Short Cuts
                        THE HOLLYWOOD SHOWCASE
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No Hollow Success
Invisible stalkers, bartending babes and aging astronauts will rule the box office, courtesy Kevin Bacon’s horror film Hollow Man with a take of $ 26.8 million. If that estimated figure holds, the horror thriller will become August’s biggest opener. Hollow Man is the biggest movie yet for both Bacon and its director Paul Verhoeven.For Bacon, this is his biggest role to date, especially after his last sci-fi movie, Stir of Echoes, failed to raise a storm at the box-office with a paltry $ 5.8 million. The film also marks a career-best for Verhoeven, as Hollow Man swept past his 1990 movie Total Recall ($ 25.5 million). While Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor II: The Klumps dropped off 58 per cent in its second week, the number three position saw Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys — the story of NASA old-timers.
Funnily enough, Cowboys made more than Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Unforgiven which made $ 15 million at the box-office. The Michelle Pfieffer-Harrison Ford starrer What Lies Beneath continued to mint money with a total of $ 13.9.

SCREEN WATCH: Heres’s what will be hitting American box-offices soon:
Matrix-man Keanu Reeves in the football comedy The Replacements. Director Joan Chen’s Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder. Oh, and there’s another supernatural thriller that’ll be hitting the box-office: Kim Basinger and Christina Ricci-starrer Bless the Child. A 30th-anniversary restored version of the Rolling Stones’ infamous concert film, Gimme Shelter, will also begin a nationwide rollout in a few markets.

Lovelorn And Love Lost
Mrs Shakespeare in Love is heartbroken. Ever since former fiancee Brad Pitt tied the knot with Friends actress Jennifer Aniston. Little birdies all over were wondering whether Gwyneth Paltrow was upset, angry or not bothered about the marriage. However, the truth was revealed with Paltrow’s interview in the September issue of Vanity Fair. The 27-year-old actress said, ‘‘It changed my life. When we split up, something in me changed permanently. My heart sort of broke that day and it will never be the same.’’ Paltrow says she’s happy to be single these days and that marriage is no longer her primary goal: ‘‘I try to remember, as I hear about friends getting engaged, that it’s not about the ring and it’s not about the wedding. It’s a grave thing, getting married. And it’s easy to get swept up in the wrong things.’’
Keep the faith, Gwyneth.

MGM is in talks with Jackie Chan to co-star in an update of the 1960 Jerry Lewis comedy The Bellboy. The original follows a bellboy as he undergoes a number of zany misadventures at Miami’s Fountainbleau Hotel. Chan is set to share top billing and his co-stars havn’t yet been announced

Horrifyingly Yours
Universal is developing a house-of-horror thriller with the goal of releasing the movie around Halloween 2001. The untitled project concerns a group of people who play solve-the-crime party games at the site of a famous brutal murder until one of the players ends up dead. The search for a killer continues with real results. Produced by Jon Berg and Damien Saccani; the movie is a spoof on the current wave of reality programming on TV, with elements that can be repeated in sequel projects.

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