Mission Accepted

British star Tom Wilkinson may be playing the man who sets in motion the turbulent drama at the heart of The Debt - along with friend and co-star Dame Helen Mirren, pictured - but an arguably bigger thrill came with another role.

For in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which is out at Christmas, he gets to utter the immortal line 'your mission, should you choose to accept it....' which surely fixes him with a place in screen history, or at least the trailer.

"That was one of the reasons I agreed to do it," the actor explains. "I wasn’t involved very much, and I don’t think I’ve ever watched the television series, but I knew that was the line to say."

James Bond finally meets his match: Indian bureaucracy

James Bond may have foiled Dr No and Blofeld, but he has finally met his match in an Indian Railway Ministry bureaucrat licensed to kill off plans to film a number of key action scenes on top of the country’s celebrated trains.

A member of the Indian production team for what is known as Bond 23 told The Daily Telegraph the plans had been abandoned and that the film’s producers  will not now be shooting 007’s first Indian scenes since 1983’s Octopussy, which starred Roger Moore and Indian tennis legend Vijay Amritraj.

Last month the Railway Ministry confirmed the film would be shot in India and said its officials were in talks with the producers over their request to film Bond, played by Daniel Craig, fight a villain on a the roof of a train and another action scene inside a train tunnel.

But officials said it was up to the producers to make arrangements which would not inconvenience India’s 30 million people who travel by rail every day.

They said the producers wanted to film in New Delhi’s Sarojini market, where shoppers buy discounted western brands made in local sweatshops, Daryaganj in the heart of its old walled city, and on the beaches of Goa and Mumbai’s commercial capital.

Talks initially focused on the possibility of filming the railway action scenes in North Goa but came to halt over security objections to shooting some bridges and tunnels in the state.

Welsh action man

Don't forget, you read it here first: one of the 'hottest' new British names in the directing stakes is about to be Welsh-born Gareth Huw Evans.

The University of Glamorgan scriptwriting graduate has just won the 2011 Toronto Film Festival's prestigious  Cadillac People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award for The Raid.

Starring Indonesian martial arts sensation Iko Uwais, The Raid follows a SWAT team that's trapped in a rundown apartment block in Jakarta filled with heavily armed drug dealers and killers.

Evans clearly has a taste for the exotic. His first film was a short, Samurai Monogatari,  telling the tale of a Samurai waiting to be executed. Filmed in Japanese, it starred students from Tokyo who were studying at Cardiff University at the time.

Sly (of the Family Stone) living in a van

 Sly Stone -- once one of the biggest names in soul music -- now lives in a white camper van he routinely parks in the rough Crenshaw neighbourhood of Los Angeles, the New York Post revealed today.

Stone, whose mega-hits include Everyday People, told the newspaper: "I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I can't stand being in one place. I must keep moving."

 A local family have befriended Stone and he showers at their house. Their son serves as his assistant and driver.

Stone says his money troubles started in 2009 when he stopped receiving royalty checks from his manager, whom he had accused of fraud. He sued the manager for $50 million.
Stone also foolishly sold his music publishing rights to Michael Jackson for just $1 million in 1984.

He says the FBI is after him and his enemies have hired hitmen to get him.

But he's still recording music, he says ... on a laptop computer.

Mail order cartoon star

Thirty years after Postman Pat first burst onto the scene, the 3D big screen version of our hero's life, subtitled You Know You're the One, has just gone into production.

Popular comic actor Stephen Mangan (pictured at foot) will voice Pat in the epic animated adventure destined for cinemas in Spring 2013 and the cast also includes Jim Broadbent, David Tennant and Rupert Grint.

Said Mangan: “I'm absolutely thrilled to be playing the world's best-known postman in his big screen debut - he's an iconic British hero and it's a great script. However when I excitedly told my 3-year-old son that I was going to be Postman Pat, he said, 'No you're not, dad, don't be silly.’”
 

Altogether now ... "Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black and white cat ...."

