What fresh hell is this? Rapper and rabblerouser Fred Durst gets a chance to make a movie, and he comes up with... a heartwarming tale of a girl who wants to play football, and the underdog team that she joins? Starring Ice Cube? There's a trailer for The Longshots here, but it's... how do you say... uninspiring. Part of it could be the insufferable voiceover ("he was a hero who lost his way; she was a loner who didn't belong" -- you don't say), but really the entire thing looks like, oh, every movie ever made. Every underdog sports movie ever made, anyway, and God knows there are plenty of them.

A bit disappointing from the man who once called Creed's Scott Stapp a "f****ing punk" on stage. This isn't Durst's directorial debut -- that would be The Education of Charlie Banks, which played last year's Tribeca and won the award for Best Movie Made in New York. It was about a cat-and-mouse game between a bully and the kid who put him in jail years earlier. I didn't see it, but it sounds like a much grittier film. The Longshots is just weird -- there's no particular reason for Durst to have become a Hollywood hack-for-hire, so one would think he has some emotional connection to this project. I wonder what it could be.

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?

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.