Some 4000 guests were on hand for the official launch of News Corp's $290-million Fox Studios Australia, including stars Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Ewan McGregor, Charlie Sheen, Baz Luhrmann and News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Arriving for the festivities at the site of the former Sydney Showground, Kidman (who is due to start filming Moulin Rouge at the new studio on Tuesday) said that while she welcomed the new studio, she hoped the Australian government would continue to support independent filmmakers. The site also features a theme park with a showpiece ride called "Titanic, The Experience." For an extensive, perceptive and Cate-centric analysis of the affaire by our very own Dean, check out Fox Sydney.

CATE AS JOURNALIST--EPISODE THREE

Cate reprised her role as print journalist recently, commenting in the Evening Standard UK on her role as Connie Falzone in Pushing Tin.

This is the third time we have caught Cate playing reporter, and if this keeps up, we will look forward to her taking on the role of Hildy Johnson in a remake of His Girl Friday. An excerpt:

"In Pushing Tin I play Connie Falzone, a housewife from the heart of Middle America. And I nearly out-Parton Dolly Parton! I wear tight pants and lots of gold jewellery and big hair. And an amazing bra in which you put little triangular helpers (called, in the industry, "chicken cutlets") to give you enormous breasts. It was great - I've never had them before!"

For a complete review of Cate's interesting remarks, check out Cate Is Great As Housewife.

CATE IS A RESIDENT OF POTTERSVILLE!

Well, at long last we were able to confirm that our Cate is, indeed, in the process of filming The Man Who Cried for writer/director Sally Potter, talented creator of Orlando and The Tango Lesson.

Boy, the misinformation swirling about this project has been legendary. This is the shoot that was originally linked to Robert De Niro before Johnny Depp signed on.

Aussie paper The Age recently reported that Cate is currently on a break from filming The Man Who Cried in Paris. Additional location filming is scheduled for Bourne Woods, Farnham, Surrey, England.

Based on an original screenplay by Sally Potter and set during World War Two, the story follows a young German woman (Christina Ricci) who flees to Paris in the secret hope of getting to America. John Turturro is also believed to be a part of the cast. Shooting is expected to continue on the movie right up till the end of the year.

Adding to the confusion over the project has been a mistaken belief that it is affiliated with the novel by Catherine Cookson, which bore the same name, and was made into a 1993 British miniseries starring hunky Irish actor, Ciarán Hinds (the Rev. Dennis Hasset in Oscar and Lucinda).
More news on this project as it becomes available...

SHEKHAR UPDATE

Shekhar's name has been bandied about almost as much as Cate's of late, however, it looks like his future may be sorting itself out, as well, according to a recent note in Dark Horizons.

Any future PhD student looking to put together an auteurist thesis on director Shekhar Kapur will have his or her work cut out establishing a link between the film-maker's most recent movies.

Having grabbed international attention with Bandit Queen, a violent and politically controversial action/drama set in his native India, Kapur followed it up with the art-house hit and Oscar-nominee Elizabeth.

Now, he has signed to make an action/adventure movie at DreamWorks. AIR PIRATES is based on the colourful real-life exploits of aircraft salvage specialist Gary Larkin, whose style was distinctly gung-ho. But the film's story is about one of Larkin's least typical assignments: to discover what happened to a WWII flyer who disappeared on a secret mission.

The film is still in the script stage, and casting announcements are some way off. It is also not clear whether Air Pirates will be made before another project to which Kapur is attached: the Anant Singh-produced Nelson Mandela biopic, Long Walk to Freedom. As always, more news as it becomes available.

RIPLEY BELIEVE IT OR NOT

There was an interesting story in a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times which asked the big question as to why so many of the anticipated year-end films were literary adaptations?
As Green Mile writer-director Frank Darabont jokes, "Apparently there wasn't a screenwriter in town with an original idea."

"At the risk of sounding banal, when you have a book, it's all there," says Anthony Minghella, director of The Talented Mr. Ripley, whose last adaptation, The English Patient based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje, won best picture honors for 1996.

"It simply accelerates the process. With a book, you have a great starting point, this rich, extremely undiluted world," Minghella explains. "If you're going to spend three or four years on a movie, it has to be something you feel is worth enslaving your life to."

Minghella says that when he was adapting Ripley, he literally tossed away the novel--a method he also used with The English Patient. "I honestly can't find my copy anymore," he says. "If I had the book too close to me, I'd be tempted to copy every characteristic and stay too close to the characters."

Casting is obviously a crucial element in getting the movie made. For Ripley, Minghella went right to the top, wooing Tom Cruise for the Tom Ripley role. After Cruise passed, Matt Damon stepped in.

Minghella soon came to realize that Damon had the ability to hynotize and repulse, one of the few actors he believed could help audiences sympathize with a character that is portrayed in the Patricia Highsmith novel as an amoral killer.

In another area of production, directors also use music as a way of replacing some of what Minghella calls the "intimate gestures" that help novels establish a private dialogue between author and reader.

Music certainly influenced Minghella's adaptation of Ripley. In Highsmith's novel, Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) is a novice painter. In the film, he's a second-rate jazz saxophonist. The film is now adorned with '50s jazz, including a Damon performance of "My Funny Valentine."

And now, continuing our never ending efforts to dig up more info on the mysterious Mr. Ripley, we offer two more reviews we tracked down out of test screenings of the film. These two views offer something of a Pro and Con assessment.

From the Pro review:

"WOW I just saw an advanced screening of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and it was epic. The first thirty and last thirty minutes are awe inspiring filmaking. What a story it is. TTMR reminded me of the best of HITCHCOCK. It had the intellectual underbed of ROPE, the grandure of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and the twistedness of PSYCHO.

The film is truly eerie. Matt Damon does an awesome job. He's ambitious to take on the role. The film deals with the theme of repressed homosexuality frankly. The motivation for the murders is as much about repressed sexual desires as it is anthing else. I think this is the kind of theme HITCHCOCK would have explored in ROPE had the sexual mores of the time allowed it.

Is the American public ready? I hope so. I haven't read the story or seen the French film based on the book so I was shocked, along with most of the theater, at the films twists. When the first murder sails on screen it is truly jarring. I can now imagine the kind of impact the most shocking scene in movie history had on moviegoers: ie. When Janet Leigh gets diced in the shower in PSYCHO."

For the full review, check out PRO Mr. Ripley.

For an opposing view, and one that scares this writer a bit, as I was never the biggest fan of The English Patient, there is this:

"Remember those people a few years ago who said that "The English Patient" was the greatest film to come down the pike since, well, ever? You saw it, though bits of it were brilliant, thought a lot of it was boring, and wondered what all the fuss was about. "The Talented Mr. Ripley," the new film from "Patient" director Anthony Minghella, won't have too much of a problem mustering similar reactions, both fawning and frustrated, from its audience.

It's an original film. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's good. Plenty of people are going to latch onto this and say that it's daring, beautiful, difficult filmmaking. Some of it is. A lot of it isn't. It's got a great ending, though."

For the full CON review, which is much more extensive and well written than the other two we've encountered, and which finally refers to our Cate, and as the "very cute looking Cate Blanchett" no less, see CON Mr. Ripley.

LOTR NEWS UPDATE

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to once again invite everyone to keep abreast of all the exciting news of the film shoot of Lord of the Rings, co-starring our Cate as the lovely Galadriel, via our separate news page at LOTR NEWS.

Otherwise, Blancheteers, that looks like the end of another big episode of Cate News. Until next time, we trust you will remember, that when all else fails, or to simply put a smile on you face and make the world a better place, call out to anyone within hearing range, "PLAY A VOLTA!!" Cheers.