Spain (Barcelona) set for European Film Awards

BBC News, 10 December 2004

Vera Drake star Imelda Staunton is nominated for best actress

Mike Leigh's film Vera Drake is among the nominees at this year's European Film Awards being held in Barcelona on 11 December.

Imelda Staunton, who plays the lead role in the film about abortion, is in the running for the best actress prize.

Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodovar's latest movie Bad Education is tipped for seven prizes, including best director and best screenwriter.

Three awards will be determined by the votes of cinema-goers across Europe.

Directors Bernado Bertolucci, Almodovar and Richard Curtis - responsible for comedies Love Actually and Notting Hill - are nominated for the popular director's prize.

People's prize

Film fans across Europe have placed Colin Firth, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant on the shortlist for best actor.

German star Daniel Bruehl, who scooped the best actor trophy for his role in Goodbye Lenin last year, is also nominated for the people's prize.

In the jury award, British actress Staunton is up against Penelope Cruz, who is nominated for her role in Italian language film Non Ti Muovere.

Almodovar film Bad Education is nominated in seven categories

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 are in the running for best non-European film.

British recipients of European Film Awards in recent years have included Kate Winslet for Iris (2002), and Ben Kingsley for Sexy Beast in 2001.

In 2000, singer Bjork won both the jury and popular awards for her role in gritty film Dancer In The Dark.

In 2002, the female stars of French film Huit Femmes accepted the best actress prize collectively.

The first European Film Awards took place in 1988, and are staged by the European Film Academy.

The food fight 

The Observer, 28 November 2004

A chocolate-coated Thom Yorke, Chris Martin on a bed of rice, Colin Firth drowning in coffee ... it seems some celebrities will do anything to get noticed. But at least this time it is in a good cause. Lucy Siegle reports on Oxfam's fair trade campaign

For a minute you have to ask yourself what's going on. Why is Michael Stipe doused in milk, Jamelia swimming in poultry feathers, Thom Yorke dunked in chocolate, Chris Martin covered in rice and Colin Firth drenched in coffee? These celebrities look like the victims of a gunk tank, yet Noel's House Party is long off the air.

The explanation lies in Oxfam's ability to persuade its celebrity supporters to do almost anything. And so each familiar face has dutifully jetted in to have equally familiar commodities dumped on their head for the latest, and arguably most important, phase of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. The dumped commodities, from sugar and rice to orange juice, symbolise the warped world of international trade - commodities are overproduced in the EU and US, thanks to the developed world's system of extensive farm subsidies, and the resulting surplus is dumped on the world's poorest nations, devastating domestic markets.

'You do wonder,' admits Clare Lewis, Oxfam's celebrity co-ordinator, 'what the response will be when you phone up and suggest to an agent or manager that their star might like to be photographed covered in some random substance.' But thankfully, this time they were all up for it and so 'it was just a question of sitting down with the photographer, Greg Williams, who dreamt up the "dumping" idea, and deciding what to dump on whom.'

'I have a bald head,' REM frontman Michael Stipe informs me by way of explanation. 'In fact, it started that they wanted to tip coffee beans over me, and I said that was fine, as I am a voracious coffee drinker. Then they phoned and said, actually we want to do brewed coffee, and that was fine because that still fits. Then they call again. They want to do milk...'

That's what's known as moving the goal posts, I suggest.

'Yeah, but I understood - the bald head. Milk looks better because it splashes off. And anyway, I heard Bono was being covered in sugar and I thought: Well, he'll look ridiculous.' [The picture of a sugared Bono won't be released until the New Year, when he's finished the publicity for U2's latest album.] 'That gave me courage,' says Stipe, 'but the thing is, I'm lactose intolerant.'

Fortunately there was no allergic reaction, just stinging eyes and a sour, sour smell: 'I smelled like a weird baby for a few days.' But not as sour, Stipe emphasises, as 'the taste left by world trade rules, which allow the richest countries in the world to milk the poorest farmers in the world dry. Mali,' he says, 'has 6.5m cattle yet 9,000 tonnes of powdered milk are imported every year.' Stipe, a long-time champion of different global-justice campaigns, became aware of the inequities of global trade in the early Eighties, an interest reawakened by the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. 'The trade debate is a tough one,' he concedes. 'We may move blindly through our lives, not recognising or realising that we are impacting on people, not realising that richer countries are having this impact on poorer countries. We might be aware of that, but we'll assume it will take care of itself. Or we might involve ourselves, even in a small way, and start to change things around, change the status quo, and try to bring an awareness of the inequalities. There's a really strong ripple effect with this.'

