Josh Shelov Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's about time. After pulling off one hell of a comeback, shedding Doogie Howser, and becoming the bad, lascivious thorn in Harold and Kumar's side, then kicking butt as all things evil in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Neil Patrick Harris is finally getting a starring feature gig, plus another supporting role. The Hollywood Reporter posts that NPH will star in a new indie comedy called The Best and the Brightest, and offer some support to CBS Films' Beastly.

First, the starring gig: Co-written and to be directed by Josh Shelov, the film focuses on a Delaware couple who move to the Upper East Side and get embroiled in the world of private kindergarten -- probably not the sort of gig any of us were expecting. Harris will happy-with-his-status dad while Bonnie Somerville plays mom, who is quite class-aware. On top of them, the cast boasts Amy Sedaris, John Hodgman, Peter Serafinowicz, Bridget Regan, Kate Mulgrew, and Christopher McDonald. Not too shabby at all.

Now the supporting gig: Have you heard about Beastly, that modern Beauty and the Beast revamp that will star Vanessa Hudgens and Mary-Kate Olsen? Well, get ready for this: NPH will play a blind tutor who helps Alex Pettyfer after he gets "turned into a hideous young man." It's too random for me to even imagine how this will play out.

Are you happy with this latest bit of news, or were you hoping for something entirely different to come out of NPH's How I Met Your Mother break?

The director who gave us D2: The Mighty Ducks (aka The Mighty Ducks 2) is set to make another sports movie. But this one doesn't seem to be as comedic, and it doesn't deal with hockey. Instead, it's yet another uplifting basketball movie focusing on a team of bad news players who become champions. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sam Weisman is reuniting with D2 producer Jordan Kerner to make the movie, which is titled The Miracle of St. Anthony.

Based on sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski's 2005 book, the movie will be about a year in the life of Jersey City high school basketball coach Bob Hurley, Sr. -- father of former Duke point guard, and Sacramento Kings and Vancouver Grizzlies pro Bobby Hurley (who also appears in the basketball film Blue Chips). In more than 30 years as head coach at St. Anthony, a small Catholic school that educates children from extremely poor families, Hurley, Sr., has won 22 state titles. Yet at the beginning of the 2003-04 season, he had mostly players who weren't motivated or focused. I'm sure I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the team shapes up and goes on to great success.

Sure, it is easy to knock this movie as being more of the same as far as sports movies go, but Hurley's story is probably very interesting and could probably make a good film. However, it's much more fair to direct the project's potential problems to Weisman, who is certainly not the guy to make this into a great film. Since D2, he has directed such crap as Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, George of the Jungle and the terribly unnecessary Out-of-Towners remake (sorry Giuliani supporters who like a good Rudy cameo). To quote the title of another of Weisman's misfires, What's the Worst That Could Happen? Well, of course, the worst is that Weisman could make the lamest, most cliched, most generic basketball movie ever, but then, that probably isn't much different from the best that could happen. Am I being harsh? Maybe, but despite the fact that audiences like the familiarity of these uplifting sports movies, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'd at least like something fresh to go along with the stale. The Miracle of St. Anthony has been adapted by Josh Shelov, who wrote the screenplay for Hooligans, a fairly well-received soccer movie.