Kiwi fruitless

The Hobbit casting call for extras described a search for men under 164cm and women under 155cm, big men with "character faces" over 175cm, men with large biceps, women with "character faces" and women with long hair to appear in  Peter Jackson's prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The production company in New Zealand expected around 1200 to turn up for the audition; in the event, more than 3000 lined the parking area at Lower Hutt, near Wellington, spilling over dangerously on to the motorway.

Result was the call had to be cancelled after just 800 had paraded past the filmmaker. Organisers will now continue their hunt online.

First of a pair, the film, subtitled An Unexpected Journey, is due in cinemas in December

Eat, drink and be merry

How come it's the bankers that get all the stick? That RBS guy's mill in share options - which he has, of course, now foregone - pales next to the greed of three middling Hollywood actors who are asking $15m each for their next movie.

We're talking Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifiniakis and their demand for turning up on The Hangover 3 - if Warner Bros agree to their pay day for indulging in more on screen drinking and debauchery.

Quite a salary hike when you consider the trio got a mere - mere? - $1m for the first film back in 2009.

However, that one went on to gross - and never was there a more appropriate word - nearly half a billion followed by the sequel which has gone way beyond that and is still accounting.

Warner's, still reeling from the end of the Harry Potter series, now seem only too happy to put their faith instead in this most unlikely of franchises, so it looks like the big bucks are well and truly pending for the comedy threesome.

Eat your heart out, Mr Hester.

Dogged lobbyists get to work at the Oscars

		Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo may be the big stars of The Artist but the actor who stole the film was undoubtedly Uggie the Jack Russell terrier. And some of his fans clearly want his work to be recognised by the film world...

Porn moguls threaten to pull out of LA

Adult film makers are warning they may have to pull out of America’s porn capital Los Angeles after the city’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, signed an ordinance requiring actors to use condoms in their movies.

Officials with the Aids Healthcare Foundation, which lobbied for years for such a law, welcomed the decision and said they would turn their attention to getting a similar condom requirement adopted elsewhere to protect actors from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

"The city of Los Angeles has done the right thing. They've done the right thing for the performers," said Michael Weinstein, president of the foundation, which had pushed for the measure for six years.

Around 90 per cent of the porn films produced in the US are made in Los Angeles. Most are filmed in the city's suburban San Fernando Valley.

After the council's action, several of the industry's biggest film-makers said they might consider moving just outside the county. That prompted the mayor of Simi Valley, Bob Huber, to announce last week he would ask the city attorney for his community, located just across the county line from the San Fernando Valley, to write a similar ordinance.

The industry already requires that actors be tested for HIV every 30 days, and film-makers say they believe that is sufficient.

"It's not that I don't doubt the sincerity of their desire to protect the talent. And, believe it or not, we have the same ambition," Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel Productions, said. "We just don't believe their way is the best way."

Floreat chaps

It's not just the present Government that's stuffed full of Old Etonians, led by PM David Cameron.

Two out of this year's five contenders for the BAFTA Orange Wednesday Rising Star Award were contemporaries at the old coll (motto; Floreat Etona) near Windsor founded in the 15th Century.

Pretty boys Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn, Birdsong) and Tom Hiddleston (War Horse, Archipelago, The Deep Blue Sea) were not just at school together but then both went on to study at Cambridge.

The altogether less posh Adam Deacon (Everywhere and Nowhere, Anuvahood), the so-called "New Face of Youth Cinema", Irishman Chris O'Dowd (Bridesmaids) and Aussie, Chris Hemsworth (Thor), once of TV's Home & Away, complete the quintet.

Going for gold

The Oscar nominations always tend to throw up a few surprises, and this year's list is no exception, with  focus in particular on two major films neither of which have hit these shores yet.

The oddly titled Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is deemed to be one of the 9 Films of the Year. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's post 9/11 bestseller, it features a leading performance by 12-year-old Thomas Horn (below) whose main claim to fame before making his big screen debut was winning wads of cash on the US TV quiz show, Kids Jeopardy.

