Last year I saw Gracie, a movie about a teenage girl who wants to play high-school soccer in the late 1970s, when the game was considered a males-only sport in America, and faces a lot of opposition from her school. I finished my review with the line, "If it were football, would we be agreeing more with Gracie's opponents?" The Longshots gives us the opportunity to consider that question. Can we sympathize with, and cheer on, a girl who wants to succeed as a quarterback in an all-boys' football league? The answer is yes, because The Longshots focuses on characters and personal relationships and as a result, feels richer and more satisfying than the standard sports-genre film.

The story is simple and except for the girl-quarterback angle, old-fashioned in a Capra-esque way. Jasmine (Keke Palmer) is a middle-school loner and misfit in a small town hit by economic troubles. Her mom Claire (Tasha Smith) has to work longer hours at the diner -- dad ditched town and family several years ago -- and Jasmine is still too young to be left alone after school. So Claire pleads, nags and finally bribes her husband's brother Curtis (Ice Cube), an unemployed ex-football player, to keep an eye on his niece Jasmine. Of course they can't stand each other at first, but eventually Curtis discovers that Jasmine has an excellent throwing arm and teaches her how to be a quarterback. Meanwhile, the town's playground football team is languishing, and one thing they're missing is a decent quarterback, sooo ...

What fresh hell is this? Rapper and rabblerouser Fred Durst gets a chance to make a movie, and he comes up with... a heartwarming tale of a girl who wants to play football, and the underdog team that she joins? Starring Ice Cube? There's a trailer for The Longshots here, but it's... how do you say... uninspiring. Part of it could be the insufferable voiceover ("he was a hero who lost his way; she was a loner who didn't belong" -- you don't say), but really the entire thing looks like, oh, every movie ever made. Every underdog sports movie ever made, anyway, and God knows there are plenty of them.

A bit disappointing from the man who once called Creed's Scott Stapp a "f****ing punk" on stage. This isn't Durst's directorial debut -- that would be The Education of Charlie Banks, which played last year's Tribeca and won the award for Best Movie Made in New York. It was about a cat-and-mouse game between a bully and the kid who put him in jail years earlier. I didn't see it, but it sounds like a much grittier film. The Longshots is just weird -- there's no particular reason for Durst to have become a Hollywood hack-for-hire, so one would think he has some emotional connection to this project. I wonder what it could be.

So today is the day I officially feel old. Variety reports that Ice Cube has made a deal with Dimension Films for his comedy script Janky Promoters; a title that had me running to Urban Dictionary to figure out what the heck 'Janky' meant. But mid-life crisis aside, back to the real news: Cube will be producing the film along with Dimension and his partner Matt Alvarez, and will also star.

The story centers on two hip-hop promoters who are given the chance to put together an all-star show in California. When the two discover that they are in way over their heads, wackiness ensues. Bob Weinstein tells Variety, "This feels a lot like Uptown Saturday Night to me, a caper film where you have these music promoters who are slightly shady but are good enough guys that you root for them, this is going to be R-rated, and it appeals right to the core of Cube's audience." Thankfully, Cube is getting out of the kiddie flick business (at least for now) and Promoters is his first script since the Friday series finished back in 2002.

Do you remember the news that Fred Durst was working on his second directorial gig, a sports drama called Comeback? Well, for some reason, the film is now untitled (why change it to untitled when you at least have a working title!?), and it's got a cast to boot. But first, to refresh your memory: Ice Cube signed on to star in and produce the film, which is about a young, female quarterback named Jasmine Plummer who became the first girl to play in the Pop Warner football tournament. Cube had picked the role of Plummer's uncle and mentor.

Now Reuters reports that Keke Palmer has signed on to star as Jasmine. You might remember her from Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion, or more likely, as the spelling fiend in Akeelah and the Bee. She's going to be joined by Tasha Smith (Why Did I Get Married?), Jill Marie Jones (Girlfriends), Matt Craven (Disturbia), and Garret Morris (The Jamie Foxx Show). Oh yeah, and Dash Mihok, who I left separate because, well, I have a soft spot for Benvolio, and I wanted to give him his own sentence.

Anyhow... There you have it. Comeback is still on its way, just as a different yet-to-be-released/decided name. In the meantime, I'm still waiting to see Durst's first -- The Education of Charlie Banks.

While Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is already moving onto his second cinematic feature, a sports drama starring Ice Cube, many of us are still anxious to see what he made of his first, The Education of Charlie Banks. A few years ago, he was telling people he was a "real director" before he had even made the feature. Then, it sounded like the statement might have been more than pompous boasting -- beyond a cast headlined by the wonderful Jesse Eisenberg (Roger Dodger) and Eva Amurri (Saved!), Variety gave the film a solid review from Tribeca earlier this year. Now, finally, the film has been picked up for distribution.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Anchor Bay has picked up the North American theatrical and DVD rights to the debut, for release this spring. It's a coming-of-age drama starring Eisenberg as a high school student who sees a bully (Jason Ritter) severely beat two kids at a party. Years after telling the police and reneging his testimony, he enters college and the bully shows up at his school, becoming part of his circle. Of course, the kid wonders what the bully's motives are, and whether Ritter's character is there for revenge. Between curiosity over Durst's directorial chops, and this cast, I'll be there to check it out, but what about you? Will Durst's name make you run to the theater? Keep you from it? Or is his involvement irrelevant?

