Yesterday, Monika asked if we were tired of George Clooney, who has undeniably been everywhere since making his escape from ER in the mid-1990s. I wanted to weigh in, because my answer is a curious one, and it sadly wasn't an option in Monika's poll: I used to be tired of him, but I'm not anymore.

I think the peak of my tiredness came with the dreadful Perfect Storm in 2000. I remember being so sick of seeing Clooney pop up as these boring, poker-faced, tediously noble action heroes. I hadn't seen his earlier B-movie efforts at the time, and the triple-threat of Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker and The Perfect Storm made me wish he'd never been born. (I had seen Three Kings, and honestly don't remember why that didn't change matters for me -- I think I wrote it off as a fluke, and was more impressed with Ice Cube anyhow.) What an anodyne heartthrob, I thought, with no personality or real talent. Get him out of my sight.

Those of you anxious to see Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac singing and dancing (without the aid of performance doubles) will be happy to know that Soul Men has not been affected by the strike. According to Variety, the musical road trip comedy is set to begin production January 21 with Undercover Brother director Malcolm D. Lee at the helm. Not to be confused with that beloved 1986 classic Soul Man starring C. Thomas Howell and Rae Dawn Chong, Soul MEN sounds more like a loose mix of The Blues Brothers and It Happened One Night (which one is Claudette Colbert, I wonder?). Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone (Man of the House), the movie will follow two estranged backup singers who are reunited after 20 years to pay homage to their recently deceased band leader.

It's pretty cool right now to get traditionally non-singing actors to perform their own vocals in musicals. Of course, it's a bit more exciting to think about Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd than Jackson and Mac in Soul Men. Chances are, the most interesting thing about this movie will be the few moments we get to actually see the duo performing, while the rest of the road trip banter will be uninspired and tedious. Maybe it's just easy to be skeptical because of Jackson's last antagonistic team up, with Eugene Levy, or Mac's team up with any one (rather than any eleven, or twelve, or thirteen). Considering not even the Coen Brothers with George Clooney were able to salvage a movie scripted by Ramsey and stone, there simply can't be much hope for Lee, Jackson and Mac.

Reunited ... and it feels so good. What's got me so happy today? I'm happy because it looks like three of my all-time favorite filmmakers are getting the band, er, the gang back together again. I'm talking, of course, about those talented brothers, director/writers Joel and Ethan Coen and that other talented hyphenate, George Clooney. We talked about this mysterious film before, but only had scant details back then. And I know, we've been on a bit of a Clooney bender here at Cinematical lately but still, Clooney's a guy who's work with the Coen brothers has given us one really great (O Brother, Where Art Thou) and one almost great (Intolerable Cruelty) film. Not a perfect record by any means, but these three together probably means something at least interesting and/or unusual will come out of this reunion.

According to Production Weekly, the reason the trio are getting together for a third go-around is to bring Admiral Stansfield Turner's novel-with-the-exceptionally-long-name Burn Before Reading: President, CIA Directors and Secret Intelligence to the screen. Man, that is long. Anyway, in the novel, a CIA agent is writing a tell-all book about his life in the agency and then loses the disk he saved the book on. The disk then passes through the hands of various people who all end up dead because they've seen what's on the disk.

Although he's played a CIA agent before, in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and in the recent Syriana, Clooney will not be returning to that role again in this film. Instead, he will go a different route and play the assassin who kills anyone who has come in contact with the disk. I can't recall a film where Clooney played this kind of part so this will be a definite departure for an actor who normally prefers the "morally ambiguous but basically a good guy" roles in film such as Ocean's Eleven, Three Kings or Out of Sight.

No word yet on other casting but I'll bet Coen alums Francis McDormand and John Goodman will probably show up somewhere. At least I hope they do. Production on Burn Before Reading (my new preferred shorter title for the film) is scheduled to begin in August of next year after Clooney wraps his current project Leatherheads, a comedy set in the world of 1920's football, in which he both starts and directs. Busy man, huh?