With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).

Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.

Take the title "Holy Rollers." What does it make you think of? There are all sorts of possibilities, but I bet this one didn't pop into your mind -- drug-dealing Hasidic Jews. Oh yes, The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) and Justin Bartha (National Treasure) are starring in a Jewsploitation comic drama called Holy Rollers. Funnily enough, this isn't taken from the realms of fantasy, like Adam Goldberg's awesome Hebrew Hammer. This puppy is based on a true story.

Set in 1999, the project is "ripped from true-crime headlines" where Hasidic Jews were tapped to smuggle drugs into the U.S., and "follows an impressionable youth (Eisenberg) from an Orthodox Brooklyn community. He's lured into becoming an Ecstasy dealer by a friend (Bartha) with ties to an Israeli drug cartel." The duo do their business in a club, and Danny Abeckaser (who has had bit parts in films like El Cantante and The Education of Charlie Banks) has been tapped to play the club's owner.

The film will be Kevin Asch's directorial feature debut, from a script by Antonio Macia. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're looking for questionable material), Macia's first and lone screened writing credit (he also penned the upcoming Ego) is Anne B. Real -- which has the honor of being #9 on IMDb's Bottom 100 list. It has a user rating, out of 2,331 votes, of 1.7. That gives new meaning to flops and bad movies. But still, it has Eisenberg, so I'm holding out some hope. Maybe, at the very least, it'll be so bad that it's good?

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?

It's going to be hard to follow Superbad, but as we've previously learned, Greg Mottola is going to give it a try. He's already working on his third film, Adventureland, which at least has that goofy-cool compound-word title thing going on, just like Superbad. Of course, this seems to be a theme that goes all the way back to Mottola's first feature, The Daytrippers, and so the similarity can't promise that the new movie will be anything like Superbad (not that The Daytrippers was bad; it just wasn't Superbad). Then again, if Mottola really wanted to ride the Superbad train he would have tried to get Adventureland made with Judd Apatow as producer, and he probably would have cast Michael Cera in the lead. Instead, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's got Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), who also has a great awkwardly comic manner but is certainly underrated compared to Cera. Joining Eisenberg are two more people who had nothing to do with Superbad: Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder) and Kristen Stewart (Panic Room).

Eisenberg will star as a college graduate who has to take a job working in an amusement park rather than go on a European vacation (he should have worked at Epcott, which could have been a compromise). Stewart is a tomboy (isn't she always?) co-worker who he falls for. Reynolds' role is a bit confusing. He's apparently an aspiring rock star (too old) who is, and I quote both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety here, "the icon of cool to all the kids working at the park." Does he also work there? Is he playing a concert there? Are all the kids working at the park really that uniform? I'm not sure. Mottola wrote the presumably autobiographical script (it's set in 1987, around the time he would have graduated from college) and The Door in the Floor's Ted Hope and Anne Carey are producing. Adventureland begins shooting next month in Pittsburgh (at Kennywood?).

How do you make a comedy about a hideous Civil War? Are TV journalists automatically 'sexier' than print journalists? How much time does a director have to devote to 'method hair'? What's it like filming in a Holiday Inn pockmarked with bullet holes? And is it easier, or harder, to make a movie with the suits from the studio an ocean away? Cinematical had the chance to speak with director and writer Richard Shepard about The Hunting Party, his follow-up to the Sundance breakthrough hit The Matador. The Hunting Party stars Richard Gere, Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg as three journalists of wildly varying experience and wildly varying ethics who choose to search for a notorious Balkan war criminal -- but are they looking for the story, or for something more? Articulate, animated, and never ambivalent, Shepard spoke with Cinematical in San Francisco; you can download the interview right here.

At the beginning of the month, we brought you the ultra-wordy poster for The Hunting Party. No, it isn't some flick about rifles and the hunt for gamey meat, but instead, the hunt for notorious bad guys. Aside from having tons of words, the poster actually answered its own question, which is both weird and funny. They asked: "How can they find the World's most wanted war criminal when they C.I.A. can't?" This is followed by some journalistic style: "[by actually looking]." The poster -- it's alright, but it isn't half as cool as the trailer that is now out.

The film stars, get this -- Richard Gere, Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg as a few risk-loving journalists and a cameraman who decide to find the top war criminal in Bosnia. (I'd go see it just for the cast alone!) The trailer is all about the irresistibility of danger, mixed in with some good, old-fashioned American cover-ups and humor. This is the first time in eons that I've been intrigued by Gere in a role, and I love seeing him with Howard, who usually picks great movies and Eisenberg, who is just plain awesome. While it doesn't seem to really tread new ground, Hunting looks pretty entertaining and fun -- and it's based on an Esquire article called What I Did on my Summer Vacation by Scott Anderson. What's even better -- you don't have to wait too long to check it out. The film comes out September 7.

Odds and ends from Friday:

• Lionsgate came to their senses, and the studio has changed the name of P.D.R., their upcoming based-on-a-true-story, heart-string tugging sports movie about -- wait for it -- triumph over adversity. Originally named for the Philadelphia Department of Recreation (yawn), the film will now be called Pride, a solid, perfectly unmemorable title for what is sure to be well-acted (it stars, among others, Terrence Howard and Evan Ross, who was great in ATL), perfectly unmemorable movie.

• We reported back in February that both Val Kilmer and Meryl Streep had signed on to star in Dark Matter, the debut feature from Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. The film was about "a Chinese exchange student [played by heartthrob Liu Ye] who takes revenge after [his] hopes for a Nobel Prize are wrecked by internal school politics," and sounded fascinating and pleasingly dorky. Now, about four months later, all of those things remain true -- except for the part about Val Kilmer. According to reports that surfaced yesterday, he's had to leave the project (blasted scheduling conflict) and will be replaced by Aidan Quinn.

• In early May, it was announced that Richard Gere and Terrence Howard (yes, him again) were going to star in Spring Break in Bosnia, a potential-laden film about "a completely hair-brained scheme hatched by a trio of American journalists (including Sebastian Junger, author of A Perfect Storm) to capture a Bosnian war criminal." Their plans didn't work out very well -- shocking, that -- and the three ended up being mistaken for CIA. I  hate when that happens. Originally, Topher Grace was rumored to be in line to play the third journalist, but it was announced yesterday that Jesse Eisenberg (Walt from The Squid and the Whale) will play the part. Nice.
  

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.