If you're an iTunes subscriber and a Joss Whedon fiend, you were probably giggling yesterday as most fans (like me) kept desperately refreshing and going back to drhorrible.com all day to see Act I of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Now it's up on the new server with no problems and a lot of singing goodness. Free! Some days I really, really love the Internet!

Having just watched Act I for myself, I can tell you that it is so worth the 13 minutes and 49 seconds. It starts off mellow (but still funny), and soon enough -- there are simple, yet ridiculously catchy songs, evil schemes and deeds, and that charming Captain Hammer.

Think Venture Brothers done Whedon style, and the only critique I can come up with right now is that "The Evil League of Evil" doesn't sound as cool as "The Guild of Calamitous Intent." Still, I'm happy. Neil Patrick Harris. Nathan Fillion. Felicia Day. Pure, musical awesome.

Oh yeah, and the MySpace page even has a comic!

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

I might adore Joss Whedon, but I don't think I'm biased when I say that the above trailer for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is the best thing since sliced bread. Check it out above. Aren't I right? Good lord, I could watch the trailer on repeat. It's further proof that with enough talent, you don't need a lot of money to make something great. Yeah, this isn't exactly a big-screen piece of cinema news, but we're talking Nathon Fillion, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Baldwin*, Felicia Day, and Joss Whedon -- all of whom have been in films, most of whom have been in some pretty awesome films (or made them).

But to keep this on the movie track: I hereby declare that no one should make a crappy spoof movie unless Joss is involved. Watching the trailer, I kept thinking about Date Movie, Disaster Movie, and all the rest of the crap that has come out, and how Whedon could've made them monumentally better.

And one more thing: When is Nathan Fillion getting his own superhero or bad-guy role on the big screen? Look at him -- he's perfect for it!

*Unfortunately, the man with the goggle-like thing, that I mistook for Adam Baldwin, is actually (I think) Rob Reinis.

So what do you think? Is former Punisher Thomas Jane the right man to bring gun-slinging Jonah Hex to the big screen? Film School Rejects is posting what they claim might be test shots of Jane as Hex in the adaptation of John Albano and Tony DeZuniga's western comic -- and if it's a fake, it's a darn good one. The photo might look legit, but there hasn't even been a casting announcement for the film, which leads me to believe that it could just be an overzealous fan with some time on their hands (and Photoshop on their computer). There had been some chatter that Firefly's Nathan Fillion was in talks for the lead, but nothing was ever confirmed.

Hex is the story of a former confederate solider turned bounty hunter with a drinking problem and an itchy trigger finger. In the original run of the comic, Hex stuck to traditional western story lines, but in a later incarnation, there was a touch of the supernatural thrown in; pitting Jonah against zombies and werewolves. Warners first announced the project last year, with Crank's Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor to write and direct; the two had promised that they would be using the later 'supernatural' editions of Hex as a starting point for the story.

But for now, it's all rumor and speculation, so stay tuned to Cinematical for the official word.

UPDATE: Shock says it's a fake, straight from the mouth of Mark Neveldine. So there goes that ...

UPDATE 2: FSR spoke to Jane who says the photo is real, and it was part of his audition to play the character.

I was completely honest with actress Michelle Monaghan yesterday when I told her, right at the beginning of a one-on-one interview, that I'd been waiting a long time to watch her come alive in a role. In her relatively short career, Monaghan has already racked up quite the resume -- appearing in films like Mission Impossible III, Gone Baby Gone, The Bourne Supremacy, The Heartbreak Kid and the soon-to-be-released Made of Honor. She's got a great, girl-next-door quality about her, but is she memorable? The good news here is that Monaghan finally delivered the sort of performance I've known was trapped somewhere inside her, hidden behind a variety of big, flashy Hollywood films. Make no mistake, this is her film. She owns it. But is that enough to convince you to see it?

In Trucker, she plays Diane, a female truck driver with one helluva edge -- not to mention a knack for drinking lots of hard liquor and taking part in more than a few unhealthy one-night-stands. She's a selfish woman with not many friends; she knows just what she needs to keep on truckin', and she knows just how to get it. Thing is, you'll never see her give anything back. These personality traits become a problem when Diane's 11-year-old estranged son (Jimmy Bennett) shows up on her doorstep one day -- brought by his soon-to-be stepmother (Joey Lauren Adams) when colon cancer forces the kid's dad (Benjamin Bratt) into the hospital. These two, mother and son, don't care for one another, nor are they interested in getting better acquainted. He needs a place to crash for three weeks, and she needs to find a way to let that happen.

