Poor New Orleans! As if the real-life horrors of Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees weren't bad enough, now the beautiful city must suffer from the devastation wrought by Danny Fisher, played by former * WWE wrestler / entertainer John Cena in 12 Rounds, the latest train wreck from director Renny Harlin. "Damn the property damage! I'm going to save my girlfriend, whatever the cost!" is a noble sentiment, especially when you don't have to pay the bills.

Danny isn't really responsible for the carnage he causes, of course, even though he politely apologizes whenever he crashes into other people's vehicles or accidentally kills people. (Cena furrows his brow and turns his smile upside down, just so you know he's not happy with himself.) The real blame lies with Miles Jackson, who is seeking revenge on Danny for the death of his girlfriend. Jackson is described as an international arms dealer, but he spends much more time blowing things up and changing SIM cards in cell phones than any actual dealing of arms.

Aidan Gillen, who was superb as a cagey, ambitious, well-intentioned politician in The Wire, has much less to play with here, but it's fun to watch him try to juice up the role of an exceptionally-nasty master criminal with absolutely no scruples or second thoughts. He provides one of the few true pleasures in 12 Rounds, which should be a lot more fun than it is. Instead of embracing its loonier plot elements -- a fire engine crashing across town, a ticking time bomb on a public bus, an out-of-control street car -- 12 Rounds insists on playing it straight as a sober drama, ending up as Speed without the flirtations or thrills.

Up until yesterday I was having trouble keeping track of all the movies that were contenders for the worst of 2009, and I couldn't decide which one topped the list. Now my head is clear of such decisions. I've seen Miss March. In the film, high school boy Eugene (Zach Cregger) practices abstinence but reluctantly agrees to sleep with his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) on prom night. Before he can seal the deal he falls down some stairs and goes into a coma. When he wakes up four years later, Cindi is the new Playboy Centerfold. So he and his idiot best friend Tucker (Trevor Moore) take a road trip to the Playboy Mansion to find her.

How they're friends is one of the movie's greatest mysteries, aside from, you know, the one about how it ever got made. These two morons react to everything with bug eyes and jaws agape, sometimes comically screaming and sometimes not. Cregger is a self-righteous, hypocrite prig, and Moore does a barrel-scraping Jim Carrey impersonation that comes much closer to Jim Varney; he even makes those old "Strip-O-Rama" comedians look elegant and refined. (These two cretins are the co-creators of a TV show called "The Whitest Kids U Know," which I am proud to say I have not seen.)

I can think of at least three movies in the coming two weeks that feature scenes that are strikingly out of tone with the film they're a respective part of and yet seemingly included as a means of getting people to tell their loved ones how ridiculous Bit X in Movie Y is. And so today's Cinematical Seven list will be an arbitrary, far from ultimate compilation of the most distractingly disgusting and supremely superfluous parts in recent movies. Sure, most of these are comedies, and yes, most of them seem to have been released from the year 2000 on, and as always, we welcome your comments below. Just make sure they're not too gross.

(Speaking of which, NSFW clips follow after the jump.)

In Utah -- the state so pure that some theaters owners refuse to show the relatively tame Zack and Miri Make a Porno but haven't given Saw V a second glance -- one theater moved their audience for the weekend's #1 movie, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, into a larger auditorium that had been showing the raunchy Sex Drive ... and promptly continued to do so once the lights went down.

This isn't a terribly uncommon mistake to be made. Just last year, a Long Island multiplex exposed children to the gruesome opening of The Hills Have Eyes 2 instead of The Last Mimzy, and back in 2005, I found myself attending a Saturday night sneak of Zathura in a theater where The Fog proceeded to begin instead. (Childless and intrepid as I was am, it took my fetching a manager to correct the situation, not any of the number of vocally concerned parents in the surprisingly full house.)

(No, please, it was nothing.)

I just hope that some giddy HSM3 fan let loose with "Go, Wildcats!" regardless. They wouldn't have been too far off...

It's a familiar tale: Hitch a falling star to a rising talent ... and see what happens. This week's iteration comes in the form of a Variety story that sees Juno director Jason Reitman teaming with Jim Carrey on a new comedy titled Pierre Pierre. The film -- budgeted at a fairly-modest $13 million -- is pitched as the tale of a "self-indulgent French nihilist who transports a stolen painting from Paris to London." In his heyday -- Ace Ventura, The Truman Show, Liar, Liar -- Carrey's salary alone would have exceeded the proposed budget of Pierre Pierre; however, as any viewer of The Majestic, The Number 23 or Fun with Dick and Jane can tell you, those bright days are far in the past.

Pierre, Pierre is going to be released under the Fox Atomic specialty banner, and also features a script from first-time writers Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Seton. I guess the question I'm pondering is which Jim Carrey will show up -- the tired, makeup-coated hack of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events or the more interested, more invested Carrey of The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? And does new talent Reitman have the skills, and vision, to coax the latter kind of performance out of an actor many consider a fading funnyman?

Well, Gilmore Girl and Traveling Pants star Alexis Bledel no longer has a Ticket to Ride. Instead, an early name change has her getting into The Post-Grad Survival Guide for Fox Atomic's upcoming comedy, and the supporting cast is falling into place. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Zach Gilford, one of the stars of the television series Friday Night Lights is in final negotiations to play Rory's love interest. Also joining the cast -- Michael Keaton, Carol Burnett, and Rodrigo Santoro (300). Man, I hope this is decent, just to get a chance to see Keaton and Burnett -- hopefully together.

