20-3-2000

OSCAR WATCH 2000

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t was announced this week by the Academy that Cate will be joining the list of Oscar presenters at the upcoming ceremony. Cate will be joining a group that includes:
DREW BARRYMORE
ROBERTO BENIGNI
ANNETTE BENING
JAMES COBURN
JUDI DENCH
CAMERON DIAZ
JANE FONDA
HEATHER GRAHAM
SALMA HAYEK
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
TOMMY LEE JONES
ASHLEY JUDD
JUDE LAW
LUCY LIU
MIKE MYERS
HALEY JOEL OSMENT
GWYNETH PALTROW
BRAD PITT
KEANU REEVES
STEVEN SPIELBERG
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
CHARLIZE THERON
CHOW YUN FAT

Looking at this list offers some intersting pairing opportunities. Having Tommy Lee Jones chase Ashley Judd across the stage a la "Double Jeopardy" seems too obvious, huh? How about a pillow fight between Gwyn and Cate? How about a 'Fight Club' match between Gwyn and Brad Pitt? Roberto Benigni has already terrorized Annette Bening once...that would be worth another giggle were she not about to drop a child at any moment. How can Mike Meyers and Heather Graham not show up as Austin Powers and Felicity Shagwell?

In other Oscar related bits and pieces, we offer this bit from the Evening Standard UK:

No one knows for sure why certain films notch up Oscar nominations and others more deserving don't. People might have a pretty good idea why Gwyneth Paltrow won Best Actress last year (an American actress with famous parents doing an English accent in a period drama) and Cate Blanchett didn't (an Aussie who wasn't born to an actress ma and producer pa). And then there are the types of roles voters lap up too (crazy person, person persecuted for their sexuality/disability/body-type etc).

Satisfying two of those criteria perfectly (crazy person and famous father), Angelina Jolie seems certain to scoop the Best Supporting Actress gong for her role in Girl, Interrupted.

Another interesting tidbit showed up this week in the UK Telegraph:

Putting the glitz on Hollywood faces

For America's top make-up artist, Oscar night is all in a day's work, reports Jenni Baden Howard.
OSCAR night is not for the faint-hearted. The prospect of negotiating the city's limo-gridlocked streets to meet nervous award nominees on time is enough to ruffle the feathers of even the most seasoned Hollywood fashion stylists, make-up artists and hairdressers. For the Los Angeles-based make-up artist Jeanine Lobell, however, this year's ceremony, on March 26, will be business as usual.

Lobell, who founded the cult cosmetics range Stila, has one of the most frantic schedules in the business. When she is not making up Gwyneth Paltrow for Vanity Fair or Hillary Clinton for US Vogue, she is wielding her brushes backstage at the New York shows - this season, for Cynthia Rowley and Daryl K - or prepping regular clients, such as Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Salma Hayek or Natalie Portman, for premieres and other red-carpet events. She is also in the process of "designing" Cameron Diaz's make-up for the forthcoming film of the Seventies television series Charlie's Angels.

At last year's Oscars and Golden Globe awards, Lobell worked her magic on Julianne Moore, Cameron Diaz, Helena Christensen and Blanchett - she gave Blanchett "an awesome smoky, glittery look around her eyes".

Lobell has a reputation for keeping her cool when the heat is on, and for creating fresh, sexy faces that never look overdone. "The Oscars are too scary, you're such an easy target for criticism," she says. "People are waiting to shred you to pieces for how you look, so better to play it safe, by picking out one feature, like a strong lip or a smoky eye."

According to Lobell, the last thing any actress wants is to look as if she's tried too hard. "People know they can trust me to say something like, 'the dress is over the top, so why don't we bring it down with just a little lip gloss and blush?' Besides, the whole look at these events has really changed in recent years. The hair's not as big and the make-up not so 'done'. Ten years ago, no actress would have dreamed of wearing her hair loose, draped in a middle parting. Now it's acceptable."

