipop stick with a 'stop' sign on it that his mum and dad made for him. And he has his own lollipop jacket that's similar to mine.' Picture: Dan Linehan With 'a small few fumes still left in the tank' post-retirement he decided to apply. 'Luckily I got it,' Mr Gleeson said. 'I'm there since. 'I have five grandchildren myself and I love them with all my heart. So I get on with kids. You get to know all the children, all the parents, grandparents over the years. I've made so many good friends. "It's like a men's shed sometimes. You meet so many people down there.' Mr Gleeson was announced the winner in the Tonstix Lollipop person of the year competition at a special ceremony at the school on Monday. Bunscoil Mhuire principal Eoghan O'Neill playing the drums after lollipop man Ger Gleeson was named the Tonstix Lollipop Person of the Year in Youghal, Co Cork. Picture Dan Linehan He received a trophy, a plaque and a €1,000 travel voucher. 'Hail, rain or shine,' he's out there to help the children safely cross the road in the east Cork town every school morning and has developed particular bonds with some of the children in the schools autism classes. Tonstix Lollipop Person of the Year 2025 Ger Gleeson helping children from Bunscoil Mhuire, Youghal, Co Cork cross the road safely. Picture: Dan Linehan 'You need to be sociable,' he said. 'You can't go to work with a sour face. You have to smile. The kids are going to school every morning and you don't want to ever see a child upset going into school." All the children know his name and call him Ger. But one 'very special little fella' called Luke who has become a major fan of Mr Geeson's calls him 'granddad'. 'He has own little lollipop stick with a 'stop' sign on it that his mum and dad made for him. And he has his own lollipop jacket that's similar to mine. Sinéad Crowther of Tonstix with Ger Gleeson at Bunscoil Mhuire, Youghal, Co Cork where he was named Lollipop Person of the Year 2025. Picture: Dan Linehan 'He has to watch me every morning and evening." 'He's just adorable. 'There are a lot of really special kids there.' Retirement can be lonely for many people and Mr Gleeson said that a job like this can really keep people connected and engaged in their community. 'It gets you out of the house every morning, keeps you going," he said. You can get into an awful rut if you retire and you have no hobbies. 'I cycle at the weekends and school holidays, the greenway in Waterford is fantastic. 'I'm living close to my grandchildren, they all come down to me nearly every day so I'm lucky.' Read More Retired fireman in the running to be named Ireland's best lollipop person
Extra.ie
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
FILM REVIEW OF THE WEEK: Lollipop
Daisy-May Hudson's Lollipop is a fierce and necessary fiction feature burning with the truth of lived experience. In this impassioned story of one mother's post-prison struggle to regain her children, Hudson lays bare the punitive systems that punish poverty, pathologise emotion, and criminalise the survival strategies of women who are already navigating impossible odds. Drawing on her own experiences of homelessness in Half Way (2015), Hudson's debut fiction film sits squarely in the tradition of Loach and Arnold, but with a vital, distinctly feminist eye that frames this story as not just one of injustice, but of structural betrayal – particularly of working-class, single mothers. Molly, brought to life in a raw and incandescent performance by Posy Sterling, is a young woman released from prison into a world that offers neither welcome nor restitution. Her crime remains unspecified – a deliberate choice, perhaps, to underline how often women are criminalised for acts of desperation tied to poverty, domestic violence, or mental health crises. The statistics support this: most women in prison are there for non-violent offences linked to poverty or attempts to escape untenable domestic situations. Lollipop doesn't sensationalise this reality; it refuses to moralise. Instead, it insists on the viewer's empathy by making clear how deeply the deck is stacked against someone like Molly. From the moment Molly leaves prison, she is not met with rehabilitation, but with a series of Kafkaesque obstacles. Her mother, played with devastating opacity by TerriAnn Cousins, has turned her children over to social services. Molly is told she cannot regain custody without stable housing, but is refused family housing because she doesn't have custody. This isn't just a catch-22 – it's a trap, one designed to collapse hope. Through quietly devastating sequences, the film exposes the impossible circular logic of social systems that claim to protect children while punishing their mothers for being poor, angry, or alone. And anger, in Lollipop, is as dangerous as poverty. Molly's frustrated outbursts are interpreted as instability, her heartbreak as volatility. The film is particularly astute in showing how emotions, especially in women, are surveilled and weaponised. Her grief is reframed as a mental health risk. Her love for her children, expressed with urgency and fear, is pathologised. This is a system that rewards passivity, even as it pushes women to the brink. One particularly brutal scene sees Molly walk into what she believes will be a reunion with her children, only to face a tribunal of care professionals – each one a woman, each one clearly burdened by the very roles they are forced to play. Hudson doesn't scapegoat these workers, nor does she let them off the hook. Instead, she presents them as caught within the same system, one that uses women to police and punish other women. It is no accident that the men in this story are largely absent