We are all well aware that David O. Russell doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to working with actors. We've heard the stories about near fist-fights on the set of Three Kings, and everyone has seen the meltdown during I Heart Huckabees. The latest casualty of Russell's people skills is celebrated actor James Caan, who has officially quit Russell's political comedy, Nailed.

What caused the irreconcilable rift, you might ask? It was all over a cookie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the final straw for Caan was during a scene in which his character is supposed to be choking on a cookie. Russell instructed Caan to cough and choke at the same time during the scene, which Caan thought was impossible for a human being to do both. The two couldn't come to an agreement and Caan left the set never to return. The film's producer got to work on the damage control and was quoted as saying the disagreement was "part of an ongoing creative conversation between the actor and director", and that Russell had been nothing but professional throughout the shoot.

This is one of those movies that has a premise so incredibly bizarre, yet has cast so strong, that I figure there is some promise I am simply not seeing. David O. Russell's romantic comedy Nailed already stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel, and The Hollywood Reporter says that the film has now added Catherine Keener, James Marsden and Tracy Morgan to the cast.

The plot follows a naive waitress, Alice, who is shot in the head with a nail. The injury causes her behavior to be erratic and outrageous (the IMDb says it causes her to become a sexually adventurous bombshell), and she heads to Washington to campaign on behalf of better health care for the freakishly injured. She ends up falling for a young and clueless new congressman, who must summon up his political courage to save her. Biel plays the waitress, Gyllenhaal the congressman. Keener will be playing a self-serving congresswoman, and Marsden the small-town boyfriend of Alice. Hopefully he's not the one who shot her with a nail. Morgan's character has yet to be decided.

Like I said, there is probably something I am not seeing. The script is penned by Russell and Kristen Gore, so the charm must lie there. But is the waitress' naivete the reason she was shot in the head? Or is she naive because she thinks her insurance will cover the cost of her injury? And must James Marsden lose a girl not only to Wolverine, to Superman and to Patrick Dempsey, but to Congressman Jake Gyllenhaal too?

To be fair, I'm willing to give Mr. Russell a fair shot after the surprisingly unique Three Kings -- although people still keep dissuading me from seeing I Heart Huckabees.

Most guys probably prefer to look at Penélope Cruz. I think I would rather listen to her. Really, who could resist that cute Spanish-accented voice? I especially like in Vanilla Sky when she says, "I'll tell you in another life, when we are both cats." Well, according to The Hollywood Reporter, I'll get to listen to her voice without seeing her body in the upcoming live-action/animated combo film G-Force. But instead of her being a cat, Cruz is playing a guinea pig named Juarez.

If you remember back to my post from last November, Juarez isn't the only guinea pig in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie. There's also Blaster, a Cavia porcellus (aka guinea pig) voiced by Tracy Morgan. Other animals and their respective voices include a mole named Speckles (Nicolas Cage), a hamster named Bucky (Steve Buscemi) and some humans (Will Arnett, Bill Nighy, Kelli Garner and others).

The humans are, of course, live-action and played by real-life actors. The animals, on the other hand, are computer-generated toons (like Alvin and the Chipmunks, I guess). And they're super-smart commandos that work for the government. And they're out to stop a evil billionaire from taking over the world (isn't it enough to be a billionaire?). As we've told you before, the script for the family-friendly action pic was written by National Treasure team Cormac and Marianne Wibberley (aka The Wibberleys) and it will be helmed by first-time director Hoyt Yeatman, who has two Academy Awards -- one for his visual effects work on The Abyss and one Technical Achievement Award "for the identification and diagnosis leading to the elimination of the 'red fringe' artifact in traveling matte composite photography." We'll have to see if the guy can score another Oscar someday for directing, though I doubt he'll manage that goal with G-Force.

See the expression on Ice Cube's face in this photograph? I wore that same expression for the entire running time of First Sunday. The transition of the holiday movie season into the barren movie wasteland of January is always a jarring one. For the past three months, it seems like I've seen nothing but Oscar-caliber movies -- masterful films by outstanding filmmakers working from amazing scripts. So maybe First Sunday just pales in comparison...

But I don't think so.

No, this is not yet another sequel to that terrific Ice Cube comedy Friday, as many have suspected. Sunday tells the story of "new" characters Durell (Cube) and LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan). As the movie opens, the boys are picked up by the cops for their involvement with some stolen wheelchairs. They are sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, the owner of the wheelchairs comes to collect, and Durell finds himself broke. Things get even more desperate when Durell's ex-girlfriend (Regina Hall) tells him she intends to move to another state with his son...unless he can come up with $17,000 to pay off a debt. So Durell and LeeJohn do what anyone in their shoes would do -- they decide to rob a church. And of course, after a night amongst good Christian folk, they learn that crime is bad and God is good and blah blah blah.

