Cuba Gooding Jr. is about to leap into an original TNT film called Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, a story based on Carson's memoirs about his rise to director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

Brilliant. Okay to be fair the story does sound interesting, and more of that in the main post, but I just watched Gooding Jr. in Men of Honor, and I was wincing during some of the scenes, it's a poor, poor film that is filled with clichés and is Top Gun for divers. What's happened to his career?

Remember when he appeared in Jerry Maguire? I do, and he received huge praise for that film including winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I would also highlight A Few Good Men, Outbreak and As Good as it Gets, and I forget that he was in Judgement Night.

However these films are all from thirty to forty films ago, what's happened to him since?

Looking at his career it was that thirty to forty film mark that he really did well with roles, all around the time of his Oscar, but then it just seemed to slip and he hit a run of half hearted thrillers, poor comedies, and films with disadvantaged characters in them.

Now he's starring as a disadvantaged character come good, kind of like Will Smith in A Pursuit of Happiness, and Yahoo News tells us a little more about the true story.

He'll play Ben Carson, who began life in a rough neighbourhood of Detroit, abandoned by his father, but pushed by his mother to succeed. That he did as he fought through the downward pressure at school and onto his doctorate. He was even awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Without belittling Carson's life, this story sounds just like Pursuit of Happiness and something we've seen before. I do hope that there's a twist to the story and I do hope that the film is given a little more focus than Cuba Gooding Jr.'s films to date since that short run of films, after all he's a cracking actor.

Thomas Carter, who directed Coach Carter, will direct this film from a script by John Pielmeier who adapted Ben Carson's memoirs.