ALL TOOLED UP

IN CASE YOU were wondering whether New Line could get any more tasteless in their Austen Powers titles, they just did. The third episode in the saga of the swinging sixties superspy, which already has its release date set (July 26, 2002), is a James Bond spoof called Goldmember.

The screenplay has been written by Mike Myers (who will, of course, star in what he claims will be the last of the Austen Powers movies), again in collaboration with Michael McCullers, and Jay Roach will again direct. Such favourite characters as Dr Evil and Fat Bastard - both, of course, played by Myers - will reportedly return, as will Verne Troyer (Mini-Me), Seth Green, Robert Wagner and Rob Lowe.

I won’t upset you by telling you how much Myers will get paid for this one (oh alright, $25 million and 21% of the gross). But it does look as though the Meet the Parents sequel which Roach was going to direct - the equally tastefully titled Meet the Fockers - is going to have to be postponed, as is Myers’ mooted reincarnation of Inspector Clouseau in a Pink Panther remake.

But, with that much money at stake, who would dare to kick against the pricks?>

BORDERING ON THE DECISIVE

FIRST IT WAS going to be Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kevin Costner. Then, in a casting switch noted on these pages in the summer of 2000, it was going to be Meg Ryan and Kevin Costner. A little later on this, too, fell apart and re-emerged as Meg Ryan and Ralph Fiennes. Each time the casting changed, one half of the pairing didn’t. Then even that stopped being a constant. Now - or at any rate for the time being - the female lead in Beyond Borders is set to be played by Angelina Jolie.

The film, which was at one stage due to be directed by Oliver Stone, is based on the true story of a New York socialite who volunteered to become a nurse for an international relief agency. She then ended up falling in love with the doctor alongside whom she worked on and off for a 10-year period in such places as the Sudan, Bosnia and the Far East.

Exactly who will play the male lead has yet to be determined, but the directorial baton has now apparently passed to action specialist Martin Campbell (Vertical Limit) - who, ironically enough, directed Zeta-Jones in her breakthrough role in The Mask of Zorro. And they’re all going to have to make their minds up pretty soon, since Beyond Borders is due to start production (for Mandalay and Paramount) well within the shelf-life of this issue of Preview (December 15, to be precise).

IT MAY NOT have been part of the plan, but it does seem to be turning out that movies made under the banner of Michael Douglas’ Furthur Films end up starring Michael Douglas.

According to director Harald Zwart (Preview 42), the boss hadn’t really wanted to be in One Night at McCool’s, the company’s debut picture, but was rather taken with the role of Mr Burmeister and ended up playing it to great effect. And then there is the current hit, Don’t Say a Word, featured on page 40. Again, Furthur Films is on the credits; again, Douglas is the star.

He must surely, however, have been a great deal more central to the planning of The Ride Down Mount Morgan, which Furthur Films is co-producing in association with Artists Production Group and StudioCanal.

The film will, of course, be the screen version of Arthur Miller’s play, a satire on marriage which had its stage premiere in London in 1991 but took a further seven years to reach Broadway, where the lead role was played (to great acclaim) by Patrick Stewart.

The movie, meanwhile, looks like being directed by Milos Forman, who had one of his greatest Hollywood successes (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) with Douglas producing. No start date has yet been set, however, for The Ride Down Mount Morgan.

I’M SURE HE has his dark moments like everyone else, but it’s hard to stop thinking of Terry Gilliam as the essence of irrepressible youth, even if he is now a year the wrong side of 60 and the long hair has finally gone.

Mind you, the collapse this time last year of one of his longest-held dreams - The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which fell apart when title actor Jean Rochefort severely damaged his back a couple of weeks into the shoot - must have hit him almost as hard as it hit Rochefort.

Moreover, Spanish director Manuel Gutierrez Aragon has reappropriated the Don Quixote story, and started shooting his own version, El caballero Don Quixote, in Spain in mid-August.

Nonetheless, Gilliam was in his usual form at Cannes, where he turned up for the official jury photocall wearing a tee-shirt bearing the legend ‘CAN BE BOUGHT’. And, as the viewing marathon moved well into its second week, he could be heard leading the other jury members in a hum-along rendition of the piece of Debussy that accompanies the ‘Festival du Film’ logo before each film.

Finally though, Gilliam is back on the road where he belongs: behind the camera. And, bearing in mind that many of his earlier movies have featured plumbers with mythical powers (Brazil), winged galleons that fly through the air (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and fire-breathing horsemen on the night streets of Manhattan (The Fisher King), it should come as no surprise that the next one is about an epic battle between two angels for the survival of mankind.

The film is called Good Omen and Gilliam wrote the screenplay himself, focusing on a couple whose history contains the key to the future of humanity. Production is reportedly due to start as early as next March, although no details of cast, financing or distribution arrangements are yet available.

The director could, however, be observed taking a very detailed tour of the facilities at Studio Babelsberg outside Berlin over the summer, so Omen might turn out to be another of his European shoots.

A COUPLE OF issues ago, I did a little piece noting all the films in which Kate Winslet is, has been or is about to be involved. Now, however, it is another Kate - or rather Cate - who is beginning to look ubiquitous.

The extremely variable size of the gaps between production and release being what they are, Cate Blanchett could well find herself starring in no less than five films that are due out between September and Christmas.

First up is Barry Levinson’s Bandits, in which she co-stars with Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton, both sporting lush heads of hair and both falling in love with her (see following pages). Then there is Tom Tykwer’s Miramax-backed movie, Heaven - the first in a trilogy of scripts written by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, the other two being titled (not surprisingly) Hell and Purgatory - in which Blanchett had her head shaved on camera. Heaven was shot in Italy earlier this year, and Blanchett plays a Scottish woman who falls in love with an Italian in Tuscany.

Next comes The Shipping News, in which the setting is the misty frozen shores of Newfoundland. Then there is the big holiday movie, Lord of the Rings, in which she plays an elf - well, not just any elf, but Galadriel, Queen of Lothlórien.

Finally, Blanchett takes on the title role in Gillian Armstrong’s Charlotte Gray, the first film to come out of the much-trumpeted deal between the UK’s FilmFour and Warner Bros which was announced at Cannes 2000.

The film looks likely to be released in the US (as it will be around the world, with the exception of the UK) by Universal. And they haven’t decided whether to put it out before the end of the year (I hear Oscars are being talked about) or leave it until next spring. Currently, it’s scheduled for December 28 in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.