Lake of Fire, the British director Tony Kaye's first feature film since 1998's popular and critically acclaimed American History X, will prompt lively debate when it comes out this year. Eighteen years in the making, it takes a no-holds-barred look, I hear, at abortion in America, and features the first ever footage of a 20-week-old foetus being aborted.

The director is a busy man these days. He is also completing an eight-song video cycle for Johnny Cash's posthumous album American V: a hundred highways. Stars have been queueing up to appear in the video, which features Cash's "tribute" to the Grim Reaper. Johnny Depp, Justin Timberlake and Kate Moss have all made the cut, mouthing a chorus. The point the sequence makes is that these celebs are mortal, just the same as us normal folk. How nice of them to admit it.

Russell Brand, the gangly and libidinous comedian, wants to become a film star. But, for the moment, he is planning to adapt his pilot Radio 2 comedy Cloud Cuckoo Land for television. The show features, among other things, a man and a woman awaking from a one-night stand to discover they've swapped legs, an enchanted toilet that can flush you backwards in time, and a magic funnel that lets you speak to your younger self. Brand may even defect from Channel 4 to make it for the Beeb.

Operas for TV are seriously in vogue following the success of Channel 4's Death of Klinghoffer, the BBC's Flashmob and so on. The latest will be Channel 4 and Jonathan Dove's Buzz on the Moon. It turns attention on Buzz Aldrin, the second man to make that giant leap, and comes hot on the heels of Dove's When She Died . . . , the controversial television opera commemorating the fifth anniversary of the death of Diana.

The BBC News 24 political correspondent James Landale could be in for a ribbing from chums at Westminster with the October publication of his book Cautionary Tales: comic verse for the 21st century. With lyrical takes on subjects such as binge drinking, text messaging and shopaholism, he's being marketed by his publishers, Canongate, as a modern-day Hilaire Belloc. (In fact, the cover has the strapline "Never mind the Bellocs - here's James Landale".) But will he live up to the billing? Judge for yourself: "If you shop until you drop/One day the trust fund will stop." Another verse, on the vexed question of nose-picking, reads: "Orificial exploration/Is but good in moderation." Perhaps it would be wise to hang on to the day job.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, let slip at the Edinburgh Television Festival that they are "worried" about the soul singer and Scientologist Isaac Hayes (pictured above), who used to voice the part of Chef. They fell out over an episode of the show which, according to Hayes, "disrespected" his religious beliefs. "We haven't heard from him since," they said darkly.

The world is being denied, for the time being at least, the memoirs of Abi Titmuss (left). Apparently the kinky 30-year-old former nurse and her publisher, Virgin, are at odds over what the work should be - a picture book, a warts-and-all confessional, or (and try not to laugh here) an "inspirational" tome.

bendowell@btinternet.com

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