Finally, we wrap up our Oscar Watch this issue with a rather humourous look at the Academy's recent problems pulling off this year's show. We present this article by Rick Lyman of The New York Times in its entirety. We wouldn't want you to miss a word---it has a certain aire of "The Gang who Couldn't Shoot Straight" about it:

HOLLYWOOD -- Police are being asked to keep an eye out for dozens of missing bald, shiny men standing about 13 inches high and weighing 8 pounds each, with strangely erect posture, vaguely Cycladic features and a tendency to make motion picture professionals gush, weep and suddenly remember their parents.

Billy Crystal had better have a pretty good alibi.

Just two weeks after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was forced to resend 4,200 Oscar ballots because the first batch had been mislaid by the Postal Service, the academy had to announce Friday morning that somebody had stolen the entire shipment of 55 gold-plated statuettes that were to be used in this year's ceremonies on March 26 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

"We are, as you might expect, keeping a sharp eye out for them," said Bruce Davis, the academy's executive director, at a news conference Friday morning at the organization's Beverly Hills headquarters.

There is no need to worry, Davis said. The academy has 20 Oscar statuettes on hand and a new shipment of 35 is being prepared for delivery next Monday by R.S. Owens, the Chicago-based manufacturing firm that makes the awards. Academy officials were trying to laugh off the theft, a little ruefully. Davis called it "an interesting but relatively minor glitch."

Here, as near as academy officials can determine, is the sequence of events. Nine unmarked boxes containing 55 statues, which were not inscribed with the names of the Oscar winners, left the Owens facility on March 3 in the custody of Roadway Express, a 70-year-old transport company that has carried the statues in the past. Most of the boxes held six statues. On March 8, they arrived at the Roadway facility in Bell, Calif., an industrial suburb a few miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, where they were placed on a loading dock.

On March 10, Scott Siegel, Owens' president, said he received a call from Roadway that the cartons could not be found. He alerted academy officials, who on that day were having the annual gala luncheon for this year's Oscar nominees at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. For two days, Davis said, Roadway checked to determine whether the boxes had been somehow rerouted, but it came to the conclusion that they had been stolen, probably from the loading dock area, by a person or persons unknown.

"I suspect they were quite surprised to discover what they had," Davis said. "I think it's going to be fairly hard to fence an Oscar."

Since the deadline for voting on the Oscars is not until March 23 -- and no one but the academy's accountants will know the names of the winners until Oscar night -- all of the stolen statues are unengraved. The total cost of the shipment was around $18,000, Davis said, and the academy expected Roadway to pay for any losses and costs incurred from the theft.

"Roadway Express apparently has a somewhat casual attitude toward security in their facility," Davis said.

John Hyre, a spokesman at Roadway's corporate headquarters in Akron, Ohio, said the company would have no comment, and referred all calls to the academy.

At the Roadway facility in Bell, a seemingly secure compound surrounded by a fence topped with razor-wire and a guard who can monitor anyone approaching, a reporter was not allowed to enter or question employees. The few workers who strayed outside declined to comment.

Davis said that Roadway was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves.

Police from Los Angeles and Bell have formed a joint team to investigate the theft, and the FBI has become involved, since the shipment involved interstate commerce, and has sent one of its art experts to advise in the investigation.

"I think we're going to solve this, but at the moment we do not have them in hand," Davis said.

The new shipment of Oscar statues will be shipped from Chicago by United Airlines Cargo and will be accompanied by security guards every step of the way, Davis said.

Getting into the whimsical spirit of Friday's news conference, reporters began asking whether the academy had searched Jim Carrey's house (the actor had been expected to get an Oscar nomination last year and this year but didn't) or had asked Crystal, the host of this year's ceremonies, not to joke about the theft on the air. "All we did was tell Billy not to go to Bell," Davis said.

Since the exact number of eventual Oscar winners is not known until the envelopes are opened on Oscar night, there are always plenty of the statuettes on hand. Davis said he was confident that would also be the case this year.

