Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Rachael Leigh Cook and Snoop Dogg. Yes, Cook and Dogg have joined the romantic comedy The Golden Door. Unfortunately they will not be playing love interests in the film. Door will also star Sarah Roemer (Shia LaBeouf's co-star in Disturbia, which I'm watching tonight) and Joseph Cross (who played Augusten Burroughs in the astonishingly terrible Running with Scissors). The film will be about "a blue-collar nursing student played by Cross who's forced to quit school after his father dies in a freak handball accident." Yeah, you read that right -- a freak handball accident. "His uncle finds him a job as a doorman in a swank Manhattan apartment building, leading to an unlikely romance with a young resident, played by Roemer."

Cook (star of She's All That and the criminally underrated pop culture satire Josie and the Pussycats) will play "the sister who encourages Cross' relationship, much to the dismay of the girl's mother." Snoop Dogg (director and co-star of the Adult Video News award-winner Snoop Dogg's Hustlaz: Diary of a Pimp) plays "the slick doorman who hazes his new co-worker and shows him the ropes." I can hear the dialogue now: "You've got to learn to drop it, son. Drop it...like it's hot!" The film was written and will be directed by David M. Rosenthal (See This Movie). Rosenthal apparently has pretty lofty ambitions for the movie, which he told The Hollywood Reporter is "about an Upstairs, Downstairs type of relationship. The film explores class distinctions and the American ideal."

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I don't know how this news slipped past us for so long, but there's a Rick James documentary in the works called, that's right, I'm Rick James. (Reading the article about it, I was stunned to see that James died in 2004. Where the hell have I been?) According to UrbanMecca.com, the movie is being made by HiddenDoor Documedia, and will feature tell-all interviews with celebs like Janice Dickinson, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg and Dave Chappelle, who was once planning to star in a James biopic. Based on the bits and pieces that HiddenDoor are leaking, there's a lot of dirt in some of those interviews, and "some celebrities may be warned to prepare their alibis now." ("Oh crap. Where was I during the entire 1980s? What did I tell my wife?") Included in the fairly hilarious list of those who allegedly partied with James -- at Studio 54 and elsewhere -- during his heyday are Tatum O'Neal, Linda Blair, Prince, Mick Jagger, Eddie Murphy and, of all people, Elisabeth Shue, who must have been about 17 at the time.

While producer Perry Santos claims that the movie will be a portrait of an era, the reality of the situation is that the studio is doing its damnedest to sell it as a good, old-fashion sex, drugs and "funk'n'roll" (as James himself once put it) story. Which, honestly, is probably the best way to put butts in the seats -- if the movie ever gets distribution, that is.

I don't know what's funnier: The cast list for Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror -- or the fact that the flick played as part of the "Guilty Pleasures" lineup at this year's L.A. Film Festival. The weirdness continues: Xenon Pictures (distributors of Blood Ranch!) has purchased Hood of Horror, and they plan on (maybe) giving it a theatrical release later this year -- and if the flick opens on more than 200 screens, I'll eat an entire birthday cake all by myself.

Or perhaps I'm being too hard on a low-budget horror comedy anthology piece that stars Danny Trejo, Ernie Hudson, Lin Shaye, Aires Spears, Diamond Dallas Page, Jason Alexander, Method Man, Billy Dee Williams, and the King Snizzle Snoop himself. As a matter of fact, the flick was directed by Stacy Title, who (once upon a time) directed a rather intriguing ensemble black comedy called The Last Supper.

Anyway, good, bad or outrageously moronic, I am now more than a little interested in seeing Hood of Horror. Bring it on, Xenon. It's been a few years since Tales from the Hood, so let's give it a second shot.

Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of this latest piece of low-budget horror news ... but here goes:

Snoop Dogg, Ernie Hudson, Danny Trejo, Method Man, Jason Alexander, Lin Shaye, Diamond Dallas Page and Billy Dee Williams will co-star in an inner-city horror anthology entitled Hood of Horror. Now that's a cast. (I can only assume Casper Van Dien was out of town.) But wait, there's more! Not content to simply rehash the same old construct used in the legendary horror classic Tales from the Hood, the producers hope to inject Hood with that one surefire-ingredient that always helps to make a great horror flick: humor.

Producer Christopher Tuffin says, "We are definitely looking at this film as a franchise property along the lines of 'Scary Movie' ... We want to push the envelope combining humor and gore."

I'll give the flick a fair shake, obviously (it's not too often you'll get to see Snoop Dogg, Winston Zeddemore, George Costanza and Lando Calrissian in the same room), but the last time someone used "Snoop" and "horror flick" in the same breath, Bones was born. And I still bear the emotionals scars. ...

According to first-time director Don Sikorski's documentary Rap Sheet: Hip-Hop and the Cops, "law enforcement has been compiling secret dossiers on hundreds of hip-hop artists and execs for years." In the movie, Sikorski details what is described as a "nationwide task force" - aka "the hip-hop cops" - involving local police forces, the DEA, and the FBI that, among other things, compiles surveillance videos (obtained by Sikorski from the NYPD) on its subjects. While Variety reports that some of Sikorski's film is built on information acquired through use of the Freedom of Information Act, it also makes it sound like the movie relies heavily on the words of artist such as Kanye West, Busta Rhymes, and Snoop Dogg, sources unlikely to be granted much credence by some audiences.

The movie doesn't yet have distribution, so all discussion of it at the moment is moot - hopefully a company with some balls will pick it up, put together a smart advertising campaign based on its controversial content, and get it into theaters, so we can decide for ourselves how plausible Sikorski's case is.

In addition to his directing career, Luc Besson has made a bit of a name for himself as a writer of children's books. His four-volume series about Arthur and the Minimoys has been a big hit in his native France, and Besson has been working for years on a movie about the characters. Though very few details had been available until recently, new information about the film has been showing up every 10 minutes over the past couple of days.

The film, which is a mix of animation and live-action, will feature the voices of Madonna, David Bowie, and Snoop Dogg (already, I'm hooked), as well as the real-life acting talents of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's Freddie Highmore as Arthur and Mia Farrow, who will play his grandmother. The fantasy plot is a little confusing in summary, but essentially, Arthur's grandparents' house is being threatened by developers, and he decides the only way to save it is to track down his grandfather's mysterious treasure, which he's been told is "hidden somewhere on the 'other side' in the land of the Minimoys" (who are a single centimeter tall, by the way). Arthur somehow reaches the other side, and madcap adventures no doubt ensue.

Besson hopes to have his film ready to premiere at Cannes in May; it has been acquired for American distribution by The Weinstein Company, and will open in here on Christmas.

[via JoBlo]