NEVER MIND THE BOUQUETS

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL '99: FRINGE & FILM REVIEWSTHEATRE

MICHAEL NYMAN BAND ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL LONDON

The question worrying showbiz reporters was: where are the big Hollywood blockbusters - and more especially, where is George Lucas's Star Wars prequel? The American studios have been increasingly rejecting the Croisette as a place to launch their summer movies. Not that most of us here have lost much sleep over the matter. The last thing we want is more movie-nuts camping out on the teeming pavement outside the Palais. There are enough funny-looking aliens, most of them from LA, propping up the bars of the local cantinas.

BRITISH film stars and art-house directors from around the world gathered in Cannes yesterday to take advantage of the gap left by Hollywood studios who have shunned the film festival this year.

The director of 'Jude' and 'I Want You' tells Jasper Rees why he likes to please himself

The image of Cool Britannia may have taken a pasting from The Avengers, but a new batch of British films show that we are capable of doing another Monty, if we don't try too hard.

THE WOODLANDERS

After the moronic inferno of GI Jane, Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (18) feels like the cavalry arriving. Based on the experiences of Michael Nicholson, the ITN journalist who adopted a child refugee of the Bosnian war, it's the first English-language film treatment of the conflict, and for the most part it answers its responsibilities with intelligence and subtlety.

Blessed with a chameleon-like ability to transform herself, actress Kerry Fox has never shied away from demanding roles. In her latest film, `Welcome to Sarajevo', she plays an innocent TV producer who is gradually broken by war

the big picture

As the lead in 'Welcome to Sarajevo', Stephen Dillane tried to make his acting invisible - but the film looks set to make him a star. Tim de Lisle meets an unusually calm - and charismatic - actor

A new film purports to tell it like it was in war- ravaged Bosnia. Emma Daly reported on the conflict for more than two years for The Independent. She feels the film is a pale imitation of the real, terrible thing.

Five years ago the ITN reporter Michael Nicholson brought home an orphan from Bosnia. Did he do the right thing?