The first cut is the softest
Lars von Trier is about to strike once again. The Danish provocateur, who has had an outstanding run in recent years with the likes of Antichrist and Melancholia, is preparing Nymphomaniac, which is about a middle-aged woman who recounts her sexual history to her husband. The married couple will be played by regular Von Trier collaborators Charlotte Gainsbourg (I’m Not There, The Tree) and Stellan Skarsgard (Breaking the Waves, Thor). Also reported to be looking at roles are Willem Dafoe (The Last Temptation of Christ, The Hunter), Nicole Kidman (The Others, Rabbit Hole) and Shia LaBeouf, who obviously needs a break from making giant robot blockbusters with Michael Bay. To up the stakes, von Trier (pictured above) has also announced that he is considering making two versions of the movie, a soft-core version and one that is not. At least it will give him something slightly safer to talk about when he next goes to Cannes.

Mr. McConaughey goes to Dallas
It’s taking some getting used to, but Matthew McConaughey’s renaissance from self-satisfied romantic comedy beefcake to valued character actor continues to gain momentum. After recent successes such as Magic Mike and Bernie, and with the likes of The Paperboy, Mud and Killer Joe still to release locally, the one-time dreamboat has now received the call from Martin Scorsese, with McConaughey to appear alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the financial corruption drama The Wolf of Wall Street. He’ll also star in The Dallas Buyer’s Club, the next film from French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee (The Young Victoria, Café de Flore), which is based on the life of an American electrician, diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, who saved numerous lives when he began to smuggle as yet unapproved HIV drugs into the United States for himself and others.

Life goes on for Yvan Attal
Israeli-born French actor and filmmaker Yvan Attal is finally ready to direct another feature, with the follow-up to 2004’s …And They Lived Happily Ever After due out later this year. In Do Not Disturb, Attal (Munich, My Wife is an Actress) and Francois Cluzet (Tell No One, Little White Lies) play a pair of university comrades reunited in middle age, where one remains a dilettante while the other has married and settled in the suburbs. Their renewed misadventures together are witnessed by a supporting cast that includes Attal’s busy wife, Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as Asia Argento (xXx, Marie Antoinette) and Laetitia Casta (Gainsbourg, the biopic of Charlotte’s father).
 

Bill Murray for President
Bill Murray continues to move to the beat of his own drum, and the Lost in Translation star is particularly fine in the new Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom, due later this month. After that he’ll star in Hyde Park on Hudson, a period piece from director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes), where Murray will play American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose guests at a 1939 country house weekend include a distant cousin he falls in love with (Laura Linney, Mystic River), Britain’s King George VI (Samuel West, television’s Cambridge Spies) and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Olivia Colman, Tyrannosaur), as well as FDR’s own formidable partner, Eleanor Roosevelt (Olivia Williams, Rushmore).