Taking the goat by its horns; Hollywood star George Clooney is used to playing the goat, as Kate Whiting reports.

Byline: Kate Whiting

GEORGE Clooney is a master in the art of deflecting prying personal questions with a wry joke. Ask him about his seemingly permanent bachelor status and, without skipping a beat, the 48-year-old announces: "I'm going to get married tonight... at some point."

Since he first graced our screens in ER in 1994, he's been deftly fielding questions about his latest love interest.

If you ask him a silly question, he'll give you a silly answer.

So skilled is he now at the comic backhander that even the most innocuous of questions is likely to merit a joke response.

Take, for example, his latest film offering, the intriguingly-titled The Men Who Stare At Goats.

With a screenplay written by Peter Straughan, from Gateshead, it's a black comedy set in Iraq -and the second comic-take-on-war film for Clooney after 1999s Three Kings.

"I have done a couple of war satire films, Batman And Robin obviously being the first. Just wearing a rubber suit with nipples on it is a battle," he says, barely suppressing a laugh.

In the hope of a serious response, he's asked what drew him to star in and produce the project, along with long-time friend and the film's director Grant Heslov.

"Well, I've known Grant since 1982 and he has some compromising photos of me, so I had to do it, I had no choice."

On working with Ewan McGregor in the film, he deadpans: "After the restraining order it was really quite hard to actually work with him."

His dry sense of humour almost seems like a defence mechanism. Perhaps after years of absurd stories about himself in the media, Clooney has given up trying to be serious with the Press. Or perhaps is he just a natural joker? "That's a little personal," he says, straight face, eyebrow raised.

Joking aside, 'gorgeous George' is enjoying a lengthy spell in the UK spotlight thanks to the fact that his three latest films have all been shown at the London Film Festival, where he appeared with his girlfriend, Italian TV presenter Elizabeth Canalis.

The first of them, Wes Anderson's version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox out now, sees George in the title role.

Up In The Air, released in January, is a rom-com about a businessman with a penchant for expensive business trips, and The Men Who Stare At Goats does what it says on the proverbial tin.

Inspired by journalist Jon Ronson's non-fictional best-seller, the film follows a reporter (Ewan McGregor) who discovers a top-secret experimental wing of the US military, a legion of Jedi-style warriors rumoured to have psychic powers and the ability to kill a goat by staring at it.

Kevin Spacey plays Cassady's nemesis Larry Hooper - everyone just wants to talk about goats.

George says: "The funny thing is, the goat was a great actor. He walked in and we were like, 'OK, stare at the camera' and he was like, 'Yuhh'. If I could get Ewan to do that it would help." He explains he and Grant had been eyeing up the script for some time.

"It was named one of the best unmade screenplays, so we were sort of anxious to get our hands on it."

The character of Cassady is, by turns, insightful and stupid. With his breakthrough film role in the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? George is no stranger to what he glibly calls "the idiot syndrome".

Some of the funniest moments here come when Cassady refers to himself as a Jedi, something the military unit called themselves.

"None of us realised when we read the script that Ewan had actually been a Jedi (in Star Wars).

"So we were doing this scene where Ewan volunteers to come to Iraq and says, 'Who's a Jedi?' and I go, 'I am' and we just sat there and looked at each other and started laughing. It was like, 'Holy s**t, we're idiots' and then we thought, 'We're going to get a lot of c**p for that' but it wasn't something we planned at all."

George is currently in Italy - where he has a villa on Lake Como - and is making another movie with co-producer Grant Heslov, a hit man story called The American.

Come January, he's bound to be among the names touted for awards glory but, with so many films out at the moment, does he feel like he's competing with himself? "I have been competing with myself for years," he jokes. "A lot of the time when it seems like you're bringing out films for awards season, you're really doing it because it's actually when grown-up films come out.

"It's not easy to bring out a film like The Men Who Stare At Goats in the summer. It sort of gets swallowed up and it's not easy to bring it out in February necessarily, because it's sort of a dead zone time for films, so this is really about the right time for the film to come out."

