News: Robert De Niro

De Niro’s concentration on comedy in recent years has been depressing for fans of his earlier work, so this week’s The Good Shepherd – which he directed as well as cameos in – has been something of a relief even if it isn’t as good as it should have been. Thankfully, with loads of films in the pipeline, quite a few are set to involve straight acting for a change.

Next up is an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman fantasy novel Stardust, with a supremely impressive cast that includes the likes of Peter O’Toole, Ian McKellen, Rupert Everett, Ricky Gervais, Sienna Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer and Clare Danes. Then there’s New Orleans, a thriller about police corruption, with De Niro investigating with the help of his new partner, played by rapper 50 Cent, before hooking up with the rather more talented George Clooney for the crime drama 36.

Then it’s back to comedy for Hollywood expose What Just Happened?, based on the book by Heat and Fight Club producer Art Linson (who also wrote the screenplay), with De Niro playing a film producer having a tough time getting funding, with co-stars including the likes of Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and John Turturro. After that it’s more drama, starring alongside his erstwhile Taxi Driver co-star Jodie Foster for her latest directorial effort, Sugarland, about two lawyers fighting to end the exploitation of migrant sugar labourers.

Then more drama – and a return to familiar territory – for The Winter of Frankie Machine, with De Niro playing a retired mob hit man, lured back into his former profession for one last hit. Finally, he’s set to star as the husband of Meryl Streep female President of the United States in the political comedy First Man, which sounds promising – as does the computer game version of Heat, assuming De Niro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer all sign on to do voice duties, as they’re currently only in negotiations.

News: Angelina Jolie

Everyone’s favourite fantasy figure Angelina Jolie may be wasted in this week’s The Good Shepherd, and may have been seen in the tabloids more often than on screen in the last couple of years, but that’s hopefully set to change.

She’s next up doing full-on “proper” acting in A Mighty Heart, following the efforts of the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl to find out precisely how her husband ended up being beheaded on camera by Islamist fanatics back in 2002. then she’s on voice duties as the voice of the mother of the monster Grendel in the much-anticipated adaptation of the Dark Age poem Beowulf, starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and a host of other top-notch actors, with more voice duties following in the animated comedy Kung-Fu Panda, alongside Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman and Lucy Liu, before switching back to drama for the Ayn Rand adaptation Atlas Shrugged, possibly alongside her real-world lover and father of her ultra-famous baby, Brad Pitt.

News: Matt Damon

Damon’s been doing stupidly well of late, with only the disappointing The Brothers Grim and Ocean’s Twelve acting as blips on his career during his last few outings. Though this week’s The Good Shepherd may not be as great as could have been hoped, he nonetheless puts in a tip-top performance which suggests that it’s only a matter of time before he lands an acting Oscar to go with the one he got for writing Good Will Hunting with best buddy Ben Affleck back in 1998.

He’s already finished filming Margaret, revolving around Anna Paquin’s young girl who witnesses a bus crash, though it is not yet set for release, and has also wrapped Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thirteen – promising that it’ll be much better than the last sequel to the fun Ocean’s Eleven when it’s released in June. Then, in August, we can expect to see him in another sequel, this time in his really rather superb Jason Bourne franchise, with The Bourne Ultimatum promising to answer all sorts of questions about his amnesiac assassin.

He’s also lined up to star aongside Tim Roth in Francis Ford Coppola’s inter-war period piece Youth Without Youth, and alongside his The Departed co-star Mark Wahlberg in 1980s-set boxing drama The Fighter, as well as providing the voiceover for the documentary Running the Sahara, following three men who want to be the first to run coast to coast across the Sahara desert.

News: Joel Schumacher

Director Schumacher, still best known for his disasterous Batman and Robin, has tried his hand at deep and meaningful with this week’s Jim Carrey-starring psychological thriller The Number 23. He’s got another thriller up next, the occult Nazi mystery revenge piece Town Creek, set in small town America, and starring Prison Break‘s Dominic Purcell and Desperate Housewives‘ Jesse Metcalfe. Then it’s Centricity, starring The Matrix trilogy’s Monica Bellucci, the plot of which remains somewhat mysterious at the moment, before he takes on another psychological piece with The Crowded Room, based on the true story of a psychophrenic robber and rapist with no fewer than twenty-four different personalities. Twenty-three might be more appropriate, given his current movie, but you can’t have everything…

News: Ken Watanabe

Having been a big name star in his native Japan for years, only recently has Ken Watanabe started making a name for himself in Hollywood – first came The Last Samurai, then Batman Begins, Memoirs of a Geisha, and now this week’s Letters From Iwo Jima. He’s now going from strength to strength.

