News & Notes

You Can Go Home Again
Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train), the Soviet-born director who came to Hollywood more than 10 years ago, returns home this August to film The Projectionist. Scheduled to be shot entirely on location in Moscow, the period drama stars Tom Hulce (Amadeus) as Stalin's personal projectionist and Blaze's Lolita Davidovich as his humanitarian wife.

Lawyers In Love
sex, lies' James Spader and John Cusack (Say Anything. . . ) star in True Colors as young lawyers who compete for the love of the same woman (Imogen Stubbs) over the course of a decade. Directed by Herbert Ross (Steel Magnolias) and written by Kevin Wade (Working Girl), the story of friendship, betrayal, and revenge — sounds like a '90s Carnal Knowledge — is shooting now in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Bonjour, Gerard
Sometimes called the French Brando, Gerard Depardieu, recently seen in Camille Claudel, is starring in his first American movie, Green Card, which begins shooting this month. Written and directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society), the romantic comedy teams Andie MacDowell and Depardieu as strangers who must live together as husband and wife in order to fool the immigration officers investigating their bogus marriage.

Sleepless Beauty
Hot off the current box-office smash Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts is staying busy. In Flatliners, a drama directed by Joel Schumacher due out in July, Roberts plays a med student who tampers with mortality, and in Joe Rubin's thriller Sleeping With the Enemy, shooting now for an early 1991 release, she fakes her own death to escape from an abusive husband.

Busy Big Man
Where does John Goodman find the time? After appearing in Sea of Love, Always, and Stella in less than a year, Roseanne's lovable hubby shows no sign of slowing down. He's starring with a bunch of spiders in the tentatively titled Arachnophobia, set to crawl into theaters in July. Then it's off to London for King Ralph I, where he plays a lounge lizard turned King of England. After that, Goodman teams up again with the Coen brothers (Raising Arizona) as an aspiring screen-writer during the '40s in the comedy Barton Fink.

Indie Awards
sex, lies, and videotape may have been shut out at the Oscars, but at the fifth annual Independent Spirit Awards it walked away with top prizes for Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Soderbergh), Best Actress (Andie MacDowell), and Best Supporting Actress (Laura San Giacomo). Matt Dillon won the Best Actor award for Drugstore Cowboy.

Sequel Watch 1990
Rocky V
Return to the Blue Lagoon
Rock & Roll High School Forever
Three Men and a Little Lady
Die Hard 2
(21 and counting)