Star Wars and Eyes Wide Shut included, you wouldn't feel safe
putting your pennies on anything for the 1999 Oscars at the moment.
This is going to be good news for William Shakespeare who gave
Hollywood more than a run for its money, vicariously, with
Shakespeare in Love last year.
The word on Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labours Lost, his most
extraordinary Shakespeare film, is so hot that, with some deft
footwork, the canny old American distributor Miramax is going to
rush it out in the States in December to meet the closing date for
the Oscars.
This is no ordinary version of the romantic comedy. Branagh, who
stars and directs, has turned it into a riotous musical, with Busby
Berkeley-inspired spectaculars and a host of 1930s and 1940s tunes.
At one point, Branagh, tap-dancing in top hat, tie and tails,
glides down the steps of a fictional Oxbridge college singing Fred
Astaire's Dancing Cheek to Cheek.
The official American release isn't planned until well into the
New Year. But Miramax's Harvey Weinstein has become so convinced
that he's got another winner that he's just decided to leak it into
a handful of cinemas in New York and LA.
Weinstein doesn't tend to misread the Oscars. Last year, he spent
pounds 10 million on an eleventh-hour advertising campaign for
Gwyneth Paltrow and Shakespeare in Love. This offended even
Hollywood sensibilities but it paid off handsomely.
Branagh has had to sit by for 10 years and watch ex-wife Emma
Thompson become the darling of the academy. But he may have had a
weather eye on a statuette this time.
Beside a host of Brits, including Natascha McElhone, Geraldine
McEwen, Tim Spall and Richard Briers, he's packed the film with big
American interest, notably Alicia Silverstone, who complained during
shooting at Shepperton that the dance routines meant she had to use
muscles she didn't know she had. Also, two young blades, Adrian
Lester (Primary Colors), Matthew Lillard (Scream) and Alessandro
Nivola, who is currently doing a stage version of As You Like It
opposite Gwyneth Paltrow.
Branagh has somehow managed to weave into Shakespeare a whole
host of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern
classics. And to ensure the film can spend lavishly on the sets,
most of the cast agreed to work for deferred act-now-pay-later
salaries - a fair old risk for someone like Silverstone, who
normally picks up $5 million on pay day.