Next up, and shown at Cannes last month, is A Dream of Red Mansions, a love story set during China’s vicious Cultural Revolution and co-starring Kate Hudson, which could prove intriguing (despite this ongoing obsession of America-backed films of casting Japanese actors as Chinese and vice versa). Then there’s (possibly) another Chinese epic, this time for Hong Kong master John Woo’s much-anticipated ancient Chinese epic The Battle of Red Cliff. Watanabe’s casting has yet to be 100% confirmed, but if he does join the cast it’ll be pretty impressive, including as it does Hong Kong megastars Tony Leung and Chow-Yun Fat, in their first joint venture since Woo’s 1992 classic Hard Boiled. Finally, Watanabe is rumoured to be cropping up as the Silver Samurai in the X-Men spin-off Wolverine, due out next year.

News: Billy Bob Thornton

Everyone’s favourite oddball Southerner, doing his best to fill the near-legendary Terry-Thomas’ shoes in this weeks School for Scoundrels remake, has another comedy up next, starring as the titular sadistic gym teacher Mr Woodcock opposite Seann William Scott and Susan Sarandon. He’s rather good at doing deeply unpleasant yet somehow entertaining characters, so this tale of the old childhood fear of a hated teacher getting it on with your mother is bound to be one of those amusing yet uncomfortable flicks when it hits our screens on 11th May.

Also on the way – completed, just not yet set for release this side of the pond, is drama The Astronaut Farmer, with Billy Bob a retired astronaut who decides to build his own rocket on his farm in his desperation to get into space. Early reports are promising – assuming you don’t mind such sentimental premises, that is… After that he’ll play a father whose family face off against a gang of local thugs in an adaptation of the Leif Enger novel Peace Like A River, which should shortly be going into production.

News: Jon Heder

He’s still best known as dweeb king Napoleon Dynamite, and this week’s School For Scoundrels is yet another nerdy role, but it looks like Heder is quite happy doing comedy, even at the risk of being typecast.

Next up is speed-skating comedy Blades of Glory, due 6th April, where he’s starring alongside Will Ferrell as one of a pair of arch-rival ice skaters stripped of their Olympic medals for cheating who find a loophole allowing them to compete as a team. Then there’s more sport – albeit animated – as he goes on voice duties for the penguin-based comedy Surf’s Up, revolving around (as if you can’t guess) a penguin surfing championship.

After that it’s back to slacker/loser territory for Mama’s Boy, with Heder as a 29-year-old living at home with his mother (played by the tip-top Diane Keaton), whose life of ease looks set to be ruined by the arrival of a new suitor, the excellent Jeff Daniels. Heder’s also completed a supporting turn in low-budget romantic comedy Moving McAllister, but that is as yet not set for release.

News: Simon Pegg

Former Shaun of the Dead and Spaced star Pegg is, with this week’s Hot Fuzz, making yet another strong case that he’s the first British comic with a real chance to make it big in America since Peter Sellers – but will he be able to maintain the momentum?

He’s certainly got a fair few more in the works – from a planned new sitcom about a pub quiz team (with his Spaced, Shaun and Hot Fuzz co-star and real-world best buddy Nick Frost), La Triviata, due some time this year through to the animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, for which Pegg wrote the English screenplay (it was originally Norwegian) about a junkie elephant on the run and provides voice duties alongside the likes of Woody Harrelson, Kyle MacLachlan, Samantha Morton, David Tennant, Emilia Fox and Phil Daniels.

But there are also some bigger projects on the way, like the romantic comedy The Good Night, with Martin Freeman, Penelope Cruz, Danny DeVito, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Gambon, or former Friends star David Schwimmer’s directorial debut Run, Frat Boy, Run, with Pegg starring alongside Thandie Newton and The Simpsons‘ Hank Azaria.

