I think that everyone who loves Michael Cera's comedy – and that should be practically everyone – is a little worried about Michael Cera. Because even as Arrested Development becomes legend, Superbad wins over every twentysomething in sight, and Juno charms the pants off the entire nation, the hushed, often unspoken question is: how long can he milk this? Cera's shtick is killer, but it's also ultra-specific – he's the shy, unprepossessing, painfully awkward adolescent, a nice guy who's self-aware enough to get embarrassed but not confident enough to avoid it.

Cera is so good at playing this part in a way that's both touching and hysterical that it's propelled him to stardom. For me to say that I haven't enjoyed any of the incarnations of George Michael Bluth that he's given us over the past couple years would be a bald-faced lie. Indeed, I think the character he's crafted is one of the most impressive comic achievements of my adult lifetime. But even as I relish it, I start to fidget, because I can sense exasperation and annoyance threatening from just around the bend. Oh, maybe not mine – I could watch Cera do this forever, I tell myself – but certainly other people will soon lose patience and turn on the guy. One-trick pony, they'll yell. Do something else.

We've been hearing about a possible 21 Jump Street movie for awhile now, and if Entertainment Weekly is to be believed, it looks like that film might be happening with Apatow love child Jonah Hill, who's in negotiations to work on the screenplay and executive produce. We assume Hill would also star in one of the lead roles, though that probably depends on whether they go the strict comedic route with this. 21 Jump Street, the TV show, was a pretty big hit during the '80s, and it starred Johnny Depp as one of a group of young cops who went undercover in high schools to help troubled kids.

I dig it. Something like this would only work today if it was done with a sense of humor, I think, and so bringing in Hill to sprinkle on some Superbad-ish jokes might work well for the film ... even though all the raunchy stuff would make it a completely different monster, and when it was all said and done, would probably have nothing whatsoever to do with the original TV show (besides the name and the premise). Could you see 21 Jump Street: The Movie working as an Apatow-esque comedy? Does it work better as a drama? And who would you like to see joining Hill as a fellow undercover officer?

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.

Oh man -- I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall again over the weekend (I first saw it at SXSW back in March) and the laughs held up beautifully; it really is a comic treasure, even if it does suffer a bit from the typical Apatow bloat. So this is great news for me: director Nicholas Stoller is reteaming with Judd Apatow for Get Him to the Greek, a comedy starring Sarah Marshall's Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. Hill will play a young insurance adjuster assigned to get a wild rock star (Brand) from London to LA's Greek Theater for a gig. I don't dispense headline exclamation points willy-nilly, so you know I'm excited.

The idea was apparently hatched at a Sarah Marshall table read, where Hill and Brand exhibited a surprising chemistry. They only had a few scenes together in that film, and since I thought Hill's character was generally a weak spot, I spent most of those scenes being mildly annoyed. But I've seen Superbad, so I know that Hill has the funny, and Brand, whom I had never heard of before Sarah Marshall, has some of the movie's biggest laughs. So: more, please.

Stoller will write Get Him to the Greek in addition to getting back in the director's chair. He has some other projects in the works, including Five Year Engagement, which he will direct and co-write with Jason Segel. He's also working with Segel on his planned Muppet movie. And he co-wrote the screenplay for Jim Carrey's Yes Man, due in December. Busy guy; lucky, too.

Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Festival turns 25 this year, but the well-established mecca of merriment isn't afraid to try something new. Organizers announced Tuesday that July's edition will include a brand-new industry conference called Just Comedy, and that in conjunction with it they've named Judd Apatow Comedy Person of the Year.

This will presumably be an annual award given out during the conference, which is aimed at industry types and filled with panels, workshops, etc. (unlike the festival as a whole, which is aimed at regular comedy audiences). Apatow is certainly an industry type, having established himself as the go-to writer, producer, and director for successful comedies. Given that the Just for Laughs folks wanted to establish a "Comedy Person of the Year" award, I don't know who else they could have given it to right now.

Well, we knew it wouldn't be too long before writer/director's Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer tortured us with yet another one of their awful "spoof" movies. And I put the word 'spoof' in quotations because I don't believe they're making spoof films; they're making sh*tty films. It's a whole new genre. Moviehole tells us the two dudes behind such instant microwave classics as Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie will next give us Goodie Two Shoes. Apparently, the "film" will follow "a group of friends who go on a life-changing adventure."

