Guess Who's Making Us Dinner

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When Drew Barrymore says in Donnie Darko that there is no more beautiful phrase in the English language than "cellar door" she clearly had never clicked on an article in Variety to read the words, "Miguel Arteta is directing from a script by Mike White." Because hot damn that's some verbiage! (Thanks to Laurence for the heads-up.) The pair previously worked together on Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl and Enlightened; Arteta's been directing episodes of the brilliant series Getting On (and some American Horror Story) recently - this will be his first film since Cedar Rapids in 2011.

The new film is called Beatriz at Dinner and it will star Salma Hayek, Connie Britton, and Chloë Sevigny, and if imagining those underutilized actresses tearing into what these two filmmakers have to offer them doesn't make you're extremities tingle then your extremities are no good to you or anybody else, lop 'em off. It will also co-star the great Jon Lithgow.

Variety describes the film as, "The story follows a holistic medicine practitioner who joins a dinner party when her car breaks down at a wealthy client’s house." And again, tingles, tingles, tingles everywhere. It's a dash of Year of the Dog with some Enlightened ladled on top - aka this is right in their wheelhouse, satirizing upper-middle-class liberal bullshit with insidery affection. I have a new favorite movie to wait for.

But wait! That's not all! As if that wasn't enough I missed this story from July -- Mike White is making his own movie! Writing and directing, I mean. It is called Brad's Status and it will star Ben Stiller and say what you will about Ben Stiller (he can be somewhat unbearable sometimes) but he uses his power to help out less-than-mainstream voices more often than not. Brad's Status will shoot in September and here's how they describe it:

"The film centers around Brad who, despite a good career and happy family, is obsessed with the better fortunes of his old friends from school. While escorting his son on an East Coast tour of colleges, Brad is forced to confront his friends and his feelings of failure."