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: Gwyneth Paltrow

Following her turn in this week’s Infamous, Paltrow looks set to be on our screens rather more in coming months, following a break of a couple of years to start raising her family in which she’s mostly just appeared in the tabloids.

Next up – out in the UK on 2nd February – is the quirky comedy drama Running With Scissors, about a teenager from a troubled household who ends up living with his psychiatrist’s bizarre family for a year. Alongside Paltrow are some big and up-and-coming names, from her Shakespeare in Love co-star Joseph Feinnes through Alec Baldwin, Annette Benning, Evan Rachel Wood and Patrick Wilson. Could be good.

She’ll keep up the family theme with The Good Night, directed by her brother, Jake. Starring Martin Freeman asa former popstar turned advertising jingle writer who’s having a mid life crisis, the impressive cast includes the likes of Penelope Cruz, Danny De Vito and Simon Pegg. Another British-based movie – unsurprising as Paltrow now lives pretty much exclusively in London – is Love and other Distaters, a romantic comedy revolving around an American intern at the British version of fashion mag Vogue, and co-starring the likes of Orlando Bloom and Stephanie Beacham.

Then come her two biggest projects, bothe decidedly more American. She has just signed on to star alongside Robert Downey Jr in the big screen adaptation of comic book superhero Iron Man, due out next year and sure to be huge. But more interesting is Dirty Tricks – a drama set during the fallout from the Watergate affair, with Jim Broadbent brilliantly cast as disgraced President Richard Nixon, and co-starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Annette Benning, Sharon Stone and Meryl Streep. That could prove very promising indeed.

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.

Review: The Departed

UK Release: 6th October 2006

After a run of solid, adventurous, but ultimately underwhelming efforts (Gangs of New York, The Aviator), The Departed finds director Martin Scorsese returning to more familiar form with a superior, Boston-set cops-and-gangsters story, based on the Hong Kong crime drama Infernal Affairs.

Rookie cop Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to go deep undercover to help catch local Mafia godfather Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Costello has groomed Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) since puberty to be his spy on the force. The complex script (fluently adapted by William Monahan) rotates around these two moles, who orbit each other like twin suns for most of the movie, but only meet in the third act.

It all makes for extremely watchable entertainment. The leads are luminous (especially Nicholson, doing his best work in years here), but supporting players Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Ray Winstone all steal scenes with glee.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 151mins

Review by Leslie Felperin

News: Matt Damon

The Departed‘s Damon continues to be one of the hardest-working stars in film, with two films already completed and two more currently filming since wrapping on Scorsese’s latest.

Of those already completed, first up is the highly promising The Good Shepherd. Directed by Robert De Niro, Damon takes the lead opposite De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci and Alec Baldwin in this period piece drama about the founding of the CIA, written by the hugely talented Forrest Gump, The Insider, Ali and Munich screenwriter Eric Roth. After that he’ll be popping up in Margaret alongside Anna Paquin, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno in this coming of age drama about a teenage girl convinced that she caused a traffic accident.

Damon is currently busy filming the third movies in two separate franchises – Ocean’s Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum. If you’ve seen the last films in either of those two series, it should be fairly obvious which one’s likely to be the best…