The Men Who Stare At Goats is released in cinemas next Friday, November 6.

SCI-FI 9(1hr 19 mins) Certificate: 12A Starring: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly Director: Shane Acker Star rating: EXPANDED from an Oscar-nominated 2005 short film, 9 is a computer-animated odyssey set on a post-apocalyptic Earth devoid of human beings.

Writer-director Shane Acker embellishes his 11-minute vision into a 79-minute quest to sow the seeds of a new man and womankind. His protagonists are a race of tiny, sack people, who look like characters in the LittleBigPlanet video game.

These Hessian heroes have distinct personalities, enriched by vocal performances from Hollywood stars including Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer and Jennifer Connelly. The feature is a triumph of dark visuals over substantial plot and character development.

The script is too linear and simplistic, and tension keeps dissipating.

9 (voiced by Wood) wakes in a seemingly deserted room.

The scientist who created him is dead, one of millions wiped out by an attack spearheaded by the Great Machine. 9 picks his way through streets littered with detritus.

Eventually, 9 meets other figures, all with identifying numbers scrawled on their back. War veteran 1 (Plummer) has anointed himself the leader of the survivors and 9 joins forces with his cloth kin in an epic battle against the remaining machines.

The fingerprints of producer Tim Burton are all over 9, and there is a pleasing dearth of sentimentality.

DOCUMENTARY MICHAEL JACKSON''S THIS IS IT!

(1hr 51 mins) Certificate: PG Starring: Michael Jackson, Kenny Ortega, Michael Bearden. Director: Kenny Ortega. Star rating: THIS is it - the behind-the-scenes film of the 50-date concert series at the O2 Arena in London that sadly never was.

Hastily constructed from hundreds of hours of backstage and rehearsal footage, it's a glowing tribute to the King Of Pop as he prepared for one of the most spectacular live shows of his career.

"Here is a glimpse of the personal gift Michael was preparing for his fans and the audiences of the world," the sombre opening credits crawl announces against a black screen, which bursts into life with dancers preparing to audition for a coveted role on the tour.

"She's the one," says Michael, pointing to a willowy blonde as the show's director Kenny Ortega announces the names of the principal dancers to screams and tears of delight.

The rehearsals footage, shot predominantly in June at Staples Center in Los Angeles and The Forum in Inglewood, California, opens with a foot-thumping rendition of Bad and segues into Jam, with male dancers flanking the star in perfect time.

The hits come one after another: They Don't Care About Us with a futuristic military theme, Billy Jean, Beat It, Black And White and a delicate version of Human Nature, which reveals the singer had lost none of the melody in his voice.

For Smooth Criminal, we go behind the scenes of a green-screen video shoot which inserted Jackson into black-and-white movie clips including Rita Hayworth's glove striptease in Gilda, then a chase involving Humphrey Bogart.

A second video shoot for Thriller in 3D cuts back to the venue, where Michael emerges from a giant black-widow spider that scuttles on to the stage.

A soundcheck for The Way You Make Me Feel leads to a difference of opinion with the musical director over subtle changes in key and tempo.

"You gotta let it simmer," says Michael, trying to let the music build slowly.

All that remains is a triumphant rendition of Man In The Mirror culminating in the epitaph: "Michael Jackson. King Of Pop. Love Lives Forever".

Screening for a limited two-week engagement, the film is an opportunity for the fans to witness arguably one of greatest pop concerts never staged.

A lot of the footage is rough and some of the sound is muffled but Ortega has cut together scenes with impressive attentionto-detail, employing split screens when appropriate. At times, Jackson looks painfully thin and gaunt as he strives to perfect each arrangement, but for the most part the film captures a musician at the height of his powers, excited to be reconnecting with fans in a live environment.

Sadness over his death mixes with regret that we never got to enjoy his vision at the O2. If only...

CAPTION(S):

SCI-FI 9 is a short animated film. FOOTAGE Michael Jackson's This is it! documentary. ALL EYES ON George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.