CHiPs on the Rise
For the love of god, please make it stop. Wilmer Valderrama, who plays Fez on That ’70s Show, will star as motorcycle cop Ponch in a big-screen version of the TV show CHiPs. The NBC show, which ran in the late 1970s, followed the adventures of California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers Francis “Ponch” Poncherello, played to the hilt originally by Erik Estrada, and Jon Baker, played with lesser hilt by Larry Wilcox. The show has been endlessly mocked for its serious macho tone, but it has achieved a cheesy, cult status nonetheless. Apparently, the film project is being done specifically for Valderrama, but Ponch’s partner has yet to be cast. Listen, just because other tacky TV shows, such as Starsky & Hutch and The Dukes of Hazzard, can be turned into hit films doesn’t mean every single bad TV show has to be given a big-screen treatment. Enough is enough!
Time to Take a Holiday
Jude Law is set to join Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jack Black in the romantic comedy Holiday for Something’s Gotta Give director Nancy Meyers. Diaz plays an American with man troubles who befriends a British villager (Winslet) with similar problems. Law will play the love interest of Diaz‘s character, while Black will play a suitor of Winslet’s character. Black sure has been stretching his legs lately. First, he’s playing it straight against an 8,000 pound gorilla in King Kong–and now a romantic lead. Of course, he played somewhat of a romantic lead in the Farrelly brothers’ Shallow Hal–as a superficial guy whose been cosmically altered and thinks he’s romancing a thin beauty (Gwyneth Paltrow) who in actuality is not at ALL thin–but I don’t think that really counts. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Holiday’s casting process was also reportedly so lengthy and involved multiple table reads and screen tests that it prompted the ire of many agents. Wonder why it took so long?
Daniels is on The Lookout
Hot off his recent Golden Globe nod for his stellar turn in the dramedy The Squid and the Whale, Jeff Daniels has signed on to star opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the thriller The Lookout. The story centers on a mentally impaired former athlete (Gordon-Levitt) who works as a janitor at a bank and gets sucked into a heist. Daniels will play Lewis Canfield, a blind ex-biker who becomes an unwilling participant in the heist as well. Huh? Daniels must have signed on to do this before he started getting all his accolades as Squid’s divorced father. This just sounds beneath him now. I mean, honestly, a mentally impaired janitor and a blind ex-biker in a heist apparently gone wrong? Who comes up with this stuff?
Hartnett Sings a Lullaby
Josh Hartnett has been cast in Texas Lullaby, a loose adaptation of Hamlet which will also star John Malkovich and Ellen Barkin. Good lord, not another Hamlet. First Laurence Olivier, then Mel Gibson, then Kenneth Branagh–and now this? In my opinion, the Shakespeare play about the conflicted Dane is a bit overrated, but I guess they still seem to think the subject matter makes for good cinema. Set in a small eastern Texas town, Lullaby revolves around a young man (Hartnett) who learns that his widowed mother (Barkin) has married his father’s brother (Malkovich). His father’s ghost tells the young man that he was murdered by his uncle and seeks vengeance. Alison Lohman will play the young man’s girlfriend–who will undoubtedly go crazy and drown in a riverbed–while rock musician Tom Waits is set as a Baptist preacher. This isn’t even Hartnett’s first stab at modernized Shakespeare. He played the Iago character in the Othello update O, also starring Mekhi Phifer and Julia Stiles.
Singleton’s Convoy
Four Brothers director John Singleton is in negotiations to take the wheel of Convoy, an action-adventure set in Afghanistan. The Paramount Pictures project revolves around a group of U.S. truck drivers who make a one-year commitment to drive goods for U.S. contractors through the Afghan war zone because of financial hardships back home. Now, this sounds compelling, especially if its cast correctly.
Cumming Suffers for His Art
Scottish actor Alan Cumming (Spy Kids) is starring in and directing Suffering Man’s Charity, a low-budget dark comedy also starring David Boreanaz (Fox’s Bones). Boreanaz plays a struggling writer who is accidentally killed by Cumming one evening. Cumming discovers the writer’s novel and ends up taking credit for penning it. When it becomes a success, the writer comes back to haunt him. Anne Heche portrays the book’s publisher, and Carrie Fisher a reporter. Also in the cast are Henry Thomas, Karen Black and Jane Lynch (The 40 Year-Old Virgin). Cumming told the Hollywood Reporter he has his hands full portraying “the craziest person I’ve ever played” and directing at the same time. “I’m playing this hysterical person, I’m weeping and screaming and fighting and crying, and then I’m going ‘Cut! How was that? Do we need to go again?”‘ For pure aesthetics, I’m somewhat intrigued with this idea.
Until next week…
