Achtung Baby!

[ What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? ]

[ Rufus Wainwright - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? ]

[ This Boy ]

[  Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright with Robert Schwartzman  - This Boy ]  

+ BBC Music: Live Lennon tribute in New York  

Next to the Wound..

Tori's Sleeps with Butterflies

[ Sleeps with Butterflies ]

Duck Tales

[ Ducktales Theme ]

Time Out London Woman of the Year

Scarlett Johansson Speaks               
The actress updates us regarding 'Mission Impossible III'.

Scarlett Johansson may well be the busiest woman in showbiz. The luminous New Yorker starred in two of the year's most critically acclaimed movies ('Lost in Translation' and 'Girl With a Pearl Earring'), toured the world promoting them, became the face of Calvin Klein's new fragrance, and somehow found time to work on a further three high profile productions ('In Good Company' opposite Dennis Quaid, the as-yet-untitled new Woody Allen film, and an update of Oscar Wilde's 'Lady Windermere's Fan' entitled 'A Good Woman').

However, when talking exclusively to Time Out, it was a 2005 project that really got the actress excited, namely 'Mission Impossible III'.

It seems the much-delayed Tom Cruise-starring sequel will finally go into production in the autumn of next year, with 'Alias' creator JJ Abrams at the helm.

'It's been postponed till September while it's rewritten', Johannson explained, 'but I'm doing weapons training for it!'

'Just pulling a trigger is easy enough, but when you're loading your magazine and you have a machine gun and a handgun and a shotgun, and you're trying to figure out how to use them all… I'm being trained by someone who was in the special forces, so I get to know interesting stuff, like how they train the Iraqi army.'

Rather than playing the shrinking violet, or dull love interest then, it seems the young actress will indeed be firing guns, and lots of them from the sound of it.

Before that however, Johansson has to finish work on Michael Bay's 'The Island', opposite Ewan McGregor, and 'The Black Dahlia' a Brian De Palma directed adaptation of James Ellroy's brilliant crime novel.

All of which suggests that no matter how big a year 2004 was for the young actress, 2005 is all set to eclipse it in every way, shape and form.

John O'Connell's full interview with Scarlett Johansson appears in Time Out London December 21 2004 – January 5 2005. No. 1792/1793.

One more photo to celebrate:

Personal Asian Cinema Fest

 
My apparent Asian Cinema fest continued last week with two films featuring Andy Lau; "House of Flying Daggers" and "Infernal Affairs III". I was pretty much unimpressed with Flying Daggers. I didn't care for it. It felt like a TV show. Like an old school Chinese soap opera drama with a few CGI flying daggers and fights thrown in. Sure it had some great costumes a few nice shots that felt like paintings but, eh. Infernal Affairs 3 on the other hand was great. I skipped watching Part 2 since its a prequel and I was more interested in what happened after the end of part 1. At the same time maybe it would of been better if they had left it alone since some aspectst of the ending were not really satisfying to me. Next on my list is "Spider Forest" since I was unlucky in getting Appleseed. I'm hoping Steam Boy comes out in the US soon.

Bill Murray has a funny feeling

Re: Scripts: "I'm not interested if I don't feel I can be a factor, if I feel like there are a lof of people who can play this part. In other words, I'm at home in the hammock until further notice."

This from the man who was in "Garfield" and "Wild Things".

[Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis ]

[ Neko Case - Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis ]

[ Lullaby To An Anxious Child ]

[ Sting -  Lullaby To An Anxious Child ]