The hours
Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, this is director Stephen Daldry's first film since Billy Elliot and an adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer prize-winning novel. It tells three interwoven stories, with Kidman as a suicidal Virginia Woolf, Moore ia Laura Brown, a fictional Fifties California housewife devoted to Woolf, and Streep as Clarissa, a contemporary lesbian Manhattanite who shares a first name with Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Weinstein refused to send the movie to the Venice Film Festival. Paramount is pushing Kidman and Streep for Best Actress and Moore for Best Supporting Actress.
Chicago
Starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones, this is stage director Rob Marshall's version of the recently revived Bob Fosse musical. Its Oscar chances have been boosted by a Golden Globe nomination in the best musical or comedy category. Zellweger's heartless low-life Roxie Hart and John C. Reilly's cuckolded husband are both thought likely to win nominations.
Confessions of a dangerous mind
The directorial debut of George Clooney, who plays a CIA agent in screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's bizarre comedy. The film also stars Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Sam Rockwell, who plays the king of American trash TV in the Seventies, Gong Show host Chuck Barris.
Clooney has brought his famous charm to this first job behind the cameras. He has even sent handwritten notes to those actors whose roles ended up on the cutting room floor, saying: 'I wanted you to hear it from me first.'
