Update: Cinematical was informed that the film still does not have a title, though we imagine one will be announced soon. See full (and accurate) press release after the jump.

Since news first broke about Sam Mendes making the leap to comedy with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, I've become awfully curious to see if the man famous for heavy subject matter can pull off a straight rom-com. Coming Soon has received a press announcement from the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa in Tuscon, Arizona, and according to them, the spa has been chosen as one of the locations for the road flick. More importantly, we now know that the film is going by the slightly awkward title of Farlanders.

McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers co-wrote the script with his wife, Vendela Vida, and the story centers on an expectant couple played by Krasinski (sporting some much-maligned facial hair) and Rudolph as they travel the US looking for the perfect place to start their family. The film has a big ensemble cast to play the various 'characters' our couple will meet along the way -- including some very funny women like Catherine O'Hara, Cheryl Hines, and Allison Janney.

Production began back in April, and according to the release, the Arizona shoot will begin in June. Some of the other locations include Colorado, Connecticut, and Florida. There is no official release date, so I guess I'll have plenty of time to get used to that title.

Farlanders The Untitled Sam Mendes Comedy is due to arrive in theaters in 2009.

Combining the words Allison Janney with indie comedy is usually music to my ears. In the last few years alone, she's rocked roles like Allie Stiffle in Chumscrubber and Bren MacGuff in Juno. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that she's signing on for two bigger-budget roles -- one that will have her working with Sam Mendes, and the other that will have her directed by Brian Robbins. Well, at least one should be completely excellent.

For Mendes, she's taking a role in his upcoming comedy, which is currently and tentatively titled This Must Be the Place. Janney will play "a loud, brassy, decidedly un-PC woman who admittedly has a few screws loose." (Could Mendes have cast that any better?) "She reunites with a former employee in Phoenix, where the expectant mother/employer (Maya Rudolph) begins a tour of the country with her husband (John Krasinski) to find the best place to raise their child."

Before the rain pooed on my parade and the poo rained on my parade at the Independent Spirit Awards Saturday, I had a pretty great time. The highlight for me was being "on set" for a series of interviews between Martin Short's Jiminy Glick and various celebs. I was just tipped off by the good folks at Netflix that those conversations have hit youtube, and if you're a fan of the character, you may want to check them out. Here's Jiminy with Matt Dillon, with a never foxier Illeana Douglas, with the always youthful Dennis Hopper (an interview that opens with a depantsing), with Ed Begley, Jr, with Juno director Jason Reitman and his father Ivan, with Aaron Eckhart, with John Waters, and with Allison Janney. They could all stand to be edited down a bit, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. If I had to direct you to the funniest couple of discussions, I'd recommend the Illeana Douglas and the Ed Begley, Jr, which contains graphic mouth-to-mouth.

I intended to run a live blog from the show, but the internet connection went out -- one of the dangers of doing a live show from a tent in the rain! I did get to see some cool people up close and personal. Philip Seymour Hoffman (a winner for Best Male Lead) charmed the little press room in a fun Q & A with Savages writer/director Tamara Jenkins (a winner for Best Screenplay) and it was a thrill to meet Scott Frank, a screenwriter I truly admire. He won Best First Feature for The Lookout, one of my favorite 2007 films. I always question what they deem "independent," but I do appreciate that the Indie Spirits have special honors -- like the John Cassavetes Award -- to honor the truly independent and low-budget films each year. Did anyone watch the broadcast? I know it's not the biggest awards show of the year (or even the weekend), but the show was really entertaining. Have favorite moments or disagreements with the winners?

Cinematical is live at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards! Our own Patrick Walsh will report back throughout the afternoon.

Jiminy Glick just wrapped up a graphic conversation with indie legend John Waters and now he is asking Maria Bello what it's like to show her "down there hair" on camera. Oh wow, now he's humping her. Now he's asking Allison Janney if Juno is a film about people who won't tolerate Jews. "Jew? No!" The man is insane. He's interviewing The Office's Rainn Wilson now, who's looking mighty unkempt and unshaven considering he's hosting the show. And now the two are engaged in a huge pillow fight. There's Dennis Hopper! What does Jiminy ask a legend like this? "Why do men have nipples if they're not supposed to breast feed their pets?" Of course.

