And here's... part two!

• Professional wonderman Ken Jeong, who just so happens to be a doctor as well as a comedian, has nabbed himself another high-profile gig. You probably recognize him as the pain-in-the-arse doc from Knocked Up, or maybe from Mad TV, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or Boston Legal. While he's also popping up in Judd Apatow's Pineapple Express, word has come from Variety that he's also nabbed himself a role in Jeremy Piven's The Goods: The Don Ready Story. Leaving his medical know-how aside momentarily, he'll play one of the car salesmen.
  
• Toni Trucks is well, sorry for the pun, trucking along. She's popped up in television shows like Barbershop, Veronica Mars, and All of Us, and she popped up in the musical romcom Music and Lyrics, and now Variety reports that the actress has nabbed herself three indie roles on top of her new role int he VH1 series The Life and Times of Marcus Felony Brown. She's playing Agent Murphy in the mafia and pizza parlor comedy called Pizza with Bullets, as well as a starring role in Hitting the Bricks -- the story of a post-prison man who becomes a recording artist, and finally -- Mr. Art Critic, which has her co-starring with one Mr. Bronson Pinchot. (If you don't know who that is, go watch Perfect Strangers.) After this, maybe she'll take on the world!
• Last but not least, Less than Perfect co-star Sherri Shepherd has nabbed herself a new gig, according to Variety. She's signed on for one of the lead roles in Push, which is currently filming in New York City. The film, a remake of Sapphire's 1997 novel, is about an overweight, illiterate, and pregnant teen who enrolls in an alternative school and learns how to communicate through poetry and language. Shepherd will play someone called "Cornrows." The film will star newcomer Gabourey 'Gabbie' Sidibe as the teen, along Mo'Nique and Lenny Kravitz.
  

Chubby teens are in this year (see Hairspray), and so are unwanted pregnancies (see Knocked Up, Waitress, and Juno). As an antidote to all that comedy, Variety reports that the bestselling novel Push -- about an overweight, HIV-positive Harlem girl who's pregnant as the result of incest -- will be made into a film next year.

Not surprisingly, it will be an independent production, directed by Lee Daniels (pictured), whose recent film Shadowboxer was his directorial debut. Before that, he was producer on heavy fare like Monster's Ball and The Woodsman. So the guy isn't afraid of difficult subject matter. (The New York Times ran a fascinating story about him last July.)

The book was written by Ramona Lofton under the pseudonym Sapphire and was published in 1996. It tells of an African-American teen named Clareece "Precious" Jones whose miserable life starts to look up when a teacher takes an interest in her. Paula Patton (Idlewild, Deja Vu) will play the teacher; a newcomer named Gabourey Sidibe -- who auditioned among 300 other girls -- will play Precious. Mo'nique plays her wretched mother, and Lenny Kravitz plays a kindly nurse who helps Precious.

I haven't read Push, but the descriptions of its content are pretty harrowing. The girl is illiterate ... bullied by her mother ... she has HIV ... she's pregnant for the second time with her own father's child ... yikes. I have to assume there's some kind of redemption in the end...? A light at the end of the tunnel...? And if Daniels and the cast -- especially this newcomer Gabourey Sidibe -- can pull it off, it could be a powerful film.

In what feels like the blink of an eye, we're wrapping up October, although I could've sworn it was just yesterday that we left summer. Anyhow, Variety has posted a number of small casting nibbles for three actresses, so read on:

