Zach Galifianakis and Amy Adams are in negotiations to star in the comedy Town House for Fox, a project originally conceived in 2007 that was interrupted by the writer’s strike at the end of the year with director John Carney (Once) attached.

From Variety, the story is loosely based on Tish Cohen’s novel of the same name about an agoraphobic (Galifianakis) and his son who live in an historic Boston townhouse inherited through his rock-star father. With monetary troubles, he’s forced to come to terms with life as he establishes a relationship with a call girl (Adams).

Doug Wright and Carney himself adapted the script, which will be produced by Ridley and Tony Scott through their production house Scott Free.

Amy Adams is one of my favorite actresses and almost criminally underutilized and under-appreciated. She gave the best performance in the otherwise stagey and overbearing Doubt, then was given the lesser of two roles in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia, which hit theaters late this summer. She does have performances in the upcoming romantic-comedy Leap Day and in David O. Russell’s The Fighter opposite Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg, a project which once had David Aronofsky tapped to direct.

Zach Galifianakis, a key cast-member in the smash-hit The Hangover, will be Seth Rogen-busy over the next few years, including another odyssey with Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and the “Hangover” boys.

Town House is set to start filming next summer.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a David O. Russell film. 2004, to be exact. That’s when I Heart Huckabees was released and became more well-known for the on-set tirades between the director and actress Lily Tomlin. He has lensed a film, titled Nailed, recently, which stars Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal, but it’s been struggling to find a release for some reason, so who knows when that film will grace us with its presence.

Until then, we turn our eyes toward Russell’s next effort, The Fighter. The cast already includes Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. Wahlberg is to play Irish boxer Mickey Ward, and Bale his trainer and half-brother. Today, it was announced that Amy Adams, star of and the forthcoming Sunshine Cleaning and Julie & Julia has been cast as a tough-girl bartender who winds up dating Wahlberg’s character.

The film is set to start shooting in the next month or two and at the moment is aiming for a 2011 release. The Fighter details the life of Ward and his Boston upbringing, through his rise to prominence on the boxing circuit.

I pray this film is completely unlike Fighting, with Channing Tatum, which was released just a bit ago. Adams is great and so is the rest of the cast. I think the film’s success lies in the hands of Russell, who’s always possessed a kind of quirky style, which I wonder how it will meld into this type of story.

What are your thoughts on Adams’ casting and the film’s chances as a whole?

Before Rachel Ray, Julia Child was the ultimate icon of cooking shows.  Many people knew her as an eccentric and animated TV show host that made great food, especially French cuisine.  Meryl Streep is another person who would be in Child’s popular arena, but for acting.  Since first making her film debut in Julia in 1977 (not about Child), she has racked up 15 Academy Award nominations and won two. (Supporting Actress, Kramer vs. Kramer; Actress, Sophie’s Choice)  Her last nomination was just last year for Doubt.  I’m going out on a limb here, but I think Streep will be nominated again. It won’t even matter if this movie sucks, Streep is shockingly amazing as Child and she should get her 16^th nomination overall.

"Can somebody top me off? I'm trying to get hammered here!"

Julie & Julia is not entirely a biopic about the cooking legend, but instead takes a different approach.  It focuses on Child, yes, but more specifically when she lived in Paris with her husband during the 1940s and 50s.  It also chronicles how she first got attached to cooking.  The other approach the movie takes is focusing on a character named Julie Powell during the present day.  Based on actual events, Powell decided to take a cookbook, written by Child, and baked all 524 recipes it featured in a year.  While cooking, she chronicled her experience on a blog called the “Julie/Julia Project.”  The blog became a hit and Powell landed a book deal to talk about her events.  She wrote “Julia and Julia:  365 Days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen” and it was published in 2005. This non-linear plot should be an interesting element, although a biopic about Child played by Streep does sound enticing.

Amy Adams (Junebug) co-stars, as Julie Powell, a cubicle employee who deals with insurance. She is envious of her friends because she can’t match the big-time success they are achieving in their careers.  Wanting to be their equal, she tells her husband Eric (Chris Messina, Ira and Abby) about writing a book.  Her idea is to bake every recipe from the Julia Child book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and write a blog about it. Julia Child is living Paris with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci, The Devil Wears Prada) while he’s working as a foreign diplomat and is later investigated for being a “so called” Communist during the McCarthy era. While bored in Paris, she decides to take cooking lessons at a French school.  She’s startlingly quick to learn and very skilled, often showing up the male cooks.  She later gets the inspiration to write a book, which is used by Julie. Julie and Julia’s lives are intertwined from different time eras and both hope to achieve goals to improve themselves.

