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Rip It Up, Issue 251, 1 July 1998, Page 32

The Martin Scorcese movie Kundun, the story of the life of the Dalai Lamas is a surprise hit in Australia. On only 21 screens the movie grossed $450,000 in its first week, coming in fifth behind films such as Godzilla on 295 screens and Deep Impact on 247 screens. Sydney's Academy Theatre in Paddington is showing the movie on two screens to try to meet the demand for tickets... Arista have rereleased the soundtrack to Scorcese's 1976 movie Taxi Driver. In the liner notes the director writes about the difficulty in talking composer Bernard Hermann (Citizen Kane, Psycho) into doing the score. Hermann, then 63, told Scorcese, "I don't do things about cab drivers." Scorcese sent him a script and met Hermann in London. He agreed to do the soundtrack. He told Scorcese, "I liked when Bickle poured peach brandy on the cornflakes. I'll do it." Hermann died Dec 24, 1975, one day after he completed recording the music for Taxi Driver... in recent months, Leonardo Di Caprio and Jack Nicholson have made visits to Cuba as guests of the Cuban Film Art and Industry Institute. Cigar aficiando Nicholson spoke to reporters in broken Spanish, saying "Cuba is very beautful, very lovely... a paradise." Di Caprio was able to wander unrecognised as Titanic had not screened in Cuba... screened at Cannes was John Turturro's Illuminata, a romance set in the 19th Century New York theatre scene, starring Turturro, his wife Katherine Borowitz, Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken... Alec Baldwin follows in the footsteps of Ringo Starr and George Carlin as the new voice on the next series of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends... the indie movie The Virgin Suicides starring Kirsten Dunst and Josh Harnett is produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by his daughter Sofia Coppola... Fox will make an animated musical based on Dracula... Robert De Niro, Lisa Kudrow and Billy Crystal will appear in a mafia comedy Analyze This directed by Harold Ramis (Caddyshack)... everyone claims Leonardo Di Caprio is "attached" to their project. The actor has been linked to Oliver Stone's American Psycho, Spike Lee's Son Of Sam biopic, Miramax's remake of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Bombshell: The Secret Story Of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy... still shooting, 18 months after he started, the release of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Open has been delayed until February 1999... William Shatner plays himself in Free Enterprise a film about two trekkies trying to put on a six hour musical about Julius Ceasar. The trekkies find their hero browsing in the porno section of a book store... Dwight Yoakam (Newton Boys) is filming Minus Man mid-year, a movie written by Hampton Fancher (Blade Runner) and then he will direct and produce a western that he wrote, South of Heaven, West of He 11... the Dust Brothers are producing their own movie My ArchiLies Heart. Oliver Stone's football movie will star Dennis Quaid, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Cameron Diaz and Tom Arnold and Stone is trying to sign David Duchovney... Sean Penn will star in the next Woody Allen movie and direct Marlon Brando in Autumn Of The Patriach about an aging Latin American dictator... Drew

Barrymore is producing Never Been Kissed and starring opposite Michael Vartan. Playing a high school teacher, he falls in love with a student who is an undercover reporter, played by Barrymore... after a four month jail sentence Robert Downey Jnr plays a studio boss in Bofinger... Quentin Tarantino is facing criminal charges for assault. Leila Mwangi (25) claims she was hit on May 2 by Tarantino with a blow intended for her photographer boyfriend.