Albert Nobbs, based on George Moore's 1918 short story, is co-written and stars Glenn Close (below) as a woman who disguises herself as a man in 19th Century Ireland. She, along with co-star Brit actress, Janet McTeer are both nominated for their cross-dressing roles.

But perhaps left-field of all is the inclusion in the quintet for Best Actor, little known, 48-year-old Mexican actor Demian Bechir (below) in A Better Life, directed by Chris Weitz, better known for creating the American Pie franchise with his brother Paul. His latest is an altogether more serious-minded drama about a father trying to keep his son away from gangland in East LA.

Can Bichir can pip the likes of Pitt, Clooney, Dujardin and Oldman to the little golden statuette? Maybe worht a punt.

All That Glitters...

To  the outsider the experience of being directed in a movie by Madonna would seem daunting enough. On top of that there’s the  challenge of playing one of the 20^th century’s most famous, reviled and – in this telling – misunderstood women. 

Yet in W.E. Andrea Riseborough delivers a remarkable performance as Wallis Simpson, the divorcee who came between a king and his throne, but is at pains to point out that any nerves about working with such an illustrious figure as Madonna had to be overcome very quickly.

“There’s no time,” he says. “If you were to allow fear to engulf you, you would paralyse yourself artistically. The other thing is that it would also be like life reflecting art, because we were dealing a couple who were both revered and hounded in the press. It would have been naïve for me to assume that I had any prior connection to the woman who was going to be my director .”

Both Riseborough and her co-star James D’Arcy – Edward VIII in the film – speak as one in their admiration and affection for Madonna.  But Riseborough has another reason to be grateful, for the relaxed attitude she showed after the accidental loss of a key prop, a piece of imitation jewellery that was washed away in the surf after Wallis and Edward share a torrid embrace in the sea.

“It will have been very valuable,” Riseborough nods, “but of course not as much as the real thing which was one of the most expensive pieces of jewellery on the planet. The cross that was lost in the scene is red, which was changed by CGI because it was actually green when we were filming it.

“One day somebody might find it and think it’s the real one, because it was made by the same people at Cartier, and it has the same inscription on the back. They might just think they’ve struck gold and try and auction it.”

Is this a Mickey take?

Mickey Rourke is no stranger to playing professional sportsmen on screen. He was, after all, a promising boxer in real life before portraying tough pugs in the movies (see Homeboy).

Then came perhaps his finest acting hour in the title tole of The Wrestler which earned him BAFTA and Golden Globe awards as well as an Oscar nomination.

For the last he was pipped at the final hurdle by Sean Penn playing a gay San Franciscan politician in Milk.

Now, though, this most macho of actors might get a chance to have the last laugh on two fronts - playing a sportsman and being gay with the news he's planning to play former Welsh rugby captain Gareth Thomas who bravely outed himself in a man's world.

There are rumours that Rourke, who will be 60 later this year, has had "work done" to make himself look more like the flying winger for a film to be shot later this year.

Quite whether he can transform himself into a thirtysomething Welsh rugby legend remains to be seen, but Rourke, already a recipient of considerable plastic surgery for earlier injuries, is nothing if not a trier.

Eh lah, the film's got no sound!

It took the Golden Globes by storm and is tipped for big things at the Oscars and the BAFTAs but it seems not everyone has been dazzled by the charms of The Artist. For a cinema in Liverpool has been forced to offer refunds after filmgoers complained that they had not realised the movie was silent and in black and white.

A spokesperson for Odeon Liverpool One confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that the first award-winning silent film in more than 90 years had not been to everybody's taste. There were also suggestions that cinemagoers felt short-changed by the movie's reduced screen size, intended as a tribute to the look of silent films from the early part of the 20th century.

"Odeon Liverpool One can confirm it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film," said the spokesperson. "The cinema is happy to offer guests a refund on their film choice if they raise concern with a member of staff within 10 minutes of the film starting."

You couldn’t make it up!

