Well, we have some good news and some bad news to report during this glorious summer weekend. Which do you want first? Since I always pick the bad news first, we'll go with that: Apparently, Quentin Tarantino is having some trouble getting some of his potential Inglorious Bastards cast members to sign on the dotted line. Not only has David Krumholtz dropped out (and replaced by Samm Levine from Freaks and Geeks, so says AICN), but unfortunately the same has happened with Simon Pegg.

Over on his MySpace page, Pegg has told fans that he will no longer be co-starring in the Tarantino WWII flick, but will instead (and here's the good news) reunite with Nick Frost for a film called Paul (first reported wayyy back in September of 2007). This time, however, Edgar Wright will not be behind the camera, as Pegg said Superbad's Greg Mottola has taken over directing duties. Paul will follow two comic book geeks (Pegg and Frost) on some sort of road trip across America. No word yet on who'll be replacing Pegg in Bastards, though I can name more than a few Brits who'd do a bang-up job.

With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).

Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.

It's going to be hard to follow Superbad, but as we've previously learned, Greg Mottola is going to give it a try. He's already working on his third film, Adventureland, which at least has that goofy-cool compound-word title thing going on, just like Superbad. Of course, this seems to be a theme that goes all the way back to Mottola's first feature, The Daytrippers, and so the similarity can't promise that the new movie will be anything like Superbad (not that The Daytrippers was bad; it just wasn't Superbad). Then again, if Mottola really wanted to ride the Superbad train he would have tried to get Adventureland made with Judd Apatow as producer, and he probably would have cast Michael Cera in the lead. Instead, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's got Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), who also has a great awkwardly comic manner but is certainly underrated compared to Cera. Joining Eisenberg are two more people who had nothing to do with Superbad: Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder) and Kristen Stewart (Panic Room).

Eisenberg will star as a college graduate who has to take a job working in an amusement park rather than go on a European vacation (he should have worked at Epcott, which could have been a compromise). Stewart is a tomboy (isn't she always?) co-worker who he falls for. Reynolds' role is a bit confusing. He's apparently an aspiring rock star (too old) who is, and I quote both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety here, "the icon of cool to all the kids working at the park." Does he also work there? Is he playing a concert there? Are all the kids working at the park really that uniform? I'm not sure. Mottola wrote the presumably autobiographical script (it's set in 1987, around the time he would have graduated from college) and The Door in the Floor's Ted Hope and Anne Carey are producing. Adventureland begins shooting next month in Pittsburgh (at Kennywood?).

Just at the CalExpo yesterday, along with Governor Arnie the Barbarian, and I must say that watching a Holstein give birth was far more edifying than a lot of the movies I've seen this summer. One of the exhibits in the home-arts pavilions was a high school electronic class's exercise of retro-engineering an air-conditioner: tearing it apart and showing all the component on a blueprint.

If some of the correspondents I know had seen this, they'd ask "Why do those students hate air conditioners so much? Why couldn't they just let it alone and enjoy it?" That's the point that movie fans sometimes miss about critics: that a really good movie will only be more interesting after it gets pulled apart a little. The best pulling-apart I've seen on Superbad is at Flick Filosopher, mostly because it's a group effort.

Critic MaryAnn Johanson got to host a passel of furious fans after she wrote that she hated it. After her pan, she made the point that Superbad suggests that "the mysteries [of sex] have yet to be solved, or even broached, by anyone involved in making this movie, and must be unbroached by the audience, as well, for maximum enjoyment." In her opinion, then, Rogan, Apatow and the gang failed to pull that matter of male-female attraction apart in the movie, and just stuck with the bad behavior on the surface.

The regular readers of this critic, who is self-described as a Gen-X female New Yorker, were suddenly joined by everyone drawn in from the link in Rotten Tomatoes. There, Johanson's review had been boiled down to a lone quote, to wit: Superbad was proof Hollywood sucked. Well, the film's many defenders came out with every ad-hominem (or I guess ad-wominem) thing they could think of typing. And the back and forth about the film -- whether it was misogynistic, implicitly pro-female or whatever, turned into a much more interesting discussion of the movie than I've seen anywhere. Except, maybe, Richard Corliss's essay about the "bromance" movie of 2007. Perhaps the best comment in this long list of insults, observations and threats, is the putdown of Johanson by someone billed as "mysogynisticSUPERBADfan': "Your opinion means nothing. You write for an internet site." And then he posted it to an internet site ...

