Elliot's trunk call to Bazza

WHEN Adam Elliot won an Oscar in 2003 for the animated short film Harvie Krumpet it catapulted him on to the corporate speaking circuit. "One week I spoke to emerging filmmakers in Darwin," says Elliot, "500 funeral directors in Coffs Harbour, and Coca-Cola executives in a jungle-themed restaurant on the Gold Coast." He has also been to Borneo for a hairdressers' convention – "that was bizarre because I don't have any hair" – and to Japan to talk to kindergarten students at an international school.

WHEN Adam Elliot won an Oscar in 2003 for the animated short film Harvie Krumpet it catapulted him on to the corporate speaking circuit. "One week I spoke to emerging filmmakers in Darwin," says Elliot, "500 funeral directors in Coffs Harbour, and Coca-Cola executives in a jungle-themed restaurant on the Gold Coast." He has also been to Borneo for a hairdressers' convention – "that was bizarre because I don't have any hair" – and to Japan to talk to kindergarten students at an international school.

All of it, he says, has helped him better understand audiences for his debut animated feature Mary & Max. The film is about two lonely pen pals, a chubby eight-year-old Melbourne girl and a 44-year-old Jewish New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome. About 25 people will spend more than a year making the film in Melbourne. Elliot says a big influence on his work has been the pathos and humour that underpins Sandy Stone, one of Barry Humphries's creations. When he stumbled on a CD of Humphries reading the children's story Babar the Elephant, Elliot realised Humphries would be the perfect narrator. Elliot contacted the comedian through friends of friends: such stories abound in the film world.

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WORD is that Clive Owen is to take the lead role of a single dad in Adelaide-based director Scott Hicks's The Boys are Back in Town, but producer Tim White has not confirmed this. The British actor (Gosford Park, The Bourne Identity, Children of Men) plays Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I in the upcoming The Golden Age. Hicks has not shot a film in Australia since Shine in 1995. The Boys are Back in Town will be made in Queensland, probably from mid 2007. The comedy-drama has been adapted from a book by British author Simon Carr and is a co-production with Tiger Aspect, one of the UK's biggest film and television producers. Billy Elliot is one of its credits. Hicks has shot three films since Shine, all in North America, although he brings them back to Adelaide for post-production. He is days away from finishing No Reservations, an English-language version of the German film Mostly Martha. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the chef this time. Hicks made Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis.

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BOTH Mary & Max and The Boys are Back in Town got the go-ahead last week from Film Finance Corporation Australia. So did The Square, to be directed by Nash Edgerton and with his brother Joel Edgerton and Rose Byrne in the cast. The adult thriller is billed as being about "a completely ordinary man who makes one mistake and finds his life totally unravelling".

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THAT very British film The Queen was nominated most often for the London Critics Circle's annual awards. For best film it is up against The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, Volver and United 93; for best British film the other contenders are Children of Men, Red Road, The Last King of Scotland and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Apocalypto has a chance in the foreign language category and Emily Watson has a nomination as best supporting British actress in the Australian-UK co-production The Proposition.

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TURNING Steve Carell into Maxwell Smart for the movie Get Smart sounds a brilliant idea: it is easy to picture him stepping into the shoes – or the shoe phone – of Don Adams, the actor from the 1960s series. Carell played Frank, the heartbroken Proust scholar recovering from a suicide attempt in Little Miss Sunshine, and the lead in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Anne Hathaway is tipped to appear as Agent 99. This sounds like good casting too, if only for Hathaway's fringe in The Devil Wears Prada – just like Barbara Feldon's in Get Smart. The TV series was made into the film The Nude Bomb in 1980 and into a telemovie a decade later. Another series was attempted in 1995 but didn't last long. Aussie cinematographer Dean Semler starts on the new film in late January; it will take him to Los Angeles, Montreal and Russia. Semler worked with the director, Peter Segal, on The Longest Yard and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.

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SIX French films are among the 10 most popular films in France this year. If only that happened locally with Australian films. Not all the French movies will make it here but one of them, the farce The Valet, opens tomorrow. As usual, writer-director Francis Veber has included a character with the name Francois Pignon, a habit going back more than 20 years. Pignon is a different person each time, played by different actors, but he is always an everyman or underdog. In The Dinner Game, Jacques Villeret's Pignon is invited to a dinner held by rich friends competing to find the dumbest guest. In The Closet, a rumour is spread that Daniel Auteuil's Pignon is gay. In The Valet, stand-up comedian Gad Elmaleh's Pignon is asked for help after he appears in a newspaper photograph of a wealthy businessman and his mistress. Early next year Elmaleh will also appear in the French comedy Priceless alongside Audrey Tautou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code). Auteuil plays the filthy rich guy in The Valet and Kristin Scott Thomas his wife. Pignon is like a good-luck charm that makes Veber feel at ease when he starts a script.