GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

SPEAKING OF HEARTWARMING yuletide tales (and what else would I be doing in the run-up to Easter?), Tim Allen has sorted out his doubts and knuckled down to sequel The Santa Clause 2, which started shooting on February 13 in Vancouver.

In stark contrast, meanwhile, the former star of the Home Alone series - which managed to be satirical and sentimental about Christmas all at the same time - has decisively moved into his adult career proper by taking the title role in Party Monster. The film tells the story of Michael Alig, who combined a penchant for organising some most memorable Manhattan parties with a murderous streak which was made a great deal wider and less controllable by excessive drug use. In the end, he murdered his drug dealer by injecting him with drain-cleaning fluid and dumping him in the East River.

Macaulay Culkin (for it is he) has come a long way since his last feature film, Richie Rich, in 1994, and was recently seen to considerable acclaim in a quite difficult role on the London stage in Madame Melville.

Party Monster will be a relatively low-budget affair, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who have already made a documentary about Alig with the same title. Production is due to start next month (April), with Christine Vachon’s Killer Films teaming up with Hong Kong and Amsterdam-based sales outfit Fortissimo.

IN 1954, JAPANESE master Akira Kurosawa made Seven Samurai, a film about a group of freelance swordsmen whose style was inspired by the Hollywood western. Six years later, John Sturges repaid the compliment by making The Magnificent Seven, which took Kurosawa’s basic story and transferred it back to the American west.

Since then, homages and counter-homages have been flying back and forth, with Kurosawa making another Japanese western, Yojimbo, in 1961, and Sergio Leone copying it three years later with A Fistful of Dollars. Roger Corman likewise rehashed the Samurai story in outer space in an enjoyable 1980 romp called Battle Beyond the Stars, which was scripted by John Sayles.

And now it’s starting all over again, with Miramax and MGM planning to team up on a contemporary version of Kurosawa’s original Samurai, which is scheduled to be the second of eight films on which the two companies will collaborate (the first being Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain). Things are still at an early stage (ie. pre-script), and the decision has not yet been taken as to whether the film will be set in Japan or the US, let alone who will direct it.