News: Brittany Murphy

Having teamed up with her Sin City co-star Elijah Wood as the voice of the penguin love interest in this week’s Happy Feet, Murphy looks to be going back to eschewing the traditional roles for up and coming starlets for her next movie, The Ramen Girl. In what could sound like a shameless rip-off of Lost in Translation, she’ll be heading off to Tokyo as an American woman who splits up with her boyfriend in the Japanese capital and, desperately looking for direction, decides to train as a Ramen noodle cook under Japanese household name Toshiyuki Nishida’s strict master chef. Expect culture clashes galore.

After her trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, Murphy will be off to even more exotic territory in surreal comedy/fantas/drama The Other Side, pitched as a cross between Beetlejuice, Amelie and Alice in Wonderland. Based around a scientist’s exploration of strange goings on on a remote island, Murphy joins a cast that includes the impressive likes of Jim Broadbent, Tim Roth, Anjelica Huston, Giovanni Ribisi and Jason Lee – if they do it right, it could prove in interesting Tim Burton-style slice of weirdness.

Finally, Murphy will be going back to the role that first brought her to many people’s attention, that of Clive Owen’s girl Shellie in Sin City 2. Owen will return as well, alongside another impressive cast that includes actors old and new like Rosario Dawson, Michael Madsen, Jessica Alba, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devon Aoki, Mickey Rourke and – rumour has it – possibly also Angelina Jolie. Either way, if you liked the last slice of ultraviolent, super-stylised noirish action, it’s pretty certain that the wait until its release (possibly Spring 2007, possibly not) will be a long one.

News: Diane Lane

The actress probably still best known for either 1983’s The Outsiders or the 1989 Western TV mini-series Lonesome Dove is on good form in this week’s Hollywoodland, although the role is probably too small to see her land another Oscar nomination to add to her one for 2002’s Unfaithful.

She has a fair few more projects in the works, however, including the potentially promising action thriller Killshot, where she’ll play one half of a couple in a witness protection programme who are tracked down by hitmen Mickey Rourke and the insanely promising star of last year’s superb high school noir flick Brick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with additional roles for the likes of Rosario Dawson and Jackass‘ Johnny Knoxville.

Also sounding promising is Ed Harris’ directorial follow-up to his critically-acclaimed 2000 biopic Pollock. Other than Harris, who will star as well as write and direct, Lane will appear alongside Viggo Mortensen in the Western Appaloosa, based on the novel by Robert B. Parker about two friends appointed to police a small town, which is set to start filming in Autumn 2007. We need more Westerns these days – it’s amazing after the success of TV show Deadwood that more aren’t on the way.

News: Johnny Knoxville

The man most associated with the Jackass brand has been doing a decent enough job of turning himself into a genuine film star that it’s amazing his agent still lets him take part in such dangerous antics.

Next up, he’ll be appearing ain a small role longside Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rosario Dawson in hitman comedy caper Killshot, but it will be his film after that (assuming that rumours of his casting are true) which could finally give him his proper movie break. Based on an accalaimed series of graphic novels, Hawaiian Dick is set in a stylised 1950s version of the islands, with down-on-his luck detective Byrd trying to cope with the surprising amount of crime he finds himself surrounded by. If it goes ahead and Knoxville can pull it off, it could just see him hit the A-list…