Golden Compass Fashion Show

Here's a whole number of Golden Compass model shots, showing Nicole Kidman and Eva Green in their alternative-Oxford get-up. One ice cold by demeanour, the other by exposure to high altitude winds and a lack of footwear.

Click on any of these to make it much, much bigger.

Direct Download Links For Margot At The Wedding Trailer

Choose from baby bear, mummy bear and daddy bear versions of the first Margot at the Wedding trailer.

Direct Download Links For The First Trailer For The Invasion

See the alien contaminants come and harass Nicole Kidman. Download it now in FLV or Quicktime.

In one scene Kidman is advised to not show any emotion at all. It's virtually a one-stop joke shop for knocking both her acting and her sad past with the king of scientology. Poor Nicole.

Compass For Pirates

The first Golden Compass trailer is to go out in US cinemas with Pirates 3 from Friday. It's more of a teaser, but will present the first 'officially complete' visuals from the feature to be released.

Some Oxford based reshoots start in just over a week. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for Kidman and Craig on the streets.

Bowenwood

The Townsville Bulleting have set up a special page dedicated the filming of Baz Luhrmann's Australia in Bowen. There are plenty of on-set snaps, and quite a wealth of information. The Bowen shoot only started yesterday, so there's lots more to come.

Kidman At The Wedding

Ted at BigScreenLittleScreen dug up what appears to be the first production still from Margot at the Wedding. Noah Baumbach's next features Jack Black, Nicole Kidman, John Turturro and Mrs. Baumbach, Jennifer Jason Leigh. Despite some anticipation and hype for this one on the wire, I'm expecting the same sincerity, good intentions but level of okay-but-not-special-ness as seen in The Squid and the Whale and Kicking and Screaming.

Nicole Kidman's Handwriting?

Mike Markus found the following poster for The Invasion, at least part directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, possibly with a late substitution of the Wachowskis. It looks like the plot either features a mother abandoning a child during a zombie-alien invasion, the child being taken away during said time or - and this is entirely possible, knowing the logic in films like this - a note written by a mother to the child she has already been seperated from even though she doesn't know where this child is. How is she going to deliver the note? Broadcast it on TV?

It's hardly spoiler material then. But it does sound rather War of the Worlds, don't you think?

And what are the odds on this being Nicole Kidman's real handwriting?

Thirteen Australians

The Daily Telegraph - Oz version - have thirteen snaps from the set of Baz Luhrmann's Australia. One of them is a look at Nicole Kidman apparently in character, the rest show sets, props and Hugh Jackman up to a bit of horseplay. Giddy up.

The film looks to be, so far at least, quite astonishingly free of camp. Of course, there's no way the finished product will be.

Realigning The Golden Compass

I have been reliably informed (did you want a credit, reliable informant?) that two weeks of reshoots for The Golden Compass began yesterday. And, yep, that could indeed be a decent slice of the film. Fixing, adding, improving or just routine?

If they hit the streets, rather than stay in the sanctuary of a studio, be sure that more news will follow.

The Weinsteins Dream On

Chatting to various rags and press wire services, I see that Harvey Weinstein has been hyping his dream-cast for Nine, the next musical from Chicago and Memoirs of Geisha director Rob Marshall. It is an adaptation of a Broadway hit that was itself an adaptation, of sorts, of Fellini's 8 1/2. Yeah - Rob Marshall remaking Fellini as a filmed reincarnation of a staged musical. Hang on though, it gets even funnier.

Weinstein's dream cast list includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger. He says "How will we pay their salaries? We'll figure it out. There are roles for six women in the movie who have to be beautiful and sing and dance. It's a terrible assignment to cast this." More to the point, Harvey, how will you negotiate their billing?

As for the male lead, Marshall and (more to the point) Weinstein are reportdly considering Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Javier Bardem or Antonio Banderas. Banderas took the role in the 2003 stage revival, so maybe the smart money would be on him.

Expect Nine to used as pungent Oscar bait late next year, probably with less than a third of this dream cast in place.

First Look: Golden Compass Footage

[EDIT: The footage is now viewable on YouTube]

The Golden Compass looks much, much nicer than I was expecting. The production design has gelled into something that makes a lot of sense.

You can see for yourself, as the First Look at The Golden Compass is online now. Thanks to Mike, I knew where to find it.

Much of the footage is unfinished, but you do get a look at a Daemon transformation, some Iorek action, a lovely skyline shot of Lyra's Oxford and a near-the-climax glimpse of The Bridge to the Stars.

Chris Weitz was most definitely not the perfect man for the job, but things are looking better than expected none the less.

Wong On Again

Wong Kar Wai is insanely busy: My Blueberry Nights is due out in May, his recut version of Ashes of Time in the Autumn, Lady From Shanghai is lined up for shooting later this year, when Kidman gets her act together. Add to this his freshly announced 'lesbian love at high school' drama, reportedly to shoot come April, and mix in his intensive, protracted shoots, reshoots and post production, and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings workload is starting to look like the quick scramble to knock off a Saw sequel.

