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WOULD I BE ALONE in suggesting that one or two of this past summer’s sequels have not quite lived up to expectations? I don’t think so. Would I be out of order in suggesting that this might actually increase the anticipation for the sequel to one of 2001’s most enjoyable romps? I hope not.
Ocean’s Eleven took what was, quite frankly, a rickety old movie which had been more of an excuse for the Rat Pack to get together and behave badly (again). It then turned it, in typical Steven Soderbergh style, into a slick, tongue-in-cheek heist drama which knew just when to give the film’s stars - and especially George Clooney - their head, and when to ratchet up the tension with a good bit of criminal action.
Funny thing about Soderbergh: he became internationally famous with sex, lies and videotape, which was a very independent, pretty experimentally structured film. But, ever since, he has been at his best when playing it straight - as in Ocean’s, Erin Brockovich and Out of Sight - and has tended to misfire with experimental outings like Full Frontal.
Only Traffic really combined the two, and Soderbergh himself was taken aback by that film’s box-office success. “If you’d told me when we were making Traffic that it would make $70 million in the United States, I would have said you were stoned,” he commented just after it came out.
He also, at the time (which was right in the middle of the Ocean’s shoot), expressed some reservations about working on any more big-budget movies. “Making a studio picture with movie stars in it is not for the faint-hearted,” he told me. “It’s like standing in the wash of a jet engine for a year. It’s just relentless!”
Well, listen for the sound of the jet starting up again, because Soderbergh is now gearing up for Ocean’s Twelve, which is set to bring back all the bad ’ol guys from the original - Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Bernie Mac, not forgetting Julia Roberts, who is actually a member of the gang this time around (hence the title), with a vengeful Andy Garcia still in hot pursuit. Plus French star Vincent Cassel has signed up for the ride, too.
The film is due to shoot early next year, but this time the story won’t be set in Vegas: Danny (Clooney) and the guys are planning a series of heists in London, with location work also planned in Rome, Paris, Amsterdam and New York.
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 NEWS OF a project which has been referred to on these pages off and on since October 1992: the planned epic about the siege of Leningrad, now St Petersburg, which was surrounded by the Germans for a mind-numbing 900 days (that’s almost three years) during World War II.
It was originally going to be a Sergio Leone film - a Soviet/Italian co-production which he had all but set up when he died in 1989 (followed, a few months later, by the Soviet Union). Then Volker Schlöndorff announced he was going to take a crack at it, but producers were deterred by the poor box-office performance internationally of another German wartime siege film, Josef Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad.
The latest to express interest is another Italian: Giuseppe Tornatore (left), director of such movies as Cinema Paradiso, The Legend of 1990 and Malena. The film is being produced by Italian powerhouse Medusa, and there is talk of getting Nicole Kidman - who has reportedly expressed interest in working with Tornatore - to play the lead in what will, like Legend, be shot as an English-language movie.
Tornatore is currently at work on a screenplay, with plans to shoot the film in Russia next winter.
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