By far the most promising, however, is Pegg’s starring role in a big screen adaptation of Toby Young’s bestselling memoir of life at a high-end New York magazine, How to Lose Freinds and Alienate People – to be directed by Robert B Weide, best known for his work on the cult comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. That could well be enough to get Pegg into the Hollywood comedy A-list…

Review: The Science of Sleep

UK release date: 16th February

Less accessible than his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, director/screenwriter Michel Gondry’s pretentious sci-fi vanity production is an overly whimsical, infantile affair.

Gael García Bernal plays a graphic artist who returns to Paris after his father’s death. Will he ever realise his neighbour Charlotte Gainsbourg is the soul mate he’s been searching for? Or will he continually dream he’s the host of a one-man TV chat show starring a swirling melting-pot of his desires?

With its makeshift “Blue Peter”-style special effects (constructed from egg boxes, clay and cellophane), the consistently juvenile approach soon becomes wearing and the whole self-indulgent mess is a complete waste of Bernal and Gainsbourg’s charms. Resembling Gondry’s Bjork rock videos strung between surreally presented concepts of romantic angst, this fey fantasy is frustratingly hollow. The “one second time machine” is the single clever laugh.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 15

Review by Alan Jones

News: Michel Gondry

The oddball French director behind the tip-top Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and this week’s quirky The Science of Sleep has a fair few more, equally bizarre, projects in the pipeline.

Next up is the movie reference-laden Jack Black-starring comedy Be Kind Rewind, set in a video store run by one of Black’s friends where all the tapes get wiped by Black’s magnetised brain, forcing the pair to recreate such Hollywood classics as The Lion King, Robocop and Back to the Future for the shop’s clientelle. With co-stars including Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow, it should prove at the very least interesting, much like Gondry’s other work, and with Black in the lead should prove another Eternal Sunshine-style hit.

After that it looks like a leap back into Gondry’s personal obsession of space, time and human perception for Master of Space and Time. Based on the novel of the same name by Rudy Rucker, it revolves around a couple of (as yet uncast) mad scientists who find a way to control – as if the title isn’t clue enough – space and time. rumours are circulating that Jack Black could again be set to star, but it’s still early days, and isn’t due until next year anyway. Could be fun, though…

News: Charlotte Gainsbourg

The actress probably still best known for her controversial duet with her father Serge Gainsbourg, “Lemon Incest”, recorded when she was just thirteen, is on good form in this week’s the Science of Sleep, and has a fair few more projects lined up that make the best of her multilingual talents.

First up is Nuovomondo (known as The Golden Door in English), which won a bunch of awards at last year’s prestigious Venice Film Festival. Gainsbourg takes the lead in this tale of Italian immigration to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, and has received much praise – but whether this will be enough for this little Franco-Italian-German production to get a proper release is anyone’s guess. After that there’s more foreign language frolics in the French farcical comedy Prête-moi ta main (or I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single in English), where Gainsbourg plays a woman called in to pretend to be a friend’s girlfriend to stop his family from forcing him into marriage.

Then it’s back to English language roles in cult director Todd Haynes’ intriguing and much-anticipated experimental Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (alongside the likes of Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Julianne Moore and Adrien Brody), before cropping up in City of Your Final Destination for director James Ivory (of Merchant Ivory fame), alongside Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney. She’s doing well.

Review: Charlotte’s Web

UK release date: 9th February

Author EB White’s classic animal fable gets the full Babe treatment in this warm, live-action family fantasy. Gently introducing younger viewers to the natural cycle of life, it explores how a clever spider called Charlotte (tenderly voiced by Julia Roberts) ingeniously uses her web-spinning talents to save a small pig from the chop.

While originally filmed as an animated feature in 1973, here the tale combines genuine critters and CGI effects, with delightful visual results. Like Charlotte herself, piglet Wilbur is so endearing that you can understand farmer’s daughter Fern (a likeable Dakota Fanning) begging for the runty porker’s life — though sadly the other crass creatures that inhabit Wilbur’s barnyard home don’t share this charm. Voiced by the likes of Robert Redford and Steve Buscemi, their tone-lowering flatulence and constant wisecracking dilutes the story’s central magic, making the finale less poignant than it should have been.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate U

Review by Sloan Freer

News: Julia Roberts

We haven’t seen much of Julia Roberts since 2004’s disappointing Ocean’s Twelve, with this week’s Charlotte’s Web featuring merely her voice as the titular spider, following her earlier voice work on the animated The Ant Bully last year. If you’re a fan of the tabloids you’ll doubtless know why – she gave birth to twins in November 2004, and is currently expecting another child, due in the summer.

