Film production projects are sprouting up as often as law-suits for Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen. He is in final negotiations to appear alongside Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe in the movie of the Les Miserables musical. Broadway actor Aaron Tveit has just been cast as Enjolras, the heroic lead.

Baron Cohen will play the role of scheming innkeeper M. Thenardier who, with his baleful wife Madame Thenardier, causes much harm to the hero Jean Valjean and those closest to him.

However painful they are, the Thenardiers have the show’s funniest numbers such as Master Of The House and Dog Eats Dog. The decrepit couple ill-treat children in their care and serve patrons sausages made of horse innards, cat liver and pigswill. Worst of all, they water the wine.

Helena Bonham Carter is also in discussions to play Madame Thenardier, although no deal has yet been done.

Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter last sang on screen in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.

A lot of the negotiations with the film studios are to do with scheduling because Baron Cohen is now working on Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, having just finished The Dictator.

Filming on Le Miserables is due to start on locations in London in March, and until then, fans can console themselves with the wealth of Borat material from his underappreciated early Channel 4 show…

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When it comes to video marketing for alcohol there is an abundance of rules and regulations but making sure your product has pride of place in the advert is usually a good start. Heineken have released a web video for the upcoming party season to encourage drinking its product in moderation though, which features a partygoer taking in the merest of sips of the beer before transferring to water.

It’s a pretty slick campaign really which features well known DJ Audrey Napoleon (?), a free track available to download as well as a social media campaign based around staying sober enough to actually witness the sunrise (#sunrise #mysunrise).

As part of the ‘Open Your World’ campaign the advert intends to encourage and celebrate aspirational behaviour amongst adult consumers. Sounds a bit strange for a beer brand? This is what Heineken’s CCO had to say:

"The campaign reinforces the importance of staying in control and celebrates moderate consumption without being patronizing…We want to show that enjoying Heineken in moderation can be an integral part of connecting and engaging with friends, meeting new people and exploring new experiences."

Launched on YouTube yesterday the player comes with a pretty cool Twitter mod that shows the real-time tweets pertaining to the ad.

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Video production in America is often labelled as sensationalist tripe, and a lot of the time, the label rings true. Most shows do not adhere to this as a philosophy, but simply yield to it in execution. However, one show which has always unashamedly run with this concept is Fear Factor. And guess what? It’s back. Bigger, badder and funnier than ever, the television production has two things which are worth your attention.

Number one is the systematic torture, humiliation and demoralisation of greedy, incredulous contestants. With all but one going home with an empty wallet, innumerable bruises and the shame of losing on national television, it’s a genuine hoot for anybody as sadistic as this author.

Then there is Joe Rogan. On Fear Factor he has the irreverent charisma of a man who has more contempt for the contestants than the audience. Outside the show, he is also a talented stand-up comic, USA Taekwondo lightweight champion and popular video-blogger. All of these aspects of Joe are distilled through the enormous power of the internet to conjure a personality who seems to have a rare curiosity about the world, a genuine likeability and most importantly of all, some intellectual honesty. Be it through his tweets, online video content or this new show, make sure you keep up to date with Joe and all his goings on.  

Fear Factor’s newest incarnation began last night, and UK residents may be interested to know that Sky is in talks to create a British version of this Grand Guignol for modern times.

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A TV production triumph of 2011, BBC nature documentary Frozen Planet has had critics grasping around for animal-punning superlatives and audiences actually tuning in to watch – something not to be sniffed at in this era of bittily fragmented viewing habits. However a stake has just been driven through the heart of FP – a fake stake driven through the heart of truth, if you believe the tabloids – in the form of accusations that viewers were misled over scenes shot in a nature enclosure.

UK TV production in general and the BBC in particular have been bedevilled by a string of fakery rows in recent years, including a supposed Blue Peter competition-winner actually turning out to be a studio visitor, and a trailer for a documentary about the Queen being misleadingly edited so as to make it look like her Maj had smashed celebrity snapper Annie Leibovitz’s face through a table (or something).     

The compulsory aspect of the BBC license fee has got certain quadrants of British society especially frothy in these times of scrimping and saving, a kind of “I’m paying more at the pumps so why can’t they spend every last penny of my fee exactly as I’d like them to” non-logic which spews up such storm-in-teacup kerfuffles as that presently afflicting Frozen Planet.    

To recap: Frozen Planet stands accused of having intercut scenes of polar bears in their natural Arctic environment with footage of a polar bear mum caring for her new-born cubs which was shot in a European nature enclosure.

Now, the origin of this latter footage was apparently clearly marked on the show’s webpage, but not during the programme itself, thereby causing certain numbskulls to moan about feeling betrayed and violated, as if the Beeb had just taken Rudolph the Reindeer out behind Television Centre and put two slugs into the back of his pointy-tipped skull.   

It is a row into which now has waded the voice of Frozen Planet himself, national treasure Sir David Attenborough, with Sir Dave making the to-these-ears entirely reasonable point that flashing up a ‘WARNING: SHOT IN A NATURE RESERVE’ sign over the ‘offending’ scene might have detracted from the overall atmosphere to a teensy-weensy extent. Still, despite such interjections of sanity, expect this one to run and run… and run, and then run some more.  

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Television Production has a tradition of dropping promotional material millennia in advance, and Californication is no exception. With teasers dropping quicker than a pair of panties in Hank Moody’s bedroom, this new snippet from Showtime hints at revelations which will titillate fans to no end. This includes some fresh cast members, most notably being the RZA. Aka Bobby Digital, aka Samurai Apocalypse.

Words cannot do justice to the potentially celestial level of coolness RZA could bring to Californication. The season five rule of studio production dictates that you change direction or you sink, and a direction change has definitely been struck for this rock n roll shaker of a show.

The show has always been imbued with a rare balance. Wonderfully whimsical and beautifully poignant in equal parts, it is a textbook example of how to walk the tight rope between comedy and drama. We can only hope that Kapinos and co can keep on walking despite the huge change of direction the show is taking in its fifth incarnation. Season 5 airs in April 2011.

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