There is an old saying in Hollywood about how in many cases, overnight success actually took a heck of a lot longer than overnight. Take director Greg Mottola for example. His most recent film, the mega-hit and super-funny Superbad, ended an almost ten-year dry spell for the filmmaker, whose last feature film was The Day Trippers in 1996. During the intervening years, Mottola worked as a director in TV on shows such as Undeclared and Arrested Development, but that next feature directing gig seemed to elude him.

Fortunately, as it sometimes does, fortune smiled on the director in the form of a phone call from Judd Apatow and the offer to direct Superbad -- and that film's success is sure to lead to more work for Mottola. In fact, it already has. According to Variety, Mottola, coming off the impressive opening weekend for Superbad, has already set up his next directing gig -- the romantic comedy Adventureland, which he also wrote.

Adventureland is set in the summer of 1987, and tells the story of a recent college grad who, instead of going on his dream vacation to Europe, is stuck in a minimum-wage job at an amusement park for the summer. Convinced he's not going to have any fun, he instead ends up making new friends, finding love and gaining valuable life experience. Given Mottola's track record, I'm sure the script and the subsequent movie will be much funnier than that sounds. Casting is now underway for the film, which is expected to begin shooting later this year.

Okay, if we're going to get technical, that title should read "Superbad Expected to Do Super Well," but that just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells is reporting that the Judd Apatow-produced teen geek sex flick, (helmed by Greg Mottola, who's probably sick of everyone talking about Apatow and Seth Rogen's roles in his film by now) should do even better at the box office than original predictions were targeting. Sony, according to Wells, had been projecting about a $25 million weekend take for the film, but it looks like the film is going to hit more like $30 million, maybe even as high as $33 million.

This is pretty interesting -- it would seem that the appeal of the geek guy has not yet run its course, probably because there are a lot more geeky guys out in the real world (and chicks who dig geeky guys) than Hollywood anticipated, even after the success Apatow had with 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Films about your average dorky protagonist are appealing, in part, because real guys like to watch films where guys like them have fun, succeed in life, and get the girl, and real girls like to watch films where the guys are characters they can like and relate to.

Clearly, both sexes also like to watch Jason Bourne kick the crap out of the bad guys, his muscles rippling beneath his shirt (yrrrrrooooww), as Wells also notes that The Bourne Ultimatum (loved it!) is set to exceed the previous two in total box office. (Just as clearly, nobody wants to see Nicole Kidman be body-snatched, as The Invasion is, predictably, tanking -- did anyone really think that one was going to be good?) But while guys might like to fantasize about being Bourne or Bond or a superhero in tights, they know those things are purely in the realm of fantasy, whereas Apatow, et al, show them how real guys can live the life the beautiful people would like us to think is reserved for them.

Long live the geeks!

With The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the upcoming (hilarious) Knocked Up under his belt, writer/director Judd Apatow is now branching out with some new producer credits. (For the record, Apatow has already produced a whole bunch of movies, including The Cable Guy, Anchorman and Talladega Nights.) For the raucous-looking comedy Superbad, Boss Apatow handed the directorial reins over to Greg Mottola (who helmed The Daytrippers in addition to several episodes of Undeclared and Arrested Development) and hired Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (yes, the star of Knocked Up) to pen the screenplay. Got all that? Suffice to say that Judd Apatow has his own little comedy posse -- and it looks like the crew is firing on all cylinders these days.

If Knocked Up is meant for couples old enough to procreate, then Superbad looks like it was made for those obnoxious little brothers who make smoochy gagging sounds every time that couple engages in a kiss. The flick doesn't open until August 17, but if you call yourself a fan of Apatow, Rogen, Jonah Hill or Michael Cera (excellent) then this is a promo clip you'll want to check out -- if you're old enough, that is. You'll have to be "age-verified" before you can enjoy the Superbad trailer, which gives me a sneaking suspicion that the farce will be rated R when it hits the screens. Cool.

Oh, the plot: A pair of co-dependent (and somewhat nerdly) best friends decide to cut loose and go extra crazy on their last night of high school. Not the most elaborate story ever conceived, but with a cast and crew like this, I'm definitely down for the flick.