In October, at an almost-secret Make Trade Fair Gig, Stipe's duet with fellow campaigner Chris Martin brought the house down. 'Chris's involvement with the trade issue has been really encouraging to me,' says Stipe. 'Like even the way he did that incredibly simple but effective thing of writing maketradefair.com on his hand when he was touring.'

Chris Martin was astounded at how many people noticed: 'I should have written "Pepsi", I could have made millions,' he tells me. 'But the trade issue needs more soundbites, because it's complex to get across. For starters "fair trade" sounds like "free trade", when they're polar opposites. I get people coming up to me all the time going: "I really like what you're doing with free trade."'

Hopefully the new campaign will help temper this kind of confusion. Having seen the effects of rice dumping first hand, on an Oxfam trip to Haiti, Martin chose to have rice dumped on him. 'I think I got off lightly,' he says. 'I was in and out of the shoot in 10 minutes, which was useful because we were in rehearsals at the time. Because my hair's a bit longer than usual, I did get a bit of rice falling out afterwards. You ask yourself: is that a lice or a piece of rice? It was mostly rice.'

In the event, it was Colin Firth who got coffee, coming straight from a Bridget Jones junket to be saturated in the stuff. But it was Thom Yorke's drowning-by-chocolate experience that was rumoured to be the most hardcore. Steve, the photographer's assistant, previously happy to stand in for feathers, rice and sugar rehearsals, drew the line at chocolate. It was left to an Oxfam intern, luckily a Thom Yorke fan, to step up. When Yorke arrived for the real take, he really went for it. 'I don't think he's done any other shoots all year,' said photographer Greg Williams, 'but he was so game. He wanted this shoot to be the best it could possibly be.

We tied plastic bags round his feet and walked him to the shower.'

Strictly speaking, neither coffee nor chocolate are 'dumped' commodities, but Oxfam made the decision to include them and widen the campaign to agricultural commodities. 'We talked about it a lot,' admits Clare Lewis, 'but we knew we'd miss a trick if we didn't include these other contentious commodities. Multinationals continue to drive down their prices so they are really important parts of the commodity industry, but with their own story to tell.'

For the Oxfam campaign, with its sights firmly fixed on the next WTO ministerial in Hong Kong next year, it's vital to seize any opportunity to communicate such stories, whether to global decision-makers or to the general public. To Oxfam, the potential benefits to developing nations from reforming unfair trade rules cannot be underestimated. 'Make Trade Fair is about the potential global trade offers to reduce poverty,' explains Amy Barry from Oxfam, who works closely with the charity's policy unit. 'That's the potential it offers for people to be able to send their kids to school, buy essential medicine, build houses that can survive storms. The kind of potential that just cannot be realised unless these countries are given the chance to get off their knees. And that will not happen while we have trade rules that deny developing countries the chance to help themselves.'

Oxfam does not advocate killing off the WTO, unlike some other NGOs or anti-globalisation protestors. Instead, the focus is on getting the WTO to agree on a new agricultural agreement that would end subsidised over-production and all forms of agricultural dumping, improve access to rich countries for poorer nations and ensure that no WTO rules impede developing countries from guaranteeing food security and reducing overall poverty - all things which were outlined in the original Doha ministerial in 2000, on which little or no progress has been made.

Brussels-based think-tank The Centre for a New Europe alleges that 6,600 people die every day directly as a result of EU trading rules and if Africa was able to increase its share of world trade by just 1 per cent, it would earn an additional £49bn a year, enough to lift 128m people out of extreme poverty.

Digby Jones, the director general of the CBI, who has attended both ministerials at Doha and Cancun, agrees that trade reform holds the key. 'The root cure to stop catastrophes occurring comes from getting sustainable, quality commerce into poverty-stricken countries. We can't do that until we stop the current situation of tariffs and subsidies. I'm afraid the only hope a kid in Africa, without access to clean water or education, has is if we have a multilateral, rules-based world-trading agreement that we adhere to - and we've got to get the likes of America, France and Japan to kill these trade inequalities.'

In 2003, the WTO ministerial in Cancun ended without agreement when a number of developing nations refused to kowtow to the developed nations and walked out. In many ways, Hong Kong 2005 represents the last chance for real reforms that would give a more balanced playing field. Oxfam insists that everybody has a part to play in pushing the issue forward, signing up to its Big Noise petition in the run-up to Hong Kong.

