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Atonement wins at Golden Globes


British film Atonement was named best film at a toned-down Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles this weekend.

The adaptation of Ian McEwan's best-selling novel set around the Second World War, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, also scooped best original score after receiving seven nominations.

Longford, Channel 4's exploration of the relationship between Moors murderer Myra Hindley and prisons campaigner Lord Longford, also won three awards at the 65th annual Golden Globes.

But the Hollywood glitz was missing as the usually-lavish awards ceremony was replaced with a news conference without any celebrities in attendance because of the continuing writers' strike.

The strike over payment to writers from shows offered on the internet started in November and has led to the Writers Guild of America refusing to let union members work on the star-studded show.

Actors said they would boycott the ceremony rather than cross picket lines.

To date, the walkout is thought to have cost the Los Angeles area around £700 million and the fate of Hollywood's biggest night, the Oscars, next month, remains uncertain.

In the 65th annual Golden Globes, Atonement fought off strong competition from violent thrillers American Gangster, Eastern Promises and No Country for Old Men, legal drama Michael Clayton, historical saga There Will Be Blood and Oprah Winfrey-produced feelgood film The Great Debaters, for the best film award.

But its star Keira Knightley lost in the best actress category to veteran Julie Christie for her role in Away From Her.

And Knightley's co-star James McAvoy missed out on the best actor award, which went to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood.

Irish newcomer, 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan, was nominated for best supporting actress, but saw the Globe go to Cate Blanchett for the Bob Dylan tale I'm Not There.

In the TV categories, Longford scooped best mini-series, best actor in a mini-series for Jim Broadbent and best supporting actress for Samantha Morton.

Ricky Gervais's Extras won best TV comedy, but Gervais missed out on the Golden Globe for best TV comedy actor for his role in the series, with the award going to David Duchovny for Californication.

Sweeney Todd scooped best musical as its star Johnny Depp was also named best actor in a musical, playing a vengeful barber who slits the throats of his customers in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway hit.

And a series of British stars missed out on the awards.

Helena Bonham Carter, who was nominated as best actress in a musical or comedy, lost to Marion Cotillard, who portrayed singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, playing the French icon from youth through middle age and into her ailing final years.

And rising British star Ruth Wilson, who was nominated for her role as Jane Eyre, lost out on the Golden Globe for best actress in a miniseries or movie to Queen Latifah, who won for Life Support.

American Gangster's British director Ridley Scott lost in the best director category to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

Briton Anna Friel, who was nominated for her role in new series Pushing Daisies, lost out in the best TV comedy actress category to Tina Fey, who won for 30 Rock.

Earlier in the evening Friel told Metro: 'On the day I found out they weren't going to happen, my stylist was in the car and I had all these dresses in the back of the car. It was like torture.'

However, the 31-year-old, who was nominated in the category for Best Actress in a TV Series for hit show Pushing Daisies, said her dress would not go to waste.

'I'm not going to tell you what dress it was because I am going to wear it to something else!' said the former Brookside star.

The actress, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, is signed up for six-and-a-half years to the US series, where she plays the childhood sweetheart of a pie-maker who brings people back from the dead.

She said her mastery of the US accent had got her noticed in Hollywood. 'Everyone at work now thinks I'm doing a phoney accent when I talk in my British voice,' she added.

Other homegrown hopoefuls - Hugh Laurie, who was hoping to win best actor in a TV drama for the second year running with his role as a hospital doctor in House, and Minnie Driver, who was nominated for best actress in a TV drama for The Riches - also missed out.
Metro

MADCAP Freddie Starr comes face to face with lesbian Page 3 babe Sam Fox in Channel 4’s wackiest ever Wife Swap.

The chubby comic is put through his paces by the 80s icon as she swaps places with his wife Donna, who goes to live with Sam’s gay lover and manager Myra Stratton.

And he’s left looking the fool when the three women meet up and become firm friends, bonding over Freddie’s layabout ways around the house.

DailyStar

Cocktails, fashion and feisty women: A sneak peek at two new shows set to replace Sex and the City Mail

Bugging scam rocks TV talent show


Police were called to a Britain's Got Talent audition after a bugging device was found under the judges' table.

The listening equipment was discovered before Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan began a second day of filming for the ITV show.

Suspicions were aroused when it caused interference with recording equipment at Manchester's Palace Theatre.

Cowell, the show's creator, said it may have been planted by a freelance journalist hoping to gain an exclusive.