"If there's a three-way tie in the visual effects category, we'll be in trouble," he said. "In fact, I think everyone should watch the entire Oscar show to see if we have enough."

Paradoxically, the academy used to simply ship the Oscars. But two years ago it decided to try to wring some publicity out of the event, staging a photo opportunity showing armed guards escorting the Oscars from the Owens facility in Chicago and across the country to Los Angeles. But the academy had been criticized for that, Davis said.

"People said it was an old-fashioned publicity stunt and we could just ship them overland," Davis said. "But apparently, you can't."

"PROJECTED" CATE PROJECTS

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his week we'll take a look at updates to a couple of projects Cate's name was affiliated with at one time, and one project she still is mentioned in conjunction with.

HANNIBAL REDEUX
From the Guardian UK came this bit of interest:

...Because, for now, Julianne Moore is one of America's sweethearts. So when Jodie Foster announced her decision to bow out of Hannibal , the long-awaited sequel to The Silence of The Lambs, to be directed by Ridley Scott, it seemed perfectly logical that Moore would make the short list. And it also reflects our rather perverse fascination with serious crime.

Looking at the other names considered for the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling, the plucky young hick who develops a dangerous empathy with jailed murderer Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter, there's a curious consistency. Cate Blanchett, Gillian Anderson, Hilary Swank, Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow.
The keywords here seem to be intelligent, vulnerable, fearless and - most important of all - beautiful.

Moore, who announced she was 'very, very excited' about the role while negotiations were being finalised during her time in Berlin (film festival), does not seem fazed by following in Foster's footsteps. Which is brave, because there really doesn't seem to be much of a precedent. Sequels are usually commissioned for their stars, not their characters...

BRIDGET JONES REDEUX

And in news related to Bridget Jones's Diary there is this from The Times UK:

Author quits as American is picked to play movie Bridget

BY MARK JAGASIA
SHOWBUSINESS CORRESPONDENT

ATTEMPTS to make a film of Bridget Jones's Diary - the best-selling musings of a neurotic thirtysomething - are becoming as convoluted as the fictional heroine's own life.

In the latest twist to the saga, author Helen Fielding has withdrawn her co-operation from the film makers.

The news comes after it was announced that an American actress is to play the quintessentially English Bridget, a career woman with a comically dysfunctional personal life.

Ms Fielding has revealed that she is upset that she was not allowed a full say in which actress will bring her creation to life. "I'm very insulted that nobody asked me," she said.

"My acting career was previously blighted in this way when I was cast in the university review and one by one in rehearsal all my parts were taken away from me."

The film makers, Working Title, have chosen the relatively low-profile actress Renee Zellweger for the part in the £5million romantic comedy.

Ms Zellweger, who appeared in the Tom Cruise film Jerry Maguire, is best known in America as the girlfriend of comic Jim Carrey.

Ms Fielding, a former journalist who has now moved to Los Angeles, said: "I've never met Renee but I'm told she's very funny and learning to speak English with an English rather than Texas accent.

"I had some initial involvement with the script but authors traditionally turn into monsters when they turn their books into films so I thought I should gracefully retire a few months ago."

Although Ms Zellweger's star is rising in America, she is a far cry from the big name actresses who had originally been pencilled in for the part - including Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz and Helena Bonham Carter.

The role was first suggested to Ms Bonham Carter in 1998 at a meeting with Ms Fielding in America. Kate Winslet then expressed interest but apparently got fed up waiting for Ms Fielding to make up her mind and instead signed up for the lead in a period drama, a version of Emile Zola's novel Therese Raquin. Ms Fielding has said in the past she would rather an unknown played the part of her hard-drinking, chain-smoking heroine.

Having a big-name star, however, would have made the fiilm much more saleable internationally. The book has sold well in America and even Japan but that does not necessarily guarantee success for the movie.

Ms Fielding, 41, wrote the first draft of the screenplay for the movie but production stalled amid rumours that casting was held up because she and the film makers had fallen out about who should star in it.

