See the expression on Ice Cube's face in this photograph? I wore that same expression for the entire running time of First Sunday. The transition of the holiday movie season into the barren movie wasteland of January is always a jarring one. For the past three months, it seems like I've seen nothing but Oscar-caliber movies -- masterful films by outstanding filmmakers working from amazing scripts. So maybe First Sunday just pales in comparison...

But I don't think so.

No, this is not yet another sequel to that terrific Ice Cube comedy Friday, as many have suspected. Sunday tells the story of "new" characters Durell (Cube) and LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan). As the movie opens, the boys are picked up by the cops for their involvement with some stolen wheelchairs. They are sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, the owner of the wheelchairs comes to collect, and Durell finds himself broke. Things get even more desperate when Durell's ex-girlfriend (Regina Hall) tells him she intends to move to another state with his son...unless he can come up with $17,000 to pay off a debt. So Durell and LeeJohn do what anyone in their shoes would do -- they decide to rob a church. And of course, after a night amongst good Christian folk, they learn that crime is bad and God is good and blah blah blah.

Think one Tyler Perry is enough? Too bad, because now there's two. According to the Hollywood Reporter, there's a new multihyphenate on the scene who also has "chitlin circuit" roots. His name is David Talbert and his first major release, First Sunday, is out in theaters starting today (read Patrick's interview with Talbert here). But instead of waiting to see if he can reel in the dough the way Perry can, Fox Searchlight has already scooped up the filmmaker for a follow-up. Titled Baggage Claim and based on Talbert's 2005 novel, the movie will follow a flight attendant who travels the country on a 30-day mission to find a husband. Included among the men she considers are a politician, a preacher and a tycoon. And according to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie will be aimed at a black audience.

Like First Sunday, Baggage Claim will be written, directed and produced by Talbert, who comes to Hollywood following (and amidst, I'm sure) a successful playwriting career -- according to the IMDb, the Los Angeles Times apparently called him "one of the most prolific theater makers in America" and Wikipedia claims his plays have grossed more than $75 million. Sounds to me like Sony, which is distributing First Sunday via its Screen Gems banner, should have held on to Talbert for longer. If Talbert really is the next Tyler Perry, he's poised to be a home run hitter as far as box office profits are concerned. We'll see on Sunday if Sunday has Sony weeping and Fox cheering, or if this is just another case of bad punditry.

This week on The Write Stuff, Cinematical speaks with David E. Talbert, writer and director of the new comedy/drama First Sunday. The film stars Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan as friends in a desperate situation who decide to rob a local church. At the church, they find a lot more resistance than they bargained for, in the form of Loretta Devine, Chi McBride, and Katt Williams.

Cinematical: Are you excited about the movie coming out?

David E. Talbert: Oh man, I'm wearing my wife out! We've been riding around looking at these billboards. Every time somebody tells me there's one that's popped up, I gotta go and find it.

Cinematical: You got your start as a playwright, and you've been doing that successfully for 15 years. Did you always want to be a writer?

DET: No, I was a radio announcer when I was in college and after. Somewhere in there, I had a breakup with my college sweetheart and I started writing "Somebody done somebody wrong" poems. And I was writing and crying and listening to Al Green every night. Then one night my Al Green record scratched, and when it scratched, I started reading those poems and I said "Wow, these aren't that bad." From there I wrote a long-form play and I put it away until about five years later when I saw the play Beauty Shop. I saw how much audiences were going crazy over it, and that's when I got bit.

While going through all the new trailers this week I came across an interesting handful that might seem to be humorous, but may in fact be something else. The week on Trailer Park we ask "But Is It Funny?"

Teeth
The tale of a girl with a carnivorous vagina? That must be a work of high camp, right? Apparently not judging from both the trailer and Scott Weinberg's review in which words like "witty, intelligent and darkly insightful" were bandied about. A teenage girl named Dawn, still finding out about her body and her own sexuality, discovers that she has teeth in her nether regions. In the preview we see Dawn giving her gynecologist a nasty surprise. This looks fascinating and original and it goes into limited release in February.

As much as I know you're hoping that First Sunday is some sort of extension of Ice Cube's Friday franchise, I'm sorry to say that it's not. Nope, this is an entirely different film -- although it appears as if Cube is finally putting aside those cheesy family-friendly comedies in order to take on a project that might actually be worth seeing. When we first brought you news on First Sunday, all we knew at the time was that Ice Cube was set to star as one half of a team of thieves who decide to rob a church. Playwright David E. Talbert, who's made a name for himself writing "gospel-tinged" plays for the past 15 years, boarded the pic as its writer-director.

Now, Variety reports that a host of other thesps have joined the party; they include Tracy Morgan (I imagine he'll be Cube's partner-in-crime), Katt Williams, Malinda Williams, Regina Hall, Chi McBride and Loretta Devine. Sony's fairly successful genre label Screen Gems will be shoveling out this masterpiece, and I have to give them credit for mixing it up as of late. They scored hits with Stomp the Yard and The Messengers, and although word on Vacancy wasn't all that bad, it didn't do as well at the box office as its siblings. Next on the agenda for Screen Gems will be Resident Evil: Extinction and This Christmas. As far as Ice Cube goes, there is a chance we'll see him team back up with Chris Tucker for another Friday flick (what would they call this one, The Friday After the Third Monday of the Month?), although I wouldn't count on that happening anytime soon. Well, not unless you have about $40 million to waste on a crappy Tucker performance.