News

Randy Quaid has been tapped to star opposite Timothy Hutton in the upcoming Sci Fi Channel miniseries Five Days to Midnight. The five-hour mini centers on a college professor (Hutton) who learns that he is about to be murdered and has five days to figure out who is trying to kill him. Quaid will play homicide detective Irwin Sikorski, who is enlisted by Hutton to aid his frantic search after he learns that Sikorski will be assigned to investigate his homicide in the not-so-distant future. Quaid joins the cast of Five Days to Midnight after most recently starring in the drama series The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H., which had a short run on CBS this fall. His recent features include the drama Milwaukee, Minnesota and the romantic comedy Carolina. Quaid, an Oscar nominee for 1973's The Last Detail, is repped by Paradigm and attorney Darren Trattnor.

The lineup for the Cannes sidebar Critics Week ends a three-year absence of American movies with Milwaukee, Minnesota, the debut film from talent agent turned director Allan Mindel, among the seven competing titles this year, organizers announced today. The film is about a geeky guy whose amazing talent to hear fish underwater has earned him a small fortune that others would like to get their hands on. It stars Troy Garity, Allison Folland and Randy Quaid. Under director Claire Clouzet, the 42nd edition of Cannes' oldest sidebar is made up almost exclusively of world premieres. These include 20h17, Rue Darling, directed by Bernard Emond of Canada, about a man probing the former lives of six neighbors who died in a fire as a way of understanding why he was not among them, and Reconstruction, from Danish director Christoffer Boe, a psychological romantic drama about a man who puts his faith in love in order to have a future. Other titles in the main section are Elle est des notres (She's One of Ours), directed by France's Siegrid Alnoy; Deux Fereshte (Two Angels), by Mamad Haghighat of Iran; Entre Ciclones (Between Cyclones), from Cuban documentary maker and critic Enrique Colina; and Depuis qu'Otar est parti (Since Otar Left), a Franco-Belgian co-production directed by another documentary maker, Julie Bertuccelli, set in the Caucasus republic of Georgia.