Louis Gossett Jr. Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The Perfect Game isn't the only baseball picture that Louis Gossett Jr. is getting busy with these days. Aside from the Mexican Little League story that I told you about last year, The Hollywood Reporter posts that he has signed on to be the executive producer and narrator of a new documentary about Negro Baseball Leagues called The Untold Truth.

The doc will detail the history of African-Americans in baseball from 1865-1947 -- the year that Jackie Robinson broke through the barrier and became the first black major league baseball player. Gregg Champion, of Wrapped Prods., will direct the feature, and the company has nabbed exclusive rights to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City for the film.

As an added perk, the sporty fare will also have a touch of jazz. Champion says that the doc will not only focus on the leagues, but "how jazz and baseball came together, how women influenced baseball at that time and how the economics of baseball played into black Americans succeeding in all walks of life." It sounds like an interesting and well-balanced doc to me. The current plan is to release the film during the World Series this fall.

You don't see much Lauren Holly news on Cinematical, but heck, how much is there really floating around? I was surprised to see that she continues to steadily work. It's just that instead of hanging with Jim Carrey and Andrew Dice Clay, she's been doing lots of television work. But here, finally, is some news for you Holly fans out there. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the actress is starring with Louis Gossett Jr. in a new indie feature called The Least Among You, which headed into production this week. Written and directed by Mark Young, the project sounds strange and good, mixing history, violence, alcoholism, and monasteries.

The film focuses "on a black man named Richard Kelly (newcomer Cedric Sanders), who, after graduating from college and becoming successful in the corporate world, is falsely arrested in the 1965 Watts riots. Kelly faces racial prejudice from professors and students after his agreement to a plea bargain that involves spending two semesters at a seminary." Yes, a seminary... Is that a punishment that has ever actually happened? It sounds strange, yet intriguing. Holly is playing a professor at the seminary, one who is a closet drinker after she lost her husband and kids while working as a missionary in Africa, while Gossett is an "elderly ex-con who lives in the basement of Kelly's dorm and inspires him to conquer his demons." Criminal reform -- Jesus style. Just to top things off, there's William Devane, who is playing "the seminary president who recruits Kelly." I wonder if he recruits from jails like coaches recruit football players...

If you're expecting Daddy's Little Girls, the latest film from writer-director Tyler Perry, to be a broad comedy like Diary of a Mad Black Woman or Madea's Family Reunion, you're in for a big surprise. Perry doesn't get into drag and play Madea in this movie -- in fact, he doesn't appear onscreen at all (unless he had an uncredited cameo where I didn't recognize him). Don't let the brightly colored poster with the cute little girls on it fool you -- this isn't a comedy, either, but is meant to be a drama with a message. Daddy's Little Girls has its funny moments, but overall it's fairly somber from the start. Monty (Idris Elba) is a mechanic who wants to buy the auto shop where he works from soon-to-retire Willie (Louis Gossett, Jr.). His three daughters are primarily cared for by his mother-in-law, who implores him to take over custody so the girls won't fall into the hands of their neglectful mom, Jenny (Tasha Smith), who is living with the neighborhood druglord. The mother-in-law dies from lung cancer early in the film, and Jenny, who hates Monty, takes him to court to gain full custody of her kids just out of spite.

To earn money for a lawyer, Monty is forced to moonlight as a driver for the high-powered and self-centered lawyer Julia (Gabrielle Union), but she fires him after he detours a trip to handle an emergency with his kids. Meanwhile, her friends insist that Julia has to find herself a man, and so she suffers through humiliating (yet comic) blind dates in search of Mr. Right. He needs a good lawyer, she needs a good man ... you get the picture. Daddy's Little Girls never goes for the subtle when it can resort to the obvious. The "bad guys" of the movie are one-dimensional: we don't empathize with ex-wife Jenny in any way, and the film works hard to make her awful in every way. She smokes, she and her boyfriend try to make her oldest daughter sell drugs, and she laughs at the kids when they watch drug-dealing thugs beat up someone. Monty, on the other hand, is shown as almost saintly: he goes to church, he's polite and friendly with all his neighbors, and he truly loves his little girls.