Well, nobody can accuse Kate Winslet of not being courageous. The actress -- also an Oscar-winner for The Reader -- is going to do a remake. Right now Mildred Pierce is slated as a miniseries starring Kate Winslet with Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) writing and directing. HBO is first in line to broadcast the mini, but the contracts haven't been signed yet.

Remakes always make me a little queasy. After all, for every success like The Fugitive, there's a debacle like The Wild Wild West. But this time around it's not a television series being remade, it's a famous and semi-classic Oscar-winner, Mildred Pierce. The name alone evokes images of Joan Crawford with shoulder pads you could die for and a horrible teenage daughter played by Ann Blyth.

Once upon a time, Hollywood made movies like Lifetime's Coco Chanel all the time. They were called women's pictures and gave the biggest stars of the times amazing roles, Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver, Rosiland Russell in Sister Kenny. Watching this excellent TV movie starring Shirley MacLaine as the older Coco and newcomer Barbora Bobulova as young Coco, I was enthralled and entertained.

You won't find a better TV movie on HBO or CBS or Hallmark Channel or anywhere else on the dial -- Lifetime set the bar high with this expansive biopic and then delivered the goods. Forget your idea of what a Lifetime movie is -- Coco Chanel is no victim of the week. If the intent was re-branding Lifetime movies with this effort, the cable net has hit it out of the park.

Sally Field is a two-time Oscar winner, a three-time Emmy winner -- including last year at Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for Brothers and Sisters -- and she's bound to be in the running again this year when the nominations are announced on July 17.

Now she's taking on a new role; she'll be guest programmer at Turner Classic Movies in July, and having gotten a look at her choices, I have to say to Sally, "I like you, I really like you" -- at least your taste in movies.

Sally will be joined by TCM host Robert Osborne introducing and discussing her four films. The Field four are Love With a Proper Stranger, The Awful Truth, All About Eve and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and every one of them features great performances by women.

To those of you who aren't movie buffs, here's a bit more information about these films -- why I like them, and I mean, I really like them.

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Last week, Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson reportedly made a surprise visit back to American Idol to offer words of encouragement to this year's batch of young hopefuls.

Visiting on elimination day, Jennifer said, "I still get nervous on Wednesdays, because I was always in the bottom three." Jennifer told the semifinalists, "Remember, it's OK if you get eliminated!"

Jennifer has certainly proved that you don't have to win American Idol in order to find success. As a follow-up to her Oscar-winning Dreamgirls role, Jennifer is hoping to get a part in Robert Redford's upcoming Jackie Robinson biopic.

[via Starpulse News blog]