But what about the celebrities who are now the faces of commodity dumping? Do they also have roles to play? 'Celebrity endorsements can make some difference to global issues,' says economist and author Noreena Hertz - nicknamed the 'Nigella Lawson of economics', she is herself no stranger to the idea of popularising economic issues. She has also briefed Bono on the drop-the-debt campaign. 'It's especially effective if that celebrity is someone like Bono. His involvement in the debt-relief issue has been critical. Someone like that who puts in hours learning an issue and who knows their stuff can really open doors. I always remember when Larry Summers [former Secretary of the US Treasury] was persuaded to speak to him. Larry had never actually heard of Bono, which is amazing in itself, but the US Treasury dutifully sent Bono some reports before the meeting, the kind of stuff nobody ever reads. Larry was completely astonished that when they met Bono was quoting paragraphs from page 186.'

On the subject of Bono, I remind Chris Martin that when he started working with Oxfam three years ago, he said he felt like 'a third-rate Bono' but was hoping to 'become a first-rate Bono' in time. 'I think I'm probably fifth-rate by now,' he says, 'because he's done even more in the interim, so I can't ever catch up.'

But what about when he himself runs into global decision-makers? In Cancun, for example, he presented Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, then head of the WTO, with a Make Trade Fair petition containing 4m signatures. 'I won't pretend it didn't feel like a really bid deal to see this guy,' he concedes. 'But then three days later everything was up in the air, when negotiations fell apart and nobody gives a shit about some singer coming in. But it's better than some singer not coming in. I never pretended I was going to save world trade. I can't, because I'm a singer. But if Beyonce, or whoever, sells hair products, then I can advertise fairer trade because that's what I believe in. Nobody has to listen to me as long as they can see me.'

www.maketradefair.com

For fortysomethings, a Firth-rate fantasy by Liz Stevens

The Boston Globe, 26 November 2004

Let's get one thing straight right off: Colin Firth's fans are not your stereotypical teeny-boppers.

They don't stalk. They're not crude. They cringe at the thought of sending the 44-year-old British actor panties in the mail or shouting, from the back of a crowd, that they want to have his baby.

No, no. Colin Firth's serious admirers have an unfanlike dignity. They are, most of them, women of a certain age with a relish for literature, period drama, and English accents.

And many swear they have never done anything like this before, i.e. taken such an, ahem, ''interest" in a movie star.

''I don't know what it was -- and I had never -- I'm happily married," says Marsha Boyd, a 42-year-old kindergarten teacher in suburban Atlanta, attempting to describe her initial infatuation with Firth. ''It was embarrassing."

In ''Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," the actor reprises his role as Bridget's love interest, the staid barrister Mark Darcy. You know, the one who wore the ''the reindeer jumper" to ''Una and Geoffrey Alconbury's New Year's Day Turkey Curry Buffet in Grafton Underwood," and, in the end, wrapped a half-clad Bridget in his Saville Row overcoat and kissed her passionately.

Swoon.

Or maybe not. Firth's appeal isn't quite so obvious to most of America's ''In Touch"-reading female population -- if they even know who he is.

''He's not classically handsome," says Kathy Cobbs, 52, a Norman, Okla., real estate saleswoman. ''But there's just something about him."

Instead of Miami tan, Firth is London pasty. Instead of driving a race car in his spare time, he writes short stories. Instead of cozying up to fashion models, he's happily married.

To top it off, Firth's breakout role came in a six-hour television adaptation of a 19th-century novel, which ran on the A&E network. It required the actor to wear what Jerry Seinfeld would definitely classify as a ''puffy shirt." There were no sex scenes, no swear words, and only one chaste kiss.

But in the end, the BBC production of Jane Austen's ''Pride and Prejudice," which aired here in January 1996, turned out to be one of A&E's most popular presentations ever. And for women whose tastes run more toward subtle, fully-clothed eroticism than hot tub make out scenes, ''P and P" became the ultimate in fantasy entertainment and Mr. Darcy the ultimate fantasy man.

''First of all, not only do I think it's women of a certain age who are typically attracted to Firth," says Rhea Keenan, a Firth fan and marketing research consultant in Evanston, Ill. ''I think it's women who are more intellectually oriented. The women I know who are enamored of him are readers and have this sense of . . . well-developed characters in novels."

In other words, Cobbs notes, ''We like to call him the thinking woman's sex symbol."

Firth might not be the ever-alluring bad boy (a la Hugh Grant, with whom he co-stars in ''The Edge of Reason" and with whom he is frequently compared), but Firth does possess the ability, say his fans, to ''smolder": the emotive eyes, the 6-foot stature, the tousled brown locks, the commanding British voice.

