Today YouTube launched a new section of its site titled The YouTube Screening Room, which it calls a "platform for films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve." Here, they will showcase four short films every two weeks and will even offer an occasional feature. Some of the films have been previously screened at film festivals and some have been nominated for or have won an Academy Award. But others will be premiering on the site. Apparently, the filmmakers will be paid a percentage of YouTube's ad revenue based on views and each film will also feature a "Buy Now" button so that you can purchase that film or other films.

Today's debuts include Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, a 2005 short written by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) and starring John C. Reilly, Mike White and July. I've embedded it above for your viewing pleasure. The other three are The Danish Poet, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2007, Love and War, which is a stop motion opera from Sweden, and Our Time is Up, which was nominated for Best Live Action Short in 2006 and which stars Kevin Pollak.

For those of you hoping this is about the band, I feel you. I want nothing more than a movie explaining how Mark McGrath and the rest went from originally being a mod band to releasing a generic single like "Mean Machine" to hitting big with a completely different style with "Fly". But no, this post is about a Sugar Ray Leonard biopic. According to Variety, the boxer's life story will be made into a film by actor Kevin Pollak. Pollak will produce with his company, Red Bird Cinema, and is thinking of casting himself in the title role. Yeah, just kidding there -- he's good at impersonations, but not that good. Pollak isn't writing the film either, despite having just written a screenplay for another sports movie, 3 Nights in August, which is about 2003 baseball series between the Cardinals and the Cubs. The interesting thing is that that movie is based on a book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning sports journalist Buzz Bissinger (Friday Night Lights), who will now be scripting this Sugar Ray movie. Producing with Pollak are his Red Bird partners John Loar and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa,

I've never been a boxing fan, nor do I care much for most boxing movies, so I can't offer too much excitement here. As a kid, Sugar Ray Leonard was just a guy who was heavily advertised on HBO while I was waiting for BMX Bandits or some other cable-TV staple of the '80s to come on. I also know that he's the person Sugar Ray named their band after. I didn't even understand as a kid why guys like Sugar Ray never fought guys like Mike Tyson, who was the only other boxer I'd heard of growing up. But despite my lack of sports knowledge, I do know Sugar Ray was a great boxer, being one of only two guys to win world championships in five different weight classes, and he had his ups and downs and went in and out of retirement a few times. I'm not sure of how dramatic his life will be on screen, but I guess he'll provide enough material for a by-the-books biopic at the very least. Now, if only Pollak can secure Sugar Ray to do the soundtrack.

Production has just began on an indie thriller directed by Charles Adelman (The Zodiac Killer) called Two: Thirteen, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, Teri Polo has signed onto the cast that already includes Mark Thompson (Mother Ghost), Mark Pellegrino (The Number 23), Kevin Pollak (The Whole Ten Yards), Dwight Yoakam (Crank) and Jere Burns (Help Me Help You). Frankly, I'm surprised that no one nabbed Henry Rollins for a part -- he does flicks like these sometimes, and two-thirteen is not only his birthday, but part of the name of his company. Regardless, we should be happy that they seemingly changed the title to something a little simpler and less teh suck -- 2wo THIR13N.

This is the second feature penned by Thompson, who also wrote and starred in Mother Ghost in 2002. In fact, Two is reuniting him with some of his co-stars -- Pollak and Burns. The film focuses on the hunt for a serial killer who loves Shakespeare -- this could definitely be an interesting and gory twist -- the man was poetic, but he also knew how to ramp up the ick and people pies. Polo is the detective over-seeing the case, Thompson is a police profiler brought back from psychiatric leave to help, Pellegrino is one of the killer's targets, Yoakam is a club owner and source for the investigation and finally, Pollak plays Thompson's psychiatrist. Polo has come a long way since her time as Ethan Hawke's Mystery Date (did you know that was her?), playing in a lot of comedies and thrillers, so this should be up her alley.

Variety reported this morning that Indie production company Palm-Star Entertainment and the newly-created (I assume -- there's not a single google reference to the company) Red Bird Cinema will collaborate to bring a fictional version of Tony LaRussa to the big screen. Seriously, they really are. The companies have acquired the rights to Buzz Bissinger's surprise best-seller 3 Nights in August, which offers a detailed exploration of how the St. Louis Cardinal boss managed a crucial mid-summer series against the hated Chicago Cubs in 2003; Kevin Pollak is writing the screenplay.

If you're wondering who, exactly, decided this book would make a good fiction film (As a rabid Cardinal fan I'd see the thing, but who else would even care, outside of LaRussa's immediately family?), here's a clue: In addition to Pollak and John Loar, the other partner in Red Bird Cinema is one Tony LaRussa. Jeez. You don't think he wants to play himself, do you?