JP/18/flick

Hirschbiegel to direct Kidman's Invasion

Los Angeles: Oliver Hirschbiegel, the German director of the acclaimed movie Downfall about Adolf Hitler's last days, is to direct Nicole Kidman in the sci-fi thriller Invasion, according to the Hollywood Reporter Tuesday.

The movie focuses on a mysterious epidemic that alters the behavior of human beings.

Kidman plays a Washington psychiatrist who discovers that its origins are extraterrestrial. She must fight to protect her son, who may hold the key to stopping the invasion.

The movie started out as a remake of the horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers but then morphed into its own original story, the report said.

"It's a very insidious story about how the end of the world can come through science and disease and not through explosions," said producer Joel Silver. - DPA

Bullock and Zeta-Jones "too old" for Wonder Woman

Los Angeles: Actresses Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sandra Bullock have been blasted as too old to take the lead role in the upcoming movie Wonder Woman.

The damning indictment came from none other than Lynda Carter, who played the original superheroine in the Wonder Woman TV show in the 1970's.

Carter sounded off on her colleagues after the two Hollywood sirens were mentioned in connection with the role.

The movie will be directed by Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. Carter appealed to him to cast the proto-feminist heroine with a younger, unknown actress.

"It should be an unknown actress who's about 20," Carter said.

According to gossip reports, actress Mischa Barton and Tom Cruise's fiancee Katie Holmes are among Whedon's prime candidates for the 2007 release. - DPA

Brando novel set for publication =

New York: A novel called Fan-Tan co-written by Marlon Brando in the late 1970's is to be posthumously published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The novel focuses on a high-seas adventurer (loosely based on Brando himself) who falls for a female Asian pirate and embarks on a mission to steal silver from a British ship.

Publishers Weekly called the book a "rollicking high-seas saga".

The book was co-written with filmmaker Donald Cammell.

But Brando, for unknown reasons, balked at publishing the novel.

Cammell committed suicide in 1996 and Brando died at the age of 80 last year. Their estates sold the novel to Knopf for an undisclosed amount. -- DPA

Foxx to the rescue as Bacall assaults Cruise =

Los Angeles: Oscar winner Jamie Foxx has come to the defense of colleague Tom Cruise who was castigated over the weekend by Hollywood diva Lauren Bacall.

Bacall told Time magazine that she had no respect for Cruise's acting ability. "When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise," she said.

She also ripped Cruise for using his relationship with starlet Katie Holmes to promote his movie War of the Worlds and Holmes' role in Batman Begins.

"It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially," she said. "It's kind of a sickness."

Luckily for Cruise, Foxx, his co-star in the movie Collateral, flew to the rescue.

"Tom Cruise is like the Michael Jordan of acting," said Foxx. "He looks like he has everything -- and he does.

"He has never had a fall. So people are looking for him to trip and fall."