Oh, yes. He's talented, too.

As an actor, Firth ''can do more without talking than most people can do with a thousand lines of dialogue," says Mary Findlay, 37, the Vancouver-based moderator for the Firthden fanlist.

Firth fans like to think of themselves as a sorority of smart, discerning women. Hundreds of them -- most in their 30s, 40s, and 50s (and at least one in her 80s) -- frequent fanlists, such as Firthlist and Firthden, where the actor is referred to maternally as ODB (Our Dear Boy).

''We want people that are fairly educated and who want to talk about him and about ourselves and not," says Cobbs, the Firthden librarian, ''the sweaty stuff."

The women have bonded over their Firth habit, exchanging hard-to-find movies and articles, sending a group donation to a charity that Firth supports, and traveling en masse across continents to see Firth in person.

And they don't just effuse over the man's talent and ''je ne sais quoi." They also swear he's just about the most admirable actor around: a dedicated father, an activist for the rights of indigenous African tribes, a celebrity who hasn't let stardom go to his head.

''Obviously, he's dishy," says 26-year-old Emma Bellenes, who runs The Firth Factor website from her home in England. ''But it's more than that. Everything I've heard about him was just so nice. He was just this genuine bloke."

Firth, who has been acting since the early '80s, was a known commodity in Britain before ''Pride and Prejudice." And since then, roles in ''Love Actually," ''What a Girl Wants," and ''Girl With a Pearl Earring" have brought him greater recognition on this side of the Atlantic.

But his brooding portrayal of the archetypal Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the haughty English gentleman disarmed by love, is what forever drives the Firth fandom.

In the now famous ''episode four" of six, Mr. Darcy dives into a small lake, fully clothed, after a horseback ride on his Pemberley estate. He emerges with his white shirt clinging to his chest -- sopping, vulnerable, and steamily sexy.

(Firth fans will be ecstatic to hear that ''The Edge of Reason" makes reference to the white-shirt scene not once, but twice. After all, Firth's Mark Darcy is the modern-day Mr. Darcy.)

The Firth bug is a potent one. Keenan once threw a Firth fan-club party at her home with Firth's picture on the place settings. Cobbs, in Oklahoma, boasts a license plate holder that reads ''It's a Colin Firth thing. You wouldn't understand."

And an Oprah website chat room recently was swamped with Firth fans after the announcement that Firth, Zellwegger, and Grant would be her guests in October.

The fact that Firth was relegated to supporting roles in both ''The English Patient" (as Kristin Scott Thomas's cuckolded husband) and ''Shakespeare in Love" (as Gwyneth Paltrow's jilted fiance), irks Firth fans to no end.

''We're very angry because he is so underrated," says Houston teacher Linda Waldrop, 55. ''Everything he does is better because he's in it."

Colin Firth eyes James Bond role by Adam Butler

USA Today (The Associated Press), 18 November 2004

Colin Firth is done being Bridget Jones' nice guy, but he's not against donning British agent 007's tuxedo. 

Firth, 44, tells Entertainment Weekly magazine that he'd seriously consider taking over the James Bond franchise from Pierce Brosnan. 

"At the moment, I can't think of anything I would be less attracted to," says Firth about the possibility of a third Bridget Jones film.

However, the 44-year-old actor tells Entertainment Weekly magazine that he'd seriously consider taking over the James Bond franchise from Pierce Brosnan.

Unlike another famous Colin — Colin Farrell, who says he's not interested in the role despite being Brosnan's choice — there's been no talk of Firth grabbing Bond's Walther PPK.

"No one has approached me, but I would not be averse to it," Firth tells EW in its latest issue.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the sequel to the 2001 original, stars Firth as the stiff tacky sweater-wearing lawyer Mark Darcy and Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones.

Firth, whose screen credits also include Love Actually and Shakespeare in Love, said he isn't interested in Mark Darcy-like roles.

"I'm attracted to dark stuff," he said, "and I'm in that mode right now."

Stars rally behind Hugh Grant 

Indo-Asian News Service, 14 November 2004

British tabloids have been trashing Hugh Grant after his scuffle with the paparazzi, but fellow actors Colin Firth, Sandra Bullock and Emma Thompson have rallied behind him.

"He is that rare thing - a true film star who doesn't take himself too seriously," Thompson was quoted as saying in the Independent.

