The strike has stalled the pen, but not the cast, so there's lots of casting nibbles to share today. Here's round one:

• Ah, D.B. Sweeney. He started off strong. He got to play the jerk in Fire with Fire, he co-starred in John Sayles' classic Eight Men Out, and even skated into moviegoers hearts with The Cutting Edge. Maybe it was his run-in with aliens in Fire in the Sky that began to change things. These days, he takes on television guest star roles and mainly little to no-buzz movies. But maybe, just maybe, things are changing for the better. Variety reports that he's among the cast of Miracle at St. Anna -- Spike Lee's WWII movie. The movie focuses on four black US soldiers (one of which will most probably not be Sweeney), but being in this has got to help him more than something like Hard Ball.
• Katie Chonacas, a new actress who has popped up in shows like CSI, also has a slew of feature projects on the way. She's completed a role in Robert Englund's sophomore directorial stint, Killer Pad, then jumped into Haylie Duff comedy with Legacy, and super-awesome Jessica Simpson fare with Major Movie Star. On a slighty (or much) better note, Variety reports that she's nabbed a role in the Morgan Freeman/Antonio Banderas crime flick, The Code. I'm thinking this will be a definite improvement over her other recent work, but that's just a hunch.
• Alex Frost started his movie career only a few years ago as the tow-headed star of Gus Van Sant's Elephant. He's had some starring indie roles since, and will soon be seen in Kimberly Peirce's (Boys Don't Cry) next film, Stop Loss, and the comedy Drillbit Taylor. In what looks like an effort to keep his movie career varied and fresh, Variety reports that he's nabbed the starring role in Calvin Marshall. This time around, he'll "play a talentless kid with dreams of junior college basketball glory." Ouch. Will he become a basketball star? Or, maybe he'll find out that he's much better suited to ping pong?

When the production for The Code gets into swing this month in Bulgaria, there will be more than a Morgan Freeman thief-like mentor and a younger Antonio Banderas crook. Variety reports that Radha Mitchell has signed on to star with the duo in the upcoming caper drama, which will be brought to us by director Mimi Leder and screenwriter Ted Humphrey. Unfortunately, they're not saying what her role is. Will she play Banderas' wife? Someone in the Russian mob that Freeman's character owes? The person the duo will rob to get that money? Who knows.

Mitchell made a name for herself in films like Phone Booth and Finding Neverland before heading Melinda and Melinda, Woody Allen's dual-story movie trek. Now she's got a handful of movies on the way that definitely hit some different themes. First up is a B movie named Rogue, which has her taking a cynical American writer on tour of the Outback when they get attacked by a crocodile and end up in some sort of horrific Gilligan's Island scenario. After that she goes back in time for The Children of Huang Shi, a period drama about journalist George Hogg who saved a group of orphaned kids, with help from a nurse and partisan fighter, during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937. Then things get lighter with Luke Wilson's Henry Poole is Here, and then darker again when she co-stars in The Seed -- about a "killer [who] returns from the past, forcing a young detective to return to a case that took her mother's life years before."

I guess that once you hit the age of 70, it's hard to not get that indelible stamp that says you're ready for movies about kicking the bucket, or playing the mentor figure over, and over, and over again. Even after playing the ultimate spiritual mentor, God, Morgan Freeman is jumping into another flick where he'll play an experienced man with a younger recruit. This time around, according to Variety, he's signed on for Mimi Leder's caper drama The Code, with Antonio Banderas.

This will reunite the actor and director, as Freeman starred in her 1998 film, Deep Impact, as the hole-making president trying to save a million Americans. This time around, the feature is a little more self-serving. Code, based on a script from Ted Humphrey, is about an old, "veteran thief who recruits a younger crook, played by Banderas, to help him pull off one final job in order to repay his debt to the Russian mob." Granted, Freeman's age isn't completely pigeon-holing him. I'm sure many an actor, especially those who get stuck in horror typecasting, wouldn't mind playing many different kinds of mentors and leaders. Not every man could jump from a stint as Lucius Fox to a tasty role as Nelson Mandela. As for Banderas, it should he a nice reminder that he can do more than fluffy dance films or kid flicks. Production begins this month in Bulgaria.