MH tells us the main movie being "spoofed" here is Superbad, which means the "group of friends" in the description will probably resemble Jonah Hill, McLovin,' etc ... I wouldn't even be surprised if they threw in a few cracks at some other Apatow films like Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. What was that? The latter film hasn't even come out yet? Oh, I know -- but that won't stop these boys from spoofing it. In fact, MH says they'll also be going after Will Smith's Hancock, Sex and the City and The Love Guru. WTF? So now we're writing jokes about films that haven't even hit theaters, and won't for a couple months? I can't. I won't. Where's the gun?

Drillbit Taylor, a comedy about three youths who hire a "bodyguard" to protect them from school bullies, may be produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin), but it doesn't really fit into the Apatow filmography of manic modern comedies. It feels like it belongs to a different continuum of film -- the lazy-yet-agreeable teen comedies of the '80s, where a simple hook gets festooned and garlanded with bits of business and digressions. That's not surprising, considering that one of the credited writers is that '80s comedy titan of teen John Hughes, shielded behind a pseudonym. It's not wholly retro -- the off-kilter, lazy charm of Owen Wilson in the lead role feels too modern for that -- but it also feels like a film we've seen many times before in form and flavor, and while it may not be consistently brilliant or laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, it is at the least consistently amusing.

Wade (Nate Hartley) and Ryan (Troy Gentile) are just entering high school; they're eager to move to the next phase of their lives. Wade is slight, bespectacled and intrinsically decent; Ryan is a beefy, big-boned boy, funny and outgoing. (Comparisons to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in Superbad are not undeserved; Superbad co-writer Seth Rogen is credited here alongside Kristofor Brown, working from a story by John Hughes -- here credited as, in a shout-out to English majors nationwide, Edmond Dantes.) They're both looking forward to the opportunities for social re-invention their new environment offers: Ryan tells Wade "I don't want you to call me Ryan; call me T-Dog." But when minuscule, nervy, nerdy classmate Emmit (David Dorfman) is being shoved into a locker, Wade does the ethically right but tactically wrong thing of speaking up, and thereby places himself and Ryan on the radar of snake-eyed sociopathic school bully Filkins (Alex Frost) and his partner-in-thuggery Ronnie (Josh Peck).

If you ask me, it's about time that Michael Douglas got the chance to play with his reputation as a lady killer and, frankly, a bit of a hound. ComingSoon recently got the chance to speak with The Spiderwick Chronicles director Mark Waters and managed to score a little casting scoop for his next project, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. According to their sources, Douglas is in talks to appear in the comedy alongside Matthew McConaughey.

The story centers on "a womanizer (McConaughey) who attends the wedding of his younger brother and bride. There, he's haunted by several old flames, including the bride's best friend. Douglas will play "Uncle Wayne, a '70s playboy, who was his mentor and he wears Bob Evans shades and guides him (McConaughey) around the ghost world". The cast also includes Jennifer Garner as one of McConaughey's exes, Lacy Chabert (Black Christmas) as the bride, as well as Anne Archer and Emma Stone (Superbad).

Originally, the film was set to star Ben Affleck with Betty Thomas directing. The production hit a snag when Disney shut the film down and Affleck walked away from the film. Maybe Affleck just wasn't looking forward to all the conversations at home on the subject of previous girlfriends. McConaughey then rode in to save the day and now the film is back on. Plus, I have to agree with Waters when he says that, "There's something great about Matthew. He has an aspect of him that he can get away with murder with women. He's the kind of guy where women are apologizing to him when he breaks up with them, because he's so charming". Girlfriends Past will start shooting February 19th in Boston and will hit theaters sometime in 2009.

It was a damn fine year for movies, 2007. It's hard enough picking 10 top flicks from the crop after a just-decent year, so the task was especially tricky this time around. (At least at Moviefone we're able to pick the 50 best.) That's why I'm thankful for the unwritten critics' rule that Top 10 lists can start with a tie, so long as there's common thematic bond between them. Here are my 11 10 favorite movies of the 007.

