Cousin Ted Demme, meanwhile, is lining up an as-yet untitled movie which will do for cocaine use in the seventies what Boogie Nights did for the ‘adult film´ business: lift the lid, add a little sugar and stir. The film, which Demme´s own production company will make in conjunction with New Line, is set to star Johnny Depp as the first guy to become the coke business´ Mr Big, with Spain´s Penélope Cruz notching up yet another English-language title as his wife, The Sopranos´ James Gandolfini as Dad and John Leguizamo as his partner.

And Cecilia Roth - who co-stars with Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar´s European Film Awards winner All About My Mother and who herself won the European Actress 1999 Award in Berlin in December (see page feature article) - also continues to hop back and forth across the Atlantic. In her case, however, the destination is not North America, but her home country of Argentina, where she is currently filming Alejandro Agresti´s A Night with Sabrina Love. Just to complete the picture of an industry more at home on the upper deck of a 747 than in their own beds, Agresti has been based in the Netherlands for most of the past decade, while his new film is a co-production with Italy.

Angel Alert (Take 27)

Hopefully this is the last time I will have to do this before the film is complete and turns up in Preview, so here goes... The casting of the movie version of Charlie´s Angels - no, please, bear with me - seems to be almost definitive. Contrary to any of the names (and accompanying glamorous pictures) that may have been bandied around here of late, the three (is it OK to call them?) babes will be played by Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. If the last name doesn´t immediately ring bells for moviegoers, think TV show Ally McBeal or the bondage freak in the Mel Gibson movie Payback. What is more, after the requisite amount of toing-and-froing - with the possible exception of all those Janis Joplin biopics, no film has chopped and changed its casting as much as the Angels pic - Bill Murray looks set to play Bosley, the guy who acts as go-between in the Angels´ dealings with the mysterious Charlie. Bet you can´t wait. Well, if all goes well at Sony, you only have 10 months to go: the studio hopes to have ‘em out there on the big screen come Thanksgiving.

On the Road Again

Here´s one for older readers. Paul Newman - who, younger readers may be surprised to hear, used to be a major star before he went into the salad-oil business - is keeping up his record of going disgracefully into that good night. Having celebrated his 70th birthday by racing in the Daytona 500 - and gaining an entry in the Guinness Book of Records by being the event´s oldest winner - the veteran actor will be celebrating his 75th anniversary next month (February) by doing exactly the same thing (though winning, of course, cannot be guaranteed this time).
Actually, sarcasm apart, you don´t have to have all that long a memory to recall Newman´s day job: he was the best thing in the recent Kevin Costner movie Message in a Bottle. And he will soon be seen with Linda Fiorentino in Where the Money Is, which some may remember being mentioned here a couple of years ago, and which is due to open in the US this spring. Marek Kaniesvka directs.