The only hope for Wong's health and sanity is that, in fact, he isn't confirmed to direct the new film, he may just be producing, scripting or standing on the sidelines with a clacker and a flag.

My Blueberry Nights was filming as recently as last week. Expect this to be another Wong Kar Wai film to undergo mutliple variations between premiere, general release and DVD.

Kicked, Bitten And Scratched

Naomi Watts has signed to star in Kicked, Bitten and Scratched, a romantic comedy adaptation of Amy Sutherland's animal training memoir. Todd Louiso and Jacob Kosoff are writing the script. You'll probably recognise Louiso as an actor - making mixtapes in Jerry Maguire, being delicate in High Fidelity - but he also directed Love Liza and, again with Kosoff, wrote the upcoming Ben Stiller and Jason Schwartzman comedy, The Marc Pease Experience.

I'm looking back at Naomi Watts' CV here, and this one hardly stands out. A good part of the reason for this is, of course, how varied her CV is. I think I saw her first of all in Flirting - if I did see For Love Alone, the previous film she made, I certainly have no recollection of it. And I must have seen her in Home and Away, if only for a brief glimpse as I channel hopped, or while I was visiting soap-addicted family.

As for her brief appearance in Joe Dante's Matinee, I wish I could picture it now. I believe she was in a mock up of something like a Kurt Russell/Disney family film. I adore Matinee, but I never picked up the DVD (so far) - mainly as the R2 version is bare bones and pan-scanned to 4:3. Inexcusable.

...and the little pieces of Tank Girl that I really, honestly, deeply loved (cumulative running time: under four minutes) weren't any pieces with Watts in - through no fault of her own. They just weren't Jet Girl scenes. Thinking back on it now, though,

So, I guess, Mulholland Drive was, for me as much as the rest of the movie watching world, the moment Naomi Watts really started to matter a little bit more. After that film, she was a talking point, a star, one of the ingredients of a film that one would be likely to discuss rather than ignore.

And I guess that's when it started getting wobbly. The quality of the films that Watts has opted for since David Lynch foist her into the limelight has been genuinely unpredictable. King Kong and I Heart Huckabees were wonderful; 21 Grams, Stay and The Ring 2 were most definitely not; the first Ring and Le Divorce watchable but far from essential.

What's interesting, though, is that she's some kind of off-centre star. Somehow, Watts doesn't slot so readily into the big, generic movies like Julia Roberts or (Watts' best friend) Nicole Kidman. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it looks to me like there's something vague around the edges of Naomi Watts' public image, and I always find it impossible to predict the style, budget or genre of her next film.

Maybe it's just because she finds it hard too. A girl has to work, right?

Kidman Hopsitalised Reshooting Invasion

[EDIT: TMZ now have video of the accident]

TMZ sez: Nicole Kidman has been put in hospital after a stunt on the set of The Invasion went awry. A car went out of control and crashed.

What dey didn't sez (ahem) is that these are reshoots, with principal photography long since completed, even forgotten. So, if Kidman's injuries somehow mean she can't finish the reshoots... what then? Go with the original version? That'd be a double catastrophe in PR terms, I think.

My lord.... what if the worst happens?

Sadly, a total of eight people were hurt in the accident, including a number of actors - one of them a young boy - and stuntmen.

[EDIT: Ms. Kidman was released after two hours. The boy, in the passenger seat, was apparently a trained stunt person. Thankfully, seatbelts were in use and no serious injuries have yet been reported]

Daniel Craig And Nicole Kidman

Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman have taken part in a fashion photoshoot together, for W magazine, and Style are running a preview slideshow right now.

As well you know, Craig and Kidman are starring in The Golden Compass, New Line's end-of-year fantasy cash cow from the wonderful Phillip Pullman book (what you may not know, if you haven't read the book is that - SPOILER ALERT! - they are playing the parents of the tween lead, Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Bellacqua)

Already the film is being hyped on an almost daily basis by the studio, and these shots won't hurt the cause any. People tend to find this pair rather easy on the eye, I've noticed.

Before Golden Compass, however, Craig and Kidman will be seen on screen together in The Invasion, Olvier Hirschbiegel's dust-gathering remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, long since completed but still months from release. I don't know a soul who has seen the whole thing, but I do have it on very good authority that producer Joel Silver consulted his Wachowski-chums over a last act rejig, and that their suggestions led to some dispute between producer and director. This is probably the first and last argument in which I can imagine myself siding with Oliver Hirschbiegel.

Even if Invasion tanks - and it's not going to be a smash, I'm pretty sure of that - it will at least keep the Craig-Kidman flame flickering. It might turn out, in the worst case scenario, to be nothing more than a very expensive, overlong and rather boring trailer for their Golden Compass match-up.