THUMPING bass and a soulful singer gently easing his way through the sound bars to lure the audience into a world of cool. Not the latest Brit-pop marketing push for a band the music industry wants us to listen to but a description of the songs used in one of the most surprising movie movements in recent history - blaxploitation flicks. With their titles and their ambition to take advantage of black American audiences, films including Shaft, Blacula, and Drum brought UK movie-goers a taste of an alien world inhabited by jive-talking, gold-wearing African-American funksters as tied up with the tunes as with the script. And it seems the cool 1970s feel is a place Tinseltown wants to revisit. Word on the street is the Hollywood hipsters are planning a remake of the blaxploitation film to outfunk them all, Shaft. Director Gordon Parks's original is to get a makeover for new millennium audiences

and is currently casting for the lead character, John Shaft, with the immensely cool Samuel L Jackson heading everyone's wishlist. Jackson is very close to signing for the project, stepping into Richard Roundtree's original loafers, in the remake for Paramount Pictures. It will be directed by John Singleton who shot to directing prominence with his hugely successful 1991 outing Boyz N the Hood.

Of course, apart from some good music and lots of action, most filmgoers are not averse to a pretty face. Male or female, if you believe the hype surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio. The A-list star, who gets invited to all the right parties, has been talking about his experiences working with the team that brought everyone Trainspotting. With director Danny Boyle, Scottish producer Andrew Macdonald, and doctor-turned-screenwriter John Hodge, the young star has been put through his paces in Thailand for The Beach. An adaptation of Alex Garland's airport-popular debut novel of the same name, the film is guaranteed an audience because of the controversy it has attracted during filming, amid all the fuss surrounding the planting of non-native coconut trees or allegations of sand dune smoothing. All this has left DiCaprio with slightly ruffled feathers. The cash-rich kid says any allegations of damage

and recklessness is the same as having a go at him directly. Oh well . . .

Another pretty face is that of Penelope Cruz. The young Spanish actress is set to star in a comic fable about a Brazilian woman who travels to San Francisco in the US and winds up a successful television chef. Although the recipes containing televisions would appear, on the face of it, fairly limited, the film should be boosted by the young star's leading presence. By the time the film is made - it is due to start filming in June this year - Cruz will probably be featuring on the covers of both men's magazines in the FHM mould and colour supplements up and down the country. She could most recently be seen in The Man With Rain in His Shoes, which was also occasionally credited as If Only in certain parts of the country. While making that film, which was shot in the UK, Ms Cruz brought her burly boyfriend along as a chaperone just in case any of her fellow cast got any ideas. the kissing scenes

in the movie, which also starred Scot Douglas Henshall and the lovely Lena Headey of Face fame, were filmed amid immense tension as the burly boyfriend looked on. Cruz made her English-language debut in Stephen Frears's The Hi-Lo Country - alongside Woody Harrelson and Patricia Arquette - which should be hitting screens in the next few months. The film details the story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set in the American West just after the Second World War, while Cruz provides them with a winning distraction.

AMONG other forthcoming winning distractions is the news that Brad Pitt, a firm favourite with the ladies, is lining up to star in film-maker Cameron Crowe's next project. Although it has no title at the moment, Crowe's film could certainly hit the spot with most British filmgoers. His list of past glories include Jerry maguire, starring Tom Cruise. His new film is set in the 1970s and details the story of a schoolboy who gets the chance to write a story about an up-and-coming rock band for his high-school magazine. Pitt, of course, would play the lead singer. Perhaps, like Shaft, there might be room for some soulful singing over a pumping bass-line.

One celebrated baseline is from the theme from the 1960s cult hit Mission Impossible which became a hugely successful film smash starring Tom Cruise. He's about to start filming the sequel, which will be directed by John ''action sequence'' Woo, in Australia. The film is aiming to be finished just in time for Christmas, should they choose to accept it.