He just told Matt Dillon he was excellent as Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump, and followed that up with a rave about his work in Saving Private Ryan. Dillon was in neither film. The red carpet is heating up, I just saw Kate Beckinsale, Tom Wilkinson, and now Aaron Eckhart -- who is discussing Mormonism with Jiminy. And now the skies have turned an unsettling gray, the winds are picking up, and I have a feeling a lot of expensive dresses are about to get destroyed. I'm gonna take shelter, but I'll be back.

For more photos and coverage, head on over to Moviefone.

Juno director Jason Reitman has been busy hopping the globe, with his film showing at more festivals than you can count as it nears its big premiere date. Oscar sugarplums have got to be dancing in Reitman's head as his second feature film continues to do well with critics and audiences alike. Reitman is keeping a blog as he travels around for Juno, and he's rumored to love getting comments from fans who read it. In a recent entry, Reitman rants about Saturday Night Fever, which he recently saw for the first time in his hotel room in London.

Criticizing a classic can be dicey, but Reitman bravely takes on the disco drama, breaking down the film's high (and low) lights and telling readers exactly why he thinks this film is a piece of crap:

Am I the only one who thinks this movie totally blows? All that wide angle shooting is really wonky. Everyone's acting like they're on a bad rip-off of "All in the Family". The love interests are not that attractive. The highlight is perhaps a cameo by Fran Dresher... which says a lot.

I checked out Saturday Night Fever's Rotten Tomatoes rating and found it sits at an impressive 97% -- not too shabby, which surprised me, as I've never been enamored of it. Juno is sitting pretty too, with a 100% fresh rating, so I don't think Reitman's suffering from professional jealousy. Reitman also talks about getting the news during his daughter's first birthday party that Juno had won at the Rome Film Festival. The film swept three categories -- the youth jury, the adult jury, and ... a psychologist's association. Well, that's cool -- I guess that means that watching Juno won't screw you up for life or anything.

Oh, and Reitman also talks about meeting up with Darjeeling Limited star Jason Schwartzman when he was in London ... how would it be for Schwartzman to star in a Reitman film? Go check out Reitman's blog for yourself, and be sure to leave him a shout-out.

Jason Reitman's second feature film, Juno, turned out to be the surprise hit of the Telluride Film Festival, before moving on to Toronto. Reitman took time out of his last day at Telluride to sit down and chat about his film, why it works, and why guys just don't want to grow up.

(NOTE: This interview is a discussion of the film that contains spoilers, so if you don't want to know anything about it before you see it, stop reading now.)

Cinematical: Let's talk about how you found the Juno script to begin with and why you wanted to film it.

Jason Reitman: I was fortunate enough that I had Mason Novack (Diablo's manager) found Diablo, and I knew Mason, and so I had a copy of the script as soon as it came out.

Cinematical: And what did you like about the script? What did Diablo do right?

JR: What she did right was this: She took a very tricky piece of material and made interesting decisions at every turn. Every time a character had a line of dialog, every scene, she made the interesting, unexpected decision. Not the usual decision, but that was not precious, but that was honest and real and sometimes very funny. That's what I liked about Thank You for Smoking. That film turns on the world of cigarettes, and Chris Buckley makes those kinds of unusual, hilarious decisions at every turn. Diablo does the same thing, and she's very good at it.

First-time screenwriter Diablo Cody was the "Cinderella story" of the Telluride Film Festival. A former stripper who got her first break writing a book about her experiences in that line of work, Cody's first script, Juno, made the rounds of Hollywood, got a deal, and then got director Jason Reitman, fresh off his successful feature debut, Thank You for Smoking, hot to make it into a film. Cody took time out of a whirlwind schedule at Telluride to hang out at the gondola station, catch some rays, and talk about her script -- and what it's like being the writer of the film everyone is talking about.

Cinematical: Your film is getting the best buzz I've heard so far at Telluride.

Diablo Cody: It's just amazing. I was surprised, to be invited to this festival. It has a reputation for being a sort of highbrow fest, heavy, a fest for cinephiles. I think people are enjoying it because it's kind of an alternative to the heavier stuff that's being offered. For me to even be here to see all these amazing films is a real privilege. But, yeah, I think that Juno is kind of a lemony palate-cleanser in between all the paralysis and Holocaust stuff.

Cinematical: When I interviewed Jason after Thank You for Smoking, we talked about how he didn't feel comedy was respected enough, especially at film festivals – that comedy can be just as artistic as drama, and he wanted to prove that. It seems Juno is a step in that direction.

