News: Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones, on good bad guy form in this week’s final film for tip-top director Robert Altman, A Prairie Home Companion, should be back on our screens at some point later this year in the Coen brothers’ next outing, No Country for Old Men. With a plot revolving around the discovery of some dead bodies, drugs and a big pile of cash, here’s hoping it’s a return to form for the duo, whose last couple of outings have been decidedly sub-par, considering the genius of their earlier films. After that, Jones will take the lead as a career military man trying to find out what’s happened to his son, AWOL after returning from Iraq, in the topical and potentially controversial In the Valley of Elah from Crash writer/director Paul Haggis.

News: Woody Harrelson

Despite still being a big name, Harrelson hasn’t had any especially high-profile roles for quite a while, generally appearing in relatively minor parts in relatively small films – with his turn in this week’s Altman ensemble piece A Prairie Home Companion and the recent A Scanner Darkly being his biggest for a fair few years. He has a fair few movies in the works, though, and must surely have enough money in the bank not to care any more, so it looks rather like he’s choosing his projects deliberately and carefully.

Amongst the numerous flicks in the pipeline are animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, alongside British faves Simon Pegg, Phil Daniels, Samantha Morton, David Tennant and Emilia Fox, as well as Indy flick hero Kyle MacLachlan. Not yet set for release on either side of the Atlantic (perhaps because it involves the search for a junkie elephant, hardly good for the kids), it nonetheless has received favourable reviews on the festival circuit.

Also promising is his starring role as a middle-aged gigolo in The Walker from writer/director Paul Shrader – a thematic sequel to his 1980 Richard Gere-starring American Gigolo, as well as his turn in the Coen brother’s latest, No Country For Old Men (alongside his A Prairie Home Companion co-star Tommy Lee Jones).

Another flick likely to catapult Harrelson back into the limelight is the intriguing thriller Transsiberia where, alongside Emily Mortimer and ben Kingsley, he will play one half of an American couple caught up in comspiracy and murder while travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway through China and Russia – although the Will Ferrell baseball comedy Semi-Pro is most likely to earn him mega-bucks.

Nonetheless, he’s not avoiding the smaller and more controversial flicks, with the entirely improvised poker comedy The Grand doubtless an interesting experience (for the actors, at least), and an ideal film for someone so associated with his political activities in the real world, The Battle in Seattle – set around anti-World Trade organisation demonstrations that descend into riot and violence. Despite the lefty politics – still unpopular in the US, though likely to be coming to the fore a bit more by its December Stateside release with the excitement of the Presidential primaries – the likes of Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Ray Liotta on the poster could well see it do well.

News: Elijah Wood

The voice behind the CGI penguin star of this week’s Happy Feet really is doing a good job of maintaining a career after his success as Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. No Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill-style fall from the spotlight for this young actor, who has already appeared as an underwear-obsessed stalker in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a sadistic psycho in Sin City, and a violent hooligan in Green Street since he returned from his quest to Mordor.

Frodo – sorry – Wood’s next few projects are yet more deliberately eclectic, yet decidedly interesting, movies, that should once again show that there’s much more to this chap than furry feet, wide blue eyes, and a tendency to look a bit pathetic while evil ghost-like things on massive flying dragons whizz around the shop.

Though it came out in France in May this year, and is scheduled for a US release in April 2007, sadly no UK distributors seem ready to put out Paris, je t’aime – a quirkily ambitious project that counts cult favourites the Coen brothers and Gus Van Sant, Scream‘s Wes Craven, French superstar Gerard Depardieu, Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuarón and Wong Kar-Wai’s cinematographer of choice Christopher Doyle amongst its many directors. Broken into 18 five-minute segments, each overseen by a different directorial team, Wood appears as a young American tourist in “Quartier de la Madeleine”, written and directed by Cube‘s Vincenzo Natali. Co-stars include the likes of Bob Hoskins, Steve Buscemi, Marianne Faithful, Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Juliette Binoche, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell and Natalie Portman – so quite why this has yet to hit our screens is anyone’s guess.

Wood will also be cropping up in the hugely impressive ensemble cast of former brat-pack actor turned director Emilio Estevez’s Bobby, revolving around the 1968 assassination of US presidential hopeful (and brother of the assassinated President JFK) Robert Kennedy. Due out in the UK on 26th January, the cast is padded out with the likes of Estevez’ father Martin Sheen, as well as Lawrence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, William H Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Freddy Rodriguez, Christian Slater and Sharon Stone. Nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this year, it’s definitely one to look forward to.

As for Wood’s other projects, again they are typically diverse and interesting. He’ll voice the young dragon Spyro in the latest in the popular computer game series – alongside Brit favourite Gary Oldman – The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, and take on the role of a young man forced in to the US army as the draft is re-introduced in the timely exploration of duty in time of war that is Day Zero. Then, due for release in 2008, he’ll play Albert Einstein in the film adaptation of comic Steve Martin’s successful play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, alongside another impressive cast that includes the likes of Martin himself, Kevin Kline, Juliette Binoche, Sienna Miller, Jason Biggs and Ryan Phillipe. Pretty soon Wood’s going to beat even Kevin Bacon for a Hollywood six degrees of separation…