or invisible – Molly's exes, the fathers of her children, have vanished from her life, leaving her to bear the full weight of social and emotional responsibility. This is a reality faced by countless single mothers, many of whom are left not only unsupported but actively punished for attempting to cope alone. Lollipop never forgets this imbalance, instead making it central to its critique. Women are expected to pick up every piece, and when they fail to do so quietly, they are deemed unfit. In its themes and emotional force, Lollipop echoes recent Irish films such as Paddy Breathnach's Rosie and Phyllida Lloyd's Herself. Like Lollipop, Rosie follows a mother caught in a brutal housing crisis, moving from car to hotel with her children while trying to hold her family together in the face of mounting bureaucracy and public indifference. And Herself tells the story of a woman escaping domestic violence who tries to build her own home, both physically and metaphorically, only to encounter institutional obstruction at every turn. In all three films, the state presents itself as neutral or benevolent, while quietly maintaining a web of impossibilities designed to humiliate, delay and ultimately erase women who dare to act independently. What Lollipop adds to this cinematic lineage is the particular lens of post-carceral motherhood and the way social control seeps into maternal identity and emotional expression itself. Lollipop is not an entirely miserable tale, and Hudson's vision is filled with tenderness. The friendship between Molly and Amina (Idil Ahmed) is a lifeline for Molly, the audience, and the film's emotional core. Their bond is forged in shared experience and mutual care, from moments of breakdown to bursts of joy. A scene in which Amina responds to Molly's anger with compassion, only for that anger to immediately melt to heart-wrenching grief, is one of the most powerful in the film, showing how empathy, compassion and understanding can unlock anyone's core and model the need for not just kindness, but genuine support. Sterling's performance carries the film with a magnetic, wounded energy. Molly is not a symbol or a victim – she is a person. She is flawed, impulsive, loving, angry. Sterling gives her a rich emotional interior, and Hudson's writing allows those emotions to live on screen without tidy resolution. Even in moments of deep chaos, the film resists melodrama, trusting instead in the authenticity of lived emotion. That authenticity is supported by a mostly female cast and creative team, who imbue the story with a deep understanding of the kinds of violence that don't always leave bruises, but leave scars all the same. The fact that every adult character—council worker, shopkeeper, probation officer—is played by a woman is deeply telling. Lollipop is about what happens to women when the state fails them, and about how that failure is masked by bureaucracy, protocol and procedure. Hudson's film makes clear that this isn't about bad apples or rogue decisions, but a systemic design that makes martyrs of single mothers and invisibilises the men who let them fall. Lollipop is a powerful, furious, and tender-hearted film. It demands not only that we look at the structures which brutalise women, but that we recognise the quiet heroism of those who survive within them. Hudson doesn't just tell a story – she offers testimony. And it is impossible to walk away from this film unmoved.
Irish Examiner
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Film Reviews: How to Train Your Dragon makes superb use of Northern Irish scenery
You don't have to be mad to live on the remote northern island of Berk, but it helps if you're the kind of deranged Viking who enjoys nothing more than a good old dust-up with a fire-breathing beastie. The live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon (PG), which is slavishly faithful to the 2010 animation, opens with the teenaged Hiccup (Mason Thames) a frustrated apprentice in the village armoury and barred — despite being the son of the chief, Stoick the Vast (Gerald Butler, reprising his role in the original) — from playing a part in defending the island from the dragons that regularly descend on Berk to pillage its livestock and barbecue its humans. Until, that is, Hiccup manages to snare the most fearsome of all the dragon species, a Night Fury ('the unholy offspring of lightning and death'), at which point a previously unthinkable proposition arises: could human and dragon somehow learn to work together? Written and directed by Dean DeBlois, this version of How to Train… is a lively blend of live action and animation that makes superb use of a variety of Northern Ireland settings (Dunseverick Castle and the Giant's Causeway both feature). Its central message, that of bitter foes learning to co-operate to their mutual benefit, remains intact and as timely as ever, and the action sequences are neatly executed, particularly when Hiccup and his new pal Toothless go swooping through the sea stacks off the Northern Ireland coast. Mason Thames isn't especially dynamic in the lead role, but there's strong support: Gerald Butler gnawing great chunks out the scenery as the Viking chief Stoick, Nick Frost providing comic relief as Hiccup's mentor Gobber, and Nico Parker as Astrid, the fiery warrior-in-training who brings a blowtorch intensity to pretty much everything she does, romance included. Lollipop. Lollipop ★★★★★ Theatrical release Kafka meets Catch 22 in Lollipop (15A), which opens with Londoner Molly Brown (Posy Sterling) leaving prison after serving a four-month sentence. Now living in a tent, and desperate to get her kids out of foster care, Molly discovers that she can't have