He said: "This shows the extent to which people will go to get inside knowledge on what is going on."

A Greater Manchester Police statement said officers were called to the theatre in Oxford Road on Thursday at 1230 GMT.

The show invites talent of any kind to perform, and the first series, won by Opera-singing phone salesman Paul Potts, attracted fire-eaters, acrobats, dancers and singers.

Ant and Dec will host the programme when it is broadcast later this year.
BBC

Jim Shelley pays tribute to Liz Dawn

And so we say tara to Vera Duckworth. Along with Dot Cotton, Vera was the last of the archetypal long-suffering, tragi-comic, working-class women upon which our soaps are built.

Tonight millions will see husband Jack fight back tears as the body of his beloved "little swamp duck" is carried out of their stone-clad home at No.9, Coronation Street.

Just a few hours earlier the couple had been excitedly planning a new life in Blackpool, but in tonight's double bill those dreams are cruelly shattered by the sudden death of Vera, played by Liz Dawn.

How she dies has been kept a closely guarded secret. Three different endings were shot on a closed set one Sunday in December.


But one thing is not in doubt - her passing is a momentous event for Corrie.

After Bet Lynch and Hilda Ogden, Vera was The Street's greatest icon.

For 33 years, she has also been half of probably the most popular couple in soap - right up there with Stan and Hilda Ogden, Den and Angie Watts, and Bobby and Sheila Grant.

Her status as a true icon (the perm, the clothes, the accessories) is confirmed by the fact that even people who've never watched Corrie know Jack and Vee and what they stand for.

Loud and colourful as she may have been - in 3,011 episodes - she was rarely less than totally believable.

Vera arrived as a machinist in Mike Baldwin's factory in 1974, alongside fellow harridan and best mate Ivy Tilsley. She came to personify a kind of warm-hearted battle-axe - a woman whose role in life was to be at husband Jack's side, nagging him... about his pigeons, his betting, his skiving.

Her distinct cry "Jaaaa-ck!" - like the squawk of an aggrieved magpie - could crack pint glasses at 50 metres.

Her best storylines have been mostly humorous: her belief that she was related to the Queen; her insistence on naming their humdrum terraced house The Old Rectory; and that home's famous/hideous stone cladding.

But Liz Dawn could do poignant, too - as Vera's years of wailing over the travails of her jailbird son Terry and the perpetual struggle to escape Weatherfield and move to her nirvana, Blackpool, testify.

She spent her latter years taking young people under her wing (from Little Tommy to Tyrone Dobbs and currently her awful grandson Paul) and invariably being left heartbroken by them.

But even after all these years, Vera wasn't one of those soap characters who you remember for her meaty storylines.

She was, instead, part of the firmament, the day-to-day life that makes Coronation Street such an important part of British culture and one of the best shows on television.

Characters like Vera are becoming rarer and rarer, replaced by more and more shiny, smiley kids in a cynical ploy to attract younger viewers.

I can't help fearing that with her passing, we have all lost something.

LIZ SAYS..

It was very emotional filming Vera's death scenes but I think it is the right decision for the character.

The producers were very respectful about how I would feel about Vera dying and we talked about it at length before we made the final decision.

I have had 33 marvellous years in Coronation Street and I will miss everyone.

BILL SAYS..

I have worked with Liz for 29 years and we have never had a cross word - I've probably seen more of her than her husband Don has!

She was a joy to work with and one of the funniest people I know - yet she doesn't know how funny she is. I miss walking on set and seeing her there - we all do.

But we wish her all the love in the world and want her to enjoy her retirement. She deserves it.
Mirror

Blood on the sofa: GMTV stars at war after they swap partners Mail

Boogie Nights star wants to disappear


John C Reilly, 42, has starred in a film you've seen. Or five. We guarantee it. Acclaimed as a serious dramatic actor for his work in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Gangs Of New York, he has taken a more comedic detour of late. In Walk Hard, a spoof of recent rock biogs, he does all his own singing and nudity as drug-addled, booze-loving rocker Dewey Cox.

There’s a scene in your new film where you are in very close proximity to a *****. What was that like?
I’ve been in a changing room before, I’m used to the sight so it wasn’t too upsetting. Rather than it being like: ‘Oh great, lots of naked women around today, this is going to be fun!’, it was almost less fun than a normal day. When people are naked, you have to be overly formal and say: ‘Hello, how do you do? Are you going to take your robe off?’ You can’t even make jokes because people are self-conscious and you want people to feel comfortable with what they’re doing. The guy with the ***** was such a good sport.

