VOLTAGE LOSES POWER

LOOKS LIKE HOLLYWOOD’S most outspoken director may finally have said too much. For the best part of three decades, Robert Altman has pulled off the striking trick of laying into the studio system at every available opportunity, while still managing to get his films financed (even in the dog days of the eighties, he continued to work).

Now, however, despite the fact that Gosford Park, his most critically and commercially successful film in years, has picked up four Best Director awards and has been nominated for six Oscars (including Best Film and Best Director), the 77-year-old director has seen the financing for his next film, Voltage, (temporarily) drop below the level needed to power it into production.

And it’s not because he’s too old to get insurance (Stephen Frears was recently revealed to be the mystery back-up director on whom the insurers of Gosford Park insisted before they would assume the risk). Could it be because, in these nationalistic times, he keeps saying what he thinks about George W Bush?

What Altman thinks about Bush is, of course, about as complimentary as what Russell Crowe thought of the BBC after they cut the poem from the broadcast of his BAFTA acceptance speech. And, although Altman has been ridiculing Dubya since well before the last presidential election, to do so in these days of heightened patriotism seems to be another matter entirely. All of which quite probably had nothing directly to do with the financing of his new film - but equally probably didn’t help.

Voltage is a satirical comedy set in 1991 about a graduate (Joaquim Phoenix) who goes to work for an electrical engineering company which suddenly sees its profits boosted by the Gulf War. With the possibility of military action against Iraq again rearing its head, it’s not hard to see why Altman should have been drawn to the project.

Based on A Shortage of Engineers, the bestselling novel by Robert Grossbach which was published in mid-2001, Voltage will have a script by long-time Altman associate Alan Rudolph, as well as roles for Elliot Gould (a regular in the director’s classic films, from M*A*S*H to The Long Goodbye) and Liv Tyler (who starred in his last-but-one film, Cookie’s Fortune). It is also reported to boast the usual Altmanesque ensemble cast, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Steve Buscemi, Bob Balaban, Harry Belafonte, William H Macy, Taye Diggs and Tony Shalhoub.

As is normal with Altman’s films, there was no studio deal in place when the film was announced in early January (the director had already reportedly been working on it for four months). But everyone appeared confident that it would be able to start shooting in New York on May 15 - until last month’s American Film Market, that is, when it was revealed that the $21-million budget was still not quite in place.

In the meantime, Altman is apparently doing what all film directors do when their movies are in limbo: making commercials. But, if past form is anything to go by, he us unlikely to do what a lot of other directors do when their film’s funding is in jeopardy: keep his head down and his mouth shut. All of which has started to make him a national hate figure on US right-wing radio stations and websites.

BLOOD FLOWS

NO SUCH PROBLEMS seem likely to affect Clint Eastwood, whose political views are known to be somewhat different to Altman’s (even if he rarely expresses them these days). His popularity seemingly undimmed by age (he is only five years younger than Altman), the actor/director began his latest film at the end of February on the Warner Bros lot, where he has been based for the past two decades.

Written by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential), it is an action thriller called Blood Work about an FBI profiler (Eastwood) tracking a serial killer. Anjelica Huston and Jeff Daniels also star.

GRANT'S GAMBIT

AS UNPREDICTABLE AS ever, the Coen Brothers kept a low profile for several months after the premiere of The Man Who Wasn’t There (which was still called The Barber Movie when we featured it in Preview in January last year). Then, in the space of a single day (January 30 this year, if you want to know), out came the announcements for not one but two upcoming projects.

The first was the more surprising of the two: the fact that Coens are planning a remake of a not terribly memorable sixties caper movie called Gambit. And, would you believe it, it is going to star Hugh Grant.

The original movie, directed by Ronald Neame, starred Michael Caine as a chirpy cockney thief who teams up with a beautiful woman (played in 1966 by Shirley MacLaine) to steal a valuable statue. No word yet on who will play the beautiful woman, but it seems likely that the British thief may be relocated several rungs up the social ladder to suit Grant’s screen persona.

The other thing the Coens will be doing - or, to be more precise, are doing, since shooting started on March 2 - is producing Bad Santa, former documentary-maker Terry Zwigoff’s second feature after the extremely successful Ghost World. Written by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who scripted Cats & Dogs, the film’s plot-line makes it sound like a children’s morality tale. It’s about a couple of wicked con men who travel from mall to mall in December disguised as Santa, but with thieving rather than goodwill on mind. Then they meet an eight-year-old who reminds them what Christmas is all about.

To readers whose toes are beginning to curl at the thought, I ought to point out that the combined talents of the Coen Brothers and Zwigoff are unlikely to result in an excess of saccharine. One thing we can be sure about, though, is that Miramax - whose Dimension subsidiary is producing the film - will not put it out in mid-summer (or spring or autumn, for that matter).