I think that everyone who loves Michael Cera's comedy – and that should be practically everyone – is a little worried about Michael Cera. Because even as Arrested Development becomes legend, Superbad wins over every twentysomething in sight, and Juno charms the pants off the entire nation, the hushed, often unspoken question is: how long can he milk this? Cera's shtick is killer, but it's also ultra-specific – he's the shy, unprepossessing, painfully awkward adolescent, a nice guy who's self-aware enough to get embarrassed but not confident enough to avoid it.

Cera is so good at playing this part in a way that's both touching and hysterical that it's propelled him to stardom. For me to say that I haven't enjoyed any of the incarnations of George Michael Bluth that he's given us over the past couple years would be a bald-faced lie. Indeed, I think the character he's crafted is one of the most impressive comic achievements of my adult lifetime. But even as I relish it, I start to fidget, because I can sense exasperation and annoyance threatening from just around the bend. Oh, maybe not mine – I could watch Cera do this forever, I tell myself – but certainly other people will soon lose patience and turn on the guy. One-trick pony, they'll yell. Do something else.

After rumors bubbled up about a possible end to Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan, her rep told People: "the production of all three films is moving forward with Rose to star." I'd question that since all the double R seems to be doing lately is acquiring projects that don't seem to go anywhere. Yes, there's a chance that they might be on hold while he films Shorts, but that production is where the new hub-ub is coming from (via Defamer).

I highly doubt there's any truth to the matter, but it's worth a glance into the rumor that Rodriguez is now canoodling his new young star, Kat Dennings. She's the girl who got her start on Sex and the City as the "f**king fabulous" rich girl having a bat mitzvah, and has since got a stepdad in a 40-year-old Virgin, and impressed audiences with her time with Charlie Bartlett.

Back in March, Jessica shared a script review for Robert Rodriguez's next film -- not the still-suffering Barbarella, but rather Shorts -- a quirky family adventure movie. Now, finally, we've got the cast in place. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jon Cryer and James Spader have jumped on board, joining William H. Macy, Leslie Mann, Jimmy Bennett, Kat Dennings, Trevor Gagnon, Leo Howard, Devon Gearhart, Jake Short, Jolie Vanier, and Rodriguez's super-cute offspring, Rebel Rodriguez.

The descriptions of the movie on THR and the script review are a little different, but the basic gist of the film is about a magic rock in a suburb where everyone works for the Black Box company. Kids find this rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes, and go a bit nuts with it before the adults get their hands on it and things get even crazier. Bennett plays the protagonist, Toe Jackson, Cryer and Mann play his parents, and Dennings plays his older sister. Spader, meanwhile, plays Mr. Black, and Macy plays "the father of a germphobic genius," which I imagine makes him Dr. Noseworthy. If Robert pulls this off with the same spark that Spy Kids held, this could be one fun flick.

Per usual, Rodriguez is involved in many aspects of the film -- he wrote it, is producing with ex Elizabeth Avellan, and will be director of photography, editor, and visual effects supervisor. According to Variety, production is just gearing up in Austin.

After viewing the trailer for Anna Faris' new comedy The House Bunny for a second time, my review can only be summed up by the immortal words of Han Solo: "I've got a bad feeling about this." You can now check out the trailer above for the Playmate comedy starring Faris as a down-on-her-luck Playboy bunny named Shelley who becomes the den mother to a 'socially clueless' sorority.

Faris is joined by Rumer Willis, Kat Dennings and Katherine McPhee (of American Idol fame) as the loser girls of Zeta House. As Shelley teaches them about the important things in life like lip gloss and dancing in high heels, she learns valuable lessons about being not hot ... or something. The only real question I had after watching the trailer was how did Colin Hanks get talked into doing this movie?

Sometimes when I see a bit of casting news, I imagine a film not with the cast of actors, but with their previous roles. So, imagine what kind of ensemble can be put together with the upcoming romcom The Dream of the Romans. Variety reports that Jeff Daniels, Lauren Graham, Lou Taylor Pucci, Olivia Thirlby, and Kat Dennings have signed on for roles in the film, which will be the feature debut of writer/director John Hindman.

Romans stars Daniels as some sort of Rhonda Byrne -- a reclusive author who penned a book that "redefined spirituality for a generation." Unfortunately, his writing interferes with his desire to be left alone as many of his fans hunt him down, convinced that "he has all the answers." Two of them are Graham, who plays a struggling single mum, and Pucci, who plays a guy straight out of rehab. This is a romantic comedy, so most likely Ms. Gilmore will get to fall for Mr. Berkman. Or, maybe the backbone-lacking jerk from Chumscrubber will get some romance with Juno's friend or the 40-year-old virgin's stepdaughter.

iDeal's (the film's financer) Jana Edelbaum says: "This is a sparking piece of writing with vivid, wonderful characters." At the very least, it looks like a fresh jump into romcom territory, rather than the usual retread. The project just kicked off production in Philly.

Charlie Bartlett is Juno's dorkier, needier cousin, the one who's watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off too many times. Am I talking about the teenage title characters or the films themselves? Both, to a certain extent. Charlie Bartlett is a standard coming-of-age comedy with some amusing quirks, but as with Juno, I found myself enjoying the company of the older characters in the film far more than the teen leads.

Poor little rich kid Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) wants nothing more than to see all his high-school peers look up to him. So he does crazy dumb things that get him kicked out of a progression of private schools, like making amazingly realistic fake IDs. As a result, his dippy but sweet mom (Hope Davis) sends him to public high school, where his private-school ways make him an instant pariah. But he's determined to fit in and tries to find a niche to fill. Charlie eventually ends up pulling more crazy stunts, but settles down to helping kids with his bathroom psychiatry gig. Still, his antics aren't going over at all well with Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.), especially since Charlie seems interested in Gardner's daughter Susan (Kat Dennings).

