From nudity to necromancy...

Former Page 3 Girl and glamour model Keeley Hazell is set for an improbable journey into the world of magic in a short film to be released online in January of 2011.

Venus And The Sun is reportedly a new take on the ancient 'Venus And Adonis' poem from Ovid's Metamorphoses, wherein the beauteous goddess, infatuated with the equally attractive Adonis, tries to steer him away from his perilous passion for hunting. The synopsis for Venus And The Sun reads:

...Keeley who thinks she's solved all her problems by taking up an unexpectedly high-brow hobby: translating Latin. The language has given her magical powers, enabling her to ward-off the frenzied attention of her adoring fans, and the British Library offers an ideal refuge.

But when she meets Adam, the one Sun-reader in the country she hadn't bargained for, Keeley is given a lesson in not judging books by their covers. Her journey of discovery will reveal just how far she's come to rely on the advantages of fame.

Will Smith (The Thick Of It) and co-star of Streetdance 3D Ukweli Roach join Hazell in the short film, which is apparently a 'mix of live action and animation that celebrates the power of stories and explores themes of vanity, identity and societies obsession with image'.

For US readers not aware (or only vaguely aware) of what a 'page 3 model' is, it's a woman who has bared all on the legendary third page of British low-brow tabloid newspaper The Sun. Page three models have provided decades of controversy among feminists, parliamentarians and academics alike, but this national British institution has survived it all to continue bringing female nudity to the British breakfast table.

British comedian Brenda Gilhooly stirred up the issue further on British TV in the 1990s with her 'Gayle Tuesday' character, which both criticised and sympathised with the rather reductionist image that page 3 models such as Samantha Fox have enjoyed over the last four decades.

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