One of the many comedies debuting at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Assassination of a High School President is a school-set spoof of film noir, with school paper journalist Bobby Funke (Reece Thompson) going from outcast to in-crowd when he dopes out who's been lifting SAT papers from the administration's office. Funke hits the means, motive and opportunity triple play and pins the thefts on student council president and basketball star Paul Moore (Patrick Taylor); his article earns him a coveted internship with Northwestern's journalism program and the affections of Moore's ex, Francesca (Mischa Barton). It's all looking good. Until it isn't. Funke learns new facts that make his sure-thing story look shaky; Northwestern is calling to fact-check the story, and if they find holes, his internship's over before its begun. But Funke's ready to walk the mean halls of St. Donovan's and scour the Jersey suburbs to get the story right. ...

Many critics and observers have already pigeonholed Assassination of a High School President as"Brick played for laughs." And yeah, that's a fairly simplistic assessment; then again, Assassination of a High School President's a fairly simplistic film. Written by ex-South Park production assistants Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski (and between this film and Hamlet 2, it's interesting how the road to Park City, Utah seems to have had an on-ramp in South Park, Colorado this year), Assassination never quite clicks as a total experience. Yes, it's amusing when Thompson, in his self-celebrating inner monologue, says he'll be on the case " ... like pink rubber bands on your sister's braces." And director Brett Simon finds lively, well-shot moments of visual excitement in the clichés of high school life: detention is shot like the big house, a party sequence moves and grooves with giddy chaos. But Assassination has a meandering plot line that dithers when it should drive forward, and lingers at times it should leap ahead. As Funke works leads, we get scenes that expand the running time instead of advance the plot. And yes, holding this film's central pitch up to the life-and-death stakes of Brick -- one of the best films I've ever seen in seven years of attending Sundance -- is going to make the funny-and-goofy stakes of Assassination seem slighter in comparison.

When Mischa Barton was unceremoniously killed off the teen soap, The OC; I think most of us thought this was her chance to transform her teen stardom into a successful movie career. So far that hasn't happened, and I personally doubt her latest role is going to do anything to change that. Variety reports Barton has signed to star in the psychological thriller Walled In. The story centers on "a demolition company rep who supervises the razing of a mysterious building and discovers horrifying secrets and past inhabitants entombed within its walls by a vicious murderer". Based on the French novel Les Emmeures by Serge Broselot, Barton will play the demolition company rep -- and is it just me, but when you think commercial demolition and construction, someone who looks like Barton doesn't exactly come to mind?

Joining Barton are Deborah Kara Unger (Silent Hill) and Cameron Bright (Juno -- you can catch Scott's TIFF review of that film here) and set to direct is French helmer Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Gomez and Tavare). This will be the first English-language feature for Brenner, who also helped adapt the novel for the screen. Barton has been piling on the projects lately, having signed for the caper film St. Trinian's back in May and she also just finished the drama Finding t.A.T.u. Barton is still hard at work on the high school comedy Assassination of a High School President with Bruce Willis. Walled In is a French-Canadian co-production and is scheduled to start shooting on October 22nd, in the most glamorous of all Canadian locations: Saskatchewan (believe me, it's funnier if you are a Canadian).

Once he's finished playing John McClane for a fourth time, Bruce Willis will be going back to school ... as a high school principal, that is. The Los Angeles Times tells us that Willis has signed on to play a supporting role in Assassination of a High School President, based off a script from newbie scribes (and former South Park assistants) Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski. Pic, which the Times describes as "a riff on JFK, All the President's Men and Robert Towne's neo-noir classic [Chinatown]," apparently revolves around a bullied high school journalist who's investigating the theft of the school's SAT exams.

Of course, this SAT controversy will most certainly lead to conspiracy theories and, I imagine, the assassination of the school's class President. Says Jakubowski, "Everything mattered so much when you were in high school - that's your world. And something that would happen to a student council president is as big as if the actual president was assassinated." Willis will play a Desert Storm veteran-turned-Catholic school principal -- the kind of guy who refers to his students as "filth." Picture the first half of Full Metal Jacket set in a high school, and you get the idea. Though it was one of the "most-liked screenplays late last year," the plot obviously delves into some sensitive territory, what with the recent Virginia Tech tragedy.

Right now, there's no word on whether the two writers will have to alter their script because of the shooting that took place on that campus (God knows rushing to greenlight a school shooting-type flick wouldn't exactly be the PC thing to do), but here's hoping they weather the storm and stay the course. Apart from Willis, ladies like Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan are showing interest in the film's "femme fatale," Francesca. Music video helmer Brett Simon will make his directorial debut, and the Yari Film Group (who optioned the script last fall) plan to begin production this July.