Brown and Long: at Risk.

Risk
Production: Marian McGowan for Mushroom Pictures, the Australian Film Finance Corporation, the Premium Movie Partnership and the NSW Film and Television Office.
Director: Alan White.
Cast: Bryan Brown, Tom Long, Claudia Karvan.
Started: 17 October, 1999. Sydney.
Subject: The new film from Erskineville Kings director White is a comedy about Ben (Long), a new recruit to an insurance company who gets caught up in the ingenious claims scam run by veteran assessor Kreisky (Brown) and his solicitor girlfriend, Louise (Karvan). Things start to get complicated, however, when Ben begins to fall for Louise, and all three have to accept the first rule of insurance: to be the one who walks away.

Leigh: going all Tosy-Turvy.

Topsy-Turvy
Production: Simon Channing-Williams for Thin Man Films, The Greenlight Fund and Newmarket Capital Group.
Director: Mike Leigh.
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Ron Cook, Lesley Manville, Timothy Spall.
Started: July 6, 1998. London.
Subject: Mike Leigh’s latest (premiered at Venice) is a costume movie about a crisis in the creative lives of 19th-century composer Arthur Sullivan (Corduner) and his librettist, William S Gilbert (Broadbent). Finally, however, Gilbert’s wife (Manville) drags him to a Japanese exhibition in London, sparking the idea for what will become the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta of all: The Mikado.
International distribution: United Artists Films.

"Penn and Bigelow: on the Water.

The Weight of Water
Production: Janet Yang, Joni Sighvatsson and A Kitman Ho for Le Studio Canal +.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow.
Cast: Sean Penn, Sarah Polley, Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine McCormack, Josh Lucas, Katrin Cartlidge, Ciaran Hands, Ulrich Thomsen, Vinessa Shaw, Anders W Berthelsen.
Started: September 13, 1999. Halifax, Nova Scotia. Subject: A movie version of the 1997 bestseller about Jean, a photo-journalist (McCormack), and her poet husband (Penn) who travel to a remote island off the New Hampshire coast, where she is to do a photo essay about the legendary murder of two Scandinavian immigrants 125 years earlier. The story switches between 1873 and the present, chronicling the parallel lives of the two women: Jean and the only survivor of the crime (Polley).
International distribution: Le Studio Canal +.