Today's Film News: Momma, Can You Hear Me?

By Katey Rich

The Sundance deals keep trickling in. Momma's Man, described by The Hollywood Reporter as "one of the more offbeat films" of the festival, has been picked up for distribution by ThinkFilm. Writer-director Azazel Jacobs cast his own parents as the loving family of a middle-aged man who abandons his wife and child to move back home and re-adopt his childhood ways. Alex Orlovsky and Hunter Gray, producers of Man, also produced ThinkFilm's 2005 success Half-Nelson.

Richard Curtis, known for pretty much creating the face of modern romantic comedy with his scripts for Four Weddings and Funeral and Bridget Jones's Diary, is sailing away from romance toward straight-up comedy with The Boat That Rocked. Variety reports that the ensemble comedy started shooting on Monday, with a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh. The comedy, set in 1966, takes place on an offshore pirate radio ship trasmitting illegal broadcasts. [Yes, I assume we'll all have to see the movie to figure out just what that means.]

What's scarier than being haunted by a dead child? Being haunted by a dead child killed in the Holocaust. That's the idea behind Unborn, a supernatural thriller already starring Gary Oldman and Odette Yustman, and now filled out with five new cast members.The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Meagan Good, Carla Gugino, Jane Alexander, Idris Elba and Rhys Coiro have all joined the project, which starts filming today in Chicago.

And finally, Confessions of a Shopaholic has already started filming here in New York, but the cast keeps growing. Variety reports that Joan Cusack and John Goodman have now joined as the parents of the main character, a young woman, played by Isla Fisher, trying to make her way through New York's magazine world. The movie is based on the best-selling novel by Sophie Kinsella.