Following his refusal to pose with his millionaire girl friend Jemima Khan at the premiere of "Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason", British tabloids have derided Grant as an overpaid, under-talented actor.

Pointing out that Grant ensured the premiere's benefits went to the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity, co-star Colin Firth said, "Who is he hurting to deserve this kind of attack?"

Grant stoked speculation about his future by declaring acting bored him and that he was in semi-retirement.

Emma Thompson, his co-star in "Sense and Sensibility" told the Independent: "I've made four films with him and I would be very upset if he gave up."

His "Two Weeks Notice" co-star, Sandra Bullock, said Grant's talent is rare and natural.

"Everything that happens to Hugh appears to be an accident, which he is experiencing for the first time," Bullock was quoted as saying.

Grant's trouble with the media is not new. The tabloids had a field day in 1995 when Los Angeles police arrested the British actor with streetwalker Divine Brown.

Firth pities Zellweger 

Contactmusic.com, 5 November 2004

English heart-throb Colin Firth pities his Bridget Jones co-star Renee Zellweger all the media attention she receives over her fluctuating weight.

The Oscar-winning actress piled on the pounds to play Helen Fielding's 'singleton' in the 2001 hit Bridget Jones's Diary and this year's (04) sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, but immediately lost the weight after filming ended.

Firth laments, "I do feel sorry for Renee because there is such a fuss over her weight. I mean, it's ridiculous because she looks so good with a bit more weight on her and she's hardly fat.

"Most men prefer her with curves. She's a good actress and very game and the looks thing gets in the way.

"I can understand the obsession. It's the same for all actresses. Actually it's probably the same for all women."

"Where the truth lies" Industry Buzz by Hugh Hart.

San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2004

Jet lag: Canadian director Atom Egoyan was broiling last month in the Hollywood Hills, where I watched him put Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman through their paces in the '70s-era period drama "Where the Truth Lies." Bacon and Firth, decked out in bell bottoms and big-collared shirts, play former partners of a comedy team who are reunited under tense circumstances by an investigative reporter, portrayed by Lohman.

The scenes were filmed on the grounds of the Stalls House, a modernist architectural landmark. But instead of continuing the project in one of the dozens of production facilities just a few minutes away, the "Truth" team flew to England the next day, where the home's interior had been painstakingly re- constructed on a London soundstage.

Robert Lantos, producer of the $24 million film, explained that the counterintuitive logistical hassle was in fact grounded in some very sound fiscal realities.

"Films are made wherever it is most economically viable to shoot them," Lantos told me by phone from England. "Sometimes it's because one place is cheaper than another. London is probably the most expensive place on Earth, but there's an equally compelling reason to come here, which is that there is significant financing available for films that qualify as British."

Follow-the-money financing can profoundly affect where a film is shot. For example, even though Brad Anderson's forthcoming thriller "The Machinist" was set in the United States, it was filmed entirely in Spain because that's where the funding came from.

In the case of "Where the Truth Lies," Lantos says, "This group of English investors put up a significant portion of the budget in return for an equity position. In addition to that, there is a U.K. tax write-off that results in money that comes into the film that doesn't have to be repaid. In all, it can add up to close to half the budget of the movie, just for being British qualified."

The made-in-Britain standard, he says, "includes spending money in England, i.e. shooting here. So rather than build the set in a studio in Los Angeles, which would have made life simpler for everybody, we built it in a studio in London."

Raising money to make a movie used to be far easier, but Lantos says, in the late '90s, distributors who had eagerly invested in quality art-house pictures got cold feet, giving rise to an intricate network of government- backed financing schemes.

"There's no point in being clever about putting financing together if you sacrifice the film in the process," Lantos says. "Some just cannot be financed in a clever way because it means compromising them to the point it's not worth making them. But because it has a lot of interiors, 'Where the Truth Lies' is a portable film.

"My real job is to contribute to the creative process and make sure the film gets properly marketed. Then I have this other thing, which is how to get them made. It means there's a lot of jet lag. And it is inconvenient. I sort of look at it as a necessary evil."

Bridget, you left me a broken man... by Jeremy Paxman.

The Sunday Times, 31 October 2004

Jeremy Paxman jumped at the chance to appear in the new Bridget Jones film with Renée Zellweger. Alas, filming was not quite as romantic as he expected.

What would you say if someone were to ring you up and ask if you would like to appear in the new Bridget Jones movie? Meet Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant — and get paid for it.