"I hope none of you have seen 'Sweeney Todd.'"

Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Julie & Julia, has done such work as Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. She actually adapted two books for the movie, “My Life In France” by Alex Prud’homme and Julia Powell’s book, “Julie & Julia.”

This one looks to be quite enjoyable and seems to avoid the cliché of the romantic comedy.  It will probably appeal to more of the female audience, but it still looks good.  Plus, Streep’s performance will be worth it.

Julie & Julia opens August 7^th.

When I first went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City last fall, I was amazed by what was featured there. My favorite aspects were dinosaur fossils, the Egyptian collection, the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Cape York meteorite, the largest meteorite to be shown at a museum. It was the best museum I’ve ever attended.  You could stay there hours upon hours continuing to find something new, because the facility is so massive.  When I was told Night at the Museum was filmed there, I had some interest in seeing it. Of course, only the exterior shots were filmed at the actual museum, the interior scenes were done in Vancouver (sorry to spoil it for some people). I ended up straying away from seeing it because it didn’t look very good. Just a regular family comedy. I still haven’t seen it because it’s received more negative criticism than positive.  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian doesn’t look very good either. Just more of the same.

Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible do their best Spiderman pose. Not a very good one, of course.

Ben Stiller reprises his role as Larry Daley, a security guard who experienced strange things during his night details at the Natural History Museum.  During his shifts, he would see such things as mannequins of historic figures and fossils of dinosaurs coming to life.  These sorts of things happen again, but at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.  It will be the first major feature to film there, even though some shots will be filmed in Vancouver once again. With the Natural History Museum being closed for refitting, the displays are moved to the Smithsonian. When two of the mannequins, Octavius (first emperor of Rome, Steve Coogan) and Jedediah Smith (famous American explorer, Owen Wilson), are shipped there by mistake, Larry must sneak in as a security guard to rescue them.  This doesn’t prove easy when more of the historic pieces come to life.

"What in the world?" "Albert Einstein. Don't you stick your tongue at me."

This movie will feature a ton of guest stars and cameos that will play the historic figures. Some notable ones are Theodore Roosevelt (Robin Williams), Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), Kuh Mun Rah (Hank Azaria), Albert Einstein (Eugene Levy) and General Custer (Bill Hader).  Jonah Hill plays a security guard and Dick Van Dyke returns as Cecil Fredericks. Shawn Levy, who directed the first Night at the Museum, remains for this one.  Original writers Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (Reno 911! fame), who adapted the first film from the 1993 children’s book of the same name by Milan Trenc, supply the script here, as well. Lennon and Garant will also appear in the movie as the Wright Brothers.

This should be appealing to families, just as the first one did, despite the already dried formula.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian opens May 22^nd.

Some people are born into a natural cleanliness with their lives. It could be brought on by a family life that’s built to be clean and meant to stay that way. Some are born into a family life that needs constant care, because it just can’t keep itself from getting dirty. You have to work hard at achieving that goal. Chemicals and scrubbing tools are necessary. At the heart of Sunshine Cleaning is a family in the latter category. It finds itself in need of a deep cleaning. The question is who’s going to do it and how are they going to get it done.

Rose Lorkowski would find herself alone in the world if she didn’t have a child, a good work ethic and a bright personality. She was the head cheerleader in high school and dated the biggest hunk in school, Mac. She maintains an intimate affair with him long after senior year, sneaking off into hotels with him on a weekly basis, under the guise of classes designed to earn her real estate license. Aside from Rose’s grade school age son, Oscar, the reason for the secretive meetings is Mac, now a police officer, is married and has children. Not the most commendable of acts for a woman in need of cleaning up her life. Then again, it serves as her motivation to do so when she realized Mac’s wife is pregnant again.

