Cinematical

I already like the sound of this one: After taking a puff alongside the school stoner, a high school valedictorian decides to get the whole student body stoned, enough so for them to collectively fail the same drug test he finds himself up against.

That's the thrust behind the new comedy High School, which looks to begin production in early November, and according to this Variety notice, Adrien Brody (The Brothers Bloom) has signed on to play a drug dealer, while Michael Chiklis (Eagle Eye) will take up the role of principal, a move that'll likely play to his stoic strengths. (Bruce Willis worked wonders with a similar part in the still unreleased Assassination of a High School President; a greater pity because it's a fairly fun little flick overall.)

There is only so much else left to say about the project. It'll be directed by John Stalberg Jr., who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Susco (of the Grudge films) and... that's really about it for now, though -- dare I suggest -- Stalberg and Susco still have time to throw the word 'Musical' into that title somewhere and simply wait for the money to roll in. Either way, it sounds like a shortage of green will be the least of their worries.

Opening nights at film festivals are usually black-tie, red carpet, invitation-only affairs, but let me extend an invite for you to crash the Hamptons International Film Festival, which opens tonight in New York, for free. You don't have to wear a tuxedo or, hey, even get dressed if that's your thing; all you have to do is point your browser to our friends at SnagFilms. Two docs are enjoying their world online premiere starting today, available for free streaming through Sunday, October 19.

My suggestion is to watch Great Speeches From a Dying World immediately before or after the Presidential debate tonight. Sure, the title sounds dire, but Linas Phillips' documentary promises to uncover "the stories and struggles of 10 Seattle homeless people, each of whom recite famous speeches from history that relate to their lives: from Shakespeare to JFK to Chief Sealth." What a country! We can listen to the next President of the United States debate his opponent on the issues of the day, and then watch homeless folk recreating great historical speeches.

For a lighter alternative, consider Between the Folds (pictured), a doc by Vanessa Gould that follows artists and scientists who have forsaken their careeers to "forge lives as modern-day paperfolders." (?!) Now, the last time I was heavy into paperfolding was when I played paper football at school, but I'm always down to hear about well-educated people who have developed "passion and determination to reinterpret the world in paper."

What are you doing for tonight's debate? Will you be watching? And did you know the very super awesome Hofstra University was hosting it (and I'm not just saying that because I went there or anything). Over on Fark, they're hosting a pretty hilarious photoshop contest in which folks are taking existing movie posters and re-tooling them to include John McCain and Barack Obama. One of my favorites has to go to the above poster for Dude, Where's My Car -- and if you look closely at those girls in the background, you'll notice a familiar face (and so what if I've been crushin' on the gal -- she's purty and stuff). Very funny nonpartisan humor.

Check out a group of these posters in the gallery below (the first one is nutty and freaky), then tell us your favorites. Additionally, feel free to send us your own creations and we'll post them at a later date. Get creative people! This is why we have imaginations!

Gallery: Obama/McCain Movie Posters

Muppet fever is in the air these days. Jason Segel got The Jim Henson Co. to help him whip up those awesome puppets for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That led to the funny man getting the honor of making a new Muppet movie. And now we're getting more Hensonesque film awesomeness. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company is going to the adult world of film noir.

Oh yes -- they've whipped up a murder mystery called The Happytime Murders (written by Todd Berger from a story created with Dee Austin Robertson), and Brian Henson will direct it. In this tale of adult puppet goodness, there's an alternate world where puppets and humans co-exist -- but not exactly peacefully -- the puppets are considered second-class citizens. The murder comes in when "the puppet cast of an '80s children's TV show called 'The Happytime Gang' begins to get murdered one by one, [and] a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye -- with a drinking problem, no less -- takes on the case."

Awesome. I can only hope there some Nick and Nora noir swank to this whole deal, but I do wonder: HOW adult will they get? The piece references Avenue Q, which is a big ol' raunch fest, but that might be too racy? However adult it gets, this sounds good. Do you agree?

If you don't know the name Billy Ray, you should, and I'm not talking about Billy Ray Cyrus. (There's no reason to know him.) The filmmaker Billy Ray, despite having a name like a Dukes of Hazzard character, has written and directed two excellent fact-based movies about powerful figures who were brought down by their own hubris. Shattered Glass told of a promising young journalist who was ultimately disgraced for making up news stories, while Breach chronicled the fall of a morally upright FBI agent who sold secrets to the Russians.

For his next act, Ray will tell another true story about an ethically compromised man: Allen Raymond, a Republican political consultant who went to prison for some shady maneuvers he pulled in trying to swing a tight Senate race in New Hampshire in 2002. Raymond's memoir, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, was published earlier this year, and Ray will write and direct the movie version for Fox Searchlight sometime in 2009, according to Variety.