her kids if she can't provide them with a home, and she can't get a home if she doesn't have any kids to house. An ostensibly straightforward dilemma, but one fiendishly difficult to unravel as Molly grows increasingly frustrated with the various social services, who argue, very reasonably, that her children's welfare is their primary concern. Written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson, Lollipop is a brilliant, stress-inducing slice of social realism featuring terrific performances from TerriAnn Cousins as Molly's alcoholic mother, and Idil Ahmed as Molly's former schoolfriend and a woman who finds herself in a similar plight. That said, the whole film revolves around the superb chemistry between Posy Sterling, who is in blistering form here, and the wonderfully natural Tegan-Mia Stanley Roads and Luke Howitt, playing her daughter and son. Tornado ★★★☆☆ Theatrical release Set in 1790, on the wintry Scottish moors, Tornado (15A) stars Kôki as the eponymous heroine, a Japanese girl who has stolen a sack of gold from a gang of outlaws led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and Little (Jack Lowden), and is now fleeing for her life. But as the outlaws stride across the lawless moors killing and burning with impunity, they fail to consider one crucial question: what happens when Tornado, the daughter of a samurai warrior, stops running and turns to fight? Writer-director John Maclean (Slow West) recreates the Wild West in the Scottish Highlands, an amoral world where life plays out on a barren, windswept landscape devoid of civilisation and pity. Kôki's performance is a touch stiff at times — to be fair, her young character, recently orphaned, spends much of the film semi-paralysed with mortal terror — but Tim Roth and Jack Lowden have a whale of a time as the dead-eyed sociopathic killers.
Irish Times
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Lollipop review: This socially aware film is maddening, urgent viewing
Lollipop Director : Daisy-May Hudson Cert : 15A Genre : Drama Starring : Posy Sterling, Idil Ahmed, TerriAnn Cousins, Tegan-Mia, Stanley Rhoads, Luke Howitt, Aliyah Abdi, Johanna Allitt Running Time : 1 hr 40 mins Daisy-May Hudson's award-winning career as a film-maker and journalist began in 2015 with Half Way, a chronicle of her family's experience of unexpected homelessness. Lollipop, her first scripted feature, builds on that documentary's poignant account of the challenges faced by a single mum and the family's maddening encounters with bureaucracy. We're not sure why Molly (played with fraying precision by Posy Sterling) has served four months in prison, but her attempts to chart a path back to normalcy are unjustifiably frustrating. Her longed-for reunion with her two children is spoiled when only her daughter arrives, and then only for a minute. In common with the frustrated hero of I, Daniel Blake , her pleas for suitable accommodation are met with institutional indifference. She's informed that, because of her incarceration, she's 'intentionally homeless'. Unlike the unfailingly polite hero of Ken Loach 's film, the volatile, fiercely maternal Molly snaps back and breaks the suffocating rules. That might qualify as a fatal flaw were it not for the sometime support of Sylvie, Molly's troubled, agoraphobic mother (TerriAnn Cousins), or Amina (Idil Ahmed), a loyal childhood chum navigating her own housing crisis. READ MORE A karaoke sequence in a cramped bedroom is emblematic of Molly's determination and, ultimately, her small, fragile demands for a dignified life. Which year did Marty not visit? 1885 1955 2015 2055 What was Clint Eastwood's first film as director? The Outlaw Josey Wales Play Misty for Me Firefox Bird Who is not a sibling? Macaulay Kieran Rory Benji The actor playing the title character of which film was actually born in the US? Klute (1971) The Mask (1994) Dudley Do-Right (1999) Green Lantern (2011) What is the last Pixar film to win the best animated feature Oscar? Soul Onward Coco Inside Out Which is the odd period out? Ms Weld Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet Ms Squibb Christina Ricci in The Addams Family Who was not portrayed by Steph? Ally Lee Patrizia Breathless Which is the odd one out? Harrison Ford's other profession 2024 Palme d'Or winner Todd Haynes's notorious early short Halloween and Escape from New York Who is about to succeed, among many, many others, James Whale, Terence Fisher and Kenneth Branagh? Guillermo del Toro Ari Aster David Lowery Robert Eggers Whose daughter fought the Triffids? Alison Steadman Thora Hird Patricia Routledge Margaret Rutherford The film-making is appropriately restrained but effective: the cinematographer Jaime Ackroyd opts for natural lighting and unshowy hand-held camerawork. Several of the selection of the film's music supervisor, Connie Farr – Body Groove by Architechs, Talkin' the Hardest by Giggs – are a decade old, evoking a freer and easier time for the beleaguered heroine. With Lollipop, Hudson has staked a significant claim in the rich terrain of Britain's socially conscious, kitchen-sink milieu. There's no triumphalism here, but there's enough grit and community spirit to coalesce into a decent outcome. Maddening and urgent viewing, minus the doom. In cinemas from Friday, June 13th
The Herald Scotland
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
This movie is like a Play for Today updated for the 21st century