Rose also has a dedicated-only-to-herself younger sister, Norah, who still lives at home with their retired father. Norah is a waitress for a small restaurant, who apparently has little interest in continuing, as she quits in an instant bit of embarrassment/frustration. Norah is left to babysit Oscar during Rose’s weekly escapades with Mac, and it’s the only time she appears to be an adult to anybody. Her bedtime stories prove to be a bit too influential for him and he reenacts a bit at school, which lands him in the principal’s office. As cliché goes, the school suggests medication for him and Rose is so embarrassed/offended by the suggestion, she decides to rip Oscar out and put him in a private school. How she affords it is another matter.

Her hourly wage at a maid service just won’t cut it, and Mac suggests a service he encountered at a crime scene. It combines Rose’s skills for cleaning up and his detective world, and will give her a large boost in pay: crime scene clean-up. He gives her the first bit of work and she recruits Norah, freshly unemployed and indirectly responsible for Oscar’s need for private school, to help her in the newfound endeavor. Newbie’s they are, they treat a crime scene like any dirty house and throw blood soaked mattresses in dumpsters and maggot infested material in garbage bags, undercutting competition with their unprofessionalism and lower asking price. Rose and Norah must band together and grow within themselves to create unity for their four-pointed nucleus.

"Did you just sneeze?" "It wasn't me!"

Amy Adams has made a living playing naïve, but bubbly characters. Rose isn’t much of a different take on her usual persona, but I’d argue that it’s her most grown-up role to date. I’ve always thought she was good at what she does. She’s earned two Oscar nominations for her previous supporting efforts in Junebug and Doubt. Here, she has a fatherless child, plays a part in an adulterous affair and drops f-bombs in frustration. This could be the role where she turns a corner into a new stage of her career. This isn’t her finest performance, nor is it her finest role, but she’s easily the best thing in an underwhelming film.

If you take a look at the cast list, you might get the impression of a well-acted film, and that could be the case if the players had any sort of material to work with. Alas, this was not the case. Emily Blunt continues to get closer and closer to starring roles since appearing in The Devil Wears Prada, but her Norah is left completely to fend for herself. There’s a slight subplot involving her quest to befriend a daughter of a clean-up self-victim which develops at a rapid pace to go absolutely nowhere. Alan Arkin plays the aimless father, looking to gain funds off of what can only be described as harebrained schemes. Kind of like a blue-haired Wile E. Coyote. Clifton Collins Jr. plays Winston, a superfluous one-armed character, whose importance didn’t even grant a mention in the plot analysis, but who made enough of irritating impression I felt the need to mention him here. Why does he only have one arm? Beats me. It’s mentioned on two different occasions, but never addressed. Remember Herman, the one-armed ex-vet from “The Simpsons?” The idea was that each time someone asked how he lost the arm, he’d give a different explanation. Just one explanation from Winston would’ve been warranted to enable him to rise above “completely worthless.”

The script was written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs. It seems to jet off into several directions, never really grounding itself to tell a fully realized story. There are elements to be admired, one in the concept of crime scene clean-up. It’s not a job I’ve ever seen put to screen before and seems destined to be captured in an episode of The Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs.” There’s a cute story of Rose and Norah always watching out for movies with diner scenes, as their now deceased mother once had a bit role in a movie they knew about, but never were able to glimpse. The difficult part is trying to ascertain what the film is trying to say. Most of the jobs they encounter come from the aftermaths of suicides, and there is an attempt at making a statement on that subject, but it never comes to fruition. I felt after 90 minutes with these characters, I was no closer to understanding who they were than when I first encountered them. They seemed like decent people, but never bothered to reveal themselves.

Amy Adams beginning to headline films is a good thing for all of us, and although this isn’t the calling card she may have wanted, it serves as a stepping stone into the next stage of a career. It’s the script that truly falters her and the rest of the cast. It almost felt to me like I was making up the metaphor of cleaning up one’s life just to serve the purpose of this review, because it’s not something the film willingly presented. Pieces of better material were present, but were gunked up. It’s the script that needed a good wiping down.

It was just a month ago we brought you word that Amy Adams was set to star in a romantic-comedy entitled Leap Year to be written by Slumdog Millionaire scribe, Simon Beaufoy. Well, according to “Variety” today, the film is supposed to start shooting in March. It appears Beafoy’s involvement was purely as a script doctor in this instance.

The original script was written by Harry Elfont & Deb Kaplan (Made of Honor), and will be directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl). Who knows how much Beaufoy will have re-written, or even if he’ll get screen credit.

