Bard & basics

Post-millennium business as usual

by Peter Keough

So much for the millennium. It's time to get back to basics, beginning with a return to the Bard, and to the old reliable themes -- revenge, hubris, thwarted love, corruption in high places -- that made him famous.

After a year off following the Oscar-gilded success of Shakespeare in Love, the old Elizabethan wordsmith is back in at least four new screen adaptations. Other familiar faces also return to old haunts -- Leonardo DiCaprio hits The Beach, the Farrelly brothers welcome back Jim Carrey, and Tom Cruise hangs out in Mission: Impossible 2. But before you get too comfortable with the status quo, ask yourself what clearer signs of the Apocalypse there could be than a Julia Roberts movie directed by ur-indie Steven Soderbergh? Or -- shades of the Antichrist himself -- the return of Yahoo Serious?

January

A last gasp of the Apocalyptic spirit gives rise to Holy Smoke (January 14), Jane Campion's attempt to return to the glory of her Piano days. Kate Winslet, reprising her role in Hideous Kinky, plays a young woman who seeks enlightenment at the feet of an Indian guru. Dismayed, her tacky family hires deprogrammer Harvey Keitel to bring her to her senses, with the expected unexpected outcome.

More high spirits are at hand from an unlikely source in Topsy Turvy (January 21), Mike Leigh's first foray into a period production. Starring Jim Broadbent as W.S. Gilbert and Allan Corduner as Sir Arthur Sullivan, it's the story behind the making of The Mikado, a kind of madcap backstage musical with angst, Victorian costumes, and self-reflexivity.

Bringing matters back to earth is Angela's Ashes (January 14), Alan Parker's tony adaptation of Frank McCourt's bestselling memoir about growing up impoverished in Limerick. Emily Watson plays the beleaguered, beloved mother of the title, Robert Carlyle is the raffish alcoholic dad, and numerous child actors portray Frank's siblings, some of whom do not survive infancy.

Family death and misfortune also play a central role in Titus (January 21), Julie Taymor's wild and woolly adaptation of Shakespeare's goriest, some say worst, play. Anthony Hopkins portrays Roman general Titus Andronicus, who's brutally beset by a barbarian queen (Jessica Lange) until he cooks up some vengeance with a distinctly Hannibal Lecterish flavor.

February

Now that a juicy rendition of Shakespeare's worst has whet your appetite, you'll want to save room for his best. Innovative indie director Michael Almereyda (Nadja) goes big-budget with Hamlet (February 25), which has Ethan Hawke as a melancholy modern-day filmmaker. Julia Stiles is Ophelia, Kyle MacLachlan is King Claudius, Diane Venora is Queen Gertrude, Sam Shepard is his father's ghost, and Bill Murray is Polonius.

From to be or not to be, it's obese or not obese. Rumors say he's blown up to Brandoish proportions, so who knows what Leonardo DiCaprio will look like in a Speedo in Danny Boyle's The Beach (February 11). A Generation X retake of Lord of the Flies, this one has a bunch of neo-hippies seeking paradise on the isolated Thai strand of the title and finding instead the heart of darkness. Based on a glib novel by Alex Garland, it also stars Virginie Ledoyen and Tilda Swinton and features perhaps a return to Trainspotting form by Boyle.

For his part, Curtis Hanson could do worse than return to the chops of L.A. Confidential with Wonder Boys (February 25), his adaptation of the novel by hip young writer Michael Chabon. Michael Douglas stars as a funky professor who's trying to finish a novel but is thwarted by lovesmitten student Katie Holmes, lover Frances McDormand, rival writer Tobey Maguire, editor Robert Downey Jr., and a missing dress said to have been given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio.

March

As for indie auteur Steven Soderbergh, somehow I don't think he'll be returning to the edgy cinema of his last outing, The Limey, with Erin Brockovich (March 17), a fact-based drama about a single mom who takes on a corporate local polluter. Why not? Two words: Julia Roberts.

Neither do this month's two Shakespearean adaptations seem likely to stick close to the original. Tim Blake Nelson's O (March 10) sets Othello up on a basketball court, with Mekhi Phifer in the title role and Josh Hartnett, Julia Styles, and Rain Phoenix playing pick-up. Taking Elizabethan tragedy even farther is former cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak's Romeo Must Die (March 24), which stars Jet Li and Aaliyah and is described as having "a strong urban appeal."

Beyond

Having safely returned from his morphing into Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, Jim Carrey is back in the hands of Peter and Bobby Farrelly in Me, Myself and Irene (May 26), where he plays a Rhode Island state trooper with multiple-personality disorder who is his own rival for the love of Renee Zellweger. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise has been keeping his eyes wide open on action maestro John Woo as they try for a coherent storyline in Mission: Impossible 2 (May 26). Whatever it is involves Anthony Hopkins, Ving Rhames, Thandie Newton, Brendan Gleeson, and biological warfare, and it has to make more sense than Mr. Accident (spring) from Australia's answer to Carrot Top, Yahoo Serious.