KadeemHardison Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The alliteration and the memory was just too much to pass up this week!

Friday will bring the release of Max Payne, starring none other than Mark Wahlberg (with a little help from Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris...). Now it would be easy and sort of obvious to just revel in some "Good Vibrations" or Wahlberg's tight-whitey clad arse, both of which were extremely prevalent at the start of Marky Mark's career. Instead, here's his first film role from 1994 -- Wahlberg playing Pvt. Tommy Lee Haywood in Renaissance Man.

In the clips above, Haywood gets into a fight with Pvt. Jamaal Montgomery -- otherwise known as Kadeem Hardison, or Dwayne Wayne. Then they get to delight in the Shakespearean world of Hamlet under the tutelage of Danny DeVito, and then, oh yes, Mr. Wahlberg sings a little bit of "Achey Breaky Heart."

It never ceases to amaze me how far that man has come. It didn't take him long either -- after this film came Basketball Diaries, then there was only Fear and Traveller before he became Dirk Diggler.

The second wedding-centric "comedy" I've seen this year is the new release Made of Honor, and like the first one, Over Her Dead Body (aka That Waste of Paul Rudd That I Had to Look Up the Title For), the word "comedy" deserves to be within quotation marks when used as an adjective. It's not a terrible film, but it rarely rises above the hilarity level of Oh, How Cute. Even the cuteness wears off in the last third of the movie, leaving you with nothing but the feeling that you've seen this all before, perhaps in sitcoms, where it was much funnier.

You can predict the plot from the poster. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) are best friends who pal around New York together like pale imitations of the leads in When Harry Met Sally, except these two characters apparently never watched the second half of that film. Tom is relationship-phobic -- he has a set of strict rules for his frequent one-night stands -- but when Hannah takes a long business trip to Scotland, he starts to realize that maybe Hannah is a bigger part of his life than someone to antique-shop and eat desserts with. Naturally, when Hannah returns from Scotland, it's with a perfectly sexy, perfectly perfect fiance in tow. And in a move that is meant to be the incitement for high humor, she asks the newly lovelorn and crushed Tom to be her -- you won't believe this -- maid of honor. Have you fallen out of your chair yet, and are you rolling on the floor in hysterics?

Have you watched the trailer for Made of Honor? Did you catch this casting bite? Yes, A Different World's Dwayne Wayne, also known as Kadeem Hardison, plays one of Patrick Dempsey's friends in the upcoming romcom. He's been showing up in a lot of the film's clips that have been circling the net, and every time I see them, I'm catapulted back in time.

But Kadeem's career was more than just the bespeckled Wayne. He had a part in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and also in one of my old-school favorites from childhood -- the television movie of The House of Dies Drear. He played Mac, part of the jerky Darrow clan, but also a young boy trying to befriend Thomas Small, who has just moved into the haunted, Underground Railroad house of Dies Drear.

Are there any other Drear fans out there? If not, head after the jump for a taste of A Different World, where Dwayne dances with his jersey tucked into his pants. Man, he was stylin'.

Shopping, casting and rumors, oh my!

• On the first, Patrick Walsh shared word that Peter Jackson was shopping around his script for Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. On the third, I shared New York magazine's first look at the script that Jackson was looking to sell for $65 million + fees. Now The Hollywood Reporter says that DreamWorks is the lucky winner. They have won the rights to the script, beating out other movie houses like Warner Brothers and Sony. Jackson is, of course, directing, and the film is set to shoot this October in Pennsylvania and New Zealand before being distributed by Paramount. Now... Who will star?
• As we told you last year, McDreamy doctor Patrick Dempsey had signed on to star in the upcoming romantic comedy, Made of Honor. In February, Michelle Monaghan signed to play his platonic, old friend-turned-love interest. Now The Hollywood Reporter is adding three new names to the mix. First, there is model/actress Beau Garrett, who will soon be seen as Frankie Raye in the next Fantastic Four film. Then, there is Tootsie director Sydney Pollack, who has signed on to play Dempsey's dad. Even better is one of the supporting cast -- Kadeem Hardison. Remember the name? He's Dwayne Wayne! Is it time for his comeback?
• Last we've got a rumor, but it's an interesting one, so I thought I'd share. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has not come out yet, but the rumor mill has greased its wheels for the next installment. According to LaineyGossip, U.K. buzz says that Naomi Watts might grab the role of Narcissa Malfoy nee Black -- wife* to Lucius, mother to Malfoy and connections to others who will not be named for those who haven't read the books. The site muses that Watts claims she feels more British than Australian (she was born in England) recently to warm Rowling up to the thought of her taking the role -- legend says that the author says only British actors can be cast in the films. Can you see her as Momma Malfoy?

*Edited, because she's obviously not a husband. Thanks, Cine readers! MB

I looked forward to seeing The Cassidy Kids because I'd enjoyed Dear Pillow, the previous feature film from local filmmakers Jacob Vaughan and Bryan Poyser. The Cassidy Kids, which Vaughan directed and Poyser produced, was quite a different film. For one thing, this movie had an actual budget: it was in color and its cast included nationally known character actors. The Cassidy Kids looked slicker and more commercial than I expected. The film also has a much more complicated setup than Dear Pillow, with several storylines entwining that occur in different places and times.

The title of The Cassidy Kids was misleading: many people at SXSW seemed to think it might be a kids' movie, or that it would be primarily about children. While the movie does flash back to childhood scenes from the main characters' lives, it is the adults in the present time who are the focus of the story. As children, the "Cassidy Kids" were involved in the resolution of a mysterious murder case, which inspired a TV show (called The Cassidy Kids, natch) in which adorable child actors portrayed the kids and solved much less serious mysteries. Decades later, the original group is reunited when the TV show is released on DVD, and they realize that not everything in the mystery they "solved" might have been quite as straightforward as it once appeared.

The Cassidy Kids reminded me a lot of John Sayles' 1995 film Lone Star. Both are ostensibly mystery/suspense films: decades-old situations surface for the characters to resolve. However, the films are not about these mysteries as much as they are about the relationships beneath them. In The Cassidy Kids, Rebecca (Anne Ramsay) encounters her childhood friend Dennis (Kadeem Hardison) after decades of not speaking. She's also trying to care for her sick father, pack and move her childhood home, and deal with other childhood acquaintances she'd rather not see again. The resolution of the mystery plot may seem pat and predictable; however, the suspense for me was not in the unsolved aspects of the mystery, but in the relationships these characters might develop or break by the end of the movie.