Five of the best

One of the most prestigious BAFTA awards used to be called The Carl Foreman Award, named after the late, great American writer/producer/director who after tangling with the Hollywood anti-Red 'witchhunts' of the early 1950s decided to make his home in the UK.

His screenplays ranged from High Noon and Young Winston to The Guns of Navarone and Bridge on the River Kwai.

The BAFTA category is now called 'Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer' and this year contains nominees that all in their own way contain elements of daring that made Foreman, who died in 1984, such a major player.

Three of the titles - Coriolanus, Submarine and Tyrannosaur - cite actors who've turned feature director for the first time: respectively, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Ayoade and Paddy Considine, while a fourth, Attack the Block, recognises experienced TV and radio performer, Joe Cornish of Adam & Joe fame.

However, tucked in there, too, is recognition of the whole team - former Casualty actor Will Sharpe, Tom Kingsley and Sarah Brocklehurst - behind an altogether lower-profile title, the microbudgeted Black Pond (below), an offbeat comedy-drama.

Foreman, who despite his prolific producing and writing credits, only ever actually directed one movie, anti-war drama The Victors, would, you suspect, have admired this eclectic quintet of British films and filmmakers.

The unkindest cut

Tucked away among the Executive Producer credits for Coriolanus, actor-director Ralph Fiennes’ updating of Shakespeare’s Roman drama to the recent Balkan War, is Will Young.

Yes, the same public school-educated Will Young who after winning the inaugural Pop Idol exactly 10 years ago went on to become a chart-topping artiste, winner of two Brit Awards, whose albums have sold more than eight million worldwide.

“If it’s a choice between buying a Ferrari and investing in this …” In other words, no contest for the wealthy Young who after “looking at a few things” was easily persuaded to put some of his money into Fiennes’ production.

As well as being one of the UK’s best-loved singers, Young had also worked as an actor from time to time – in the film Mrs Henderson Presents, on stage in Noel Coward’s The Vortex and for the small screen in programmes ranging from Skins to Miss Marple. “I’m the cameo king,” he laughs.

He was also due a cameo in Coriolanus, playing a war reporter. “It was just five lines and I found it really, really hard.”

Sadly, his efforts were in vain for after he shot his role, the filmmakers decided to expand the idea of a news anchor/journalist covering the conflict and got Channel 4’s Jon Snow to step in and give the part more weight and veracity.

So, for all his fame and fortune, Will Young remains, in this much-lauded new take on the Bard at least, yet another face on the cutting room floor.

A Hitch in time

If you scour the end credits of The Artist, you might just find tucked away at the end of the roll call a blink-and-you'll-miss acknowledgement of Bernard Herrmann's evocative "Love Theme" from Hitchcock's celebrated 1955 psychodrama, Vertigo.

Herrmann's unique stylings in fact get considerable use towards the climax of the acclaimed new French-made, black-and-white silent feature whose official composer Ludovic Bource has already picked up at least four awards for his jaunty score.

With more to come, doubtless, as the awards season picks up pace.

Amid all the excitement about The Artist, there is now at least one, considerable, dissenting voice. None other than 78-year-old Kim Novak, the American beauty who co-starred (as below) with James Stewart in Hitch's classic nearly 57 years ago.

In a full page ad in the trade paper Variety she says she feels as if "my body - or at least my body of work - has been violated by the movie" before going on to claim that The Artist "could and should have been able to stand on its own."

By featuring Herrmann's music, it's as if the makers of The Artist were, she adds, "guilty of using emotions it engenders as if it were their own ... I believe this to be cheating, at the very least."

Director Michel Hazanavicius has responded by saying that his film was inspired by Hitchcock among other directors, that the music had been used in other films and that he was "pleased it was used in mine."

The Nelson touch

What have Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, Terrence Howard, David Harewood, Dennis Haysbert, Clarke Peters and Sidney Poitier - among many others - got in common?

And we don't mean in a Luis Suarez kind of way.

