Woody, or wouldn't he?

Considering Hollywood believes its main target audience is the 14-35 age group, it was a remarkable night for the oldies at this year's 84th Academy Awards.

There was Christopher Plummer, just two years younger than Oscar, winning Best Supporting Actor for Beginners, and to Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese, who will be 70 later this year, went five of the coveted statuettes.

And what about Meryl Streep, no spring chicken at 62, who snared Best Actress for The Iron Lady?

But perhaps the most heart-warming award of all was the "comeback" of Woody Allen at 76.

He won his fourth Oscar (from no fewer than 23 nominations) for Midnight in Paris's Original Screenplay fully a quarter of a century after his last - Hannah and His Sisters in 1987.

And in his own great tradition, he wasn't on hand as usual to receive the prestigious prize, preferring instead to stay in his native New York, possibly playing clarinet at a local hostelry.

War is Heil

Snakes on a Plane, Cowboys and Aliens, and even the upcoming Strippers Versus Werewolves ... they all do exactly what it it says on the tin. Straightforward and also delightfully absurd.

Even more absurd but not quite so straightforward, and also increasingly controversial it seems, is the innocent-sounding Iron Sky.

This is the one in which the Nazis, having been defeated in 1945, colonise on dark side of the Moon before rebuilding their war machine ahead of Invasion Earth 2018.

This sci-fi alleged comedy, shot in Germany and Australia by Finns, features a US President who looks remarkably like Sarah Palin and an American navy cruiser called the USS George W Bush

Well, it has to be funnier than the current Eurozone crisis.

Sex, please, we're British!

Steve Coogan was just a toddler in the Sixties when Paul Raymond was first dubbed the "King of Soho".

Now the actor/comedian is to play the infamous porn publisher and strip club owner who died in 2008 aged 82 in a new film, directed bny Michael Winterbottom.

King of Soho will also co-star Anna Friel as Raymond's first wife Jean, Tamsin Edgerton, as glamour girlfriend Fiona Richmond, and Imogen Poots, as Raymond's daughter, Debbie, who died of a heroin overdose in 1992.

This is the latest collaboration between actor and director which previously included 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story and a popular TV series, The Trip, in which Coogan co-starred with Rob Brydon.

What's It All About?

Just a year short of its centenary Twickenham Film Studios is shutting its doors for the last time.  The London based studio that has endured countless economic crises, film industry doldrums and even a direct hit by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz is in administration and will close for good in June.

Home to a variety of productions since it began operations in 1913, highlights include Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, A Hard Day’s Night, Repulsion and Alfie with recent movies using its facilities including Horrid Henry: The Movie and My Week With Marilyn. A sad moment for British cinema, the news of Twickenham’s demise coincides with an announcement by the BFI that 2011 was a record breaking year for British films at the UK box office.

Oo, Ah, you're nicked!

Eric Cantona, the former Manchester United and Leeds footballing ace who became famous on screen for a kung fu incident on the wrong side of the law, has now been firmly copped.

After novelty roles in Elizabeth (as the French Ambassador) and Ken Loach's Looking for Eric (as himself) 45-year-old Cantona gets his juiciest movie to date playing Detective Forgeat in a new thriller, Switch, which opens here next month.

As befitting the one-time sports god who decided to take spectacular high-kicking revenge against a mouthy Crystal Palace fan during a match in 1995, his big-screen cop has to go outside the law while tracking down a ruthless killer in Switch.

All in all, a kind of re-enactment of Cantona's most notorious case when seagulls followed the trawler because they thought sardines would be thrown into the sea.

French toast

Following the French takeover this year with seven British Film Academy awards for The Artist, you have to go back more than 20 years to find the last major Gallic assault on the BAFTAs.

That was 1990 when Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Gerard Depardieu as the swashbuckling hero with a big nose, scooped four of the prestigious masks - but none in the most prestigious categories.

For that, you need to scroll back almost 20 years before that, to 1973, when another French movie which took us behind the scenes of cinema itself, had a big night in the West End.

We're talking, of course, Francois Truffaut's glorious La Nuit Americaine (pictured below), much better known as Day for Night, which won three top BAFTAs, including Film, Director and Supporting Actress (Valentina Cortesa).

The film also featured a charming supporting role for an aging matinee idol - shades of Jean Dujardin - played by the late Jean-Pierre Cassel, whose son Vincent can be seen in a new film release, A Dangerous Method.

Princess of Hearts

Serena (sister of Kristin) Scott Thomas and Caroline (a one-time Miss Moneypenny) Bliss have "done" her on screen.

Now Naomi Watts, the 43-year-old, Sussex-born actress is to play Princess Diana in Caught in Flight, which will deal with the last two years of a controversial life that ended in a tragic Paris road accident in 1997.

