Joel David Moore Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Could Paris Hilton become the next major movie star? Stranger things have happened (give me a few hours to come up with one), and the girl already has two flicks arriving in theaters next year -- both of which are extremely opposite of one another. The Hollywood Reporter tells us Regent Releasing has picked up all North American rights on Hilton's romantic comedy The Hottie or the Nottie with plans to throw it into theaters on February 8 ... right before Valentine's Day. Yay! Because there's nothing I prefer more than seeing a Paris Hilton flick and then taking my significant other out for a splendid dinner.

In case you're at all wondering about The Hottie and the Nottie, the film follows a guy (Joel David Moore) who's been in love (or, as HR puts it, "obsessed") with the same girl (Hilton) since first grade. But in order to win her love or a date or a cheap one night stand, our hero must find a date for the hottie's not-so-hot best friend (as played by Christine Lakin -- who, funnily enough, is hotter than Hilton in real life). I'm not sure where this wild flick is going to go from there, but I'm sure we're in for plenty of hilarity and bad acting on Hilton's part. I can imagine director Tim Putnam now, giving cues to Hilton: "Okay, so just look hot. Don't act, simply read the lines ... and be hot." Movie magic at its finest, folks.

If you've seen the horror flick Hatchet, you might have preconceived notions about filmmaker Adam Green, and therefore about Spiral, which he co-directed with Joel David Moore, and which screened at Fantastic Fest a year after Hatchet played there so successfully. But you'd be wrong -- this film has very little in common with the old-school horror of Hatchet. Spiral is an odd film, a combination of indie-relationship film and thriller that stands on the precipice of gory horror and threatens to dive into a potential bloodbath.

The action -- or the hint that action might occur -- focuses around Mason (Joel David Moore), an asthmatic painter with an almost pathological lack of social skills, who appears to be harboring some dark nasty secrets. He works in a dull insurance company, where his longtime best friend Berkeley (Zachary Levi) is his boss. As Mason sits at lunch, flipping through a book of sketches of a woman who has been haunting his dreams, another woman starts a conversation with him. Amber (Amber Tamblyn) also works in his building, and slowly makes friends with Mason. She agrees to pose for paintings that he sketches out beforehand. It all seems quite sweet, the awkward guy and the cute girl ... but what happened to his previous model, and what will he decide to do about (or with) Amber?

Director and world ruler James Cameron called Ain't It Cool News last night to release details about the cast of Avatar, his ultra-secret sci-fi project that will mark his first return to the big screen since 1997's Titanic. Here's the big news -- Sigourney Weaver has signed on as Grace, whoever that is. I have only the vaguest notion of what the film's plot is, so I'm not sure if this will a primary role or a sort of bone to throw to long-time fans of Aliens. But either way, it somehow makes me want to see this film a lot more. Cameron also revealed the following names for the cast roster: Peter Mensah, Joel David Moore and C.C.H. Pounder, an actress who is mostly know for television work -- it will be interesting to see what Cameron has in mind for her. He's also trying to get Angelina Jolie "in and out in five days," to boot.

Cameron just returned from three days of location shooting in Hawaii with leads Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington and he will now be moving on to California to begin a shooting stage called "pre-capture." He also gives some details about the stuff he's inventing for the film, including some contraption called a "motion builder" for use in the real-time cinematography, although I can't quite figure out what that could be, based on the details given in the piece. He also confirmed that no director of photography had been chosen yet, and gives details about how the workload will be divided up between himself and the DP who is eventually chosen. He also noted that the first assistant director is coming off of The Polar Express and Beowulf, other motion-capture-heavy projects. Avatar is currently penciled in for release in 2009.