gabrielle union Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Girlfriends and wives usually get the short shrift in music biopics. In most cases, they end up as background (with maybe the exception being Walk the Line). Hopefully, this will not be the case for Gabrielle Union's latest role. BlackFilm reports that Union has signed to star in Darnell Martin's music biopic Cadillac Records as Geneva Wade. Wade was blues legend Muddy Waters' long-time girlfriend and was the inspiration for the classic song, Little Geneva.

Cadillac is the story of Chess Records, founded by Leonard Chess. The famed label was responsible for launching the careers of some of the greatest names in R&B. Casting has been the order of the day since news first hit that Adrien Brody would be playing Chess. Since then, it's been a flood of news, with the debate over Beyonce being cast as jazz legend Etta James at the top of the list. It should probably not come as a shock that other casting news has garnered fewer headlines. So just to bring you up to speed: Jeffrey Wright signed to play the great Muddy Waters, Cedric the Entertainer will appear as Willie Dixon, Eamonn Walker as Howlin' Wolf, and Columbus Short as Little Walter. There is also my favorite piece of casting -- Mos Def as Chuck Berry. Because, frankly, Def is just 'eccentric' enough to pull it off.

Cinematical has just received the exclusive poster for The Perfect Holiday (click on the image for a larger version), starring the smokin' hot Gabrielle Union, Queen Latifah, Terrence Howard and Morris Chestnut. This looks to be one of them feel-good Christmas flicks (and we need at least one of those every year ... because it's nice to just feel good). In the film, Gabrielle Union stars as a divorced mother who's too busy raising her three kids, she never finds any time for herself. Ah, but her kids are paying attention -- and when they go to visit Santa at the local mall, they don't ask for a lousy football or a Red Rider BB Gun, they ask the jolly fat man for a nice gentleman to compliment their mother. Turns out Santa himself is a nice, good-looking guy in the form of Morris Chestnut, and, well, I imagine sparks fly from there. Based on the poster, it looks like there will be plenty of characters swirling around mom and her kids; some of which are dressed up as big ass elves. Also starring in the film are Malik Hammond, Charlie Murphy, Faizon Love, Jeremy Gumbs, Jill Marie Jones, and Rachel True. The Perfect Holiday was written, produced and directed by Lance Rivera (The Cookout, Life Support), and you can check it out in theaters on December 12.

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.