You would, wouldn’t you? I mean, you pick up a magazine and it’s full of someone called Abi Titmuss who gets to open supermarkets just because she once dated someone I’ve never heard of, who got ousted for not doing something or other with someone else I’ve barely heard of. That’s the spirit of the age: nobody actually does anything any more, they just get photographed.

So who could resist an invitation to appear in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason?

I admit it is not exactly a starring role. For a fleeting second or so I entertained vague fantasies about billboards. ”Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason. Starring Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger. And introducing Jeremy Paxman as . . .“ As what? The man who didn’t quite know why he was there? The man the costume department forgot?

I never truly expected above-the-title billing; I knew I wasn’t going to get my own feng-shuied Winnebago with personal masseuse and as many Belgian chocolates as I could eat. But the North Circular was not the departure point I had anticipated either. And certainly not at 7 on a wet November morning. I felt slightly less excited than Adrian Mole when being invited to be the guest speaker at the Melton Mowbray Creative Writing Circle.

The scene in question — my scene — is shot 42A, a slow tracking shot through the offices of the television company where Grant’s character continues to lay siege to Bridget. At least, I assume that’s what is going on, because the only page of the script I am allowed to see is the one on which my line is printed. For all I know Hugh Grant might already have taken a chainsaw to his mother, and Bridget might have been revealed to be Osama Bin Laden’s body-double.

Shot 42A requires me to stand behind a Coca-Cola machine and then to walk out as Daniel Cleaver (played by Grant) passes. He is telling Bridget (Zellweger) that he never watches television. But — vain, egotistical and sadly plausible figure that he is — he loves appearing on it.

At this point, a busty blonde in the shortest imaginable mini-skirt passes, and speech is rendered impossible because Grant’s tongue is on the floor. As he recovers and continues his walk down the corridor of the office block on the North Circular, I am to emerge from behind the soft drinks and utter the deathless words: ”Ah, Daniel. I thought the Madrid piece was outstanding. Full of insight. Really original.“

It’s not Hamlet’s soliloquy. But even Laurence Olivier must have started somewhere.

So far, my acting career has been restricted to say the least. At 14 I had a part as, literally, a spear-carrier in Romeo and Juliet. I peaked at 17 in the school production of Under Milk Wood, in which I was required to walk on stage, cross my arms and intone ”I am Evans the Death“ for no obvious reason. The rest is silence.

So here we are, on some ghastly winter morning in a glass and concrete office block on the North Circular. The Big Break has arrived.

On arrival, there is a limo. It is 100 yards to the make-up caravan, but they are insistent. One must use the limo to get there. And being feeble-minded one acquiesces and then sits in the trailer, where a platoon of make-up artists has been deployed since 6am, as a bit of powder is dabbed on my face. I have a sneaking suspicion that they think it’s a lost cause.

Then it is back to the limo and down to the office block. There are an awful lot of people. There is a man to direct you into the car park. There is a man to direct you to the lift. There is a woman to direct you out of the lift. There is another person to point you down the corridor. And then there is a room full of dozens of people, most of them watching television.

(Altogether, it turns out, there are 105 people on the set. Most have been there since 6am.) And then we are at the Holy of Holies. It is like no commercial television office I have ever been in, for the simple reason that it is clean and organised. It is also full of people, when we all know that the main hobby of media bosses in the past few years has been replacing people with machines.

I feel like a solitary prune at Harvest Festival. Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing. Evans the Death rings echoingly around my head.

Mr Darcy is to die for by Cherry Potter.

The Guardian, 20 October 2004

Our hero ... Colin Firth has become the favourite Mr Darcy,but this romantic hero might not be so great in reality, writes Cherry Potter.

Mr Darcy is women's favourite fictional romantic icon. According to a recent poll by the Orange Prize for Fiction, 1900 women across the generations voted for Mr Darcy as the man they would most like to go on a date with. He was also the character women would most like to invite to a dinner party - which strikes me as odd, as surely Mr Darcy would spend the evening either gazing at the ceiling grunting with boredom or glowering at the guests.

Whatever, new fictional Darcys abound. In Bride and Prejudice, a contemporary Bollywood reworking of Jane Austen's classic due for release in Australia next February, proud Mr Darcy has been transformed into an arrogant American tycoon. The film, just released in Britain, stars the New Zealander Martin Henderson who is rude and condescending towards Lalita (the Elizabeth Bennett character) and her Indian family.

Despite his stunning good looks she, of course, loathes and despises him ... until, well, you know the rest.