Apres Mildred

Well, as we predicted before the event, Kate Winslet duly won Best Actress Emmy for TV's Mildred Pierce and delivered a breathless "can't believe it!" acceptance speech strangely reminiscent of her "golly, gosh" shtick after snaring the Oscar (and BAFTA) for The Reader.

OK, you read it hear first ... don't be surprised if we go through almost exactly the same when she picks up what may be several awards early next year for her role in Roman Polanski's lauded new four-hander, Carnage (in which she's pictured below with co-stars Jodie Foster, John C Reilly and Christophe Waltz), based on Yasmina (Art) Reza's play The God of Carnage.

Incidentally, proving like Kate that movie success is no bar to small screen acceptance, director Martin Scorsese (for Boardwalk Empire) and writer Julian Fellowes (for Downton Abbey) were also Emmy winners this year.

Kate on the trophy trail

Big screen, small screen, the raves just keep on coming for Kate Winslet. Already the owner of a Best Actress Oscar for The Reader, following a clutch of nominations over the past 15 years, Winslet is clear favourite for this year's Emmy Award for her title role as Mildred Pierce.

The period miniseries has snared no fewer than 21 nominations in the race for the prestigious Emmys - the TV Oscars - two more than Mad Men which, in turn, is just ahead of Boardwalk Empire and Modern Family. Our homegrown Downton Abbey chips in with 11.

The omens are good for Winslet, 36 (pictured below). Back in 1946, the same role earned Joan Crawford (pictured bottom with her co-star Zachary Scott) her sole Oscar for the movie version of the tear-jerking melodrama.

Acting royalty

The mood at Buckingham Palace will be interesting when Oscar winner Colin Firth receives his CBE from the Queen later this year.

For the man who won just about every acting prize going for his performance as George VI in The King's Speech will be coming face to face with the regal daughter of the character he played in that film.

Firth - who can currently be seen as one of the starry ensemble in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - sounds fairly relaxed at the prospect.

"I don’t think there’s a lot of conversation involved," he says.  "There will be quite a few of us around and I don’t know what she’ll have to say about it.

"I have no idea whether she’s even seen the film or not.  There were reports, and I don’t know if they’ve been verified, that other members of the Royal family have seen it and their response has apparently been positive."

But still, what if Her Majesty requests an autograph?

“Shall I bring a pen just in case?" Firth smiles.  "I’d be prepared to swap memorabilia if she wanted."

Age shall not wither him

Dustin Hoffman was rising 30 when he made his Hollywood starring debut as callow Benjamin Braddock in the hit Sixties' film The Graduate.

So maybe it's no surprise that the double Oscar-winning star, now veteran of more than 40 movies, has waited until he was a well-seasoned 74 before making his film directing debut with Quartet, which has just started shooting in the UK.

Adapted from Ronald Harwood's play of the same name, Quartet co-stars Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins in a comedy drama set in a retirement home for ex opera singers.

Mind you, Hoffman's career in front of the cameras shows no sign of slowing down. Next up is a horse racing drama, Luck, which has been produced for HBO.

Larry/Lana

The Wachowskis, the Chicago-born brotherly directing-writing-producing team behind the smash hit Matrix trilogy as well as films like V for Vendetta and Speed Racer, are now officially "Andy and Lana Wachowski" (pictured below).

That's according to a press release for the start of shooting on the film version of David Mitchell's time-leaping bestseller Cloud Atlas.

The Wachowskis - now brother-and-sister? - are teaming up with German filmmaker Tom Tykwer to share directing duties on the adaptation, which will co-star Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon.

Described as "an epic story of humankind" the film will shoot using two full units simultaneously in Scotland, Spain and Germany.

Tom Tom the fighting man

Tom Hardy is well'ard. Anyone who's seen him in Bronson (the notorious jailbird not the much loved vigilante from Death Wish) will appreciate that this is a heavily tattooed, much muscled  34-year-old British actor who you wouldn't want to meet one night down some dark alley.

