News: Alec Baldwin

His turn as Annette Benning’s alcoholic husband in this week’s Running With Scissors is just the latest in a recent spurt of top-notch character performances from the former A-lister, showing he’s well on his way to having a bit of a career revival following his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination back in 2004, and his Best Comic TV Actor Golden Globe this year for 30 Rock.

Next up – on 23rd February – is Robert De Niro’s intriguing-sounding tale of the birth of the FBI The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon with the likes of Angelina Jolie, De Niro himself, Joe Pesci and Michael Gambon in support. That will be followed by the less promising, yet potentially interesting, 1980s-set coming of age gangster drama Brooklyn Rules, starring Freddie Prinze Jr, Mena Suvari and Scott “son of James” Caan.

Speaking of Freddie Prinze Jr, Baldwin’s next film after that will be Suburban Girl, a romantic comedy of relationships with age differences where he gets all loved up with Freddie’s real-world better half, Sarah Michelle Gellar – who at 29 is a good 20 years younger than him. Nice work if you can get it…

Then there’s another 1980s-set coming of age flick, Lymelife, though this time it’s a family-based comedy, with Baldwin as the patriarch of a family that includes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory “brother of Macaulay” Culkin, before Baldwin heads back to the war film genre that has served him so well in the past for The Forbidden City, based around the post-WWII Sino-American hunt for Japanese war criminals. Could be good…

News: Forest Whitaker

Whitaker’s been picking up awards and nominations left, right and centre for his turn as Ugandan dictaor Idi Amin in this week’s The Last King of Scotland, so far cleaning up for Best Actor with many of the US Critics’ awards.

Unsurprisingly, given all the praise, he’s got a fair few more – typically varied – projects in the works, from animated baseball family comedy Everyone’s Hero (the last directorial effort of former Superman Christopher Reeve) to a return to the world of fashion that he last visited in Pret a Porter for the drama Ripple Effect, about a fashion designer going through a crisis of confidence.

Then there’s more typically quirky, Indy-fick Whitaker fare, like The Air That I Breathe, based on an old Chinese proverb and starring Kevin Bacon as “Love”, Brendan Fraser as “Pleasure” and Sarah Michelle Gellar as “Sorrow” – Whitaker will play “Happiness”. Or perhaps another big budget potential blockbuster, like Vantage Point, a thriller about an attempted assassination of the American President told from five different perspectives (in a deliberate attempt to mimick the classic Kurasawa pic Rashomon).

Most worth looking forward to, though, is the next outing from screwball director Spike Jonze – Where the Wild Things Are. Based on the popular children’s story about a young boy who creates his own forest world inhabited by fabulous creatures, if they can get the animation right, this could prove to be something very special indeed. If you know the books, Whitaker will be voicing Wild Thing – which could well work very nicely.

Review: The Grudge 2

UK Release: 20th October 2006

Director Takashi Shimizu has made a career out of ghost stories. Or to be precise, he’s made a career out of retelling the same ghost story over and over. The Grudge 2 is the sixth reworking of his original Japanese outing — 2000’s direct-to-video Ju-on. It’s also a direct sequel to his recent Hollywood remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as an American in Tokyo terrorised by ghosts. Gellar returns briefly here, but is largely supplanted by Amber Tamblyn as her sister, who’s trying to stop the supernatural beings reaching the States.

Those familiar with the series will find little that’s original, as Shimizu shamelessly recycles set pieces from earlier incarnations of the story. Yet his masterful ability to inject even innocuous objects (telephones, wardrobes and shower cubicles) with a foreboding sense of dread delivers some occasional, hair-raising chills.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 102mins

Review by Jamie Russell

News: Sarah Michelle Gellar

Despite her top-notch turn in the modernised Dangerous Liaisons that was Cruel Intentions back in 1999, and money-making roles in the two live-action Scooby-Doo flicks, Gellar’s career has hardly boomed since her fame-making TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended three years ago. Nonetheless, she has been a bit of a workaholic, with four movies already completed or in post-production, and two more in the pipeline.

First up, due out in January, is yet another horror flick, The Return, where Gellar’s nightmares lead her on a quest to solve a 15-year-old murder. She is also set to challenge our gag reflexes in an entirely different way in The Girls’ Guide to Hunting & Fishing, where she’ll play a young woman enters a romance with an older man – played by Alec Baldwin, of all people.

More promising sounds The Air That I Breathe, an experimental drama based on an ancient Chinese proverb, where she will play “Sorrow” alongside Kevin Bacon’s “Love”, Brendan Fraser’s “Pleasure” and Forest Whitacker’s “Happiness”. The one that could really make it for her, however, is Alice. Due for release in America in July next year, Gellar plays a grown-up version of the Alice from Lewis Carrol’s beloved novels, who returns to Wonderland following an emotional breakdown.