But it’s right in your face.
Yeah, but I didn’t have to touch it with my face. At the end there’s this montage where I’m drinking with a friend and he’s there again. The friend and I kept clinking beers and a couple of times I was talking to this guy and laughing and went to clink his beer and hit him in the *****. That was one of the less extreme things I did for the movie, actually.

What was more extreme?
I ran around city streets in a thong nappy and had random anonymous simulated sex with lots of women.

How did your wife feel about all this?
It’s just another day at the office. I’m not really sleeping with those women, I’m happily married. She doesn’t come around on those days, though, because it’s just too weird.

Does she ask what you got up to at work?
I don’t talk about work much at home regardless of what I’m doing. When the day ends, it’s time to let go but if something upsetting or particularly out of the ordinary happened, I’ll tell her about it. Usually she just likes to see the movie and be surprised: ‘Oh my gosh! This is what you’re up to?’ She’s going to have a bit of a shock with this one.

I would like to shift back a couple of gears. People have short memories and I’m pretty good at disappearing

What do people say when they recognise you in the street?
It depends what kind of movies they like. Some people mistakenly scream ‘Dirk Diggler’ [Mark Wahlberg’s character in Boogie Nights] when they go by in the car and I have to yell back: ‘It’s Reed Rothchild!’ I get a lot of ‘shake and bake!’ because of Talladega Nights. Most people think: ‘Oh! It’s the fisherman from The Perfect Storm’ or ‘It’s Cal Naughton from Talladega Nights.’ Right now I’m getting: ‘It’s that guy from the poster!’ because these huge posters of me are all over LA.

Are you enjoying the exposure?
No. In fact, I would like to shift back a couple of gears. I think I can. People have short memories and I’m pretty good at disappearing when I want to. I learnt that from Jack Nicholson. I went to a concert with him and he was like: ‘Come on, I want to go walk around.’ I said: ‘Jack, you can’t go walk around, you have to have your people protect you.’ And he was like: ‘Don’t worry.’ People recognised him but he just said: ‘Keep walking!’ That’s the secret: never stop moving.

Which real-life musician would you like to play?
I’d make a good Johnny Cash but those movies have been done.

Who were your rock idols when you were growing up?
I went through a couple of different periods. For about two years I only listened to the Rolling Stones. It got to the point where guys in my neighbourhood started calling me Mick. Before that it was Elton John and only Elton John. Metro

Monster movie tops US box office

Cloverfield was created by JJ Abrams, the man behind TV's Lost
Cloverfield, a film about a giant lizard attacking New York, opened in North America with a January record of $41m (£21m), studio estimates showed.

It beat the $35.9m (£18.4m) achieved when the first Star Wars movie was reissued in January 1997.

Romantic comedy 27 Dresses, telling of a perpetual bridesmaid, was in second place this week with $22.4m (£11.4m).

Last week's top film, The Bucket List, about two cancer patients who travel the world before they die, was third.

There was an overall surge in figures, with the top 12 films taking $135.3m (£69.4m), up 39% from the same weekend last year.


NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE
1. Cloverfield ($41.0m)
2. 27 Dresses ($22.4m)
3. The Bucket List ($15.2m)
4. Juno ($10.3m)
5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets ($8.1m)
6. First Sunday ($7.8m)
7. Mad Money ($7.7m)
8. Alvin and the Chipmunks ($7.0m)
9. I Am Legend ($5.1m)
10. Atonement ($4.8m)
Source: Media By Numbers

Cloverfield, which does not feature any big-name stars, is seen through the lens of a party-goer's hand-held video camera.

It captures the lizard creature causing chaos as it rips through the city.

It was produced by JJ Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost and director of Mission: Impossible III.

The film was aimed at the youth market, with a cryptic campaign which featured intriguing clues for a scavenger hunt to discover the production's plot, images and title.
BBC

Oliver Stone plans Bush film Sun

ANT & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is back – and needs YOU to take part. The cheeky Geordie duo’s show returns on February 16 with new fun-filled items and a host of celebrity guests. If you would you like to get involved, email takeaway@itv.com or call 0207 633 2537.

Josh Brolin to play George W Bush in an Oliver Stone biopic? That'll please the White House no end


Josh Brolin
Is this your idea of the 43rd president?

