PREVIEW OF 1999
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6. The Idiots (Apr) Expect certain tabloids to blow a blood vessel at the thought of Lars Von Trier’s new film screening to British audiences. Good taste goes out the window as a group of middle-class friends run around pretending to be mentally handicapped. The orgy scene features graphic sex and will be a real test for the censors. Not Breaking The Waves then.
7. Celebrity (Jun) Shooting in black and white, Woody Allen directs Kenneth Branagh, Leonardo DiCaprio, Judy Davrs and Winona Ryder in a tale of the modern pursuit of fame and love. Woody's best film of the decade.
8. Star Wars: Episode 1 —The Phantom Menace (16 Jul) Everything else pales into insignificance as George Lucas delivers the first instalment in a new Star Wars trilogy (the next two follow in 2002 and 2005). The story concerns the early development of Anakin Skywalker in the days before he became Darth Vader. Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson and Samuel L. Jackson join Yoda, C3PO and R2D2 in the $110 million budget movie.
9. The Wild Wild West (summer) It doesn’t sound like your average Western: Will Smith and Kevin Kline play two secret service lawmen out to stop mad scientist Kenneth Branagh from assassinating President Ulysses S Grant with a robot tarantula. Then again, with Men In Black's Barry Sonnenfeld directing, it was always going to have one foot outside the mainstream.
10. Tarzan (summer) Boy meets apes. Boy lives with apes Boy meets girl. Boy wants to live with girl. The big new Disney animation film of 1999 is a retelling of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book with the voices of Minnie Driver and Glenn Close.
11. Tomb Raider: The Movie (summer) Long rumoured and still closely guarded, The List's readers' favourite Video game comes to life. Liz Hurley is slated to play Lara Croft, the English aristo hired by Sharon Stone to find a mysterious artefact in Peru,
12. Eyes Wide Shut (Aug) Is this the most secretive movre ever made? All that’s known of Stanley Kubrick’s first film since Full Metal Jacket
is that it stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as married psychologists who experiment sexually with their patients. Warner Bros reckon it’s good enough to go against the summer blockbusters but Kubrick still hasn’t delivered a final cut.
13. Virgin Cinemas (Sep—Dec) Various plans abound for new cinema complexes across Scotland, but Virgin have announced a trio that will definitely open their doors in 1999. Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh are to be the sites of a total of 42 new screens, including Scotland's first Iwerks 3D screen at Edinburgh’s Fountain Park.
14. The World Is Not Enough (19 Nov) The 19th James Bond film, directed by Michael Apted (Ne/l, TV’s 7 Up series), sees 007 acting as bodyguard to the daughter of an oil tycoon killed in an explosmn in the M16 headquarters. Pearce Brosnan returns, with Sophie Marceau, Denise Williams and Robbie Coltrane in the cast. 15. Mission Impossible 2 (Dec) John Woo begins shooting this big budget actioner in January, with Tom Cruise reprising his role as spy Ethan Crane. Expect a slew of high profile sequels towards the end of 1999 — Scream 3, Freddy v Jason and Toy Story 2 are all on the schedule.
Natalie Portman
Is the release of Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace too big an event for
18 THE “81’ 7—21 Jan 1999
any one actor to outshine? Very likely. But seventeen-year-old Natalie Portman already has a fine body of work behind her. Expect her future career path to be more Harrison Ford than Mark Hamill.
Dubbed ‘the new Audrey Hepburn' by Harpers & Queen, Portman first came to attention as the waif—turned-assassin in Leon. Heat, Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You and Mars Attacks! quickly followed, more than making up for the disappointment of being beaten by Claire Danes to Romeo And Juliet.
The only child of an artist mum and doctor dad, she has made some sound career choices to lift her above all
those Hollywood teen peers: turning down Adrian Lyne's Lolita and winning over Broadway as the lead in The Diary Of Anne Frank were smart moves indeed. Recent work has paired her with Matthew McConaughey (South Beach), Milos Forman and Liv Tyler (The Little Black Book) and Susan Sarandon (Anywhere But Here) ensuring that she’s always in high profile company.
Ted Demme, who directed Portman in Beautiful Girls reckons 'in ten years time, she's going to run the entire world’. Hell, as the young queen Padme Naberrie Amidala in The Phantom Menace, she'll have the universe under her thumb. (Alan Morrison)
‘ The idiots
'T' “T; MEL; 16. Garbage (Glasgow; SECC, 23 Jan) A year and a half ago, one of our contributors swore blind that he sat behind Shirley Manson on the bus out to South Queensferry where she has her home. If she could manage to travel incognito in those days, then it's a different story now as Garbage’s second album, Version 2.0, is the biggest-selling record in Europe this year.
17. Robbie Williams (Glasgow. SECC, 11 & 12 Feb) Master of the comeback, Williams has gone from being a figure of fun to the uncrowned king of pop. Not afraid to send himself up, he's injected a shot of sauce into an oft bland genre. He’s also unfeasibly popular and this gig sold out yonks ago.
18. Jerry Goldsmith (Glasgow: Royal Concert Hall, 20 Feb, Edinburgh: Festival Theatre, 28 Feb) The great film composer celebrates his 70th
Cerys Matthews of Catatonia