News: Brad Pitt

It seems Pitt can do no wrong these days. He’s got away with the divorce to become one half of yet another Hollywood golden couple, and now has a kid to go with it. But ignoring the tedious tabloid angle, his cinematic outings have been pretty impressive of late and all. After this week’s hotly Oscar-tipped Babel, he’s got an insane number of very pormising movies in the works, from The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button, alongside his Babel co-star Cate Blanchett and directed by his old Fight Club and Seven buddy David Fincher, to the much-anticipated western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, where Pitt will play the legendary gunslinger James, complete with ‘tasche and stetson.

Then, of course, there’s Ocean’s Thirteen – which will see all the usual suspected added to by Al Pacino, and which all involved have promised will be much, much better than the really rather dire Ocean’s Twelve, before he goes from frivolous to serious and political for Dirty Tricks, set in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, and State of Play, based on the tip-top BBC political drama that aired back in 2003. He’ll be taking on the John Simm role as a crusadingjournalist trying to uncover a major scandal – although it’s somewhat likely that the action will relocate from Westminster to Washington.

Then there’s a bit more frivolity with Chad Schmidt – where Pitt will play both himself and the title character. Why? Because it’s set in 1980s Hollywood, just as Pit’s rise to fame began, and the Chad Schmidt of the title is a Brad Pitt lookalike – who rather resents his doppelganger’s success.

But keep your eye on Pitt in the run-up to the 2009 Oscars – he could be worth a flutter for Dallas Buyer’s Club, due next year, where he’ll play an AIDS victim in the late 1980s forced to experiment with black market drugs in the hope of finding a cure. If they play it right – which looks likely as they’ve got Monsters Ball director Marc Forster in to direct – it could well be one for the awards.

Review: Stranger Than Fiction

UK release date: 1st December

Following in the footsteps of such movies as Being John Malkovich and I Heart Huckabees, which treat their outrageous scenarios as more drama than comedy, comes Stranger than Fiction.

The loopy premise here is that mild-mannered tax inspector Will Ferrell begins to hear voices — well, actually just one voice, which seems to be narrating his life. A visit to a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman, as enjoyably tick-riddled as ever) reveals that the author of his story is Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) and she is indeed in control of his destiny. The trouble is that all her novels end in the death of the lead character.

In less talented hands, this kind of forced intellectual whimsy can be deeply irritating, but with the understated direction of Finding Neverland‘s Marc Forster, the decidedly odd is perfectly believable. And Ferrell, like Bill Murray and Robin Williams, proves that comic actors reined in can give surprisingly affecting dramatic performances.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 112mins

Review by Adam Smith

News: Marc Foster

German-born director Forster is making quite a name for himself, adding this week’s Stranger Than Fiction to an already impressive CV that includes the Oscar-nominated likes of Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland.

He currently has three films in the works: the small-scale tale of an Afghan-American’s return to his former homeland, The Kite Runner, based on the bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini, is due out in the UK in January 2008, and will feature little in the way of big stars – quite a change from working with the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Depp on recent movies.

He is also attached to direct 36, a remake of the 2004 French action flick, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu, 36 Quai des Orfèvres. No casting news has yet emerged, but rumour has it that one Robert De Niro may be interested…

Finally, and from the sound of things pretty much guaranteed to bring in a few Oscar nods on its release late in 2007, is Dallas Buyer’s Club. Brad Pitt will star in absolutely classic Oscar-winning material, as an HIV sufferer who develops full-blown AIDS and is told to go home and die by mid-1980s medics who were unable to cope with the then new disease, but who instead hunts down potential life-prolonging drugs via the black market in a desperate attempt to find a cure.