Is Matt Damon getting under Mark Wahlberg's skin? 

Hollywood seems to view the two hunky Boston lads (a year apart in age) as almost interchangeable. Wahlberg filled in for Damon when the latter bailed out of "Planet of the Apes" this year. Likewise, when Wahlberg couldn't escape the simian "Planet" in time, Damon nabbed the part that Wahlberg's buddy George Clooney had been saving for him in "Ocean's Eleven." 

But this role-swapping may be chafing Wahlberg. The actor turned curiously caustic when Damon's name came up in a recent interview with Britain's Daily Telegraph.

"He doesn't want to be a Hollywood movie star," Wahlberg said of Damon, who played a trouble-prone "Southie" in "Good Will Hunting." "He wants to have been to jail, and say he's tough."

"He's very lucky he didn't have to grow up in Dorchester," added Wahlberg, who grew up in the rough neighborhood and served 45 days in jail at age 16 for attacking a man. Damon, he said, "was close enough to know what it's like and to be able to play it in a movie without having had to experience it." 

Wahlberg is also said to have sneered at the Beantown accent that Damon and his friend Ben Affleck have held onto. 

"I want nothing to do with it," Wahlberg announced, according to the Boston Herald. 

Damon may be the one with the bigger gripe, if you believe gossip that Wahlberg had a fling last spring with Damon's ex-girlfriend Winona Ryder. 

As you can imagine, reps for both actors deny that there was any such fling or that's there any tension between them. 

A spokeswoman for Damon, the son of a stockbroker and a professor, says: "Matt has never made himself out to be a tough guy. That's ridiculous."

A friend of Wahlberg tells us that he's "always been very cordial whenever I've seen him run into Matt. In fact, he once said to Matt and Ben, 'I'm glad to see good guys are getting good roles.'"

The voracious recycling machine that is Hollywood has claimed another victim. 
 
This time the popular classic being given a remake is the Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant vehicle Charade. 

The 1963 story of a Parisienne who finds her husband murdered is being brought up to date by the American director Jonathan Demme, whose previous films include Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. 

In place of those icons of cinematic cool, Grant and Hepburn, will be a former rapper and a black British actress - Mark Wahlberg, formerly Marky Mark, star of Boogie Nights; and Thandie Newton, who last stepped out opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 2. 

Demme has been visiting Paris with French director Luc Besson, who is producing the remake - renamed The Truth About Charlie - to find locations. 

Grant was 60 when he played the role and the steps taken to conceal his age included filming him taking a shower fully clothed. 

The considerably more athletic Mr Wahlberg, who leapt to fame with his series of Calvin Klein underwear adverts, will have no problem stripping down, should the role require it. However, he might find it more challenging to capture Grant's original brand of suave urbanity. 

Demme and Besson are reported to be looking for instantly recognisable landmarks to give the film a Parisian feel. "They have been looking at places around the Champs Elyseés and Montmartre," said an insider. "They will be going for classic locations." 

The drama is played out with a small cast of characters who have multiple identities. In the original, Grant comes to the rescue of Hepburn, who is caught up in a hunt for a fortune in gold coins. 

Among the distinctions of the 1963 version was the theme tune composed by Henry Mancini which received an Academy Award nomination. 

However, that film-lovers' bible, Halliwell's, gave the movie somewhat faint praise. 

"Smoothly satisfying sub-Hitchcock nonsense, effective both as black romantic comedy and macabre farce," it noted. 

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - In an earlier century, all products in movies were generic. No labels were ever shown when William Powell poured gin, Bette Davis lit a cigarette or Marilyn Monroe sprayed on perfume.

That has all changed in the last few decades, since companies have discovered the joy of product-placement deals. But in the year 2000, such blatant plugs have moved to a new level: Products are not only visible -- they are now key plot points.

The storyline of ``What Women Want'' hinges on Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt working on an ad campaign for Nike (with the eventual results lovingly shown, in great detail, onscreen).

Few companies have ever gotten more onscreen time than Federal Express in ``Cast Away.'' The first 10 minutes of the picture examine the company's scrupulous efficiency; the company's logo pops up on airplanes, trucks, envelopes -- and on packages that wash ashore with Tom Hanks, who obsesses on them for half the movie.

On the other hand, such key plugs are not always positive. The title character in ``Nurse Betty'' (Renee Zellweger), unwittingly endangers her life because she borrows a Buick Le Sabre.

Even more of an anti-plug: Pacific Gas & Electric in ``Erin Brockovich.'' It's clear that the company execs are bullying and guilty of dumping toxic waste: ``Those arrogant PG&E f---ers!'' Julia Roberts proclaims. (This movie does for PG&E what ``The Insider'' did for Brown & Williamson tobacco.)

