Fit Kate makes Mail cry uncle

Academy Award-winning actress Kate Winslet has extracted an apology and £25,000 from the Daily Mailfor making false allegations about her exercise regime.

The recent Oscar winner for The Readerexplained:

“I felt that I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise.”

Here's a tip for the Mail.

If you’re going to make dubious claims about Ms W, don’t do so in a story headlined “Should Kate Winslet win an Oscar

for the world’s most irritating actress?” You’re just asking for trouble, guys.

Cork fest unreels over weekend

If you're in shooting distance of the River Lee, don't forget that the Corona Cork Film Festival continues until Sunday and that a great many superb films are still to screen. Tonight, London River, the new drama by Rachid Bouchareb, director of Days of Glory, unspools in the Opera House. Later in the evening, Harry Brown, a cracking revenge thriller starring Michael Caine, will be bloodying up the auditorium.

Other highlights include, on Saturday, Samson and Delilah, a slice of Australian naturalism, and, closing the festival on Sunday, John Hillcoat's unrelentingly sombre adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. www.corkfilmfest.org

Is this the end for Reel News?

Digital projection, for so long the dog that didn’t bark, is finally making its advance into cinemas throughout the world. Digital Finance Ltd of Tipperary has announced the signing of digital cinema deployment agreements with four major Hollywood Studios. These documents will enable the company to facilitate the conversion of cinemas from film to digital projection throughout Ireland and the UK.

“We did our homework and analysed this area thoroughly,” says Kevin Cummins, DFL’s CEO. “We presented a unique model to the studios, and our low overhead allows us to offer the best financing package possible to the exhibitor.”

It took a while, but it seems those big metal reels are on the way out. But hang on? What are we going to call this column?

Roger Rabbit set up again?

So, Robert Zemeckis has announced that he is considering a sequel to his classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Apparently the film will mix live-action and animation. There's no surprises there, of course, but what does Zemeckis mean by "live action" these days? He is reluctant to accept that the nasty stop- motion technique he's used for The Polar Expressand this week's A Christmas Carolcounts as animation.

Does this mean that the creepy, shiny pseudo-Bob Hoskins who appears in the Dickens adaptation will turn up in Roger Rabbit 2? We must pray that he sees sense.

Ladies, gentlemen – and Rob

A number of movie stars have been drafted into Barack Obama's grandly named Committee on Arts and Humanities. Sarah Jessica Parker, Forest Whitaker, Ed Norton and Rob Schneider join figures such as Vogueeditor Anna Wintour and cellist Yo-Yo Ma on the . . . erm . . . distinguished panel to be chaired by culture fan Michelle Obama. (Actually we made it up about Rob Schneider, but it's an amusing notion.)

I said: ‘You have a job to do and one part of that job is to do what I tell you. Understand?’

- Bright Star director Jane Campion tells The Ticket how she used to deal with male  chauvinists on her sets