Good news for that discredited lame duck currently snoozing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He is to be impersonated on screen by the actor Josh Brolin, best known for his turn as a tough Texas hero (also, ironically, a Vietnam veteran) in No Country For Old Men. According to director Oliver Stone, the 39-year-old Brolin "has the same drive and charisma that Americans associate with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger". After that Stone presumably attempted to lick the microphone, performed the Birdy Song for the assembled press and then fainted dead away on the floor with his trousers round his ankles. How else does one begin to put that statement in any kind of context?

It says a lot about the essentially apolitical state of Hollywood that Stone is traditionally hailed as its rigorous left-wing outrider. This is the man who mounted a rheumy-eyed apologia for the crimes of the 37th president in 1995's Nixon, who reconfigured the 35th as a dove-like martyr in his ludicrous JFK and who now promises a "fair, true" portrait of the 43rd that "will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors".

Now I'm all in favour of the rounded, reasoned approach when it comes to biopics, if only because a hysterical Michael Moore-esque diatribe risks preaching to the converted in exactly the same way as a Rush Limbaugh radio show. It's just that the evidence suggests Stone wouldn't know fair and true if they took him to the fair and truthed him to death. Outrage, bombast and the broad brush-stroke are his stock in trade. He is cinema's equivalent of the bull in the china shop or the elephant at the crime scene: entertaining enough as a spectacle but really not to be trusted as the last word on any subject except perhaps himself.

That casting bodes ill for a start. Even putting aside the obvious point that Brolin is, like, "an actor" and can therefore "pretend" to be someone he is not, he carries a lot of baggage - a certain rugged, action-hero presence - that will doubtless please the White House no end. Brolin is Bush as he would like to be seen - a hardboiled Texas cowboy as opposed to the pampered scion of an east coast, Ivy League aristocracy.

Surely there are better candidates currently doing the rounds. Timothy Bottoms has already played the president on TV and has the right thin-lipped, peevish quality that makes him more physically suited to the task (as a bonus, his name has a nice Midsummer Night's ring to it). In addition to being fine actors, Anthony LaPaglia or Chris Cooper are likewise safe bets in the look-alike stakes. Oliver Stone tends not to make comedies, which will disappoint those who long for the sight of Will Ferrell pouring over a copy of My Pet Goat as the news of 9/11 comes seeping in.

Thus far, Brolin is the only name lined up for the Bush biopic, which leaves a lot of other roles still to fill. How does one even begin to go about casting the key players in what is surely the wildest, weirdest US administration in living memory? Off the top of my head, I suspect Toby Jones would make a passable Karl Rove. Richard Dreyfuss - at a stretch - might muster the kind of blinkered, wasp-chewing irritability that I associate with Dick Cheney, while the wonderful Jeffrey Tambor could surely reinvent himself as the profoundly spooky John Ashcroft. After that it gets tricky. Is there anyone in Hollywood who is up to wrestling Donald Rumsfeld or impersonating the comb-licking Paul Wolfowitz? And who, pray tell, is qualified to tackle the redoubtable Condoleezza Rice - particularly if we concede that Montgomery Burns is probably too busy being evil in cartoon-world to make the transition to this one?
guardian

Ali Campbell quits UB40 for solo career
EXCLUSIVE Singer Ali walks out on band after 30yrs Mirror

New Bond film called Quantum of Solace
By Alun Palmer Alun.Palmer@Mirror.Co.Uk


It's more sci-fi than superspy but Quantum of Solace is the title of the new Bond film... yes, really.

The name has left fans scratching their heads but 007 star Daniel Craig reckons it's perfect.

He said intriguingly: "It's meant to confuse a little, to make you wonder.

"We could have gone for something snappier but this is a Fleming title and statement and it has its reasons. But that doesn't mean it's a character-driven kitchen-sink drama. We're making a Bond movie."


Craig, 39, took centre stage yesterday with stunning Bond girls Gemma Arterton and Olga Kurylenko as the title was unveiled at Pinewood Studios, west of London.

Villain Mathieu Amalric and Dame Judi Dench as M also star in the 22nd Bond adventure which picks up where Casino Royale left off.

Quantum of Solace is a little known Bond short story by author Ian Fleming which explores the relationship between a warring couple. It is one of five stories in the author's 1960 compendium For Your Eyes Only. Only Risico and The Hildebrand Rarity have yet to feature as Bond titles.

Well, that's the next two films sorted then...