Currently in J Edgar, Watts, whose films have ranged from Mulholland Drive and King Kong to The Ring and 21 Grams, notes of her new role: "It's such an honour to be able to play this iconic role. Pricess Diana was loved across the world and I look forward to rising to the challenge of playing her on the screen."

The film will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, best know for Downfall, his biopic of Hitler, and several episodes of the TV series, Borgia.

Bourne Legacy trailer unveiled

The first trailer for the much-anticipated The Bourne Legacy, starring Jeremy Renner as renegade agent Jason Bourne, has just been released and here it is. Enjoy!

 

A Fair & Balanced Movie

The Muppets hit town a week or two ago, and while Kermit and Miss Piggy were basking in the genuinely heartfelt praise for a fun return to the big screen in their self titled movie after 12 long years, there was one voice of dissent.

For a pundit on Fox News (and the Fox is a natural predator of the Muppet) had questioned the inherent bias of the plot in so serious minded a movie featuring a greedy oil baron who wants to tear down the Muppet Theatre to drill for 'black gold'.  The Muppets, as ever, had the last word.

Depardieu to play sex scandal IMF chief

Gerard Depardieu is to star as Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a film about the fall of the shamed former chief of the International Monetary Fund which ruined his chances of being elected president of France.

Isabelle Adjani will play his wife Anne Sinclair, who has stood by him as his political career collapsed after the sex scandal exploded.

The film’s director Abel Ferrara, who made 1992’s Bad Lieutenant starring Harvey Keitel, did not reveal who would play Nafissatou Diallo, the chambermaid who accused Mr Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in a New York hotel suite last May 14.

But he said: “It will be a film about sex and politics, and Gerard Depardieu will be perfect for the role.”   

Filming will begin later this year on location in New York, Washington and Paris.

Gemma gives up sexy photoshoots

Gemma Arterton says she has posed for her last “sexy” men's magazine shoot as she takes control of her career. 

The star of Tamara Drewe and Tess of the D’Urbervilles told Vogue magazine that she has mixed feelings about being a sex symbol and will not be posing in her underwear again.

"I did this photoshoot for a men’s magazine a couple of years ago that was quite sexy, I suppose, but I don’t think I’d do anything like that again,” she said. “When it came out, I felt awkward, like I’d done something dirty. My mum was quite upset when she saw it.”

Arterton, 26, said that her early roles, such as Bond girl Strawberery Fields in Quantum of Solace and Kelly in the 2007 St Trinians "served their purpose" but she is now choosy about film roles and determined to portray strong women on screen.

"When I read the script, I'm like, 'Hmph! No.' I think it happens in most jobs where women aren't equal. You have to fight through that barrier and when you do, you feel emancipated and you can do your thing."

Arterton won critical acclaim for her role in the independent film The Disappearance of Alice Creed and her next role is in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, which she describes as "a cross between Pan's Labyrinth and Kill Bill". Also in the pipeline is Byzantium, a "neo-feminist vampire movie".

She has also been approached to star in a film adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder after appearing in a London stage version last year.

King of sex

So, farewell then, Zalman King, who has just died aged 69.

King (below), born Zalman Lefkovitz, was the uncrowned king - geddit? - of Hollywood softcore sex dating back more than 25 years to when he was co-writer and producer of the megahit Nine and a Half Weeks which encouraged the use of soft fruit in sexual foreplay.

The heavy breathing 1986 "adult" drama, co-starring Mickey Rourke, long before plastic surgery wrecked his looks, and Kim Basinger, gave King licence to ignite a whole raft of tasteful on-screen shagathons.

There was Wild Orchid, Wild Orchid 2, Two Moon Junction and Delta of Venus, to name but a few,  not to mention the phenomenally successful Red Shoe Diaries series which began life as a TV movie with a pre-X Files, David Duchovny - possibly honing his future Californication skills.

King worked right up to the very end with his latest film, Kamikaze Love, now in post-production awaiting posthumous release later this year.

It promises "a wealthy real estate developer who takes a young woman from an everyday mundane life and shows her a world of decadence and debauchery that pushes her sexual limits to the brink". Bonk on, Zalman.

Le scandale

Have the Oscar chances of The Artist been scuppered by a Norbit style exercise in bad taste, or an orchestrated campaign of negative publicity?  We only ask because soon after Kim Novak’s bizarrely distasteful comments about the use of some Bernard Herrmann music in the score, comes news of star Jean Dujardin’s next film.

Les Infideles translates as The Players, and is a satirical take on men and their sexual mores. But the graphic nature of the poster image – since censured by the French advertising standards authority – has caused some French commentators to wonder if this has done for any chance of The Artist sweeping all before it on February 26^th.  Surely not, the Americans love the French in all their Gallic variety, don’t they?