So are brand names a good or bad thing? We'll let the reader decide. Here are the winners of the 2000 Brandies, honoring the year's most notable plugs.

Overkill

- In ``Keeping the Faith,'' Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman go to a movie and run into friends -- all of whom are holding Pepsi cups. The Pepsi shots are repeated in a romantic montage and again during the closing credits.

- In ``The Perfect Storm'' local bar the Crow's Nest features three neon Bud Light signs, a Budweiser metal sign and a big Bud Light sticker on the pooltable lamp, while the customers are seen drinking only one kind of beer. The kids, however, drink Pepsi.

- There's no Pepsi for Eddie Murphy in ``Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.'' In various scenes, he drinks Diet Coke, pauses by a Coca-Cola machine, passes a hot dog cart featuring plenty of Coke cans and hides his fountain-of-youth formula in the fridge, between cans of Classic Coke and Diet Coke.

A TESTIMONIAL WORTH MILLIONS (ASSUMING PEOPLE WANT TO LOOK LIKE HER)

- In the documentary ``The Eyes of Tammy Faye'' the former televangelist and makeup maven says, ``Here's my mascara that I'm so famous for. As you can see, it is L'Oreal Waterproof Lash Out Makeup. As you see, it's much used, much loved.''

Dubious Brandies

- In ``American Psycho,'' serial killer Christian Bale stuffs the body of a victim (Jared Leto) into a Jean Paul Gaultier garment bag.

- In ``Scary Movie,'' a woman gets killed in front of a Norge refrigerator.

- Riding on a motorcycle in ``Mission: Impossible 2,'' Tom Cruise has a near-collision with an Avis truck.

- In ``Me, Myself & Irene,'' Jim Carrey goes ballistic when he loses money in a Coca-Cola machine -- twice.

- In ``The Perfect Storm,'' it's clearly established that sea captain George Clooney has been on a losing streak. And on his desk sits a big bottle of Pepsi.

Take A Big Gulp For This Plug

- In ``Final Destination,'' Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) tells of her late father going into a 7-11, where ``a guy blew his head off.''

The Rich Are Different From You And Me

- In ``Charlie's Angels,'' hungry billionaire Sam Rockwell asks Kelly Lynch, ``So, what're we doing, House of Pancakes or Sizzler?''

Trailer Hooks

- In the trailers for ``What Lies Beneath,'' Michelle Pfeiffer is shown, in closeup, photographing a ghost with her Nikon camera.

- In the trailers for ``Little Nicky,'' Lucifer's son (Adam Sandler) and a talking dog extol the benefits of Popeye's chicken.

Jordana Brewster is not even old enough to drink legally, and already she's waving off rumors that she's married.

The 20-year-old actress has been dating Mark Wahlberg for almost two years, but she wants to make sure everyone knows that those three stacked rings on her wedding finger are from her parents and not her boyfriend.

"I have no idea where people get that (we're married)," Brewster said in the upcoming issue of W magazine. 

Hey, she just passed her driving test and is only a sophomore at Yale. Cut her some slack. Brewster, who appeared in the NBC miniseries "The '70s," also recently landed a role opposite Cameron Diaz and Blythe Danner in "The Invisible Circus." So marriage is not in the cards right now. 

"Growing up is a process I'm still going through," said Brewster, whose three best friends at the moment are her three freshman roommates. And you should know that she has yet to try to hang out with Yale classmate and fellow actress Claire Danes. 

"I just think it would be weird if I tried to be friends with her — sort of ridiculous," Brewster said. But the fact that she's with Wahlberg, who is nine years her senior, does tend to separate her from her school chums. "I always liked people who were older than me," she said. "I just can't imagine dating a 20-year-old boy."

Twentieth Century Fox has invested $609,000 in the economy of Ridgecrest, Calif., through its construction of a "Planet of the Apes" city at Trona Pinnacles.

Estimated revenue from filming in November was $993,000 as compared with 1999's $798,000. The month saw 50 filming days compared with 42 in 1999. Year to date, 2000 is less than $100,000 behind 1999, with $8,620,500 and $8,706,500, respectively. So far there have been 553 days of filming compared with 588 through November 1999.

"Five feature films shot in December 1999, so it will be tough to surpass total filming in 1999 even with two features scheduled in December," Kern County film commissioner Barry Zoeller said. "But for us to be so close to 1999's figures in light of a six-month commercial actors strike that decreased commercial filming drastically, we think we did a good job marketing Kern."