While you won't be able to touch her body, Mariah Carey is making a foray back into the world of cinema, with not one, but THREE films.
The Grammy winner put away her butterflies/honey/rainbows to play the battered wife of a state trooper in Tennessee, which won raves at the Tribeca Film Festival. Director Lee Daniels was so impressed with her grit that he's cast her in Push, in which she plays a Harlem social worker ministering to an obese, HIV-positive woman impregnated twice by her father.  Sounds like someone is trying to get all ugly to make a bid for a golden, bald man.

If THAT wasn't enough, Carey is also developing a movie musical based on her colossal-selling Christmas album. It's about a town outside a city, where a ruthless developer wants to turn it into one big mall.

"Mariah doesn't want to let that happen," says her producing partner Benny Medina. "Her character uses song and love to keep the Christmas spirit alive."

Mariah says the script, which High School Musical writer Peter Barsocchini is working on, is still in the early stages. But she says, "Since I recorded the Christmas album, I've always wanted to make a movie to go with it, something that people could watch and hear and enjoy every year. I'm into it. I'm all about the holiday season."

Want to know what I thought about the latest Chuck Palahniuk adaptation? Well, head on over to our Review Section, where we've put up my review from South by Southwest. Choke opens in just 400 theaters this weekend, if it's not near you yet...it should be soon.

Nic Cage has just been announced as the star in Season of the Witch for Dominic Sena (Gone in Sixty Seconds).

Cage plays a 14th century knight transporting a girl suspected of being the witch behind the Black Plague. His compatriots help him bring the girl to an abbey of monks trained in exorcising demons.

Production begins in November in both Austria and Hungary.

We're already anticipating a Lancelot mane of hair for Cage. As for the movie? Well, we anticipate next to nothing for this one. Cage needs to get back into The Weatherman and Adaptation territory, where he can prove what a good actor he is. Heck, we'd even settle for another Lord of War.

Did Samuel L. Jackson defeat the white threat? Did the Coens fall apart in their second weekend? Were people united on their front against Dane Cook? Has our Pick of the Week cries fallen on deaf ears? Find out that and more in our Box Office Results Section.

According to EW.com, DreamWorks is an independent company again. After two-and-a-half years and an unparalleled run of success (Tropic Thunder, Transformers, and Disturbia, among others) the company founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg will no longer be a part of the Paramount family. Spielberg, Geffen, and chief executive Stacey Snider are expected to take their production and marketing/publicity staffs with them, according to a source close to the deal. Thanks to a deal with India’s Mumbai-based Reliance ADA Group estimated to be worth $500 million and $1.2 billion, the newly independent DreamWorks will establish its own operations.

But rather than start up its own distribution arm, as DreamWorks did when it was first established in 1994, the company will look to another major to release its slate of six films a year. Paramount has taken itself out of the running and word around Hollywood is the likely winner will be Universal Studios. (DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind the Shrek franchise and this year's Madagascar, will continue to distribute its movies through Paramount.)

Insiders say that a lot of horse trading will now have to go on between DreamWorks and Paramount over what titles each studio will walk away with. While Paramount will surely release everything in production — including The Soloist, The Lovely Bones, and DreamWorks co-production Transformers 2 — the studio will not be able to develop every project that DreamWorks was trying to put into the pipeline. What titles go to which party should be hashed out in the next month.

Columbia Pictures has announced that actor/director Stephen Chow (of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle fame) will team with Seth Rogen on the upcoming Green Hornet silver screen adaptation, due to hit theaters on June 25, 2010.

Chow will not only co-star in the film opposite Rogen as the Green Hornet’s faithful sidekick, Kato, but will also direct the film.

In a statement released by the studio, Chow said, “I’m excited to be taking on The Green Hornet — obviously, I’ve been a huge fan of the show since I was a kid. The idea of stepping into Bruce Lee’s shoes as Kato is both humbling and thrilling, and to get the chance to direct the project as my American movie debut is simply a dream come true.”

Rogen, who will star as the titular hero and act as co-screenwriter, feels that the choice to bring Chow on as director and co-star is as close to a perfect fit as he could imagine.

“Stephen was always my and [co-screenwriter] Evan [Goldberg]’s first choice for director and to play Kato,” said Rogen. “We just hope that he never finds out we’re not the Wachowski Brothers.”

For those of you not familiar with the Green Hornet, here is some background info, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Green Hornet is Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher by day who by night goes out in his masked "Green Hornet" identity to fight crime as a vigilante, accompanied by his similarly masked Asian manservant Kato, wh driving a car, equipped with advanced technology, called "Black Beauty". The Green Hornet is often portrayed as a fair-to-above average hand-to-hand combatant and is often armed with a gun that sprays knock-out gas.

"Above average hand-to-hand combatant?" Will Rogen drop some weight for the role?! Regardless, Chow's presence on the film makes us doubly excited now.

The poster for Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, was released this week.

Is it just us, or does this poster say NOTHING about the film? Oh, well, it's still in our most-awaited fall films list. Thoughts?

Jude Law is currently in negotiations to secure a spot as Sherlock Holmes's sleuth sidekick Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie's upcoming Sherlock flick.  As we all know, casting is underway and rumors are everywhere.

Things we do know for certain are that Robert Downey Jr. will be taking the lead reigns as Sherlock, and Ritchie is bring his visual flair to the direction of the film based on both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books as well as the Sherlock comic books. Other principal roles are still yet to be cast, including the main villain, Blackwood.

Jon Favreau has written a script, hatched from the mind of Vince Vaughn, to co-star Jason Bateman and be directed by Peter Billingsley. And it's not called the Break Up Too! (That exclamation is part of the title to emphasize its cleverness)

Story follows four couples who go to a tropical island resort. While one couple is there to work on their marriage, the others are there to play but soon discover that participation in the resort’s couples therapy is not optional.

The cast is still being finalized and production looks to start by late October. We here at The Movie Press are always excited when any Arrested Development Alum gets any work, especially Bateman who is always worth watching...even if it is Teen Wolf Too. (You see what I did there?)

Giovanni Ribisi is one of Hollywood's secret gems. The man has range and skills that many actors dream of,  and Ribisi is now teaming up with Luke Wilson to star in the indie drama Middlemen. Shooting begins in Phoenix October 20th.

Script centers on a straight-and-narrow businessman who builds the first online billing company dealing exclusively with adult entertainment and finds himself in the middle of a whirlwind filled with starlets, con men, Russian mobsters, federal agents and international terrorists -- all while trying to hold on to his marriage and family.

It's almost like continuation of his character from Boiler Room, if that character continued to fuck up and deal with shady characters. Let's keep our fingers crossed for an Affleck cameo where he flexes his nuts Alec Baldwin-style in Glengarry.