REEL NEWS

Rip It Up, Issue 236, 1 April 1997, Page 38

REEL NEWS

Those hordes of you who’ve fallen in love with William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet star Clare Danes can look forward to seeing her in the following bunch of up-and-comers: To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, Polish Wedding (opposite Lena Olin and Gabriel Byrne), Oliver Stone’s Stray Dogs, and Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker ... Edward Norton plays a skinhead in American History X... Peter Fonda plays a widowed beekeeper in Sundance Film Festival hit Ulee’s Gold ... The Van is the third part of Roddy Doyle’s ‘Barrytown trilogy’ (which began with The Commitments and The Snapper). Stephen Frears directs this tale of a couple of mates who decide to start their lives over by buying a fish and chips van ... add Brassed Off to the ever increasing list of films on the way from Ewan McGregor ... Buzz magazine called writer/director Greg Mottola’s debut The Daytrippers, ‘this year’s Flirting With Disaster.' Here’s hoping ... fact of the month: Independence Day sold at a rate of nine copies per second on its first day of video release in the UK. The blockbuster is now available on sell-through video in New Zealand ... Pierce Brosnan will follow his lead role in Dante’s Peak (opening April 10) by wrapping on Robinson Crusoe’s raggy wraps, before stepping back into James Bond’s shiny shoes. He has also completed production on The Nephew, which is the first project from his production company, Irish Dream Time ... the Australian director of the original Crow movie, Alex Proyas, has filmed his next movie, Dark City, in Sydney ... meanwhile, new Crow star Vincent Perez has Talk of Angels on the way, and his The Crow: City of Angels co-star, Mia Kirshner, will be seen in the upcoming Anna Karenina and Mad City ... rumour has it Gary Oldman will play Dr Smith in the big screen version of telly classic Lost in Space ... With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant is out now in Picador paperback. This refreshingly wide-eyed account of ‘Swaziboy’s’ work from Withnail to Pret a Porter— with particularly fascinating chapters on the financial and artistic fiasco that was Hudson Hawk, and working with his dream triumvirate of directors on The Player, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and The Age of Innocence — offers great insight into the movie making business, told with enough insider gossip and pointed occupational observation to make one actually miss Grant when he’s signed off. Nevermind though, he’s at a cinema near you come April 24, when Twelfth Night (co-starring a cast of loveys led by Helena Bonham Carter) opens.