Entertainment Today: Showbiz News

'CHICAGO' GETS EIGHT GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS

"Chicago" led the field with eight nominations as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced nominees Thursday for the 60th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

"The Hours," had seven nominations and "Adaptation" had six.

"Chicago," a musical about two murderous women, was nominated for best movie musical or comedy, and its stars -- Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere -- were nominated for top acting awards in a musical or comedy. Newcomer Rob Marshall was nominated for best director.

"The Hours" was nominated for best movie drama, and two of its stars -- Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep -- were nominated for best actress in a movie drama. Stephen Daldry was nominated for best director.

"Adaptation" was nominated for best musical or comedy movie. Its star, Nicolas Cage, was nominated for best actor in a musical or comedy movie, and co-star Streep received a supporting actress nomination.

The other nominees for outstanding drama movie are "About Schmidt," "Gangs of New York," "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and "The Pianist."

The HPFA previously announced it will present actor Gene Hackman with its highest honor, the Cecil B. de Mille Award for lifetime achievement.

The 60th Annual Golden Globe Awards will be presented Jan. 19 in Beverly Hills, in ceremonies to be televised live on NBC-TV.

(Thanks to UPI's Pat Nason in Los Angeles.)

NEW ZEALAND TOURISM UP AFTER 'RINGS'

Tourism in New Zealand has risen dramatically since native Peter Jackson filmed "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy there.

"It's interesting," the filmmaker told United Press International. "There was a thing in the paper a couple weeks ago that said that tourism in the last 12 months has written 21 percent. Which is huge, because tourism in New Zealand was pretty big prior, and now it's 21 percent bigger. I don't know what the dollar terms are for that, but it would be something pretty enormous. It's pretty intangible because I don't think anyone stops tourists at the airport and asks them why they're coming -- a survey as they get off the plane. But you've got to guess that a lot of that 21 percent increase is due to the movie."

THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE OF GOSSIP

In New York to promote her new film, "Catch Me if You Can," French actress Nathalie Baye dished with reporters about her leading men, both past and present.

On Gerard Depardieu, her frequent co-star in French films: "He's like Steven (Spielberg). He makes six things together and he makes wine. He thinks that he makes the most incredible wine, but it's the one that people say, 'Hmm,' and then (spit out)," she said. "It's a nightmare. Last winter, I was in a film festival and Gerard called me because he makes the wine where the film festival was, and he said, 'Take four hours for me, and come and have lunch and you're going to taste some good wine,' and we had four hours and it was wonderful and it was a long time since I had such a good time with him. I tried his wine I don't know how many times, and definitely, no. His films, I think, are much better than his wine."

On Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays her son in "Catch Me": "You have a lot of friends who are very jealous (of you). It's great. It's great for many reasons. First of all, because he's a fantastic actor and it's great when you work with a very good actor, and the second thing is because he's a young man ... who is normal, with normal relations... I think that this anecdote explains him quite well. One day, we were shooting ... and James Brolin's wife, Barbra Streisand, was on the set. She came and stayed there, and Leo's mother and his grandmother were there, too, and his mother was taking pictures of the chairs with the name of the actors and the grandma, too. So, then, the mother stayed behind Barbra Streisand's chair and she called her son, and Leo was very excited and called the set photographer and said, 'Do a picture of my mother and Barbra Streisand.' And I said, 'This guy, who is so known, so famous, he's still like a young boy, and to do a picture of his mother and Barbra Streisand,' and I said, 'OK, he's a good guy.'"

On Christopher Walken, who plays her husband in "Catch Me": "Christopher Walken is a star. I was very excited to meet him because he's very famous and French people like him very much and everyone is a little scared of him. It's like, 'That guy is a strange guy who came from another planet.' (Laughs) He's going to be my husband, I was a little afraid, and when I met him, he's a very sweet man. He was scared, like I was, the first day of shooting, and very anxious and has a big sense of humor and loves cats, like me. There were cats on the set and he was talking to the cats all the time."

On Tom Hanks, the FBI agent hunting down her con artist son: "I had no idea about Tom Hanks. I think that he's a wonderful actor, but I have no idea. I had only scene in that film with him and I had a big problem with Sara Lee. I didn't know what Sara Lee was, and there was one line that was very difficult for me to say. There was only one that was a nightmare, and it was the day with Tom Hanks. My God, and Tom was so sweet, and said, 'Listen, if I had to do the scene in French, it's going to be a nightmare...' It was so funny and everyone laughed and then we did the scene very nicely. He's a very sweet man, very sweet, very normal. You know, to be a big star and a normal guy."