Most Adam Sandler fans are probably more than a little relieved that he has left some of the 'earnest' comedy behind and is now headed back to a sillier state of mind with You Don't Mess with the Zohan. But don't get too comfortable; it looks like there's more family-friendly fare on the horizon. ComingSoon.net recently got the chance to speak with Adam Shankman on the set of his latest flick, Seventeen (starring the 'dreamy' Zac Efron) to talk about his upcoming directing gig with Sandler in Bedtime Stories.

Shankman told Coming Soon that the release date of December 25th is foremost in his mind and that production is going to have to work, "Unbelievably fast, because I'm going till mid-June; it's a long schedule. Then, I have to be out in theaters December 25th. And there's a ton of CG, so I'm excited." Sure, he sounds excited, but why am I suddenly worried that this film is going to be the Jumanji of 2008?

The family comedy was written by Matt Lopez, a relative newcomer who only has a few credits to his name -- one of which is the upcoming remake of Witch Mountain. Stories stars Sandler as a guy whose life is forever changed when the stories that he tells his nephew at bedtime start to become real. Keri Russell (Waitress) also stars, although there is no description of her part. The smart money is that Russell will get the thankless role of 'love interest'. Shooting is set to begin in the next three weeks and keep your fingers crossed that Shankman can keep on schedule.

It's about to get a smidge gossipy in here, but once I read these stories back-to-back, I had to write up these bits for you...

First up: Early Obituaries
There's death pools for the masses, and early obits written up by the press just in case the sometimes-inevitable happens. Why waste time writing it up and losing the scoop if you can just hear the news, grab the story, and click "publish"? Well, that's what the Associate Press thinks about Britney Spears, according to Ace Showbiz. The AP have confirmed that they are preparing a blurb for that possibility, and editor Jesse Washington says: "We are not wishing it, but if Britney passed away, it's easily one of the biggest stories in a long time. I think one would agree that Britney seems at risk right now. Of course, we would never wish any type of misfortune on anybody, and hope that we would never have to use it until 50 years from now ...but if something were to happen, we would have to be prepared." Topping this off, Ace says she has chronic mood disorder and is predicted to die in six months if she doesn't get treatment. Poor Spears. Her problems seem never-ending.

Meanwhile... Morgues!
While some people are waiting for Britney to hit the slab, Yahoo reports that Lindsay Lohan will have to visit one. Still in her first legal drinking year (21), Lohan will have to work at a morgue as part of her misdemeanor drunk driving punishment. She's gone to rehab, done some community service, and now she has to do two 4-hour days at the morgue -- "part of a court-ordered program to show drivers the real-life consequences of drinking and driving." Topping that off, she'll also have to spend two days in a hospital ER. I'm sure that will be all sorts of scary for Lohan, but considering how many damned stars and celebs drink and drive, I think all of them should be put in this program.

But all hope is not lost, Wonder Woman is coming!
Justice League is kaput, and that whole live-action project for the lady with the lasso isn't going anywhere, but that doesn't mean we can't get more Wonder Woman. TV Guide reported recently that their sources say that there's a straight-to-DVD animated Wonder Woman feature on the way, and Keri Russell will be voicing the epic, Amazonian heroine. That leads me to wonder (pun!), should she pull off the voice well (and these rumors are true), could Russell also make it work in a live-action setting? Stay tuned!

Variety is reporting that Keri Russell will follow in the footsteps of such beautiful actresses as Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, and Jessica Biel. In Disney's Bedtime Stories, Russell will romance Adam Sandler. She'll play "a potential love interest for Sandler's character, a harried real estate developer whose life is suddenly turned upside down when the lavish bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew become real." Adam Shankman, a director who totally underwhelmed me until Hairspray, will direct. Matt Lopez (the upcoming Witch Mountain) wrote the script.

It might not be the most challenging role Russell could tackle -- women in Sandler comedies historically don't have much to do other than laugh at the star. But I'll be thrilled if appearing in the film bumps Russell into the stardom that has bafflingly eluded her all these years. I was a big Felicity fan, I've enjoyed her in pretty much everything else, and she was just wonderful in this year's Waitress, now on DVD. Her lovely performance in Adrienne Shelly's romantic comedy just might snag her an Academy Award nomination. And here's hoping this gets Sandler comedy back on track. I'm not expecting another Happy Gilmore, but I can't sit through another Click. Get ready for your Bedtime Stories next year at Christmas.

Time flies, and we've almost approached the first anniversary of Adrienne Shelly's murder. Since then, Waitress has hit both the festival circuit and local big screens, charming audiences as a bittersweet cherry to her career; however, Waitress wasn't the only material she was working on. Variety reports that another Shelly screenplay is heading towards production. Cheryl Hines, who co-starred with Keri Russell in Waitress, is going to make her feature directorial debut with a project called Serious Moonlight -- which Shelly's husband, Andy Ostroy, will co-produce along with Michael Roiff.

