Watch out for...

by BAZ BAMIGBOYE

Last updated at 12:06 23 February 2007


Hugh Dancy, who is astounding as a broken-down young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I whose nerves are 'battered to bits' through the daily horror he witnesses - and because of the whisky he drinks to blot it out — in the Broadway production of Journey's End.

Director David Grindley's West End version of the play was very good - and this is terrific.

Dancy, making his American theatre debut, stars with an American cast that includes Boyd Gaines, Jefferson Mays and the young actor (and a name to watch) Stark Sands.

I've seen R.C. Sherriff's play many times over the years, but Grindley's version I will never forget. Dancy is a revelation, as his Captain Stanhope tries to grapple with the hell and degradation of war.

Clearly, the American audience I saw it with before I travelled westwards connected with it because of what their soldiers are having to endure in the pointless war that is Iraq.

The real Supremes and Motown story, fictionalised in Dreamgirls, which will be turned into a mini-series for America's ABC network by Motown founder Berry Gordy.

Mr Gordy discovered Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops and a whole host of soul legends.

He was none too happy with Jamie Foxx's character in Dreamgirls and the suggestion that a black music executive had to be crooked and corrupt to rise to the top.

The mini-series will be broadcast in 2009 and will certainly be snapped up by either ITV or the BBC. Because the drama has Gordy's blessing, it will be packed with every Motown hit from its heyday.

But it should also include a few warts and not totally whitewash the backstage shenanigans that went on.

Quentin Tarantino, who is expected to be at this year's Cannes Film Festival - the event's 60th birthday - with his horror thriller Death Proof. The film stars Rose McGowan and the director himself.

Death Proof is one half of a double bill called Grindhouse. The other part is a horror flick from Robert Rodriguez.

But only Tarantino's film will screen at Cannes, and it will be a longer version than the one to be released in America by Harvey Weinstein's The Weinstein Company.

By the way, Tarantino held a private late-night screening at his Hollywood home of hit British comedy Hot Fuzz.

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