Showbiz: Julia's New Script

Oscar-winning actor Julia Roberts, who is expecting twins, has shelved all movie plans for the next few months. "I'm not planning anything," the 36-year-old told Newsweek. "I can't imagine how big I'm going to get in the next three months, but you just kind of play it as it comes. I'm allowed to do that, aren't I?" Roberts, who won the best-actress Oscar in 2001 for Erin Brockovich, married cinematographer Daniel Moder in July 2002.

She has two films set for release in December - Closer, in which she stars alongside Jude Law, and Ocean's 12. Roberts said she was feeling excited but nervous about the birth.

Juggling act

Juggling work and a baby is not easy for anyone, but Oscar-nominated actor Cate Blanchett appears to be coping nicely. She told In Style magazine how she juggles a busy schedule with the Sydney Theatre Company production of Hedda Gabler and looking after her second child, Roman Robert. "It's mayhem. But it really is one of the most astonishing things that can happen. I think sleep deprivation is the major challenge - it's a form of torture."

But Blanchett said her playwright husband, Andrew Upton, had been supportive. The 34-year-old and Upton have another child, two-year-old Dashiell John.

Mercury rising

The classic band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in Iran, reports BBC Online. Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where being gay is considered a crime. But an album of Queen's greatest hits was released in Iran this week.

Mercury, who died in 1991, was proud of his Iranian ancestry, and illegal bootleg albums and singles made Queen one of the most popular bands in Iran.

The album contains hits such as Bohemian Rhapsody, The Miracle and I Want to Break Free, but omits some of Queen's love songs.

The cassette, costing less than US$1, comes complete with translated lyrics and an explanatory leaflet. It tells Queen fans that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution he calls on God, in Arabic, and so regains his soul.


Modest for once

Music mogul Simon Cowell has launched his new band - a four-piece all-male operatic vocal group. The former Pop Idol judge, who is known for his nasty putdowns, describes Il Divo as the act he is most proud of and says he is "intimidated and slightly in awe of their talent".

Cowell, who has launched acts like Robson & Jerome and Gareth Gates, is uncharacteristically modest about his own role with the band, saying: "They have taught me more than I have taught them." The classical music act - whose name Il Divo means divine performer, or a male diva - performed operatic arrangements of romantic popular music at a showcase in London.


One-night stand

Sarah Jessica Parker will have to work a little on the night of Sex And the City's last Emmy hurrah. Parker, with Friends star Matt LeBlanc (Joey) and NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz, will present awards at the 56th annual Primetime Emmys, which air on September 19. Garry Shandling is hosting the show for American ABC. LeBlanc is up for his third Emmy for playing Joey Tribbiani on Friends. He lost last year to Tony Shalhoub of Monk, who is also nominated this year.

Sex And the City, which ended its run on HBO early this year, is up for 11 Emmys. Parker has been nominated for outstanding lead actress in a comedy in each of the show's six seasons but has never won. Franz is a four-time Emmy winner for his work on NYPD Blue, where he plays volatile Detective Andy Sipowicz.

'Munsters' return

The sinister 1960s television show about a monster family, The Munsters, will get a new lease of life. The oddball family that includes the Frankenstein-like Herman Munster will be revived by brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans with a modern-day look.

However, the brothers, who starred this year in the comedy White Chicks, will not appear in the movie, which will be made for Universal Pictures.

Real monster

A chillingly frank screen portrayal of Adolf Hitler's final hours in his Berlin bunker spawned a national debate over whether Germans are prepared to view the dictator as a figure of tragedy rather than as a monster. In a country where displays of Nazi emblems are banned, Germans are accustomed to being reminded by television and movies that Hitler was the ultimate war criminal. And in a country where the spectre of neo-Nazism is ever-present, any less than a damning portrayal of Hitler is suspected of playing to radical right-wing sentiments.

Veteran New Wave actor Bruno Ganz stars as Hitler in producer Bernd Eichinger's film, made with the scholarly assistance of award-winning German historian Joachim Fest.

- AGENCIES