Nonetheless, she found time amidst all the pregnancies and childcare to star alongside Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman in what looks set to be a pretty major movie (as if the three stars – with nine Oscar nominations between them – aren’t indication enough…). Charlie Wilson’s War is due out in December in the States, just in time to qualify for the 2008 Oscars, and it’s a pretty likely contender for a slew of big nominations. Directed by the rather good Mike Nichols (with five Oscar nominations under his belt), who directed Roberts in 2004’s Closer, it is based on the true story of Texas Congressman Charles Wilson (Hanks) who, soon after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, was the man who realised that the United States needed to get subtly involved in the conflict. The upshot? The funding of covert CIA operations and training of local tribesmen – including a number of Islamic fundamentalists who would go on to form a little group by the name of Al-Qaeda. Topical, political, and plenty of scope for epic storytelling. It has Oscar written all over it.

The only other film Roberts has in the works is The Friday Night Knitting Club, a rather more low-key affair, based on the novel by Katie Jacobs about a group of women who make friends in a knitting shop in New York. Roberts is the only name currently attached – though whether it will happen now she’s pregnant again is anyone’s guess.

News: Robert Redford

Veteran screen icon Redford hasn’t been showing so much of his usual good taste in picking his roles of late, with his turn as a horse in this week’s Charlotte’s Web not quite what you’d expect from the Sundance Kid.

Next up he’ll be returning to directing for the first time since 2000’s cheesy disappointment that was The Legend of Bagger Vance with another typically Redford schmaltz-fest along the lines of his earlier The Horse Whisperer and The River Runs Through It, in which he’ll also star. Aloft follows a couple of men who track a peregrine falcon across America, so looks to be more of the same.

This is the man who’s pretty much single-handedly responsible for the success of the Sundance Film Festival, for God’s sake, and so in turn for the careers of the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch and Kevin Smith – he should know quality when he sees it, so why hasn’t he directed a decent film since 1994’s excellent Quiz Show?

Well, with any luck, his other upcoming directorial project, Lions For Lambs, could finally indicate that he’s got his film sense back. He’ll again star – alongside Tom Cruise (in his comeback flick after the world decided he was certifiably potty) and Meryl Streep – though this time the material looks both far more interesting andfar more promising, set as it is around the events in modern day Afghanistan, and how they have impacted on United States society. It could well prove to be the first major War on Terror-era movie to join the “Vietnam Vet” genre, of which the impressive likes of The Deer Hunter and Tom Cruise’s best film Born On The Fourth Of July are but two of the most well-known. It’d be nice to see Redford do well again at any rate – even if a side-effect would be the revival of Cruise’s career…

News: Dakota Fanning

The Shirley Temple of the early 21st century continues to ascend as the main human character in this week’s Charlotte’s Web. It’s an instantly recognisable name even if you can’t place her typically cutesy child star face – she was Tom Cruise’s daughter in War of the Worlds, and has also starred alongside Denzel Washington in Man On Fire since her breakthrough role as Sean Penn’s daughter in 2001’s I Am Sam. Not a bad list of co-stars for a twelve-year-old…

Next up she’ll be going dramatic again, taking the lead in Hounddog as a troubled teenager who escapes from the world via the music of Elvis Presley – and featuring one particular scene that has been the cause of much tabloid outrage and controversy, considering Fanning’s age.

After that she’ll lend her voice talents to the lead character in Coraline, based on the children’s novel by cult comic book writer Neil Gaiman, about a girl who discovers a portal to another world. Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane and Jennifer Saunders fill out the cast.

Finally it’s back to yet more deep drama with The Secret Life of Bees, exploring racism and bereavement in the 1960s Deep South. She looks to be going for an Oscar, this one. But does she have the talent? Unsurprisingly, at her age it’s rather too early to tell…