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BOTTLE ROCKET
THE SPARK FOR THIS offbeat comedy caper was a 10-minute 16 mm short about a bookstore robbery that 26-year-old director Wes Anderson wrote with his University of Texas buddy Owen Wilson. James L. Brooks' Gracie Films was inspired to bankroll a feature-length $5 million version, which begins with an escape from a mental institution and follows the original cast on a crime spree.
HEAVEN'S PRISONERS
IN THIS LONG-DELAYED THRILLER, a hard-drinking New Orleans homicide detective (Alec Baldwin) tries living a tranquil life, only to find that danger has followed him. Mary Stuart Masterson, who plays a dancer with what she calls ''a little substance problem,'' wasn't surprised to get called in for reshoots this spring by director Phil Joanou seven months after the movie wrapped. ''That happens when there are lots of stories in a film,'' she shrugs. But Joanou's words in our 1994 Fall Movie Preview may be more prophetic: ''Even if the movie is a stinker,'' he said, ''audiences will look at Alec differently.'' (Oct. 13)
POWDER
BORN WHEN lightning struck, Powder (Sean Patrick Flanery) was raised in isolation, yet his IQ is off the charts. ''He's an advanced soul placed in our midst, and he resembles a profound version of an albino -- a very beautiful, moving marble statue,'' says Mary Steenburgen of the young man her character befriends in the course of his bittersweet introduction to a not-so-welcoming world. ''It's an allegory about being different.'' (Oct. 27)
LES MISERABLES
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS after Breathless, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a rogue on the road again -- this time in Les Miserables. Claude Lelouch's riff on the 1862 classic intersperses a story he wrote about Vichy France with scenes from Victor Hugo's novel. Still, this version, at least the 10th to be filmed, won't be the last: Broadway's Les Miz waits in the wings.
FAIR GAME
WILLIAM BALDWIN as a Miami cop! Cindy Crawford -- in her big-screen debut -- as a lawyer on the run from hitmen! It sounds like a summer movie to us -- and it did to Warner Bros. as well, until reshoots forced the studio to postpone the release of producer Joel Silver's $30 million action film from August to September. Rumor has it that Crawford's character -- and performance -- are both getting an overhaul. (Oct. 27)
THE CROSSING GUARD
SEAN PENN is directing, so don't expect a fun, light-hearted date movie. David Morse (St. Elsewhere) plays a drunk driver who kills a little girl and is so consumed with guilt he contemplates suicide. ''I'm always interested in people who know they're destroying their lives, who are smart enough to know what they're doing, and it doesn't help,'' says Penn. Jack Nicholson (a Penn pal) is the girl's dad.
PLUS Four fresh-out-of-college kids -- including Barcelona's Chris Eigeman -- drag themselves Kicking and Screaming out of their prized period of youth with help from an elder (Eric Stoltz); Kevin Smith (Clerks) returns to the big screen, directing Beverly Hills bad girl Shannen Doherty and himself in MALLRATS, the second film in his planned boys-hanging-out trilogy; with a larger budget and a Disney deal, the Hughes brothers follow Menace II Society with the story of a disillusioned Vietnam vet from the South Bronx ready to rob an armored car for the cold, hard cash known as DEAD PRESIDENTS; from Merchant Ivory Picturescomes FEAST OF JULY, in which an abandoned woman (Schindler's List'sEmbeth Davidtz) loses her child and seeks revenge on the lover who left her; Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss makes a cameo appearance as a liquor store owner in young director Gregg Araki's blood-and-sex-soaked THE DOOM GENERATION, a story of teens on the run; Jamie Lee Curtis may be nowhere in sight, but that hasn't stopped a certain psychopath from returning yet again in HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS; Blade Runner fans will want to keep an eye out for author Philip K. Dick's SCREAMERS, about murderous machines on a war-torn planet; members of England's Royal Shakespeare Company have adapted Jane Austen's posthumously published work, PERSUASION, the tale of a couple's second chance at love; a troubled teen in postrevolutionary Chile is trapped in a heist gone bad in Gustavo Graef Marino's JOHNNY 100 PESOS; ACROSS THE SEA OF TIME uses IMAX 3-D to bring to life a Russian boy's wanderings in New York; the glory days of Disney's animated features are recounted in FRANK AND OLLIE, a documentary about two of the studio's greatest animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.
