Nick Cassavetes

In My Sister's Keeper, young Anna knows that she was genetically engineered and brought into this world in order to serve as a donor for her ailing sister, Kate. Well, My Sister's Keeper was engineered to make people cry — over and over and over again, for two hours. Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation, and by the end of this movie I wanted to file for emotional emancipation.

Anna (played sweetly by Abigail Breslin) was conceived after her parents, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learned that their young daughter Kate (the teenage version played by Sofia Vassilieva) had leukemia and their other child, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), was not a perfect match to be a donor for his sister. Throughout her life Anna has been required to give all sorts of things from her body to help keep Kate alive and now, at the age of 11, Anna finds a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for medical emancipation. The lawsuit comes at a critical time: Kate's kidneys are failing, and without one of Anna's kidneys, Kate will die — soon. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that fill in some blanks about the family's journey up until this point. The flashbacks are interspersed with scenes of the present-day situation as Kate's condition worsens and Sara, a former lawyer, prepares to fight her youngest daughter in court. For more on this terribly sad movie, read more

• Woody Allen has added Nicole Kidman into the cast of his as-yet-untitled next project which already included Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins. — Reuters
• Queen Latifah will star in the romantic comedy Just Wright, described as "a modern-day Cinderella tale." — Variety
• Summit Entertainment has picked up feature-film rights to the book The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, which insinuates that Harry Houdini acted as a spy for Britain. — ComingSoon
• Summit is also in the process of picking up Marc Haimes' original screenplay Elevator Men, a dark thriller which "takes a less romanticized look at the human-vampire interactions." — The Hollywood Reporter
• Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Bloom are in talks to star as a mysterious stranger and a policeman in the movie Main Street. — Zap2It
• NBC has pulled The Chopping Block and replaced it with repeats of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
• Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, Alpha Dog) has signed on to direct the conservation-themed drama Peaceable Kingdom. — ComingSoon
• Fox's Summer schedule includes a medical show called Mental and more Hell's Kitchen. — Zap2it
• Lionsgate has acquired the feature rights to the stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. — Variety

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Director Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, Alpha Dog) is hoping Keira Knightley will play Zelda Sayre in a "period love story" titled The Beautiful and the Damned. The Hollywood Reporter has more info:

Damned revolves around Zelda Sayre (Knightley) and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who became Jazz Age icons known for living large, soaring high, and crashing hard. Although toasts of town in the 1920s, their courtship and marriage was festooned with jealousy and acrimony. Fitzgerald used their relationship as material for his novels, and Sayre — who tried hard to find an artistic identity of her own and ended up being admitted to a sanitarium — did the same.

Now for the question: Who should play F. Scott Fitzgerald to Keira's Zelda?

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Well, for all of you who were none too pleased by the casting choice of Cameron Diaz in the film adaptation of My Sister's Keeper, this news may not help: Elle and Dakota Fanning have been cast to play the two sisters in the film.

Elle Fanning will play Anna, the girl who sues her parents for medical emancipation, while Dakota will take on the role of Anna's sick older sister Kate. Cameron Diaz is playing their mother. According to Variety, "The girls are younger than they were in [Jodi] Picoult's novel, but a decision was made to cast them younger because it was age-appropriate for Diaz."

Oh, Nick Cassavetes. What are you doing?!

Fans of the book, what do you think of this news?

Fanning photos source

The Facts:

• Jodi Picoult's novel My Sister's Keeper is being adapted for film.
• Cameron Diaz will star as "a former defense attorney who returns to the courtroom to defend herself and her husband when they are sued by their 13-year-old daughter for emancipation."
• Nick Cassavetes, who directed The Notebook, will direct the project.

Ms. Diaz is one busy lady.
What with the Ashton Kutcher comedy What Happens in Vegas... and then the suspense-thriller The Box, My Sister's Keeper won't go into production for a while. Cammie's rather in demand these days, no?

The Book:
I enjoyed Picoult's Vanishing Acts, so I should probably get to reading Keeper before it comes to the big screen. Anyone read the book already? Thoughts?

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