So ... during a recent chat with AICN, Neil Patrick Harris said: "I'm doing a web short film that Joss Whedon is directing and wrote called DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-A-LONG BLOG. That's a musical about super villains and crossing my fingers for the next round of Dancing With The Stars. (long pause) No ..." This, of course, led to a flurry of comments over at Whedonesque, and Joss himself finally weighed in, giving us another reason to love the Internet.

Joss says: "The bag is catless. During the strike I started writing a musical intended as a limited internet series, 3 episodes of approximately 10 minutes each." He managed to get interest in the project, and this week, they started shooting. As Whedon describes it: "It's the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he's too shy to talk to." I'm getting flashbacks to The Venture Brothers and 40 Days and 40 Nights, but I don't care!

Just to make it even better -- NPH is Dr. Horrible, who I presume is the super-villain, Nathan Fillion is Captain Hammer (mean ol' superhero?), and Felicia Day is Penny. Day, by the way, was the young newbie slayer Vi on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now if only Joss could give us more, regular, moving media work.

Have you recovered from your holiday eating binge? Are you ready for some pie? Reviewing Waitress at Sundance earlier this year, Cinematical's James Rocchi described it as "a light, breezy romantic comedy with a crackerjack cast and a certain degree of faux-Southern charm that never descends to cornpone mawkishness, and also has a whip-smart comedic sensibility in every scene." The late Adrienne Shelly wrote, directed, and co-stars with Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion and Andy Griffith. The DVD includes several featurettes and an audio commentary with Russell and producer Michael Roiff.

The Namesake very much impressed our own Kim Voynar, who called it "a deeply felt look at the ties of family and birthplace, the loneliness of living far from your home, and the connections that hold everything together, sometimes in ways we don't appreciate until much later." Mira Nair directed; the film stars Irfan Khan, Tabu, Kal Penn and Sahira Nair. The DVD features an audio commentary by director Nair and several featurettes, plus deleted scenes.

Critics gave high marks (83% positive, per Rotten Tomatoes) to documentary Manufactured Landscapes. It's said to be an "investigation of photographer Edward Burtynsky's legacy, with its aesthetic studies of industrial landscapes. ... It uses the topic of Burtynsky as a springboard." Jennifer Baichwal directed. The DVD includes additional scenes, a stills gallery and a discussion with Baichwal and Burtynsky.

We can never get too many rebellious child prodigy dramas, can we? Vitus fairly well divided critics: 34 positive and 21 negative, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The veteran and versatile Bruno Ganz is the most recognizable name in the cast. The DVD features an interview with Ganz, a "making of" feature and an audio commentary by director Fredi M. Murer.

As Scott Weinberg has already noted elsewhere, Nathan Fillion just can't catch a break. His career is littered with cancelled TV series and movies few people have seen ... but that doesn't mean he doesn't have fans. Me, I love this guy and everything he does; in fact, when we named our celebrity crushes a while back, Nathan Fillion was mine. Who knows, maybe I like him because he hasn't hit it big yet -- and because his choices, while maybe not so commercial, are never less than interesting. (Also, I'm fascinated by his goofy hair.)

Serenity was the first thing I ever saw Fillion in. I went in knowing nothing about Firefly, the TV series on which it was based, except that it was the brainchild of Buffy creator Joss Whedon, upon whom many of my (straight) guy friends had developed crushes of their own. And I was delighted to discover a hidden gem of a film, a smart, funny, quirky sci-fi movie that sacrifices nothing to action, pace or intergalactic adventure. It's also a Western. Yes, just roll with it. Fillion plays Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, who leads a ragtag crew across the civil-wartorn universe as a freelance pilot and thief. (Sound like anyone else you know? Rhymes with "Dan Schmolo"?) Grand adventures ensue, which involve the crew's transport of brainwashed ninja chick River (Summer Glau), Mal's rescue of pseudo-girlfriend and courtesan Inara (Morena Baccarin), the discovery of a drug that wipes out civilizations, and some badass fight scenes. I was surprised to like a genre film quite so much, and I championed it as such ... that is, until six months later, when I found a new genre fave in Slither, which also starred Nathan Fillion. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Rent or buy the DVD | Watch the trailer

Bonus Points: This two-disc collector's edition isn't just some hastily glommed-together retread. There are over 60 minutes of new features (most of which were on an Australian edition of the DVD, now offered to U.S. fans in response to demand) including extended scenes; commentary by Whedon, Fillion, Glau, Adam Baldwin and Ron Glass; and various featurettes on the TV show, the ship and River's past. So you'll have plenty to occupy yourself -- if you're a sci-fan, until Battlestar Galactica starts, and if you're a fellow Fillion fanatic, until the Waitress DVD comes out (and don't get me started on how much I love that movie.)