DC: I think Jason has a lot to do with that. He's really elevated the material. I know a lot of people feel it was a strong script, which is a great compliment and I'm really happy about that. But to me, Jason just came in and took the script and he really built on the material. Jason and I, we come from very different spaces, I tend to be the one who's, you know, making the joke about the condom making the guy's dick smell like pie. I tend to be a little more ... well, and Jason is a trained filmmaker, and some of his points of reference are more impressive than mine. Well, that's not really what I mean. What I mean is that's good that he and I are different and that we balance each other well.

Now I've seen everything. A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the newly released DVD of Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, an oddball film from 1990 about a small town enthralled with the idea that their favorite daughter, who left the town and went on to become a movie star, was gracing them with a return visit. Now comes Our Very Own, a straight-to-DVD release that's a near ripoff of Roxy, only more crazy. This time it's not a fictional movie star that the entire town is obsessed with, but a real one. Actually, I take that back -- it is a fictional movie star. It's Sondra Locke. Yeah, Sondra Locke, the 70s-era Clint Eastwood companion who appeared in several of his films -- remember the revenge-seeking rape victim from Sudden Impact? -- and whose acting career coincidentally ended at around the same time they broke up. Our Very Own, in a stunning retcon of reality, has its cast of Tennessee townies walk around in a near hypnotic state over the potential arrival of Locke, who we're repeatedly told is a major star.

If the movie were set in 2007 instead of 1978, Melora, the main character, would be the kind of kid who starts a fan site to celebrate her favorite actor. Played by Autumn Reeser, who looks like a young Julie Warner and gives away her non-Southern roots from the start by badly affecting a Reese Witherspoon-style white-trash Tennessee twang, Melora sports a The Heart is a Lonely Hunter poster on her bedroom wall and forestalls sex with her boyfriend so that she can confess her fondest hopes and dreams, which all involve Sondra Locke. "I want to meet her so bad," she says. "I dream about being just like her. [Wow] I don't know what I'll do if I don't get to see her and get to know her. I think she'll really like me!" Her boyfriend makes the mistake of indulging her in this line of thinking, which only brings out more of her fantasizing. "I wonder how she did it ... figured out how to be somebody," Melora muses. "She knew something ... something we don't know yet." Again, wow.

When your directorial debut features an ensemble cast that absolutely knocks it out of the ball park, there's a pretty good chance a host of folks will line up itching to be a part of your follow-up film. Thus is the case with Jason Reitman's Juno, which has just added comeback kid Jason Bateman and Allison Janney to a cast that already includes Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera and the fantastic Ellen Page. Pic reunites Bateman and Cera -- who played father and son on Arrested Development -- though their roles will be slightly different this time around.

Coming-of-age story follows a high school girl named Juno (Page) who discovers she's pregnant after briefly shacking up with her best friend (Cera). Bateman is set to play Garner's "emotionally stunted" husband, and one half of a couple who are interested in adopting the newborn baby. Janney was cast as Juno's stepmother. Though Arrested Development never quite found a large enough audience, that has not stopped Bateman from churning out the big-screen projects; apart from Juno, he also stars in The Ex, The Kingdom, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and Tonight, He Comes. All intriguing projects, but nothing even comes close to his role as Todd Howard in Teen Wolf Too. Which reminds me: Don't you think it's about time for a Teen Wolf Three? Written by stripper-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody, Juno is set to hit theaters at some point this year.

Odds and ends from Tuesday:

• Brittany Robertson has signed up to play Steve Carell's rebellious 15-year-old daughter in the upcoming Dan in Real Life. Pic centers around a widower who writes a parenting column, though things take a turn for the worse when he falls in love with his brother's girlfriend. Man, don't you hate it when that happens?
• Just when you thought it was safe to assume they were done casting the latest big-screen version of Hairspray, yet another actress has thrown her name into the pot. Allison Janney (The West Wing) has been tapped to play Prudy Pingleton, the overbearing mother of Penny (Amanda Bynes). Janney joins a cast that already includes John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken and Michelle Pfeiffer, among others.
• After receiving an angry letter from Martin Scorsese regarding their movie review system (seriously, this guy has nothing better to do with his time?), DirecTV went ahead and hired the legendary director to help re-vamp their service. Scorsese will write a monthly column for the subscription-only On DirecTV. In it, he plans to "offer critiques of overlooked films on DirecTV." I'm not sure what qualifies a film to be "overlooked," but all you DirecTV subscribers are welcome to let us know which films he decides to cover. I'm super curious.