BATMEN

With Warner Bros preparing three new movies in the Batman series, Chris Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) has been announced as the latest director to take on one of the films. The others are Darren Aranofksy, who made the exceptional Requiem For a Dream and who will direct Batman: Year One, and a director with the single-word name, Pitof, who will take on Catwoman. The latter’s only other film as director was the French thriller, Vidocq.



PETER O’TOOLE WANTS A ‘REAL’ OSCAR

Although he has been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar seven times – for films that include Lawrence of Arabia, Becket and The Lion in Winter - Peter O’Toole has never won the golden statuette. The Academy intended to compensate for the oversight this year with an honorary award, but it seems that the actor may have rejected the offer. Although the Academy’s board of directors voted unanimously for the award, writing to O’Toole to tell him that he “earned and deserved it”, he replied with a thankful note but wrote that he was “still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright”. It remains to be seen whether the award will be given anyway.



HI, HI BIRDIE!

With Chicago singing and dancing its way to box office success, the cause for those championing the return of the movie musical gathers strength. Now Columbia Pictures will remake its 1963 musical, Bye Bye Birdie about an Elvis Presley-like rock singer who comes to a small town to plant a kiss on one symbolic fan before he is drafted into the Army. Dick Van Dyke and Ann-Margret were among the cast members of the original, but, as yet, no names have been announced for the update.