Also Recommended:

The Lives of Others
Who says German spies aren't lovable? This drama justly won the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, despite how hard I was rooting for Pan's Labyrinth. (Check out the indie DVD post on Lives of Others.)

You might remember our Scott Weinberg reviewing a documentary from SXSW called The King of Kong (which has since added onto the end: "A Fistful of Quarters"). He said it was "as compelling, colorful and entertaining as any of the 'human interest' documentaries of the past five years." The film, which opened in limited release this weekend, follows the quest of Steve Wiebe to get his record-breaking score on Donkey Kong recognized -- one that beats the long-established score of Billy Mitchell. There's lots of argument over the whole thing, which has continued beyond the making of the doc. Mitchell isn't happy with how he is portrayed, and four months after Wiebe beat his score, it seems he regained his title. But the kicker is that a fictional account is in the works, to be written by Michael Bacall, and the filmmakers got chatty with VH1 about who they'd like to star.

If you're wondering about what kind of movie this could be, director Seth Gordon described one scene they weren't able to catch on film, but could make it into the feature: "There was a moment recorded only on audio when Steve was approaching a record on his Donkey Kong machine in his garage. As he hopped barrels toward glory, his young son was yelling, 'Daddy, Daddy, wipe my butt,' and hitting dad with a broom. I think it will be pretty fun physical comedy."

And who do they want to play the gamers? Gordon says: "My first idea for Billy was Johnny Depp. Ed Norton I thought would be good. It's not really about the hair, it's about the eyes. It's got to be a real actor." For Wiebe, producer Ed Cunningham thinks Greg Kinnear would be good, while Gordon likes Nathan Fillion. With names like these, this could rock the pants off The Wizard! I imagine they'd have a good shot with Fillion -- he's still making his way so I imagine he'd be easier to sign, and considering the success of the doc and the possible co-stars, it would be an appealing project for an up-and-comer...not to mention the fact that I think he'd make a good gamer. I'd also love to see Depp in the role, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was too busy or uninterested. Who would you pick?

We already know that Michelle Monaghan is making a name for herself, having nabbed roles in big films like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, North Country and Mission: Impossible III, plus upcoming flicks such as Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor. On the flip side, there's Mr. Nathan Fillion, who has found success in pizza places and space, but can't seem to break beyond them into the stardom he deserves. (If you agree, make sure to check out Scott's fan rant about Fillion failing to catch a break.) But now, I ask: could truckers give him his big break?

According to Variety, production has just started on the Plum Pictures film Trucker, a new independently-financed drama starring Monaghan, Fillion, Benjamin Bratt, Joey Lauren Adams and Jimmy Bennett. James Mottern, who wrote the script, will make his directorial debut with the movie. In a nice change of pace, the trucker is being played by Michelle herself, and her character leads "a careless life with no responsibility until she has to take in her estranged 11-year-old son (Bennett) after his father (Bratt) is hospitalized." The actress is so into this role that she not only signed on before they got financing, but she also became a licensed tractor-trailer driver. Either this is a meaty role, or she's been itching to entertain her inner trucker. There is no word who Fillion will play, but hopefully it will be something to give the man some long-deserved recognition.

Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...

COLUMNS, REVIEWS, and INTERVIEWS

• Indie Seen: Women in Filmmaking -- Monika Bartyzel takes a closer look at some of the most important women in indie film.
• Killer Bs on DVDs: Matt Bradshaw reviews Dead Time Stories.
• Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows: The Life and Death of Small Films
• Erik Davis interviews Rocket Science director Jeffrey Blitz.
• Fan Rant: Scott Weinberg wonders why the heck Nathan Fillion can't get a break already.
• Review: Rocket Science
• Cinematical Indie Seven: Freaks and Geeks -- Why Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow are Superhot.

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