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.

News: Andy Serkis

The actor best known for his superb turn as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings is a busy boy these days. After his turn as David Bowie’s sidekick in this week’s The Prestige, his versatile voice will next crop up in next month’s Aardman animation Flushed Away, alongside The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman, and has plenty more films in the works. He will soon crop up as the sinister Interrogator in the timely Kafkaesque thriller Rendition (which has a great production blog packed with information), before shifting to childrens’ fantasy for Inkheart, an adaptation of the popular Cornelia Funke novel starring Paul Bettany and Brendan Fraser, due 2008.

Serkis is also set to make his feature film directorial debut with Freezing Time, based on the life of pioneering 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge and described as “The tumultuous life of the Godfather of Cinema, his collaboration and conflict with the Governor of California, his trial for the murder of his wife’s con-man lover, and his relentless pursuit of the art of motion pictures”. He will be follwing that with another directing project, an adaptation of the autobiography of Stephen Smith, Addict, a tale of 20 years of drug addiction, crime and a slow descent into poverty and madness.

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.