But right now, right at this moment in Edinburgh in August 2024, Hudson is all nerves and anticipation. 'You make a film and you are in an incubation period for a long time and then it's here.' It's been worth the wait. Lollipop is a small film with a big heart. Hudson has brought all of that energy to bear on it and the result is compelling. It's the story of Molly - played by Posy Sterling in what should be a star-making turn - fresh out of prison who's keen to see her two kids again. But they have been absorbed into foster care and all of her efforts to get them back are blighted by polite but obstructive bureaucracy. It's a film about homelessness and love and despair and it feels like a Play for Today updated for the 21st century. A contemporary Cathy Comes Home, if you like, but not without hope. Ultimately, it's a hymn to friendship and resilience. 'Maybe at first it feels relentless,' Hudson admits, 'but what is so powerful and profound is Molly's absolute determination and firecracker energy to keep going, driven by that lioness protective energy of what it means to be a mother.' Lollipop is a film with an all-female cast and at its heart is Sterling as its flawed, heroic heroine. It's a film that plays out on Sterling's face. Lollipop Director Daisy-May Hudson (Image: PA) 'Posy was the first person we saw,' Hudson recalls. 'That's some spooky stuff, isn't it? And she walked in through the door and I was like, 'I can't believe the person that I've written in the film is actually walking through this door.' "She was just so alive and she was genuinely moved by the script. She read it seven times before she walked in. And she wanted to ask me so many questions. I could feel that it was in her and you see it on screen. 'She just gave everything in the most incredible way.' Hudson and Sterling could be sisters. Or maybe it's Hudson and Molly who could be related. Hudson, after all, is not a voyeur in this world. Lollipop is deeply researched, but also comes from lived experience. In 2013, when she was in her early twenties, Hudson's own family were made homeless. Hudson started to film the experience and her mother's battles to find them a new home. That became Hudson's debut documentary film, Halfway. Now she has turned to fiction to tell another similar story about those at the margins and the battles they have to fight every single day. Lollipop is a film about relationships - failing ones in the case of Molly's mum [TerriAnn Cousins] - and supportive ones, as with Molly's best friend Amina [played by Idil Ahmed]. Read more But it's also a movie that tells us something about social systems and how they become a barrier rather than a conduit. 'Halfway came from this feeling of not feeling heard or not feeling seen,' Hudson admits. 'I went to a protest outside the Houses of Parliament and I saw these women who were protesting for the right to have their children back. They weren't being listened to and they weren't being seen and I could connect to that. 'I think a lot of what drives me and my work is to be able to create space to be able to listen to people who aren't heard. Because I think magical things happen when we actually listen to each other.' Hudson did a lot of listening in preparation to making Lollipop. 'Because I come from a documentary background I'm already a complete nerd and love to research for months. 'So, when I found these women I did a lot of research from their perspective - just hearing them and understanding.' She also spoke to women who had been in prison, and to social workers, housing officers, a family lawyer and a judge. 'It was really important to me that, even though it's told from Molly's perspective, it is also true and authentic and everyone feels that it's a fair representation. I'm not saying one person is bad and one person is good. It's about really questioning this system as it is. Does it work? And is it effective?' What emerges is a vision of a bureaucracy that is not malign but politely frustrating. 'I think that's what I noticed from my own experience of homelessness. No one that I met were villains. I don't think people go into a job to be horrible to people. I think they genuinely go in because they want to make a difference. And then what happens is you have years of it and it's so emotional and so heartbreaking and you can't help people and you have to start to self-protect.' And ultimately, she says, many of us only one missed rent payment, one lost job away from finding ourselves in the same position as Molly. Read our review 'You're just one choice or one teacher's encouragement or one father's absence away from being on the other side of the table." Hudson knows that all too well from her own life. How, I wonder, has her own experience of homelessness shaped who she is today? 'I think that it really enabled me to see the power of using our creativity to transform our pain into light and joy and something that can be medicine for others. 'That was a big driving force for me when I was making Halfway. I want people who are also going through this experience to not feel the isolation and the loneliness that can come from being homeless. This is a shared collective experience.' This is the drive behind everything she does, she says. 'How can we keep coming back to our shared humanity and our collective experience? Turning our pain into something beautiful.' What does the word 'home' mean to you now, Daisy-May? 'I think home is inside now. It's inside of you. You can create a feeling of home wherever you go. Because I think when we rely too heavily on government or councils - things outside of us - we lose sight of what is important. 'And for me home is - and it sounds so cheesy, but it's absolutely authentic and true - home is in my heart. 'Once you find that, it's this groundedness and centredness that means that you can navigate anything in life.' It's not necessarily bricks and mortar, then. 'I don't think so, no.' Lollipop is in cinemas now
