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.

News: Adrien Brody

Oscar-winner Brody puts in a good turn as a noirish detective in this week’s Hollywoodland, though most of the Academy Awards buzz for this film seems to be centred around the “comeback” performance of his co-star Ben Affleck.

It could instead be the upcoming biopic of Spanish bullfighter Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, Manolete, for which he trained in southern Spain to get the full bullfighting experience, which garners Brody his next batch of nominations. Likely to be a controversial movie for its potential to laud such a cruel sport, and coming from Menno Meyjes, the same writer/director responsible for the John Cusack-starring Hitler biopic Max, word is that the chemistry with co-star Penélope Cruz could make this one to remember on its release in Autumn 2007.

Brody will also be appearing in the experimental director Todd Haynes’ equally experimental exploration of Bob Dylan I’m Not There, alongside a ridiculously impressive cast of the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett,Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Julianne Moore. Due out next year, Dylan’s life and work is explored through seven characters representing different aspects of the man and music.

News: Christian Bale

Casting rumours continue to emerge for the second in The Prestige star and director Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan’s new Batman franchise, The Dark Knight. To join Heath Ledger’s Joker, rumours circulating include Cruel Intentions‘ Ryan Philippe as Two Face and Capote’s Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.

Bale has a number of other movies in the pipeline: the Werner Herzog-directed Vietnam War flick Rescue Dawn, where he plays a German-born US pilot shot down over the jungle, experimental director Tod Haynes’ exploration of the life and work of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, with Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Heath Ledger, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Cate Blanchett (see ComingSoon.net for more); and is set to star alongside Russell Crowe and Peter Fonda in a remake of the 1957 Elmore Leonard Western 3:10 to Yuma for Walk the Line director James Mangold.

Review: Children of Men

UK Release: 22nd September 2006

England, 2027: this green and pleasant land is now a dirty dystopia in which humanity has become infertile and its childless society is crumbling as refugees and terrorists fight the fascist powers that be. Submerged in this chaos is alcoholic former activist-turned-bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen), who watches from the sidelines until a surprise visit from an ex-lover (Julianne Moore) offers an unlikely glimmer of hope.

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También) here delivers a truly startling take on PD James’s downbeat novel, reworking its apocalyptic theme through the cracked prism of the post-9/11 era. Owen is excellent and there’s a glorious turn from Michael Caine as an ageing, pot-smoking ex-political cartoonist.

But it’s Cuarón’s film: his hand-held camerawork aping news broadcasts as it records nerve-shredding action set pieces in tense, unbroken shots. True, the proceedings are occasionally marred by a surfeit of plot exposition, yet the stark triumph of Children of Men lies in how its visceral vérité style brings the realities of a War on Terror fought in distant lands crashing back onto British soil.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 109mins

Review by Jamie Russell