BBC - Films - High Noon - 8th December 2003

		Aint It Cool News Uma Thurman will reunite with her Pulp Fiction co-star John Travolta on Be Cool, the long-awaited sequel to Get Shorty. She'll play a widow who takes over her late husband's record company and ends up in business with Travolta's ex-mobster, Chili Palmer. Danny DeVito will return as egotistical actor Martin Weir, while Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson will co-star as a gay bodyguard who wants to be an actor. F Gary Gray (The Italian Job remake) is directing. Hey - at least that lowers expectations.

		Gollum Goes Ape Andy 'Gollum' Serkis is set to reunite with The Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson on his King Kong remake. The British actor would play the titular ape, using the same digital technology that was used to capture his performance as Rings' weasily creature. "There have been talks about it," he told BBCi FILMS. "Nothing's absolutely certain yet but I'd love to work with Peter again so hopefully, hopefully... I started dropping my ape movements in towards the end of playing Gollum, you know!" Meanwhile, Jackson reportedly wants Robert De Niro or George Clooney to play Carl Denham, the explorer who captures the giant ape and brings him back to New York.

		Police Story Jackie Chan may co-star as chop socky sidekick Cato in Steve Martin's The Birth Of The Pink Panther. "I don't know if we're going to have Jackie Chan or not," says Martin, who is co-writing the screenplay. "We haven't really discussed it. I think he's a genius, by the way." Martin has also revealed that he will be employing the 'comedy' French accent used by Peter Sellers in the original films. "Every once in a while in the privacy of my home, I try out the accent. I took a long time to decide whether to do it or not. It was only when I started writing ideas down that it started to look like this could actually be really funny rather than just a rehash of a genius." Hmmm.

		Samurai Succeeds Tom Cruise action epic The Last Samurai bowed in top spot at the US box office this weekend, with a not-bad $24.4 million, despite dreadful weather. Jessica Alba dance drama Honey nabbed second spot, while Eddie Murphy comedy The Haunted Mansion was third, ahead of Elf and the much-hated Dr Seuss' The Cat In The Hat in fifth. Meanwhile Russell Crowe's Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World is clearly no Gladiator - dropping to tenth place with a total gross of $72.6 million. Love Actually continued its steady success, approaching the $50 million mark.

		Sandler Clicks Adam Sandler will star in Click, a 'high concept' comedy about a man who finds a remote control that can fastforward and rewind parts of his life. Trouble is, it starts to make decisions for him. Jim Carrey was originally in line for the role, from a script by Bruce Almighty writers Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe. Shooting starts in April.

		Good Bye, Competition! Good Bye Lenin! dominated the European Film Awards, winning six top prizes. The amusing German reunificiation comedy took best film, actor (Daniel Brühl) and screenplay - as well as the three People's Choice awards - for director, actor, and actress (Katrin Saß). Lars von Trier won the director award, proper, for Dogville, while Charlotte Rampling won best actress for Swimming Pool. The British films nominated - Dirty Pretty Things, Young Adam, Calendar Girls, and In This World - won nowt.

		Connolly Does Full Monty Stand-up and sometime actor Billy Connolly has signed to co-star in Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events. He'll play Monty, uncle to the story's heroic Baudelaire orphans, who are being threatened by the eeevil Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). Meryl Streep and Jude Law co-star, with Brad Silberling at the helm.

		Soul Asylum Horror novelist and sometime director Clive Barker is to helm Tortured Souls, based on his own range of action figures (aka toys). Comic book creator and toymaker Todd McFarlane is to produce the project, about a man who, in Variety's words, decides to "exchange his wife for a demon goddess from another world, throwing her into a shadowy world of monsters - one from which she must escape and return to his everyday world to rescue their child and vanquish the demon". One to look forward to, then.

		Ban Banned We've not written about this much because, quite frankly, it's a bit dull, but there's been a development in the ongoing tussle between Hollywood studios and independents over sending out 'screener' copies of their films. In short, the studios didn't want to do it 'cos, they reckon, it encourages piracy (avast, me hearties, etc). The independents, meanwhile, say they need to send their movies out on tape/DVD to ensure that Academy members bother to watch them and consider giving them Oscars. Anyway, the Motion Picture Association of America banned screeners and now a judge has banned the ban, saying it's illegal. Hmmm. That wasn't "in short" at all, was it? Sorry. It's Monday morning and High Noon had a busy weekend.