The Edge of Reason, the Bridget Jones sequel, is due for release in November. The first Bridget Jones movie ended with our feisty, fun-loving eponymous heroine ensconced in her happy-ever-after moment with virtuous, faithful Mark Darcy/Colin Firth. Apparently, movie pirates have offered $US10 million ($14 million) for a perfect digital advance copy - which is either a brilliant publicity stunt, or another sign of the enormous popularity of films with characters called Mr Darcy, particularly if they are played by Colin Firth. I don't envy Matthew MacFadyen who is stepping into Firth's shoes in the latest star-studded feature adaptation being filmed in Britain.

When Firth starred in Andrew Davies's 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he became forever identified in the eyes of multitudes of adoring women (probably owing to the scene when he clambered out of the lake after an early morning swim) with the character of a man who may be repressed and difficult but, at the same time, is morally upright and devastatingly sexy.

Of course, Austen's novel betrays nothing of Darcy's actual sexuality or lack of it. Apart from being subject to the obvious restrictions of a female writer in Regency times, she may also have realised that the best sex scenes reside in the secret imagination of her readers. But what she does provide is a perfect blank screen on to which Darcy's admirers, by identifying with Elizabeth Bennett, can project that most archetypal of all female fantasies - that they will be the one and only woman to discover the key to unlocking a man's tortured soul, thus setting free his hidden passions.

It's natural such a fantasy held sway over women two centuries ago. When society was deeply patriarchal, men like Darcy really were severe, remote and all-powerful - in the novel, Darcy even describes himself as "selfish and overbearing". Women were separated from men by all sorts of formal conventions which left them little opportunity to get to know men until after they were married. The question is, why does Darcy continue to have a compelling hold over women, particularly educated literary feminist women, in the 21st century?

For instance, in response to an Orange prize quest for"watershed novels" which had changed readers' lives, Carole Welch, the associate publishing director of Sceptre, chose Pride and Prejudice because "it fanned the flames of my desire to read ... which led to me becoming a publisher". But then she adds the downside: "It encouraged me to fall for moody, charismatic, seemingly unattainable men, with unfortunately less happy results than for Jane Austen's heroine."

Here is the rub - Austen leaves us to assume her heroines' marriages are happy despite portraying very few idyllic marriages in the rest of her texts. Also, Austen's deification as a novelist is such that one hardly dares to point out that when it comes to marriage and what goes on behind the bedroom door, she herself had no first-hand experience.

But as modern women with our wealth of relationship experience and all the benefits brought about by feminism, we should know better. The fact is dark, smouldering, moody, charismatic, arrogant Darcy types, whom we hate at first sight and later fall in love with, often - particularly after we have married them - turn out to be rigid, dominating and controlling.

What message is this Darcy fixation sending to men? On the one hand, women say they want men who are emotionally intelligent, sensitive, flexible, who enjoy sharing equally and are fun to be with. But these same women are swooning over a fictional character who is the epitome of the dominant patriarchal male. No wonder men are confused.

Far from swooning over the latest Pride and Prejudice adaptation, those of us who have experienced the dark side of the Darcy syndrome should be warning younger women about repeating our mistakes. I'm sure Jane Austen would be cheering us on.

It was a weekend of Hugh, Colin and Ben, Oh, My! by Michelle Solomon.

TheChamplainchannel.com, 18 October 2004

Hob Nobbing In Hollywood With Movie Hunks

It Was A Weekend Of Hugh, Colin And Ben, Oh, My!

Well, it was a whirlwind weekend, sitting at the pool of a luxury hotel with Hugh Grant, then playing cards with Ben Affleck. Yes, Celebrity Chatter does make the rounds. Did I mention that I also had a chat with Colin Firth?

Grant was nursing a cold and drinking his English tea poolside of a very exclusive Beverly Hills hotel. He eyed the large trough of sushi I was eating, and then turned back to his magazine. I considered offering him a shrimp roll or perhaps some of the sashimi, but I hesitated and thought better of it.

If he were sick, would he really want sushi? If only I had been eating chicken soup.

Later, during our interview about the upcoming film "Bridget Jones 2," Grant didn't feel much better.

I blamed his runny nose and red eyes on the fact that his character, English cad Daniel Cleaver and Mark D'Arcy (played by Colin Firth) have a rousing fight scene, which ends up in a pond of water. Could it be that although shooting wrapped months ago that Grant is still harboring the chill from that day?

I didn't even get a chuckle out of him, nor did I when I tell him that the reason we (he and I as one) get even whinier than others when we are sick is that we're both Virgos.

His birthday is Sept. 9 and mine is just two days before. He took this very seriously and reflected on it a minute.

