News: Jon Heder

He’s still best known as dweeb king Napoleon Dynamite, and this week’s School For Scoundrels is yet another nerdy role, but it looks like Heder is quite happy doing comedy, even at the risk of being typecast.

Next up is speed-skating comedy Blades of Glory, due 6th April, where he’s starring alongside Will Ferrell as one of a pair of arch-rival ice skaters stripped of their Olympic medals for cheating who find a loophole allowing them to compete as a team. Then there’s more sport – albeit animated – as he goes on voice duties for the penguin-based comedy Surf’s Up, revolving around (as if you can’t guess) a penguin surfing championship.

After that it’s back to slacker/loser territory for Mama’s Boy, with Heder as a 29-year-old living at home with his mother (played by the tip-top Diane Keaton), whose life of ease looks set to be ruined by the arrival of a new suitor, the excellent Jeff Daniels. Heder’s also completed a supporting turn in low-budget romantic comedy Moving McAllister, but that is as yet not set for release.

News: Woody Harrelson

Despite still being a big name, Harrelson hasn’t had any especially high-profile roles for quite a while, generally appearing in relatively minor parts in relatively small films – with his turn in this week’s Altman ensemble piece A Prairie Home Companion and the recent A Scanner Darkly being his biggest for a fair few years. He has a fair few movies in the works, though, and must surely have enough money in the bank not to care any more, so it looks rather like he’s choosing his projects deliberately and carefully.

Amongst the numerous flicks in the pipeline are animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, alongside British faves Simon Pegg, Phil Daniels, Samantha Morton, David Tennant and Emilia Fox, as well as Indy flick hero Kyle MacLachlan. Not yet set for release on either side of the Atlantic (perhaps because it involves the search for a junkie elephant, hardly good for the kids), it nonetheless has received favourable reviews on the festival circuit.

Also promising is his starring role as a middle-aged gigolo in The Walker from writer/director Paul Shrader – a thematic sequel to his 1980 Richard Gere-starring American Gigolo, as well as his turn in the Coen brother’s latest, No Country For Old Men (alongside his A Prairie Home Companion co-star Tommy Lee Jones).

Another flick likely to catapult Harrelson back into the limelight is the intriguing thriller Transsiberia where, alongside Emily Mortimer and ben Kingsley, he will play one half of an American couple caught up in comspiracy and murder while travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway through China and Russia – although the Will Ferrell baseball comedy Semi-Pro is most likely to earn him mega-bucks.

Nonetheless, he’s not avoiding the smaller and more controversial flicks, with the entirely improvised poker comedy The Grand doubtless an interesting experience (for the actors, at least), and an ideal film for someone so associated with his political activities in the real world, The Battle in Seattle – set around anti-World Trade organisation demonstrations that descend into riot and violence. Despite the lefty politics – still unpopular in the US, though likely to be coming to the fore a bit more by its December Stateside release with the excitement of the Presidential primaries – the likes of Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Ray Liotta on the poster could well see it do well.

News: John C Reilly

The pug-faced character actor may have made his name with decent acting skills in films like this week’s A Prairie Home Companion, notably in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia, but he seems increasingly to be turning to comedy, as with his recent outing in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

He’s got three more comedies in the works: Quebec, as a grocery store clerk vying with his colleague Seann William Scott for a promotion; Step Brothers, another bit of comedic rivalry with his real-world buddy and Talladega Nights co-star Will Ferrell; and Walk Hard, a spoof of Oscar-winner Walk The Line, in which he’ll star as a singer on the road to music superstardom.

Review: Stranger Than Fiction

UK release date: 1st December

Following in the footsteps of such movies as Being John Malkovich and I Heart Huckabees, which treat their outrageous scenarios as more drama than comedy, comes Stranger than Fiction.

The loopy premise here is that mild-mannered tax inspector Will Ferrell begins to hear voices — well, actually just one voice, which seems to be narrating his life. A visit to a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman, as enjoyably tick-riddled as ever) reveals that the author of his story is Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) and she is indeed in control of his destiny. The trouble is that all her novels end in the death of the lead character.

In less talented hands, this kind of forced intellectual whimsy can be deeply irritating, but with the understated direction of Finding Neverland‘s Marc Forster, the decidedly odd is perfectly believable. And Ferrell, like Bill Murray and Robin Williams, proves that comic actors reined in can give surprisingly affecting dramatic performances.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 112mins

Review by Adam Smith

News: Will Ferrell

The former Saturday Night Live star has, with this week’s Stranger Than Fiction, made yet another convincing stab at gaining recognition as one of the most interesting comedy actors currently working in Hollywood, after a series of relatively disappointing turns.

Next year will see just one Ferrell movie, the ice skating comedy Blades of Glory, following two rival Olympic skaters expelled from the games who find a loophole that might just see them able to get back in, while 2008 will see another Ferrell sport-s based outing with the basketball comedy Semi-Pro, in which Ferrell will co-star with Woody Harrelson.

Most promising for Ferrell fans, though, is likely to be Step Brothers – Ferrell co-writing with Talladega Nights and Anchorman director Adam McKay as well as starring in this broad comedy about two spoiled grown-ups, who – naturally – hate each other, who end up as step brothers when their aging parents decide to get hitched. Ferrell’s Talladega Nights co-star John C Reilly will co-star.