Judi Dench will not be attending the Oscars, even though she is nominated for best actress for her part in Notes on a Scandal. "I can't go to the Oscars because I'm going to have a knee operation," Dench told reporters at the Berlin film festival. But whatever happens, she added, "I shall watch and cheer from my bed." On her chances of winning, she joked: "Don't put money on me, because you'll lose it."
Gurinder Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham, is heading back to familiar teen-angst territory. She is to direct Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, based on Louise Rennison's 1999 bestseller about a 16-year-old girl's diary. Chadha's Bend It screenwriter, Paul Mayeda Berges, is adapting the book and filming is due to begin in April.
Pixar's Cars was the winner at this year's Annie awards, the most prestigious awards for animated features aside from the Oscars. The film, starring the voices of Paul Newman and Owen Wilson, was named best film on Sunday night in Los Angeles.
Jennifer Garner, the star of TV's Alias, is producing, and possibly starring in, Devil in the Junior League. The film is a comedy about a stuffy Southern socialite whose husband disappears with another woman and her fortune. In lieu of her legal fees, she has to teach her lawyer's wife how to get into the Junior League, a US women's organisation dedicated to charity work. The film is adapted from a bestelling book by Linda Francis Lee.
