BBC - Films - High Noon - 20th April 2004

		Moss Gets Mission Carrie-Anne Moss will star opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3. Ving Rhames is also set to reprise his sidekick role as Luther Stickel. Narc director Joe Carnahan begins shooting the film this summer in time for a 2005 release. That comes after producers (including Cruise) finally settled on a script, which has been through the hands of Dean Georgaris (Lara Croft 2), Robert Towne (Chinatown), and Dan Gilroy (Freejack). The brain behind The Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont, has scribbled the most recent draft, but plot details have been kept under wraps.

		Miramax Medal Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein has been awarded an honorary CBE. That's Commander of the British Empire to us common folk, the second highest honour awarded by The Queen after a knighthood. (For all the cogs at Miramax, that means you won't need to call him Sir Harvey - although he probably already insists on that.) The award is in recognition of Weinstein's contribution to bringing mainstream attention to British film talent and to the national 'film industry'. "My life and my career have been greatly influenced and enriched by great British filmmakers and authors, and so I am especially honoured and humbled to be receiving the CBE," Weinstein said. Fair dos to him since Miramax has contributed upward of £600 million to the development, commissioning, production, financing and distribution of films made with British companies.

		Star Wars Shines Like New Details have been revealed about the bonus features accompanying the worldwide DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy (digitally re-mastered, of course!) on 21st September. These include a feature-length documentary made up of interviews with more than 40 members of the cast and crew, plus reams of thus far unseen archival footage and early screen tests. Multiple featurettes will fill out the fourth disc, as well as a ten-minute behind-the-scenes preview of next year's Episode III - with the first glimpse of the new Darth Vader costume. Which is quite a big deal, apparently...

		Oh, The Horror... An unknown in this country, US TV actress Emily VanCamp has landed a major role in The Ring 2, opposite Naomi Watts and pint-sized thesp David Dorfman. Carrie star Sissy Spacek also has a small part in the horror sequel to the 2003 hit, which rolls into production next month... Martin Landau and Judy Parfitt (Girl With A Pearl Earring) are pairing up for WWII drama The Aryan Couple. The story follows a German Jewish industrialist forced to surrender his empire to the Nazis in order to pay for his family's passage out of the country. It's not a comedy... Scribes Craig Moss and Steve Schoenburg have been hired to pen the remake of 1982's high school gross-fest Porky's. Sources say the plan is to contemporise the story to include more set-pieces, but "not necessarily in the gross-out mode". The credibility of this statement is slightly undermined by the fact that Craig Moss' only previous screen credit is as director of Saving Ryan's Privates.