Hardy, a recovering drunk and drug addict, currently to be seen in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and imminent as a mixed martial arts contestant in Warrior (pictured below) also has a way with words - although some might call it 'gibberish' - after reading an interview in the Guardian

Asked about the lure of watching two men slug it out in a cage, he replies: "Well, it's a normal human impulse. Let's watch Ricky Gervais and Danny Dyer in a ring with bottles. I would pay good money to see those guys carve each other up.

"If they didn't, I'd be trying to instigate it: 'Go on, fellas, let's turn the lights off, feel our way around this ring ..." And so on and so on.

On second thoughts, I'd pay good money to watch little laughterman Ricky tussle violently with tough luvvie Danny so perhaps yer' man Hardy isn't such a berk after all.

Venice triumph for Fassbender

Michael Fassbender won the Best Actor prize at the Venice film festival last night for his controversial role in Steve McQueen's drama Shame, in which he plays a successful New York executive tortured by his obsession with sexual images and brief sexual encounters.

He spends much of the film naked, engaged in increasingly unhappy acts of sex in hotel rooms. He also struggles to maintain a relationship with his visiting sister, played by Carey Mulligan.

Accepting the award, Fassbender, 34, said: "It's nice to take a chance on work you think is relevant and hope other people find it relevant. Venice is a festival with a wonderful tradition and it is humbling to win when the competition is from so many other amazing talents."

Shame is the second time he has collaborated with McQueen. He played Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands in McQueen’s controversial drama Hunger, which won the Camera d'Or for best debut film at Cannes in 2008.

He is currently starring as Mr Rochester in the new UK release Jane Eyre, and will shortly be seen as Carl Jung in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.

Fassbender's win represented a highly successful festival for British cinema – he was joined on the winner's stage by Robbie Ryan, ho won the Best Cinematography award for his atmospheric work on Andrea Arnold's daring adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Keira is Anna

Two of cinema's greatest beauties have played her. Now it's time for Keira Knightley to follow in the footsteps of Greta Garbo (1935) and Vivien Leigh (1948) (both pictured below in the role) to portray one of literature's most enduring tragic heroines, Anna Karenina.

For this latest version of Tolstoy's epically romantic novel, which has just started shooting in the UK and Russia, Knightley is re-united with director Joe Wright with whom she made Pride & Prejudice and Atonement.

Playing the two men in her late 19th Century life are Jude Law, as Count Karenin, and Aaron Johnson, as Count Vronsky. The cast also includes Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen and Emily Watson.

Back to the future

Can there be a busier filmmaker on the planet than Steven Spielberg? Spielberg, who will be 65 in December, has two new films awaiting release, another in pre-production and a fourth already scheduled to open on July 3, 2013.

We know about War Horse, his adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo novel, and The Adventures of Tintin, both of which are due for release soon.

His next assignment is Lincoln, an account of the great American President who led the States into the Civil War in the 1860s. The cast includes Daniel Day Lewis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field.

And barely will he have had time to recover from the rigours of directing that period piece than he will be going back to the future for Robopocalypse, based on Daniel H Wilson sci-fi bestseller. Spielberg is, of course, no stranger to sci-fi having previously made films like AI, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, a little thing called ET.

Is it bye bye Mr Bean?

Rowan Atkinson is refusing to bring back his legendary character Mr. Bean, because he reckons he's now too old to portray the bumbling fool.

The Johnny English star launched Mr Bean on television in 1989 and the series continued until 1995, before it was adapted into two big screen versions.

But Atkinson is adamant he should say goodbye to Mr. Bean for good because he's convinced he won't be able to do the role justice.

He told the Daily Mail: "I've got a feeling I probably won't play the character [Mr. Bean] again. Never say never, but I just feel I'm getting too old for it.

"I've always liked Mr. Bean as a cartoon-like figure, who doesn't really age much. I've always seen him as an ageless and timeless being and I'm clearly not ageless and timeless. The older I get, I feel I am less qualified to play him."

Marty goes for gold

In more than 40 years of directing movies, there has only been the very rarely a title by the great Martin Scorsese that has eluded the attention of those nice people at Oscar.

Nominations and, more importantly, the little gold statuette itself, have decorated such notable Scorsese works as Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, The Aviator, Casino, Cape Fear, The Departed, The Color of Money and Gangs of New York.