Bledel stars as a girl named Ryden Malby, who has just graduated from college and has "to move back home with her eccentric family while trying to find a job, meet the right guy, and figure out where her life is headed." Santoro is going to play an infomercial director and neighbor who becomes Ryden's friend and confidant, but there is no word on who Keaton and Burnett will play. Considering the eccentric family angle, I'm hoping for some sort of dad and grandma deal -- Carol would be perfect as Alexis' grandmother. As for the neighbor, will Ryden find a lucrative future in the infomercial biz, peddling special fryers, rotisseries, and weight loss products? The possibilities!

Filming will begin on the project this Monday in Los Angeles, under the directorial eye of Vicky Jenson -- director of Shrek and Shark Tale. It'll be interesting to see what she makes of this live action comedy, but really, I'm just psyched for Carol.

For seven years, she was the smartie of Stars Hollow sharing rapid-fire words and pop culture references with her young mom. She dealt with the kooky denizens there, then with the fiery rage of fellow students at Chilton, and then she even lived with them at Yale. But those days are over and Alexis Bledel has to look beyond her Gilmore Girls years. She's already shot the next film in the series about those magic pants that can fit anyone, and has now signed on for her first starring role since the hit show wrapped. As Variety reports, Bledel's got a Ticket to Ride -- and it isn't some sort of feel-good family movie about a girl and her horse, or bike, or whatever she's riding. It's Fox Atomic's upcoming college comedy from Shark Tale helmer Vicky Jenson.

Written by Kelly Fremon, Ticket stars Bledel as Ryden Malby, in a film that will thrust her into fresh, new, and exciting territory. It's about "a college grad who is forced to move back into her childhood home with her eccentric family while she attempts to find a job, the right guy, and some direction in her life." Okay, so really it's nothing new at all. As Rory, she's had lots of experience with eccentric friends and family, and suffering the woes of job-finding, guy-finding, and picking a path. But at least we know she can handle the material. With a $15 million budget, the film will begin shooting next month.

When she is not off fighting injustice during the writer's strike, there is no doubt that Diablo Cody has plenty of work to do in the coming year. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Cody will re-team with Juno director Jason Reitman for the supernatural comedy, Jennifer's Body. Reitman will be producing the flick along with his partner Dan Dubiecki for Fox Atomic, who told THR that "We're here because Diablo's voice and our voice align."

Back in October, Erik had reported that Megan Fox (the dream girl of pubescent boys everywhere) had signed for the lead in the teen comedy – and just as a side note, am I only one who thinks Fox looks like a little old for high school? Fox will star as a small-town Minnesota cheerleader who starts killing local boys after she becomes possessed by a demon. So if that wasn't weird enough, then "Her 'plain Jane' best friend must kill her, and then escape from a correctional facility to go after the Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation." Cody herself describes the script as "Juno but with cannibalism and evisceration." I don't know about you, but that description alone has sold me on the film.

Reitman and Dubiecki seem eager to have Cody on board, telling THR, "We want to make unusual films, and anything that turns a genre on its ear interests Dan and I. And if you look at 'Bonzai,' 'Juno' and 'Jennifer's Body,' they bring a new voice to genres people are very aware of." Jennifer's Body is set to start shooting later this year and is aiming for a 2009 release.

First off, on behalf of all the teenage boys out there, I'd like to raise my glass and officially congratulate Megan Fox on finally landing another role. Mazel Tov! The Transformers hottie has signed on to star in Jennifer's Body, written by the extremely hot (and I'm talking hot like she's very busy lately) Diablo Cody (Juno). The Hollywood Reporter tells us Fox Atomic pre-emptively picked up Cody's spec script last week, Fox is in negotiations to star and Mason Novick is onboard to produce. While all you dudes out there might be itching to see Fox back up on the big screen, minds might change once I tell you what this sucker is about.

Apparently, they're describing this one as "similar in tone to Heathers and Beetlejuice," and it will revolve around a cheerleader (Fox) who, at some point during her perfect life, becomes possessed and begins killing boys. Ouch. At that point, her best friend must find a way to stop her. As of right now the best friend has not been cast, but Atomic really wants to get this one out before a possible strike takes place. Since Cody's scripts so far fall into a comedic category, it should be interesting to see what the gal does with a thriller. Funnily enough, as hot as Cody is (Juno has lots of buzz coming off the fest circuit, she adapted How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and set up the female-driven comedy Girly Style at Universal), none of her films have arrived in theaters yet. But trust me, once they do, we'll all know exactly who Diablo Cody is. And if you'd like to get to know her a little better now, check out Cinematical's recent interview with the scribe.

New screenwriter Justin Ware is just rolling in the successful pitches and writing gigs these days. He's the pen behind American Summer, the comedy I told you about in February. Remember the oh-so-charming premise? A pool cleaner (Matthew Lillard) slacks around cleaning the pools of the rich while his parents think he's going to school at Harvard. When his apartment is fumigated, he moves into an empty mansion and pimps out an escort he knows. That production just wrapped, and he already has three other projects in the works -- Adrenaline, Amazing Girls, and Handymen.

Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted the next project added to his ever-growing list -- an original comedy pitch called Wake Up Call, which will be produced by Smallville creators Al Gough and Miles Millar. Unfortunately, they say almost nothing about the plot, other than describing it as "a high-concept comedy along the lines of Wedding Crashers." Does that mean a similar wedding-crashing premise, or just the general idea? Perhaps the flick will focus on some guys who don't crash weddings, but instead randomly give wake-up calls to people in the neighborhood? Or people who make the wake up calls at a hotel. Or maybe some dudes who need a wake up call about their stagnant lives. Considering the writer and the title, what's your best guess?