Nia Long Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there are movies that leave virtually no impression whatsoever. Are We Done Yet? falls into the third category. I saw the movie on Monday night and I still have to rely heavily on my notes because the film was so very unmemorable. Are We Done Yet? is both a sequel and a remake: the main characters from Are We There Yet? return a year later in a storyline adapted from the 1948 film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (and unofficially, The Money Pit). Ice Cube plays the Cary Grant role ... that's a sentence I never thought I would write.

Ice Cube's character from the first film, Nick Persons, has married his sweetheart Suzanne (Nia Long) and is assuming the role of stepdad towards her two children, Lindsey and Kevin. Lindsey is 13 and, believe it or not, Nick is concerned that she's wearing skimpy clothing and too much makeup, and spending too much time at the mall. And he thinks Kevin spends too much time indoors and needs to do male bonding things like fishing. After Suzanne announces she's pregnant with twins, it's time to leave the overcrowded condo for a house out in the country where the kids can thrive and Nick can work on his new sports magazine. (Suzanne apparently has no career that can't be discontinued.) Nick buys a gorgeous old house that starts to fall apart even before the sale is complete. Real-estate agent/contractor/midwife Chuck (John C. McGinley) agrees to help, but Nick is growing annoyed at the level of repairs needed as well as the intrusiveness of Chuck. Will the new house cause the family to fall apart, too? Will the audience please wake up now?

How many J-horror remakes have we weathered in the past three years? Five? Seven? Boy is that a trend I'll be happy to see die ... but not just yet, apparently. Seems there's still a remake of The Eye due to hit theaters late next year, but before that we get Sandra Bullock starring in Premonition -- a flick that definitely seems to be a semi-kinda-remake of Norio Tsuruta's Yogen (aka Premonition) from 2004. That film, which clearly borrowed a few cups from the original Ringu, is about a phantom newspaper that informs people of tomorrow's bad news. Not a bad little entry into the J-horror canon, but a slight one nonetheless.

...actually, come to think of it, I'm beginning to suspect that these films have no connection. Based on this new trailer and the few plot synopses I've seen lying around, it looks like the only thing the two movies have in common is the title. My bad.

Anyway, Sandra plays a woman whose husband is killed in a car accident, only when she wakes up the next morning, he's (dun dun dun) still alive! Scary! The movie comes from German director Mennan Yapo and second-time screenwriter Bill Kelly. Co-starring alongside Ms. Bullock will be Julian McMahon, Amber Valletta, Nia Long, Peter Stormare and Kate Nelligan. Release date is March 16.

As we reported way back in August, Sandra Bullock, as part of her bid to appear in fewer stupid movies, agreed to star in Premonition, a supernatural thriller about "a housewife (Bullock) whose husband dies in a car crash and who is shocked when he appears alive the next day." Good call, Sandy - there's no way this one can be stupid. The dead/not dead hubby will be played by Julian McMahon who, given his experience as a demon husband on Charmed, should find this job a piece of cake. (Oh, wait - according to the IMDB, he's not dead, it was a premonition. Bummer)

Since the movie is currently filming in Shreveport, LA (they won't be put off by a little hurricane), it's a good thing that casting has finally been completed - joining Bullock in (not) being haunted will be Nia Long, Amber Valletta, and Kate Nelligan. Long is set to play Bullock's best friend, and Nelligan will be her mother. Valletta, needless to say, is the movie's designated Hot Chick, and will be having extramarital sex with McMahon. (That sound you hear is a nation of teenage boys suddenly becoming very interested seeing a Sandra Bullock movie.)

Revolution Studios has been hard at work preparing the cast and screenplay for a remake of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, starring today's Cary Grant, Ice Cube. However, the movie has undergone a rather sudden revision, and is now being retooled and rewritten into a sequel to Cube's 2005 hit, Are We There Yet?. Though the plot of the movie will reportedly still be fairly close to that of Blandings, it's now called Are We Done Yet? (as in with the dream house), and both Cube and Nia Long, his co-star from Are We There Yet?, will reprise their roles from that film. Additionally, the studio is scrambling to sign Aleisha Allen and Philip Bolden, the young actors who played the kids in the first movie. (Since the script is already being rewritten and the studio really, really needs those kids, they're in a position to make completely outrageous demands. I hope they both get butlers.)

Though it's a little unclear why the production on Blandings was originally halted, it's thought that the (deeply disturbing) success of Big Momma's House 2 is what drove Revolution in the remake direction. It's a very scary time, friends, when Martin Lawrence in a fat suit is influencing the thinking of Hollywood studio heads.