• Canadian actress Lauren Lee Smith, who shocked audiences (including me) with some rather racy scenes with Eric Balfour's member in Lie to with Me, has been cast in the Ashley Judd-starring indie film, Helen. The film focuses on "a music professor and mother who suffers from a deep, debilitating depression. Her family tries to help her, but no one can relate to her pain other than a young female student who knows depression all too well." Since Variety says that Smith is the co-lead, I imagine she'll play the young student. In the meantime, she has a few projects coming our way soon, including Pathology with co-star and uberhero Milo Ventimiglia.
• Ashley Benson, who you might remember from 13 Going on 30, or from her work as Abby Deveraux on Days of Our Lives, or have spotted from her upcoming lead role in Bring It On: In It to Win It (yes, there's another!), has nabbed a role in Bart Got a Room. The comedy is about a nerdy high school senior named Bart (Steven Kaplan) who is looking for a prom date. Alia Shawkat (Maeby from Arrested Development) has already been cast as his friend, and now Benson is going to play a girl named Alice. Will she be the object of the geek's affection? Will Alia's character be jealous and in love? Will Bart try to give Alice diamond earrings? Only time will tell.
• Finally, there's a new role for Maggie Siff, who currently plays a lawyer in the just-out Michael Clayton. She's nabbed the part of Teresa Stowe in Paul McGuigan's upcoming science fiction feature Push, which centers on a bunch of people with telekinetic/clairvoyant abilities who are trying to hide from the US government overseas. Mel Gibson's production company got involved with the project last year, and then the cast started to come together in August, including names like Djimon Hounsou and Dakota Fanning. Production should be gearing up soon.

Those pesky U.S. government agencies -- they always have to make things difficult. No, I'm not talking about getting a passport, although that seems to be hellish these days, but about the groups looking to capture or neutralize the "different" people. After watching E.T. and similar films as a kid, I've had a love/hate relationship with special abilities -- I've wanted to read minds, see the future, etcetera, but I also feared that some scary, government agency would then hunt me down and conduct tests and experiments on me. If the government didn't get me, I was sure some corporation would fool me into working for them and fulfilling their evil plans, like Dark Visions. Not fun.

It looks like my fantastical childhood fear is going to be relived on the big screen soon with a supernatural thriller called Push. The film stars Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond), Dakota Fanning (Hounddog), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) and Camilla Belle (The Chumscrubber) as young American ex-pats who are hiding out in Hong Kong. See, they all have telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities, so they're trying to hide from a government agency. As The Hollywood Reporter describes it: "They must band together and use their different talents to try to escape the control of the division." Where's Magneto and Professor X when you need them?! The film, which was written by David Bourla, will be directed by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin).

Personally, I'm waiting for the day when Bill Duke is elected governor of any state but California or Minnesota -- but that is just part of my dream for all of the cast of Predator to follow in the footsteps of Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger (including Kevin Peter Hall, in the costume, of course). With my dreams far from plausible, though, I'd at least like to see Duke stick to appearing onscreen. Sure, he's been somewhat successful behind the camera with films as diverse as Hoodlum, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and The Cemetery Club, plus a ton of television episodes, but not successful enough for him to be absent from the eyes of moviegoers. Maybe it is just the unfortunate time we're in that Hollywood doesn't utilize talented, distinct-looking character actors as much as it used to, or maybe there's just too many bad-ass dudes who can fill the detective roles he's been limited to in the past twenty years.

Anyway, enough about my love for Duke (at least I got to see him on Lost last week). The truth is that he's probably doing better for himself as a director, and hopefully his films will get better, too. He has already picked his next project (to produce and probably direct), for which he's optioned the book Push, a self-published "street lit" novel written by a guy named Relentless Aaron while he was incarcerated in a New Jersey federal prison. It follows an inner-city vigilante named Push, and Duke is hoping to make a franchise out of the character, possibly extending to sequels, a television show, comic books and video games.

I guess he's going to be too busy to run for office any time soon.

Man, even though Mel Gibson has gone a bit nutty in his film choices recently, I sure would love to see another Road Warrior flick - so it's good news that he is delving back into the Sci-Fi world with a film called Push.

Gibson's Icon Productions is teaming up with Infinity Features (Capote) to produce and finance the film, as well as two other undetermined pics. The story is said to center around a group of American ex-pats with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities. While hiding out from U.S. intelligence agencies (who, I assume, probably want to use them to either find Osama Bin Laden or throw toasters across the room just using their eyes), the group come together to perform the one last mission that can save them from detection.

While there's no word on whether or not Gibson will actually star, it would be interesting to see him as the group's fearless leader. The film is currently in the packaging stage (Hmm, I wonder if there is a box big enough to fit Mel's ego) and should begin shooting in China next year.