Each week, The Exhibitionist comments on the latest news, trends and innovations related to the theater industry, or it discusses long-continuing problems with and complaints against cinemas in general, or it simply relates a specific moviegoing experience of yours truly. But rarely does this column get into the subject of actual movies. Well, seeing as there's not much new in the industry this week, and seeing as I'm fortunately not being dragged to see Sex and the City and therefore have no experience to relate about being a sole male in an auditorium packed with women, I figure this is a perfect time to bring up actual movies. Not just any movies, though: I'm presently only interested in discussing movies about, set in or prominently featuring movie theaters.

The earliest movie that I'm familiar with that significantly involves a theater is Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. The silent comedian plays a projectionist who falls asleep on the job then has a dream in which he literally climbs through the movie screen and into a detective film. A similar idea of breaking the boundary between auditorium and screen is used in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and in John McTiernan's The Last Action Hero, both of which involve a movie character who manages to leave his respective film within the film. But nothing tops Keaton's screen-entering stunt, which utilizes special effects that still astonish more than 80 years later.

One of the scenes in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that people will be talking about over the virtual water cooler next week is the one that involves Jason Segel doing full frontal nudity. Yes, he lets it all hang out, and what's admirable is that he does it purely for the sake of a joke. That takes courage! That takes guts! That takes ... well, you know.

This isn't the first film to use nudity for laughs, of course. Comical naughty bits have a rich history in Hollywood. Here are seven movies with hilarious nudity.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
What's funnier than a naked dude? A naked FAT dude. And what's funnier than a naked fat dude? A naked fat dude wrestling a naked skinny dude in a hotel room, and a hotel hallway, and a hotel elevator, etc., etc.

As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.

The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster (click on the image for a larger version) from the upcoming comedy Superhero Movie -- which claims to be "the greatest superhero movie of all time (not including the others)." As you can see, the poster is in line with those the Scary Movie franchise have churned out over the years -- and I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but get a kick out of Leslie Nielsen's t-shirt: "With great power comes hot bitches." Nice. A spoof of several popular superhero flicks, Superhero Movie revolves around a high school kid named Rick Riker who develops superhuman abilities after being bitten by a genetically altered dragonfly. Thus, he soon becomes The Dragonfly ... and must go on a quest to stop a supervillain called The Hourglass from taking over the world. Of course, look for a whole slew of ridiculous antics in between. Superhero Movie touches down in theaters on March 28, and you can view the trailer over at Moviefone.

For those of you who are already sick to death of all the big-screen TV adaptations, you're not gonna like this latest news. According to an interview over at MoviePictureFilm.com with Shawn Wayans, the guys who brought you Scary Movie, White Chicks and Little Man are gearing up to bring The Munsters back to life up on the big screen. Yup, The Munsters. Ya know, the 1960s television show that starred the late Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster, the father of a family of friendly monsters. Al Lewis played Grandpa? Butch Patrick was young Eddie? Remember? Wayans says, "We're contemporizing it ... something I want to clear up is that we're not going to be in it. We're just writing and producing it. We're going to get some white people and paint them green." Might I start off by suggesting you cast the winners of Cinematical's Halloween costume contest. Different characters, but they certainly have the whole green thing down.

So will the boys go raunchy with their new, updated Munsters look? Wayans says the flick will be PG-13, partly because their R-rated movies weren't making a lot of money; they claim audiences were seeing them, but kids were buying tickets for other movies and sneaking into theirs. Hence, they'd like to lower the rating to allow more people to gain access. And when The Munsters crashes and burns (and it should), they'll probably blame the theater employees for giving away the wrong tickets. And then they'll blame us for "accidentally" going to see the wrong movie. But Wayans, who wanted to make it clear that his family was not at all involved with Scary Movie 3, 4 or the upcoming part crap 5, did get one thing right: That once they left the Scary Movie franchise, things went downhill.

When asked about the spoof sequels, Wayans replied, "Yeah, they sucked. Scary Movie 2 was better than both of them and it wasn't our best one, we know that, we were rushed to do that movie...the studio that was doing them (pauses) ... [interviewer asks, "The Weinsteins?"] ... "Yeah (sighs) that's all I have to say. Don't worry though, we got some more R rated movies coming." In the meantime, Moviehole (who turned us on to this story) claims Sophie Monk has joined Scary Movie 5, and she'll be playing Anna Faris' evil twin sister. Additionally, Hulk Hogan is rumored to be up for a part as well. Oh boy -- The Munsters and Scary Movie 5! If sh*t could talk, I think it would say: "Get ready for one helluva 2008 people!"

I guess David Zucker wasn't satisfied with the quality of the superhero jokes in Jason Friedberg's Epic Movie, so he felt the need to make his own. Variety reports that Dimension films has finalized casting for their spoof flick, Superhero! Dimension had already cast Josh Bell (Drake and Josh), Sara Paxton (Aquamarine), Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars) and Kevin Hart (All About Polly), but the latest additions are comedy vets. Variety reports that Naked Gun icon, Leslie Nielsen, Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: TNG), and Marion Ross (that's right, Mrs. Cunningham herself) have all signed on for unnamed roles.

Back in 2006, while doing press for his other satirical masterpiece, Scary Movie 4, Zucker told JoBlo.com that, "Craig Mazin [SCARY MOVIE 4 writer] has written a script, and it's a...You know, we've identified about a dozen characteristics that are common to all these superhero movies, like Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men...and if you can get those common characteristics, there's a pretty good chance that the audience will share those references and you can poke fun at the cliches. So it's going to be pretty interesting." Mazin has also been signed to direct the film, and David Zucker and Robert K. Weiss will produce. Zucker and Weiss were the team behind Scary Movie 3 and 4, as well as some of the later films in the Naked Gun franchise. So it probably doesn't take much imagination to guess what the film will be about. If you have ever seen a Scary Movie, then you just switch the low-brow gags to a man in tights rather than wielding an ax. Superhero! is set for release on March 28th, 2008.

