Clooney film storms UK

George Clooney's new movie The Perfect Storm has blitzed UK box offices, taking more than £2.1m since it opened last Thursday.

The movie, which also stars Mark Wahlberg, went straight to the top of the film charts, grossing £1m more than second-placed film, Stuart Little.

Chicken Run was third in the pecking order, with the next highest-placed opening film Matt Damon's futuristic flick Titan AE, which took £245,003.

---

Izzard to play cross-dressing soldier

Eddie Izzard is heading to Hungary to star with Matt LeBlanc in the Second World War comedy All the Queen's Men.

The British comedian has been cast as a cross-dressing singer-soldier recruited to train a mis-matched British Special Forces team.

Friends star LeBlanc plays the leader of the team, whose mission is to infiltrate a female-run factory in Berlin to seize a decoding device.

Filming begins next week.

---

Mendes keeps Hollywood waiting

Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes is keeping Hollywood waiting by returning to the London stage before deciding on his next film project.

He has picked Dougray Scott - the villain in Mission: Impossible 2 - and Ray Winstone to star in the play To the Green Fields and Beyond, which Mendes will direct this autumn at the Donmar Warehouse.

Mendes has been inundated with offers from Hollywood since winning his Oscar for American Beauty, but has not yet committed to his next project.

He is working on the script for a thriller called The Lookout for DreamWorks, according to Hollywood magazine Daily Variety.

---

Madonna slates competition

Madonna claims the music world is in the doldrums and describes the current musical landscape as scary.

"No-one's doing anything interesting or daring, with the exception of the occasional artist who is unique and who manages to sneak into consciousness," she says in an interview with Billboard magazine.

"It's all so generic and homogenised."

Referring to her new album, Music, which is being released on 19 September, she says: "If this record happens, it might mean that people are ready for something different."

---

Morrissey and Speer unveil bus crew

Actors Neil Morrissey and Hugo Speer are to unveil the crew attempting to break the record for the world's longest bus journey.

The six-person crew will travel from London to South America via Canada on a double-decker bus - a journey of 20,000 miles expected to take nine months.

The adventure should raise around £200,000 for the War Child charity.

A 13-part documentary series about the journey is also being made.

---

'Cagney' to star in US Queer as Folk

Sharon Gless, who made her name as the tough cop Christine Cagney in the long-running TV series Cagney and Lacey, is to star in the US version of Queer as Folk.

She will portray Debbie, a blowsy waitress who is mother to one of the teenagers in the series.

Gless, 56, believes there is a need for an Americanised version of the popular series because, she says, the British version is hard to understand.

"There's a lot of slang and people talk fast," she adds.