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Charlie Bartlett (click on the image for a larger version), starring Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey Jr., Hope Davis and Kat Dennings. In the film, Yelchin plays a Ferris Bueller-type kid who, after being booted from his prep school for making fake I.D.s, quickly becomes his new high school's self-appointed psychiatrist ... with a little help from his nutty mom (Davis), his new girlfriend (Dennings), her (recovering) alcoholic father/principal (Downey Jr.) and, of course, the school's teenage drug dealer. Directed by Jon Poll, Charlie Bartlett first premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, where yours truly called it "a film that carries a heavy message about the mis-use of prescription medication amongst today's teens, but does so in a very clever (and fun) way." Additionally, you can also check out our interview with Bartlett director Jon Poll and star Anton Yelchin. I dug this film -- it's cute and quirky, sure, but it packs a pretty entertaining punch. Go see it. Charlie Bartlett arrives in theaters on February 22, 2008.

You just saw him running from vampires in the cold, dark Alaska of 30 Days of Night. Now get ready to see Josh Hartnett evading more human adversaries on a hot, Texan football field in End Zone. According to Variety, the actor has been cast as the lead in an adaptation of the farcical Don DeLillo novel, which will be directed by George Ratliff (Joshua). The movie, scripted by Ratliff and his Joshua writing partner David Gilbert, will see Hartnett as a college football running back who is ruining his chances for stardom by thinking too much about another kind of end zone, that related to nuclear war. Also cast are Kat Dennings (Big Momma's House 2), who plays the love interest, and Joshua star Sam Rockwell, who plays the school's publicist. Another significant role, not yet filled, is a professor of international terrorism and mass destruction who sees Hartnett's character as a perfect soldier.

I can't really picture Josh Hartnett as a perfect soldier, let alone a football player. But I guess I never could have imagined him as a cop or a pilot or any other responsible position had I not seen it realized on screen. Mostly my image of him is focused on three relatively slacker roles: Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides; the sex-crazed abstainer of 40 Days and 40 Nights and the "wrong man" protagonist of Lucky Number Slevin. Now that I think of it, though, I could see him as one of the pot-head jocks in Dazed and Confused, and since DeLillo's novel was released in 1972, it places Hartnett's End Zone character in almost the same environment. Of course, I don't recall Randall "Pink" Floyd ever contemplating nuclear war.

Now that Superbad has made him a household name (because God forbid anyone actually watched Arrested Development), Michael Cera is starting to pile on the gigs. Variety reports that Cera will star alongside Kat Dennings (who's also doing quite well for herself as of late) in Mandate Pictures' Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, based on the novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. The story is said to revolve around two "bridge-and-tunnel teenagers, nursing broken hearts, who fall in love during one sleepless night in New York while searching for their favorite band's unannounced show." For those who do not know what a "bridge-and-tunnel teenager" is, that just means they don't live in the city; instead, they live in a place (Long Island, most of the time) where one needs to take either a bridge or a tunnel to get into the city. Usually, on Friday and Saturday nights, the hot spots in NYC are filled with the so-called "bridge-and-tunnel crowd," and the locals stay away. Hard to explain why, but let's just say you can spot them from a mile away.

Anyway, I'm pretty stoked to see they tapped Peter Sollett to direct the film. Sollett first broke onto the scene with a little indie (made on the cheap) called Raising Victor Vargas, about two teenagers from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who struggle to maintain their sanity amidst an eccentric cast of characters. I really liked the film, and was excited to see a new New York City-based director interested in telling stories about New Yorkers who weren't covered in money, living in gigantic apartments that just don't exist in reality unless you have over $4 million to blow. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist will mark Sollett's first gig since Vargas (amazing that it's taken this long for him to get something else going), and the script was written by Lorene Scafaria. Sony Pictures will distribute, while production is scheduled to begin later this year.

Her name has been circling a bunch of projects as of late, but it seems American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee has finally landed her first studio acting role (after already landing a part in the indie dark comedy The Last Caller). Take that Taylor Hicks! Mcphee has signed to star alongside Anna Faris in the untitled Happy Madison sorority flick we told you about recently. Columbia Pictures will distribute. Also joining the first female-driven comedy from Adam Sandler's shingle are Emma Stone, Rumer Willis, Kat Dennings and Dana Goodman. Fred Wolf will direct off a script penned by the Legally Blonde duo of Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. Story follows a Playboy bunny (Faris) who gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion and settles into a role as house mother to the "lamest sorority on campus." I'm not exactly sure how one goes from Playboy Mansion to lame sorority house without at least stopping by Brett Ratner's casting couch first, but I guess we're supposed to suspend our disbelief a bit here.

Mcphee, for her first major role, will be playing a pregnant hippy. A pregnant sorority hippy, that is. Stone will act as the sorority's president, while Willis will play an insecure girl who wears an unnecessary backbrace, Dennings will show up as the token feminist (piercings included) and Goodman will take on the role of a girl who should have graduated years ago if she didn't constantly keep changing her major. (Hey, my best friend did that!) Like with most college comedies, there will be an evil, popular sorority -- and Sarah Wright has signed on to star as a conniving hottie from the other side. Shooting is set to begin later this month in Los Angeles. Personally, I'm just curious to see a female-centric Happy Madison flick. Since they're known for producing silly male-orientated films (mostly starring Sandler or one of his many pals), I wonder how this one will play out. Faris has potential if she's given the right material (a bit over-the-top in Just Friends, but I dug her), but I imagine the premise will rely on how "lame" they can make the rest of the cast, Mcphee included.