Hopefully we'll never again have to see Marlon Wayans' face on the body of a little person, or covered by a white-girl mask. If he and his brothers (Shawn and Keenan Ivory) want another franchise (they are still going with the Scary Movie series), they could possibly make one out of their next project. The Wayanses are turning their comic book Super Bad James Dynomite into a live-action feature film for Rogue Pictures with Marlon starring as the title role. Dynomite is a 1970s blaxploitation-era detective -- ala Shaft and Dolemite (which is apparently being remade) -- who has been in prison for the past 35 years, or so. When he's released in the present, he retains his 70s look, complete with exaggerated afro, and sets off to find the criminal who framed him.

The comic is full of adult material, so turning it into a franchise wouldn't be as easy as it has been for superhero titles. The Wayans brothers aren't reported as being interested in sequels, but I'm sure Rogue would love a franchise if the guys were down and if the first movie does good business. Of course, there are a few reasons why the movie might not be too successful. The most important of these reasons is that blaxploitation doesn't need another homage. Between the Shaft remake, Jackie Brown and the spy comedy Undercover Brother, we've seen enough tributes to and jokes on the genre recently to last us another 35 years. Plus, the Wayanses already covered the territory with the blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. The bottom line, though, is that the original films are just too enjoyable by themselves to require any kind of hindsight rehash. If Dynomite is only a single shot film, Rogue should be fine. The studio also just bought another script from Marlon and Shawn, which was co-written by Xavier Cook and Mitchell Marchand (The Wayans Bros. television series).

I guess it is fair that people in the U.K. will get to see Hot Fuzz beginning Wednesday -- usually the Brits have to wait a few months behind us for new Hollywood releases. But being fair doesn't make me wish it weren't true. I am really, really looking forward to this movie, as are many of us. It doesn't help that I keep getting teased by more and more promotional materials. Now, Empire has a new internet-only trailer up. I don't want to spoil the trailer for you, but I will say that the trailer won't spoil the movie for you. And yet it tells you all you need to know about the film. Here's what you need to know about the trailer, though: it was personally edited by Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright and it was scored by Robert Rodriguez (surprising, I know).

The only thing I'm getting worried about now is that the movie is being sold as -- and will actually be -- too much of a parody film. Shaun of the Dead was a comedic zombie movie more than a spoof of zombie movies, and I'd hope that Hot Fuzz could work more on its own than being an action counterpart to Scary Movie and others -- not that I could imagine it would be that humorless. The latest review, from the BBC, claims it isn't as good as Shaun but that it is hilarious and worth seeing more than once (it gets 4 stars, too). If your boyfriend or girlfriend loves Shaun of the Dead, spend the money and fly the two of you to England on Valentine's Day. Otherwise, try to wait with me until April 13.

Here's a question for Anna Faris, one I'm sure has been frequently asked: Why do you continue to make such crappy movies? I completely understand using the original Scary Movie as a launching pad to bigger and better things, but then how do you justify Scary Movie 2, 3, 4 and 5? (Oh yes, they are making a part five. Now, that's scary.) Granted, she was decent in Just Friends, albeit a bit over-the-top, but if she remains on this course, Faris will turn into another Amy Smart -- just some blonde girl who looks sort of familiar, but never really stands out.

For her next role, Faris will be traveling across the pond, as well as through time, in the sci-fi comedy Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. She'll be joined by three up-and-coming British comic actors; Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd), Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless) and Marc Wootton (Confetti). Pic, which was written by Jamie Mathieson, revolves around two geeks and their cynical friend who "attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum in the middle of a British pub." Wait, a British comedy that takes place in a British pub? Get out! Faris plays some girl who arrives from the future (hot off a stint in Scary Movie 12?) to help these boys along on their adventure. Gareth Carrivick will begin directing this epic next week in the UK.

Are you among the 14 people who actually paid money to see Date Movie? If so, at any point during that movie did you find yourself thinking "Wow, I really hope someone gives these filmmakers money to make another spoof movie!!"? Well, if so then you're an idiot. Because someone did. And now we have something to look forward to called Epic Movie.

Based on this retina-demolishing trailer, Epic Movie looks to be yet another endless collection of movie-related sketch comedy bits. Yeah, just like Date Movie, all four Scary Movie movies, and every Leslie Nielsen "comedy" post-1981. To be fair, writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer spent a good deal of time on their Date Movie audio commentary apologizing for the lame jokes and atrocious filmmaking ... so let's just see if the guys tried a little harder this time out. Sad to say that based solely on the trailer, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Epic Movie performers include Kal Penn, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge and Crispin Glover as Willy Wonka. Limp-ass parody bits that'd get booed off the stage on free beer open-mike night include swipes at X-Men, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane ... Borat, and ... um, Paris Hilton. Witty, timely and truly "epic" stuff there, fellas. I can barely wait to see what Friedberg & Seltzer have cooked up for January 2008. After Scary Movie, Date Movie and Epic Movie, I can only assume the next one will be called Crap Movie.

For those who'd like to know when they should avoid the local multiplex as if it were infected with Insta-Deth Ebola, I'll tell you this: Epic Movie opens on January 27th. And if the thing's even half as wretched as the trailer (or, god help us, Date Movie), I think I may pen a strongly-worded letter to Fox and ask where I can get some of whatever they're obviously taking.