There have also been suggestions that rather like Joanna Lumley's character Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous - which was toned down in an American remake of the sit-com - US audiences will not be able to take the character in an undiluted form and it seems unlikely that Ms Zellweger's Bridget Jones will be quite the one familiar to fans of the Diary.

MINORITY REPORT REDEUX

Well, the MR scenario seems to have finally revealed itself. The biggest obstacle to Cate's involvement with Spielberg's "Minority Report" seemed to be the time factor (she's TOO busy!!), but, that may have just changed.

Steven Spielberg confirmed reports Tuesday that he plans to bring Stanley Kubrick's 80-page treatment for "A.I." (artificial intelligence) to fruition this summer. The science-fiction tale of a boy robot who "lives" during a time following the melting of the polar ice caps had long been in the works by Kubrick and, before his death, Kubrick himself had talked about the possibility of Spielberg directing it.

In a statement Tuesday, Spielberg said, "Stanley had a vision for this project that was evolving over 18 years. ... I am intent on bringing to the screen as much of that vision as possible, along with elements of my own." Production of the Warner Bros.-DreamWorks project is slated to start on July 10.

A spokeswoman for Spielberg said that the director's subsequent project will be "Minority Report", starring Tom Cruise, for 20th Century Fox-DreamWorks. Production is slated to begin on the film in April of next year, and it seems possible that Cate might be available then, or be able to work around the Galadriel/LOTR shoot should that still be going on.

Am I the only one that wants to see Cate and Cruise together in a Spielberg thriller wrtitten by Phillip K. Dick (BladeRunner)?

And then, just one day after it was announced that Steven Spielberg had agreed to direct Stanley Kubrick's A.I, trade reports said that Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment are in negotiations to star in the film.

In a related story, Entertainment Tonight featured a brief segment on Tom Cruise wherein the actor spoke of his upcoming projects, particularly "Minority Report". When asked about the Spielberg project, Cruise revealed that it probably won't happen until April-May 2001. In the meantime, Cruise simply said that he was exploring lots of other projects.

As to what happened with Spielberg and the "Harry Potter" film?
Steven Spielberg decided to back out of directing "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" because of "creative differences" with author J.K. Rowling, the London Sunday Express reported, citing an unnamed Warner Bros. executive.

The newspaper said that Rowling is "intimately involved" in the development of the film project and did not see eye-to-eye with Spielberg about how her popular work should be approached. The Warner's exec told the newspaper, "It wasn't going to be Spielberg's vision. It would have to be a shared vision with the author. Spielberg has a more fanciful approach, and to be true to the book, he would have had to portray her vision, not his."

Moreover, the two reportedly disagreed over casting, with Spielberg wanting Haley Joel Osment of "The Sixth Sense" to play Harry Potter, while Rowland insisted on a young British actor. The Express said that it is now likely that Brad Silberling (City of Angels) will direct.

ODDS AND SODS

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ell Blanchetteers, we'll close with a fun bit of fluff (no wise cracks you guys!).
Peter Hewitt (The Borrowers & Whatever Happened To Harold Smith?) was interviewed by The Guardian UK and amongst the questions were:

Guardian: Which actor would you most like to be?

Hewitt: Errol Flynn or, as Woody Allen once said, Warren Beatty's fingers. Jimmy Stewart is lovely or Tom Hanks.

Guardian: Which actress?

Toni Collete is fab, Annette Bening, Cate Blanchett or Celia Imrie. From the older days, I'd choose Margaret Rutherford.

So, there ya have it, Blancheteers, another artist with EXQUSITE taste!
Before we blow this popstand, we would remind you once again, to check out all the latest news on the Lord of the Rings production at our companion News Page at LOTR NEWS.. And, at the risk of appearing redundant, we would remind you not to forget that when all else fails, scream out at the top of your lungs, "PLAY A VOLTA!!!".
See you next week, Blanchetteers!

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