This year we'll get to see Fred Durst's The Education of Charlie Banks, and now we've got word on his next picture, as he aims to become the next in the line of "real directors" like Scorsese and Coppola. I've been dying to see Banks since I learned that two of its stars were Eva Amurri, who was absolutely excellent in Saved!, and Jesse Eisenberg, who was great in my beloved indie flick Roger Dodger. Variety gave the first flick a pretty solid review, so Durst might be onto something, even though it's hard to think of the Limp Bizkit front-man as a snappy new director. Now Variety is reporting that his second film will be a true-story sports drama called Comeback.

Ice Cube is going to star in and produce Comeback, which is based on the achievements of Jasmine Plummer -- an 11-year-old quarterback who brought her team to the Pop Warner tournament and became the first female to play in it. Cube will play the girl's uncle, who mentors her as she becomes the first gal quarterback. Prison Break writer Nick Santora adapted the story, and Akeelah and the Bee scribe Doug Atchison is currently whipping up a rewrite. I have to say that I'm impressed to see Durst picking some solid and serious fare to prove himself as a director. His first directorial effort has a great cast, and neither story is closely linked to his music roots, which helps to separate him from his past work.

Hey, remember when Fred Durst was frontman for Limp Bizkit and, like, really popular? Don't you remember? No, before the porn, er, failed comeback attempts. No, that's Kirsten Dunst -- but nice try though. I'm talking about that rowdy "It's just one of those days!" dude, who always wore a red Yankees hat backwards, and did things like yell and ... what else did he do, exactly?

Well, chalk one up for Durst's agent, because the man has just landed an acting role alongside Chris Klein and Jake Busey (guess who he's related to?) in Play Dead, to be directed by Jason Wiles. Now, before you begin to wonder what on earth Chris Klein is doing in a movie with Jake Busey and Fred Durst, let me tell you what this sucker is about. Remember Last Action Hero? Yeah, well change the bad guys to meth dealers and, instead of Arnold, stick Klein into the lead role. The American Pie star will play a former TV action hero who's career has gone into the toilet. While traveling back from an audition, he becomes stranded in a remote Nevada town where a bunch of seedy drug dealers (Busey, Durst, etc ...) do bad things to people they don't know. Now, it's up to Klein to become a real action hero and save the day.

Pic was written by Wiles and Shem Bitterman; currently there's no production schedule set for this bad boy. Is anyone out there still a fan of Fred Durst? Does knowing he's involved in the film really make you want to see it? They're labeling this one as a dark comedy, so when it arrives on Netflix (I can't see this getting a theatrical anything), we'll be sure to let you know.

As New York frantically prepares for the arrival of Tom Cruise (by speedboat, no less!), McDonald's has bigger (Filet O') fish to fry. Also: felons are getting their Fiddy, and Fred Durst is totally getting his directorial debut on, beeyotch.

Get the podcast
[Watch] Online (please make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime for best results).
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[RSS] Add the Cinematical Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator to have all of Cinematical's rich content delivered automatically.

Hosts
Karina Longworth

Editor
Randall Bennett

Music
Love as Laughter - I'm a bee

Format
5:30, 32 MB, MPEG4 (iPod / PSP compatible)

Program
00:00 - Cruise is coming to town!
02:04 - Bizkit's Durst sez' he's the next Scorsese
02:49 - McDonalds preparing Fast Food Nation counterattack
03:52 - While Brokeback ain't fit for prisons, 50 Cent's masterpiece apparently is

As I'm sure you all remember, late last year Fred Durst told MTV about his rather impressive cinematic ambitions. And I quote: "I want to be beside Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola. I'm a real director." Make no mistake about it, haters, Durst has big plans. And now, finally, The Education of Charlie Banks, Durst's long-discussed feature debut, is going ahead. The movie, which has a budget of about $10 million, was written by Peter Elkoff, and revolves around "a Vassar College [Holla!] student who gets an unannounced visit from the scariest kid from his old New York neighborhood." (What Vassar has to do with it is anyone's guess, but I'm preparing to be offended.)

Durst has scored a surprisingly solid young cast for his film, including Jesse Eisenberg (the big brother from The Squid and the Whale), who will play Banks, and two of the shockingly talented male leads from Joan of Arcadia, Jason Ritter and Chris Marquette. The movie starts filming this June and, with those stars and a $10 million budget, Durst has a great start on that movie career of his. He better not screw it up, dammit.

According to an interview with MTV.com, musical yeller Fred Durst is very serious about starting a film career - and he wants to direct, dammit. Despite the fact that people are apparently lining up to have him in act in their projects (he was in NBC's Revelations miniseries, and also appeared with Jeremy Sisto in Population 436, and indie film that just finished shooting in Canada), Durst is determined to be behind the camera. Sure, so far his only non-video directorial work was on Unquestionable Truth, a 30 minute short that appears on a Limp Bizkit release. But he does have a couple of full-length features in the works. Though he won't name the films, Durst has long been associated with Runt, a drama "about a high-school outcast," and a thriller called Joe.

And make no mistake: the man is setting his sights high. "I want to make timeless movies. I want to be beside Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola. I'm a real director." Dang. Well, you certainly can't accuse Durst of lacking ambition.