A hot favourite to have joined the ranks of the awarded would surely have been last year's Scorsese effort, Shutter Island, an epic period tale of madness and murder, with Leo DiCaprio giving one of his best ever performances of an already distinguished career.

But, no. Not an award nor even a single 'nod' from either Oscar or even his British counterpart, BAFTA.

So the Scorsese camp will clearly be hoping for better things this year when, on December 2, his 21st full-length feature, Hugo, hits the cinemas. Based on the bestseller, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it marks a couple of firsts for the filmmaker, who will be 70 next year: his first family film and first in 3-D.

You could also add a third: it was, unlike most of his movies which have been firmly US-based, shot mostly in the UK.

Steady Eddie

Hot favourite to host the 2012 Oscars is Eddie Murphy, a man with a rather patchy history of critical acclaim and awards recognition.   He is, after all, the man who was The Nutty Professor (plus sundry relatives) and the hapless Norbit, but the former Saturday Night Live star was Oscar nominated for his dramatic turn in Showgirls five years ago. So, with his ready wit and undeniable charisma as a performer, he  may be a better choice than recognised dramatic performers James Franco and Anne Hathaway who drew such flak for their efforts at this year's ceremony. At least the comedy should be deliberate.

Madge about the girl

What have the following quotes got in common?

"An excruciating bore"

"What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is"

They are just two among a generally hostile critical reaction to the pair of films that have been, to date, directed by that fiftysomething mistress of reinvention, Madonna.

The first refers to her 2008 debut, Filth & Wisdom. The second is an even more painful summation of her most recent effort, W.E., which has just lit up - not in a good way, it seems - the Venice Film Festival.

Her latest 'turkey', as most describe it, portrays the parallel stories of Thirties' divorceé Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), who snared King Edward VIII costing him his throne, and a Nineties New York trophy wife called Wally (Abbie Cornish).

Mind you, Madge is no stranger to stinking film reviews. Her acting career has been littered with abuse from the 80s' days of Shanghai Surprise, co-starring then husband Sean Penn, to the new millennium horror that was Swept Away, directed by another partner, Guy Ritchie.

Go, (Material) girl!

Dead? Not me, says Jean Marsh

It was Mark Twain who first said: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Now veteran actress Jean Marsh can say it, too.

The Upstairs, Downstairs star was horrified to read reports of her death recently -- and the false story prompted a flurry of phone calls from concerned friends and family. It also led to a deluge of tributes from fans and 77-year-old Marsh admits she was touched by the messages.

She told the Daily Mail: "It was reported that I had been cremated and everything had been kept secret so my family could grieve in private.

"I had lots of people calling up to check if I was OK. It was nice to see so many kind obituaries... one fan wrote: 'Jean Marsh is dead. Oh s**t.' I thought that was hilarious. I might even have it on my gravestone -- but not for a while yet."

Fangs for the memory, Colin

Fright Night star Christopher Mintz-Plasse has a permanent reminder of filming the horror comedy: co-star Colin Farrell "punctured" his neck with his movie fangs and left him scarred.

Apparently Farrell really threw himself into the bloodsucking role in the new version of the classic 1985 vampire film. 

Mintz-Plasse told The Sun: "Colin had these prosthetic fangs on that were quite sharp... He punctured my neck and left me bleeding. He has scarred me for life!"

Pattinson's guitar gift to a busker

He may be a vampire on screen but Twilight star Robert Pattinson s shown his generous side by handing a homeless Los Angeles street performer a guitar as a gift.

He donated a few dollars to the musician's collection tin but later returned with a new acoustic guitar for the busker. 

Pattinson's kind gesture was witnessed by holidaymaker Luke Jones, who told The Sun: "We were gobsmacked  when he handed the guitar to the tramp. 

"Robert quickly went back to his car and drove off. The busker was totally shell-shocked. He had no idea who Robert was -- I think he thought the guitar was stolen. He was looking left and right, half expecting the police to arrest him. We asked him to play but he couldn't get his thoughts together."