Matthew Goode has signed on to play the love interest to Adams. With his inclusion, the plot summary now reads: “Adams plays a young woman who travels to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day. When weather forces her to veer off course, she enlists a cynical Irish innkeeper (Goode) to join her on a cross-country trip.”

Oops. Maybe Goode doesn’t play the love interest. At least not initially. I’m sure he’ll come around to it, though.

"I will not be ignored!"

Goode is no stranger to love triangles or a love four-sided figure as was the case with the excellent Match Point. He can next be seen as Ozymandias in Watchmen.

When writing the headline, I couldn’t help but think of “The Simpsons” episode called “Two Dozen & One Greyhounds,” where Santa’s Little Helper falls in love with a dog from the track and they have puppies. Their first meeting at the track goes a little something like this:

Lisa: What’s Santa’s Little Helper doing to that dog?
Marge: Uh oh…
Bart: It looks he’s trying to jump over her, but he can’t quite make it. Come on, boy, you can do it!
[Marge covers the children's eyes]

Sadly, no video clip, nor photo can commemorate this event, so a transcript is all I could give.

Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter comes news of a couple writers signing on for new movies.

The first bit of news comes in the form of a biopic about the life of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. John Orloff (A Mighty Heart) has been hired to write the film, Fleming. Why would this be remotely interesting? Fleming served as a British intelligence officer before inventing 007. i have a feeling the film will have to take a Confessions of a Dangerous Mind stance to distance itself from a blase biopic. Please no womanizing! I assume it’ll be mostly a spy film. Do you have any interest in this?

Orloff also wrote two episodes of “the greatest mini-series of all-time,” Band of Brothers. So, that’s something.

Anybody who wrote this deserves every job he gets

Also, the writer of Slumdog Millionaire, who I believe has a pretty good chance at winning the Adapated Screenplay Oscar next money, has been brought in to write Leap Year. Simon Beaufoy’s script will be a romantic-comedy vehicle for another Oscar nominee this year, Amy Adams.

“Adams is playing an uptight woman who travels to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on leap day, Feb. 29, following an Irish tradition in which women propose to men on that day and the man must say yes. When weather derails her trip, she enlists the help of a surly Irish innkeeper to make an unexpected cross-country trek to pull off the perfect proposal in time.”

Aren’t romantic-comedies cute? My brother had a friend born on leap day. He’s 40,  but has only had 10 birthdays. And you thought being born near Christmas was bad.

Let's hope she doesn't get bogged down in rom-coms

In this week’s edition of Movie Poster Round-Up, we bring you 7 new posters from 4 different movies.

First up is a new Mickey Rourke film (dominating the headlines as of late) based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Killshot. We mentioned it briefly as something we’d be interested in seeing in our “Top 20 Most Anticipated Films of 2009.” As you can see from the poster, it has a pretty sweet cast. It’s slated for release January 23rd.

We also unearthed the trailer for the film. See what you think.

Next up is a film that debuted at Sundance last year and will be in limited release March 13th. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt (I originally typed Amy Smart for some reason) star as sisters who create a crime-scene clean-up service. I had a similar idea for a movie after watching an episode of “Mythbusters” about trying to remove extreme smells. I guess that’s over with. Word has been decent around Sunshine Cleaning and it’s from the producers of Little Miss Sunshine, so one assumes the two films will do battle until the death, vying to be the movie you can reference with just the one word of “Sunshine.” Except one assumes, Sunshine would have something to say about that.

And here’s the trailer for that:

The Jonas Brothers have already taken over the TV (Damn you, Target commercial!), and now they’re ready to take over your local cineplex. Disney learned a lot about the money that can be made from a 3D concert film with last year’s Hanna Montana/Miley Cryus: The Best of Both Worlds. They’re poised to do it again, come February 27th.

There’s actually a trailer for this thing, too, for those that care about such things.

Last, and very much least, we have four new posters for the latest Tyler Perry sacrificial lamb, Madea Goes to Jail. Not once have I seen a moment of anything bearing Tyler Perry’s name, and I vow to keep it that way. In addition to the fact that there are four posters, I figured I needed to shrink them so that one didn’t react by punching their computer monitor when his big, womanly mug popped up on screen. I’ve been spared from posting the trailer, since we’ve already brought it to you in this post. February 20th for this one. I’d ask for a boycott just for society’s sake, but it’d still manage to rake in first or second place at the box office.