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Theron won't change clothes


Charlize Theron won an Oscar after playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003 film Monster. In The Valley Of Elah, her latest project, also focuses on a serious subject – life for veterans of the Iraq war back in the US. This summer she'll star in Hancock opposite Will Smith. Theron lives in Los Angeles with her long-time boyfriend, actor Stuart Townsend.

In The Valley Of Elah is one of Hollywood’s few Iraq war-themed films. Did you want to make a political statement?
No. To me, this was a human story. It was about people, it was the truth. I didn’t feel this carried any kind of political agenda. I didn’t feel like it was pro-war or against war. It’s just the truth about the realities of the fact we are at war. We are sending very young kids to Iraq to do something few of us do and I have a great respect for that. They are coming back and we can’t expect them to fit back into society and be normal functioning citizens. It’s just not going to happen. We have to give them the right tools and we are not.

It’s also yet another rather gloomy film for you.
Well, if I’m in it, probably. It’s so sad, I was like: ‘Oh, my God, I have to change this.’

Your co-star, Tommy Lee Jones, isn’t renowned for being friendly. Did anyone give you any tips on working with him?
Frances McDormand did. She said: ‘Just give him a big hug every time you see him. It drops his guard.’ I thought that was really cute so I did. I don’t know what happened, but from that moment on he was very respectful. I don’t have one bad thing to say. I’d do another film with him tomorrow.

Do you enjoy making depressing films?
Michael Caine said to me: ‘I’m old and I’ve worked on so many movies I don’t even remember all of the titles, but I can tell you specific memories of the experience which will stay with me for ever.’ I don’t want to be telling stories and not have a great experience making them.

So many actors work non-stop. You seem to put your feet up quite often.
I love my job, I really do. I realise how few people can wake up in the morning and say: ‘I love what I’m doing.’ It’s a blessing, I know. You only get one chance to live this life and that comes first. I love to work and when I do, I work incredibly hard but then I play very hard. That’s what helps me be a good actor. I don’t think you can draw from anything if you don’t go and experience life. It was very important for me to take a year off, pack a backpack, appear unplanned somewhere, not knowing where I was going, and just throw myself into a different culture.

I live such a nice, comfortable life that it’s refreshing to go somewhere and wear the same shirt for three days

You must like roughing it – you went backpacking in Costa Rica.
I live such a nice, comfortable life that it’s refreshing to go somewhere and wear the same shirt for three days and not shower every day and just adventure. That is the thing. Just to wake up and throw a shirt on and go and experience something that you’re not used to. I love that. That is like the greatest gift you can give me.

Are people surprised to see you in that setting?
Yes, which is so ironic because I’m a farm girl from Africa. I don’t need shoes. I’m happy barefoot and dirty.

Have you ever worked in South Africa?
I think I’m the only actor who hasn’t shot a film in South Africa and I’m a goddam South African. It’s ridiculous. I would love to shoot something there. I’m always struggling to find the time to go home. I am going soon as part of my Africa Outreach programme. We’ve been building mobile health clinics for the past six months and they are almost finished. It’s very exciting. We’ll be bringing antiviral drugs and education to some of the poorer communities.

Didn’t you become an American this year?
I did. I've lived in LA for 13 years and been in America for almost 16 years. I've always considered America my home although a different kind of home. I put my feet down on African soil and something happens to my blood.
Metro

Russell Brand funny?


Friday night and Russell Brand has an important announcement to make.

"I'm quite an intrepid w**ker," he says. Thanks, Russ - but I think we already knew that.

C4's side-splitting Comedy Live: Russell Brand and Friends had me in hysterics from start to finish. I have never laughed so much in my life.

Only joking! It was rubbish.

During a horribly hectic hour of substandard stand-up, there were a couple of moments when I swear I came close to almost smiling. But that was about it.

Rare high points included Lee Mack's decent routine and former Dennis Pennis Paul Kaye's filthy take on TV's nicest game show Mr and Mrs. Sadly, top of the bill Rosanne Barr was even worse than hopeless host Brand. And that's saying something! As usual, ranting Russ droned on about his sad little sex life.

He also cracked lots of alleged jokes about his unsurprising penchant for ********** before revealing that his mother was in the audience. How proud she must be.

As far as I can work out, the only people in the world who think this pretentious prat is remotely funny work for Channel 4.

Why else would they keep putting him on the telly even though no one likes him?

"It's been good, ain't it?" giggled boring Brand as his dire dirge reached its merciful conclusion. Yeah, right... it was the best programme I've ever seen.
Mirror