The Weinstein Co. has locked in Gong Li and is negotiating with John Cusack to star in "Shanghai," a period drama the studio hopes to make in China early next year.

Mikael Hafstrom, who helmed Cusack in the Dimension hit "1408," will direct a script by Hossein Amini.

Cusack is in talks to play an American who returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

Phoenix Pictures topper Mike Medavoy and Barry Mendel will produce, with Arnie Messer exec producing.

Project, which will shoot in Shanghai, is a longtime passion for Medavoy, and for Harvey Weinstein, who almost pulled the picture together in 2001 as director John Madden's follow-up to "Shakespeare in Love." Gong last starred in "Hannibal Rising" and the Zhang Yimou-directed "Curse of the Golden Flower."

Medavoy, who also has an early 2008 start date for his Paramount project "Shutter Island," which Martin Scorsese will direct and Leonardo DiCaprio will topline, was born in Shanghai and spent his childhood there until his parents fled to Chile before the Japanese invaded.

Philharmonic to feature pianist Anton Nel

The Santa Maria Philharmonic will open the second concert of the season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with the work of Paul Dukas, Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel and Robert Schumann, at Grace Baptist Church in Santa Maria.

Maestro John Farrer has invited Anton Nel, pianist, as the featured soloist performing in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, and Schumann's "Introduction" and "Allegro Appassionato," Opus 92.

The brass section will play the Dukas' "La P/ ri Fanfare" as the opening piece. "La P/ ri" ("The Flower of Immortality") is a ballet about a man's search for immortality and his encounter with a mythical Peri. Written in 1912, it is the composer's last major work.

Symphony No. 3 in F major, opus 90 by Johannes Brahms, was written in 1883. Often regarded as one of the last stalwarts of the Romantic Period, Brahms' masterpieces have included symphonies, concertos, waltzes and lieder.

Fuel Fighters

Further south on this electronic map, many more trucks are visible, scattered along the highways of the north of England. Duncan moves his cursor over a green mark which shows a driver heading for Winsford in Cheshire.

Comparisons with military operations are not out of place here. Sandy McCracken and Son may be just another "typical Scottish hauler", with Duncan as its operations director, but like many in the road transport industry, its troops see themselves engaged in a battle. Their objective? To persuade an unyielding government to reduce the duty on fuel as costs soar and to impose a pricing formula that will enable hauliers to survive.

The geek who conquered the fashion world

He's an intellectual Belgian with a passion for art and youth culture. He's also the most influential menswear designer in the world - and his new womenswear collection could change contemporary fashion. So why haven't you heard of Raf Simons? Alice Fisher travels to Milan to meet the new king of the catwalk

Interview by Alice Fisher
Sunday January 20, 2008
The Observer

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Megson tackles fans head on

Within an hour of Whites' chairman Phil Gartside announcing Megson's appointment just before 12.45pm yesterday, more than 70 readers had left comments on The Bolton News website criticising the appointment.

"A lot of people don't think that Megson is right.