Film; OUT TAKES

Primary Colors (above), directed by Mike Nichols, is a political satire due to open in October. It stars John Travolta as Clinton-clone Jack Stanton and Emma Thompson as his wife. A popular presidential candidate, Stanton has, in the words of his campaign trouble-shooter Kathy Bates, "poked his pecker" into a career-threatening situation. But if Primary Colors was an uncanny prediction of Zippergate, it has already been trumped by another satire released earlier this year. Starring Robert De Niro as a White House spin doctor and Dustin Hoffman as a meglomaniac Hollywood producer, Wag the Dog (above) saw Mr President deflecting a potentially explosive sex scandal by going to war. Old-style movie-making looks set to be a thing of the past with the first theatrical release of a digital feature. The premiere of a $900 movie, The Last Broadcast, takes place in the States in October. Set in a cable TV station, this tense micro- budgetted thriller was put together using a combination of digital video, celluloid and Hi8 before being edited on a computer. By projecting the film digitally, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler hope to avoid the crippling expense of transferring their final video onto a film print.

Liese Spencer