Maybe I had tapped into the psyche of Hugh Grant.

We also talked about his reputation as a worrier. I asked him about the legendary story of when he was shooting "Mickey Blue Eyes" with James Caan. The story goes that Caan took to calling him Whippy after tiny whippet dogs that get nervous and shake.

"Hmmm," he says.

Our conversation then moved to his career. Since I couldn't find any information anywhere about what Grant's upcoming projects were, I figured I would ask him myself.

"I'm in semi-retirement," he told me.

What? No more boyish British prime minister a la "Love Actually" to give Tom Cruise's underwear dance a run for its money?

No more characters like Will Freeman ("About A Boy") who got up in front of a school assembly and sang a bad rendition of "Killing Me Softly" to help his newfound 12-year-old friend be cool at school?

And after "Bridget Jones 2," no more Daniel Cleaver who gave new hope to women everywhere that large undergarments are actually sexy?

Meanwhile, fans of Bridget Jones books are asking me how they solved the Colin Firth dilemma. If you don't know what dilemma I'm talking about, I'll fill you in.

Firth, who stars with Renee Zellweger and Grant in the "Bridget Jones's Diary" movies, is actually a character in novelist Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones sequel, "The Edge of Reason," prompting the question: Who plays Firth in the movie? Jones becomes a journalist in "The Edge of Reason" and interviews Firth.

To answer that question, we went to Firth directly.

He said there was much discussion and that there was even talk of having George Clooney play the part, so that it would be changed to Bridget interviewing Clooney or some other big name celebrity.

In the end, there is no celebrity interview.

So there it was, a weekend of hot Hollywood movie hunks. How could it get much better?

Renee says UK women are obsessed about weight...

Ananova.com, 13 October 2004

Renee Zellweger has hit out at British women for being obsessed with their weight.

The Hollywood actress, 35, says she was surprised that British women worry about their figures just as much as Americans.

She said: "It made me sad to notice there's more American culture in society. It's about having their eyebrows groomed, pedicures, being more conscious about being thin and whether they're dressed appropriately.

"I'm used to those things in the US, but it made me sad to see it in the UK. Personally, I'm not bothered about my appearance."

Renee reportedly went on a strict diet to lose the weight she gained for Bridget Jones' Diary.

A film insider said: "Renee is obsessed about her figure. She hated piling on the pounds for Bridget, so it's a bit rich for her to talk like this. She even turned down a massive pay day to do the third film because she did not want to be fat again."

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason will be released in the UK in November.

Renee to take a year out... 

Ananova.com, 13 October 2004

Renee Zellweger says she's going to take a year out because she's sick of the paparazzi.

Renee, currently promoting both Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Shark Tale, wants to step out of the public eye.

She told Time Out: "You have a convoy of six men who've decided that they need to make some money out of you today, and they don't care that it will be at your great expense.

"So, I'm stopping. I'm really not considering anything until probably this time next year. If there's nothing for them to talk about, you figure... I'll make myself as boring as possible.

"What is going on with the media? It's crazy. And when we talk about the piddly little things that are written about me, that's not what bothers me. It's the trickle-down effect that it has, it's so negative.

"It used to be that you were famous because you achieved something that was considered to be beyond human capability.

"Like Lindbergh - everyone in the world knew who he was because of his achievements. Or in the early ages of Hollywood it was because a person had a quality that you found yourself drawn to.

"You just wanted to be around Clark Gable for a couple of hours, it wasn't about him showing you every speck of his constitution.

"The message that it sends is that society doesn't value what you have to contribute, but it values whether or not you're recognisable, for any reason. I think that just leads to something that is so ugly."

Atom eats Bacon by Mike Sampson.

joblo.com, 22 June 2004

We here at JoBlo.com are fans of writer/director Atom Egoyan's work and JoBlo himself even got a chance to sit and chat with the guy last year (you can read that interview here). Mr. Egoyan has finally announced his next project, SOMEBODY LOVES YOU, and has added Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth to the cast. The film will follow a comedy duo (described as being in the vein of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) and a young female journalist who is investigating why the famous pair split. She eventually finds out about that a dead girl in their hotel room was responsible for their break but since both have airtight alibis, what exactly happened? The film is based on the Rupert Holmes novel "Where the Truth Lies" and was adapted by Egoyan. Filming is expected to begin later this summer in Toronto, LA and London. Bacon recently wrapped filming on BEAUTY SHOP with Queen Latifah and Firth can be seen this fall in BRIDGET JONES 2.