Moonlight is a dark comedy about a "high-powered female attorney who learns that her husband is about to leave her for another woman, then prevents him from doing so by binding him to the toilet with duct tape." I guess she didn't see 9 to 5, which has a much more creative means of binding the pesky man. Anyway, things get more tricky when the home is invaded by robbers.

Ostroy says: "I felt compelled to continue her work for her after her death. I think she was just hitting her stride with Waitress. I tried to put together a team that was part of the Waitress family to re-create the vibe and the success of that film and honor Adrienne and get her work out there with a group of people who really cared about her and (understood) her spirit and vision." The comedy will head into production this December in LA, and considering Ostroy's plan, there's probably a decent chance Russell will also get involved, since there has been no mention of new projects. We should know soon -- Roiff, Ostroy, and HInes are currently casting the film.

For those of us who'll never get enough Andy Griffith, it was a real treat seeing him in this year's Waitress. In the film, he's a crotchety but lovable old diner-owner and guide to Keri Russell's "with child" pie-making protagonist. The best part about his role was how subtly crass he could get at times. If you haven't seen it (do it!), just picture Ben Matlock saying the following line: "I saw that look on a woman's face before. Her name was Anette. I made sweet sweet love to her all through the summer of 1948, and she had that look on her face all through the fall." Well, now we don't have to settle for stories from youth, because in Griffith's next movie he plays a guy on the prowl. The indie pic is titled Play the Game, and it casts the 81-year-old opposite Battlestar Galactica's Paul Campbell, who will play his grandson.

According to Variety, the plot centers on the inter-generational duo as they go out and pick up girls, the younger teaching the widowed elder how it's done. But of course the kid's game plan fails to work for grandpa, according to a synopsis from a 2003 script reading of Play the Game, and even causes problems for the old man when it ruins his chances with the woman of his dreams. The cast includes Everybody Loves Raymond Emmy-winner Doris Roberts, who I assume plays Griffith's love interest, and The Practice's Marla Sokoloff, who probably plays Campbell's -- though wouldn't that be an interesting twist if it was the other way around? Will we at least see him attempt to woo a girl who could be his great-granddaughter? Or hear some more naughty talk from ol' Andy Taylor? We'll just have to wait and see. The indie rom-com was written and is being directed by Marc Feinberg, and shooting began in Los Angeles this week.

Expect Sigourney Weaver to receive an Oscar nod for her work in The Girl in the Park, which got a warm reception at this year's Toronto fest. Weaver plays Julia Sandburg, a 40-something business executive and mother of two, including a toddler named Maggie. Julia's life, which we can sense has been planned down to the smallest detail, is unexpectedly shipwrecked when, during routine playtime in a park one day, Maggie goes missing under her nose. The child is not found, and her disappearance is tied to a string of similar abductions in the area, leaving practically no hope. Cut to fifteen years later -- Julia now looks to be in her late 50s and has spent the last fifteen years living a solitary, robotic existence, the disappearance having disintegrated her marriage, poisoned her relationship with her remaining child, and taken a toll on her mental health. Existing more or less as a shut-in these past years, her own relatives, including her son and new daughter-in-law, can hardly believe it when she turns up at a family function.

The son and daughter-in-law, played by Alessandro Nivola and Keri Russell, are budding suburbanites who are planning for a new child and have no intention of living their lives in the past, but the past is the only place Julia feels safe, and there seems to be little prospect of her returning to any kind of social normalcy. This is the lay of the land when Louise comes into the picture. A sleazy drifter and scam-artist in her young twenties, played effectively by Superman's dame Kate Bosworth, Louise meets Julia in the city by chance and picks up on her vulnerability, perhaps sensing she's some old, lonely lesbian who can be taken for a ride and cleaned out or more simply, someone who will feel sorry for her. During their first meeting, Louise gives Julia a phoney tale of woe, and in the space of a few minutes, Julia has her checkbook out and is shelling out for travel fare and medical expenses for an unborn child (which doesn't exist.) Louise then wisely disappears, but their interaction isn't over yet.

As I was watching the just-released trailer for August Rush on Moviefone, I thought to myself 'this seems a lot like one of those emotional fantasy films that Robin Williams used to make' ... and then Robin Williams showed up in the trailer. Guess I called that one. The film tells the story of two musicians, played by former IMF agents Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Keri Russell, who get together and have a baby. Something then happens that causes them to actually lose the baby. The baby grows up into an orphan kid played by Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) who inherits the natural musical talents of his parents. The fantasy part comes into play when the kid uses music to send out some kind of actual signal to his parents to come and find him, or something like that. And Robin Williams is dressed as a cowboy. Terrence Howard is also in the film, although after watching the trailer twice, I couldn't quite figure out what his role was. He seems to be giving people advice.

