News: Kathy Bates

Bates may still be best known for her Oscar-winning turn as a raving spycho in 1990’s Misery, but she crops up in all kinds of films, as her outing as Bitsy the Cow in this week’s Charlotte’s Web demonstrates amply.

Come the end of the year she’ll be cropping up in two more movies where voice work’s all important, with Jerry Seinfeld’s much-anticipated The Bee Movie being followed by the decidedly less anticipated “musical family adventure comedy” Christmas Is Here Again. But – just to make sure no one thinks she’s getting lazy – she’s also going to be cropping up in the decidedly less cheesy Vince Vaughn / Paul Giamatti comedy Fred Claus around the same time.

Then its a switch back away from comedy for P.S. I Love You, with Hilary Swank as a young widow whose husband has left her messages to help her cope with his death, before some heavy-duty drama in First Comes Love, set amidst the 1980s AIDS epidemic. But still, that’s not due until late 2008 – a long time to wait for a dramatic performance from one of the most subtle dramatic actresses currently working. Nonetheless, considering Hollywood’s sexist ageism, the fact that an actress in her fifties can manage to have so many films on the go is pretty impressive…

News: Anthony Hopkins

After taking on just one of the many interesting roles in this week’s Bobby, Hopkins will be taking a far more prominent position in his next outing – as writer, director and star of the wilfully experimental Slipstream, a surreal, existentialist Charlie Kauffman-style tale of an aging screenwriter whose characters start to appear in the real world, prompting much musing on the nature of reality, memory and death. Fun may not be the word, but it certainly sounds intriguing, with good reports this week from the Sundance Film Festival, where it’s just had its first screenings.

After that, it’s back to more familiar fare for Hopkins with Fracture (due in the Spring), where he’ll play a Hannibal Lecter-style intelligent murderer, as the wise older man in academia-set drama The City of Your Destination, and as yet another Butler, opposite Morgan Freeman, in Harry and the Butler (both due 2008).

Initially likely to attract most excitement, however, is the big budget adaptation of Dark Age classic Beowulf, where Hopkins will take on the put-upon King Hrothgar opposite Ray Winstone’s Beowulf and a monstrous Grendel voiced by Crispin Glover. And, in terms of full-on Hopkins-acting-his-guts-out potential, his turn as novellist Leo Tolstoy, opposite Paul Giamatti and Meryl Streep, in biopic The Last Station could prove one to excite the awards panels in a year or two, as the aging writer frets over combining his wealth and fame with his high principles. Not something, on the evidence of Slipstream, that Hopkins has much difficulty in doing.

News: Rachel Weisz

After this week’s odd sci-fi, The Fountain, Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon will come as a bit of a break. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

News: Rachel Weisz

Brit lovely Rachel Weisz is just one of the big names in this week’s kids’ fantasy Eragon, though she’s only on voice duties. We’ll soon be seeing a lot more of her, however, with a number of big parts in big movies due over the next weeks, months and years.

Due in January, after a perhaps appropriately insanely long wait, is oddball director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain – a much-delayed, hugely ambitious sci-fi/fantasy romance spanning 1,000 years and three separate, if linked, storylines revolving around Hugh Jackman’s efforts to find Weisz, his one true love. It has been slated at least as much as praised by those who have seen it so far, so could prove interesting.

Then will come more standard fare, with Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

News: Judi Dench

The veteran Dame, who celebrates her 72nd birthday on 9th December, may well be the only major Bond cast member retained fromthe Brosnan years in this week’s Casino Royale, but let’s face it, she’s been a star for so long that she’d hardly be fussed even if they had decided to drop her.

Other than the next film in the series, the as-yet untitled Bond 22, she will be returning to work with Iris director Richard Eyre for Notes on a Scandal, set for release in the UK on 7th February 2007. Dench plays a teacher drawn to the new Art mistress at her school, played by the excellent Cate Blanchett, who gets swiftly entrapped in a web of illicit love, lies and deceit. She is also rumoured to be appearing in the next film from Shanghai Knights and The Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, Fred Claus – unsurprisingly due Christmas 2007. Starring Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus and Vince Vaughan as his good-for-nothing brother Joe, it could well turn out to be a fun festive treat – though quite what part Dame judi will have in the proceedings is anyone’s guess.

News: Scarlett Johansson

Even before this week’s magical movie, Hollywood’s hottest starlet had got used to working alongside her The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman on the set of Woody Allen’s Scoop, yet to be scheduled for a UK release, where she plays an American journalism student in London who lands a big story – and an affair with Jackman’s aristocrat. She’ll be cropping up as a student again (well, she is still only 21, with her 22nd on the 22nd of this month) in American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s New York-set The Nanny Diaries, where she’ll play the titular nanny, living and trying to keep up with her studies in the household of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney’s Mr and Mrs X.

But Johansson’s far too canny to risk getting typecast, so it’s good to see her lending her help to the current revival of the period drama, with no less than four historical projects in the works. She is still attached to star as Betsy Balcombe, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s British jailer at the end of the French Emperor’s life, in Napoleon and Betsy – although the project seems to have been on hiatus for some months. More recently announced – though with little as yet known other than that it came from an idea by Johansson herself – is Amazon, which could well be a female version of Gladiator, with Johansson in the Russell Crowe role as an avenging warrior in 200BC.

Most interestingly, however, is a brace of British-based history pieces, both set in the Tudor era. First up, based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory and directed by the man behind the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House, is The Other Boleyn Girl. With Eric Bana lined up as Henry VIII and Natalie Portman as his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn, Johansson will play the “other” Boleyn of the title, Anne’s sister Mary, who was also having an affair with the King. After that, Johansson will take on royalty herself in Mary Queen of Scots, with her in the title role, based on a script by Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. See? They always told you that history could be cool…