Today's Film News: A Big Happy Family Again

By Katey Rich

Diane Keaton has hit a rough patch with comedies lately (Because I Said So, Mad Money), and Steve Martin hasn't done too well for himself either (the Cheaper by the Dozen movies). Now maybe they'll both have a chance to redeem themselves, since they're teaming up for the comedy One Big Happy, from the creators of the TV series "Party of Five." Lorne Michaels is attached to produce, which hasn't always meant instant success (The Ladies Man, anyone?), but it indicates the movie will be more than a cheap throwaway. Variety reports that Keaton and Martin will play a couple, as they did in the early-90s Father of the Bride movies.

For perhaps the first time in history, the soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" is at the center of a labor dispute. Over the weekend, as the two actors' unions SAG and AFTRA tried to hammer out a deal that would find them renegotiating their contracts with the AMPTP as a united front, the two groups decided to split off instead. The tipping point, Variety reports, was when SAG reportedly tried to take control of the cast of the soap opera, which had been previously under AFTRA's jurisdiction. Now the two unions are going it alone in renegotiations, which makes it all the more likely that we'll be seeing-- sigh-- yet another strike.

Mos Def dazzled me in Be Kind Rewind, and now he'll have his chance to show his stuff in a very different role in Cadillac Records. The Brooklyn-based rapper and actor will play Chuck Berry in the drama, a fictional take on the 1950s music label Chess Records. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Gabrielle Union has also joined the cast as Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters.

And finally, this photograph has nothing to do with anything except that the Kids Choice Awards were held yesterday, and it's a slow news day, and there's not much better than seeing a sexagenarian Indiana Jones smiling through the slime. Happy Monday!