They've all played Nelson Mandela - or Mandiba as he's popularly known in South Africa - in various films and TV dramas down the years.

Now the search is on for a suitable actor or actors to portray Mandiba, for that is also the title, in an expensive six hour TV mini-series which will track the history of the great man from his humble begnnings up to his accession as President of the new rainbow nation.

You may have spotted that all the actors mentioned above are either British or American. Nice if they could actually find a South African to play this most prestigious of roles.

Like Presley Cheweneyagae (pictured bottom), the charismatic star of the brutal 2005 drama Tsotsi.

Who let the Dog in?

In between pneumatic models, reality TV performers, ex soap stars, failed talent show competitors, an openly gay rugby player and the odd adulteress, there's actually an authentic Hollywood star on the latest edition of Celebrity Big Brother.


None other than big Michael Madsen, Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, 51-year-old veteran of more than 170 films and TV shows since he made his screen debut 30 years ago.

Thrice married Madsen, whose credits also include Die Another Day, Sin City, Kill Bill Parts I & II and Species I & II, not to mention - and how could you forget them - two helpings of the whale adventure Free Willy, will doubtless be bemused by some of his talent-free fellow guests.

How about, just to liven things up, he recreates Mr Blonde's most infamous moment from Tarantino's heist movie and arbitrarily picks a CBB contestant to dance around before severing his or her ear to the strains of Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle With You'.

Now that would boost the ratings.

JK and Reels of Inanity

If you're suffering from Harry Potter withdrawal symptoms following the end of the film series, you might just want to seek out a glorious absurdity called Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story.

Premiered on American TV last summer and just shown here on C5, it purports to show how the lovely Joanne, played by Aussie actress Poppy Montgomery (below) of Without a Trace fame, graduated from being a single mother on benefit to one of the richest women in the world.

There are a few establishing shots of key locations like Edinburgh, London and New York, but in the main the film was shot in Vancouver with predominantly Canadian actors desperately trying not to trip over their vowels as various key people in JK's life.

As one critic noted: you'd learn more about the author on Wikipedia.

Cumberbatch the Trekkie baddie

He’s more used to being seen as a hero, but now Benedict Cumberbatch looks set to be the main villain in J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek sequel. 

The cast of the 2009 Star Trek movie, including Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto,  are returning for the sequel, which will be shot in 3D and released by Paramount. The script is written by Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

Cumberbatch, who stars as Sherlock Holmes in BBC1’s Sherlock, has recently been seen on the big screen  in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and will appear again shortly in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, which is released on January 13. He is also voicing the characters of Smaug the dragon and the Nercomancer in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.

Berlin honour for Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is to be presented with the honorary Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival next month.

"Meryl Streep is a brilliant, versatile performer who moves with ease between dramatic and comedic roles," said festival director Dieter Kosslick.

 

Streep's latest film, The Iron Lady, will be screened at the festival, as well as some of her previous films, including Sophie's Choice, Kramer vs Kramer, The Bridges of Madison County and Out of Africa.

The Golden Bear is Berlin's highest accolade. In 1999, Streep won the Berlinale Camera award, and in 2003, she shared the Silver Bear prize for The Hours with Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman. In 2006, she appeared in competition in Robert Altman's ensemble comedy A Prairie Home Companion.

Streep has appeared in more than 40 films and has had a record 16 Oscar nominations, winning two for her performances in Sophie's Choice (1982) and Kramer vs Kramer (1979).

I may not make another film, says Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam has hinted his 2009 fantasy drama The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus could be his final film as he doubts he will "ever make a movie again".

The former Monty Python star directed the Pythons’ first film Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975, before making a series of other acclaimed films including Brazil, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Doctor Parnassus featured Heath Ledger's final performance before his tragic death in 2008, and Gilliam is considering quitting directing after admitting things go wrong when he makes films.

He says, "I've actually reached the point of not believing I'll ever make a film again. I get easily distracted and greedy to do lots of films.

"Whenever I do that things fall apart. I used to believe I could will things into existence but now I am older I know it doesn't work that way."