News: Michel Gondry

The oddball French director behind the tip-top Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and this week’s quirky The Science of Sleep has a fair few more, equally bizarre, projects in the pipeline.

Next up is the movie reference-laden Jack Black-starring comedy Be Kind Rewind, set in a video store run by one of Black’s friends where all the tapes get wiped by Black’s magnetised brain, forcing the pair to recreate such Hollywood classics as The Lion King, Robocop and Back to the Future for the shop’s clientelle. With co-stars including Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow, it should prove at the very least interesting, much like Gondry’s other work, and with Black in the lead should prove another Eternal Sunshine-style hit.

After that it looks like a leap back into Gondry’s personal obsession of space, time and human perception for Master of Space and Time. Based on the novel of the same name by Rudy Rucker, it revolves around a couple of (as yet uncast) mad scientists who find a way to control – as if the title isn’t clue enough – space and time. rumours are circulating that Jack Black could again be set to star, but it’s still early days, and isn’t due until next year anyway. Could be fun, though…

New: Anika Noni Rose

The third member of the Dreamgirls trio may have the lowest profile, alongside award-nominated co-stars Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Hudson, but she’s the one with more films on the way. First she’ll be cropping up in the Danny De Vito comedy One Part Sugar before heading to the small screen for Hollywood-set mini-series Starter Wife, alongside Will & Grace‘s Debra Messing and The Lord of the Rings‘ Miranda Otto. Then she’ll be teaming up with her Dreamgirls co-star Danny Glover for Razor, where he’ll play an aging, Alzheimer-suffering ex-con who returns to his former home of the Bronx after 50 years in jail.

News: Danny Glover

Still much-loved for his turns in the Lethal Weapons films, playing Barnyard’s Miles the Mule must have been a nice break for Danny glover, who’srarely away from the front of the camera these days. He’s already completed one other movie, while two others are in post-production, three more are currently filming, and yet another two are in pre-production. Quite how many see the light of day, however, we can but wait and see…

Most promising, from advance buzz at least, is likely Dream Girls, due out in the UK at the start of February 2007, where Glover will appear alongside Afro-American Hollywood bigwigs Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy and pop princess Beyonce Knowles, set around a ficitional 1960s black female three-piece singing group based heavily on Diana Ross and the Supremes. The stage version has been running since 1981 – and it’s just possible that Dream Girls could immitate Chicago‘s successful transition to the big screen.

Glover has also got a role in the next film from Michel “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” Gondry, the Jack Black-starring Be Kind Rewind, following the travails of two movie store clerks who accidentally wipe their entire stock, and so have to recreate famous flicks for their most loyal customer. It could be genius, it could be nonsense. hard to say this early.

He will also crop up in the Marky Mark Wahlberg-starring actioner Shooter for King Arthur director Antoine Fuqua (due May 2007 in the UK), with Glover playing the lengthily-named Colonel Isaac Fitzsimmons Johnson. That is almost certain to be mindless nonsense, but could nonetheless make a packet from those of us who like our action flicks big and mindless…