What did Raymond do? It's actually kind of brilliant, in an evil way. With funding from New Hampshire's Republican State Committee, Raymond hired a telemarketing firm to constantly jam the state's Democratic headquarters' phones with hangup calls, preventing the Democrats from making any outbound calls on Election Day. Meanwhile, the Republicans were making the customary get-out-the-vote phone calls all day long, and their candidate won the election by a very narrow margin.

Dirty tricks surely happen on both sides of the political fence, and if How to Rig an Election turns out to be nothing more than an anti-GOP diatribe, at least it will have been based on Raymond's own account rather than someone else's. But I suspect Ray will do a better job than that. Breach and Shattered Glass both did a classy job of presenting their moral dilemmas, and How to Rig an Election has the potential to be another thought-provoking case study.

Our friends over at Moviefone got the always-fun idea of doing a piece on "pre-fame stars who appeared in horror flicks." But when I checked the feature out, I was happily surprised to note that their piece was a QUIZ and not a full article. Which means they just gave me a great idea to steal! (Thanks guys!) But definitely go enjoy the quiz first, because the following list might spoil some of the answers for you. Actually, it definitely will.

Of course there are the biggies: Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th, Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night, Road Games, Terror Train, and Halloween 2. And who can forget Jennifer Aniston battling the loopy Leprechaun? And of course Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger in a Chainsaw sequel so bad they tried to get it impounded. But let's start out with the big horror franchises and see who else we can dig up.

"Honestly, if you had to have an orgasm in front of a room full of random strangers you've never met and screamed really really loud at the top of your lungs, you'd probably cry. " -- Elizabeth Banks

I'm not entirely sure what is going on in this video, but I'm oddly attracted to it. Apparently, the controversial (and hard-to-handle) Tony Kaye (American History X) directed this short experimental film for Mean Magazine starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks called This Is Not Sex. And what we're looking at is an assortment of scenes connected through famous quotes about sex in which both Banks and Rogen do some pretty strange things -- like, say, have an orgasm while working a hula hoop ... or, um, wear a noose and hang themselves. Yeah. Exactly.

Here's the description from the site: "Sex sells. Sex kills. Sex thrills. This Is Not Sex pays homage to the subject of the upcoming Kevin Smith flick, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, whilst taking you through a ride of sexual misperception through the lens of director Tony Kaye." So there ya go. Zack and Miri Make a Porno hits theaters October 31.

I've included the video after the jump since I feel like it might be somewhat not safe for work. Enjoy?

I mentioned in a post back on Feb. 29 that movies released on Leap Day are exceedingly rare. Surely you remember that post, and the glaring error I made in it, as though it were yesterday. But even rarer than movies released on Leap Day are movies about Leap Day. Why have the cinematic properties of Feb. 29, an extra day that occurs just once every four years, so far mostly eluded the magic-makers in Hollywood?

That oversight is about to be remedied with Leap Year, a romantic comedy that The Hollywood Reporter says is probably going to star Amy Adams (Enchanted). She would play an uptight woman who goes to Dublin on Feb. 29 to take advantage of an Irish custom dictating that if a woman proposes marriage to her boyfriend on that day, he is obligated to say yes. (What the hell kind of operation are they running over there? I don't think that would hold up in a court of law.) But -- get this! -- shenanigans and tomfoolery delay her, and a surly innkeeper has to help her get across the country in time to make her proposal! One suspects that hijinks and merriment are also involved, though The Hollywood Reporter is unclear on that aspect.

I don't like to judge a movie before I've seen it, or before it's finished, or before they've even started filming it, but I'll go on the record now: Wow, this sounds awful. Casting the exuberant, lighthearted Adams as an uptight woman in a generic-sounding rom-com is wrong to begin with, and the screenplay is by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont -- the duo behind the paralyzingly bad Made of Honor.

As of this writing, it's just under a month until Quantum of Solace's November 14th release date. The buzz on it has been oddly neutral; no one's seen it, people still mock the title from time to time, but everyone seems to be calmly assuming that the acknowledged awesomeness of Casino Royale will just sort of carry over. It's been nice to have a build-up to a blockbuster without too much undue hysteria.

Apropos of the calm seas, MSN offers the fairly placid first clip from Quantum of Solace. In it, Craig's Bond has a heart-to-heart with Mathis (the great Giancarlo Giannini), whom he pegged as a double agent at the end of Casino Royale. ("Oddly, right now you're the only one I can trust," he says.) They mourn the death of Vesper Lynd, with Bond understandably conflicted seeing as she betrayed him before she died. Bond drops some pictures on the table and asks for information.

It's not much, but at least it's apparent that Quantum of Solace will embrace Casino Royale's earnestness rather than the Pierce Brosnan films' often annoying snark. And it's good to see that, while I'm sure Quantum will stand alone in most respects, plot threads from Casino Royale haven't just been forgotten, as has been the franchise's unfortunate practice.

UPDATE: Moviefone has just launched a clip from Quantum of Solace as well, and this time Bond and M chat about revenge and Vesper and all sorts of groovy things. Check it out.