Nick Castle, who helmed Major Payne, Mr. Wrong, and Dennis the Menace has a screenwriting credit on this thing along with another writer, and it's being directed by Kristen Sheridan, whose last film was 2001's Disco Pigs. I'm actually a fan of both Russell and Rhys Meyers -- I think they can do good work when the material is there, so I'll probably check this one out. However, having not even seen the film, I'm advising them to seriously consider cutting down the Robin Williams cowboy shtick. That stuff has an expiration date of 1994. August Rush hits theaters not in August, but on October 19.

*A guest review today, from Nick Schager, of Slant Magazine


Regrettably but inevitably, Waitress's tenacious optimism is partially offset by the recent, tragic murder of its writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelly, an actress who made her name in Hal Hartley's early indies and, with this funny, charming slice of Southern country life, appears to have found her voice as a filmmaker. However, the bittersweetness that accompanies the film's arrival is, coincidentally, in tune with its story's miserable protagonist, a young, pretty waitress at Joe's Pie Diner named Jenna (Keri Russell). Stuck in a loveless marriage to her controlling, abusive husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto), and prevented from running away by a lack of cash, Jenna is a forlorn woman who sees dreams of a bright future dissipating before her eyes. To cope, she pours all of her grief, longing and sadness for happier times-gone-by into her unique homemade pies, which – described, at one point, as "biblically good" – are concocted with an array of inventively combined ingredients, and named after the moods that inspired them (such as her "I Hate My Husband Pie" and "Falling in Love Pie").

Tending to her louse of a spouse, wasting time gabbing in the diner bathroom with co-workers Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Shelly), and waiting on outspoken, lewd diner proprietor Old Joe (a consistently hilarious Andy Griffith) while decked out in her '50s-style blue-and-white uniform – Jenna's life is, at the outset, in a rut. Waitress is too, as its early attempts at establishing a mood are a tad shaky, vacillating unevenly between cutesiness and seriousness. That balancing act becomes much smoother, however, once Jenna – after learning that she's pregnant with Earl's baby thanks to an ill-advised drunken roll in the hay – goes to see her OBGYN and finds, to her surprise, that her lifelong doctor has suddenly semi-retired and been replaced by attractive Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). Though she's been stashing money around the house for an eventual escape, Jenna makes clear to the married Pomatter that, while she isn't thrilled about the baby (who'll further tie her down), she nonetheless intends to keep it. Her plan to disappear into the night, however, is complicated by the almost immediate and overwhelming mutual attraction that blossoms between doc and patient.

Next week, Cinematical contributor Nick Schager will be bringing you a review of Waitress, a romantic comedy starring Keri Russell that's arriving in theaters on May 2 with a lot of unfortunate baggage. Waitress is of course the final film of indie actress and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered in her office apartment last November, reportedly before hearing that Sundance had accepted Waitress into its 2007 schedule. You may have seen her most recently as a player in Matt Dillon's much-liked barfly film Factotum, or you may remember her as the star of those Hal Hartley movies from way back at the dawn of indie wave, The Unbelievable Truth and Trust. If you want to read more about Shelly and her final film, you can pick up a copy of the spring issue of Filmmaker Magazine, which is featuring an article on that very subject.

The piece, which was penned by media blogfly and former Cinematical editor-in-chief Karina Longworth, is encapsulated thusly on the magazine's cover: "Premiering at Sundance following the sudden death of its writer-director, Adrienne Shelly's Waitress is a bittersweet success." I haven't read the article yet, since that would involve all kinds of complicated actions like leaving the house and catching a bus to the city, but if you're fortunate enough to live closer to a well-stocked newsstand than me, and you're looking for something interesting to read, you might want to go out and pick up a copy. Sarah Polley is the dressed-down cover girl, and the issue also contains articles on, among other things, Hostel: Part II and the Sundance films Once and Zoo.

You've probably heard something about the story by now: In early 2001 a German man was arrested for killing, disemboweling, cooking and eating another man. What makes this story particularly (ok, especially) bizarre is that the victim was a willing participant in the event! He actually wanted to be eaten! Obviously a story like this is entirely ripe for a movie adaptation, which is where Martin Weisz' Grimm Love (aka Rohtenburg or Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story) comes in. (Another film covering the exact same story, Marian Dara's Cannibal, is presently available on video. It's a lot more graphic, but not quite as engaging as Grimm Love.)

"Based on actual events," but using a fictional character for a framing story, Grimm Love focuses on American graduate student Katie Armstrong (Keri Russell), a committed researcher who finds herself absolutely obsessed with the story of flesh-eater Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann), a rather sick man who's doing jail time for dining on his fellow man.

Given that we only know a few small snippets about Hartwin's life, Weisz cleverly juxtaposes Armstrong's story with early details from Hartwin's life. As Katie gets the sketchier stories about the killer's childhood, we're offered the anecdotes in flashback form, and as she gets a whole lot closer to the seriously slimy truth, the b-story material gets decidedly more ... icky. The whole (and admittedly languid) affair comes to a head with a powerfully compelling two-headed sequence: Katie gets to see the carnage on videotape as we switch back and forth to Hartwin's final descent. And it ain't pretty.