Serial thriller

Could Denzel Washington be making an all-out play for the Oscar? In his latest movie, The Bone Collector - whose official site goes online today - he will play a criminologist paralysed from the neck down. It's no secret that the members of the Academy can't resist an actor playing somebody with physical or mental problems - remember Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Geoffrey Rush in Shine, Tom Hanks in Forest Gump, Dustin Hoffman in Rainman - and that's only the last ten years. Denzel's character Lincoln Rhyme has to track down a serial killer terrorising New York from the confines of a hospital bed while his rookie partner, played by Angelina Jolie, gets to do all the running and gun waving.