This week on The Write Stuff, Cinematical speaks with David E. Talbert, writer and director of the new comedy/drama First Sunday. The film stars Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan as friends in a desperate situation who decide to rob a local church. At the church, they find a lot more resistance than they bargained for, in the form of Loretta Devine, Chi McBride, and Katt Williams.

Cinematical: Are you excited about the movie coming out?

David E. Talbert: Oh man, I'm wearing my wife out! We've been riding around looking at these billboards. Every time somebody tells me there's one that's popped up, I gotta go and find it.

Cinematical: You got your start as a playwright, and you've been doing that successfully for 15 years. Did you always want to be a writer?

DET: No, I was a radio announcer when I was in college and after. Somewhere in there, I had a breakup with my college sweetheart and I started writing "Somebody done somebody wrong" poems. And I was writing and crying and listening to Al Green every night. Then one night my Al Green record scratched, and when it scratched, I started reading those poems and I said "Wow, these aren't that bad." From there I wrote a long-form play and I put it away until about five years later when I saw the play Beauty Shop. I saw how much audiences were going crazy over it, and that's when I got bit.

I love talking animals as much as the next guy, but does Steve Buscemi always have to play some kind of toothy rodent? Actually, it's possible he only did that once, for Charlotte's Web (I'm not sure what kind of animal he is in Home on the Range). But wasn't that enough? Sure, he kinda looks rodent-like, but I'm sure he has the range when we're not looking at his mug. Anyway, according to The Hollywood Reporter, this time around it's a hamster named Bucky, who Buscemi will provide his voice for in the Disney movie G-Force. As we told you a few months back, G-Force is a Jerry Bruckheimer production that mixes live-action and computer animation and is about a group of genetically enhanced commando guinea pigs who have to stop an evil billionaire with world-domination dreams. Other voices will be provided by Nicolas Cage, as a mole named Speckles, and Tracy Morgan, as a guinea pig named Blaster.

As for the live-action roles, new to the cast are Bill Nighy, as an industrialist, and Will Arnett, as an FBI agent. And thank goodness for them, because the actors previously brought on to appear in the movie were too obscure for me to handle. They included Gabriel Casseus (Black Hawk Down) , Zach Galifianakis (Into the Wild), Kelli Garner (The Aviator) and Jack Conley (Fun With Dick and Jane). I know in a movie like this it's all about the talking animals, but with Nighy we've got ourselves a real movie. And with Arnett we have a funnier movie. Bruckheimer told THR that this will be another movie to be enjoyed by everyone "from the smallest kid to the oldest grandparent." He also pointed out that the movie's director, Oscar-winning visual effects master Hoyt Yeatman, came up with the idea with his son. From there it was apparently passed on to National Treasure screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley (aka The Wibberleys). G-Force is currently in production and expects a May 2009 release (Just a hint to Bruckheimer: it might make sense to add an extra dimension to this movie, since I think everything else animated coming out that month is going to be in 3D).

As much as I know you're hoping that First Sunday is some sort of extension of Ice Cube's Friday franchise, I'm sorry to say that it's not. Nope, this is an entirely different film -- although it appears as if Cube is finally putting aside those cheesy family-friendly comedies in order to take on a project that might actually be worth seeing. When we first brought you news on First Sunday, all we knew at the time was that Ice Cube was set to star as one half of a team of thieves who decide to rob a church. Playwright David E. Talbert, who's made a name for himself writing "gospel-tinged" plays for the past 15 years, boarded the pic as its writer-director.

Now, Variety reports that a host of other thesps have joined the party; they include Tracy Morgan (I imagine he'll be Cube's partner-in-crime), Katt Williams, Malinda Williams, Regina Hall, Chi McBride and Loretta Devine. Sony's fairly successful genre label Screen Gems will be shoveling out this masterpiece, and I have to give them credit for mixing it up as of late. They scored hits with Stomp the Yard and The Messengers, and although word on Vacancy wasn't all that bad, it didn't do as well at the box office as its siblings. Next on the agenda for Screen Gems will be Resident Evil: Extinction and This Christmas. As far as Ice Cube goes, there is a chance we'll see him team back up with Chris Tucker for another Friday flick (what would they call this one, The Friday After the Third Monday of the Month?), although I wouldn't count on that happening anytime soon. Well, not unless you have about $40 million to waste on a crappy Tucker performance.