10. Tie: Dan in Real Life / Grace is Gone (Widower Special)
What can I say, I'm a sucker for widowers. Some critics found the loving family in Steve Carell's poignant dramedy Dan unrealistic. I feel sorry for some critics. Plot contrivances aside, it succeeds both in capturing the dynamics of a large clan and telling a helluva love story. In a career-best performance in Grace, John Cusack is a flag-waving father of two whose wife is killed in Iraq. This tear-jerking drama might be misconstrued as a political statement, but finally it's a heartrending tale of human loss.

9. Hot Fuzz
Yes, this hilarious send-up of (tribute to?) Bruckheimer schlock tops Shaun of the Dead, the brilliant debut from Brits Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright. Whereas Shaun's first hour is pure bliss, it loses some steam in the third act. Fuzz gets better as it speeds along, offering up surprises and side-splitters in equal measure. Really, who would've thought anyone would ever pay homage to Bad Boys II?

8. No End in Sight
As you can surmise from the title, this ain't exactly a sunshiney look at the Iraq War. But it's the most thorough, eye-opening detailing of the mega-blunders made the Bush Administration in planning and executing the war to date (so THAT'S where the insurgency came from!), with nary a Michael Moore stunt in sight. Prepared to be educated, maddened.

7. Ratatouille
Like I've been saying it for a while now: The machines at Pixar appear to be challenging themselves more and more with each release: "What DON'T audiences think they'll fall in love with? How about a rat who cooks? Better yet, a French rat!" And of course, after 111 minutes of Pixar magic, most of us left with a newfound respect for rodents. (Reminds me of '91 when I saw Beauty and the Beast; haven't been afraid of beasts since.)

6. Superbad
Forget Knocked Up. Forget Walk Hard. This deliciously raunchy buddy comedy/love story will stand the test of time and prevail as the most influential Apatow movie of '07, defining a generation like Dazed and Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High did before it. Here's hoping Christopher Mintz-Passe (a.k.a. McLovin) will ever be able to convincingly play another character, though I wouldn't mind more McLovin.

Last week I listed my five worst theatrical experiences of 2007. It was a difficult thing to do, because as a former proud and happy employee of the theater industry, and as a huge supporter of going to the movies over home viewing, I hated to showcase cinemas and exhibition formats in a bad light. But how else to encourage improvements in movie going if not by pointing out unsatisfactory experiences? Part of my interest in the theater industry has always been to help make improvements where needed, whether it was back when I worked as a theater manager or now when I merely comment on theater practice and procedure. I not only want people to go to the movies; I want them to enjoy going to the movies as much as possible.

I've gone to a great number of movies over the past year, some of which were free and some of which cost too much, and aside from those five experiences listed last week and a few others that were more affected by minor or nitpicky problems. Otherwise I've had a lot of fun going to the movies in 2007. I've seen old movies on the big screen, new movies as they premiered, I've sat among other critics in comfy yet popcorn-lacking press screenings and most enjoyably I've sat with regular audiences in regular cinemas. It's difficult to pick the best kind of theatrical experience, but it wasn't too hard to pinpoint five specific experiences that stood out in my mind as being the best of my theatrical experience in 2007.

Theatrical Experiences of 2007 Part II: The Best

The Darjeeling Limited at Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, El Cerrito, CA -- 12/26/07

Everyone always tells me I have to experience the famed Alamo Drafthouse(s), but I feel the Speakeasy cinemas are probably just as cool. And until or if I experience better, the Speakeasy in El Cerrito is my new favorite place to see a movie. Unfortunately, it's across the country from where I live. It combines three of my favorite things: great movies, restored old cinemas and beer. Also the owners are delightful, the chairs and couches are comfy, they often show old movies, some of which are free, and the popcorn is delicious. I'd already seen The Darjeeling Limited once, but I think it was a better experience this second time, mainly due to the more chill atmosphere in which it was presented. Most important: I'm not that enthusiastic about major chains charging extra for relaxed, living-room-style viewing with wait service (I will be writing about this problem soon), but when it's only $6, like at the Speakeasy (or 2 for $6, as it is there on Wednesday nights), it's absolutely perfect. I wish I could fly back in two weeks to check out The Maltese Falcon there.