the daily show Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Above: Rainn Wilson lets his hair down for The Rocker.

Fans of Rainn Wilson's offbeat, hilarious and strangely endearing performance as Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office might expect him to transition into film work with straightforward comedy, and The Rocker confirms that suspicion. However, they might not realize the serious professional motives behind his choice. In the movie, directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Grown Monty), Wilson plays a grown-up dolt named Fish with a scary fixation on classic rock. Abandoned by the band Vesuvius in his teens -- before they became a commercial phenomenon -- Fish spends the next twenty years working deadbeat jobs and wishing things happened differently. Naturally, he gets a second chance: When the opportunity rolls around to drum for his nephew's high school, Fish goes for it. Ageism and slapstick humor ensue.

While not exactly a classic, The Rocker proves Wilson has the charisma to carry a movie. The script could use some polishing, but Wilson manages to play a completely dysfunctional human being without ever becoming an annoyance. It's a testament to his skill as an actor with calculated timing. The humor emerges from the naturalism of his performances, which make you believe in the outlandish characters he portrays. In a conversation with Cinematical recently, Wilson elaborated on his particular strategies as his career advances, reminisced about his days as a New York theater actor, and shed some light on a few upcoming projects.

And you thought Wall-E was political. JibJib, the interactive e-card site founded by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, have returned to the scene that originally brought them fame. The duo first received national notice during the 2004 presidential campaign, when their riotous spoof This Land presented the two candidates (and a variety of secondary players) as rotund heads on animated bodies spouting rhetoric in rhythmic harmony. Since then, the JibJab site has placed more focus on the e-card business, but now it's back to the good old days with Time for Some Campaignin', a jolly tune to set the stage for the Obama/McCain face-off in the weeks to come.

The new video is similar to This Land in that it opts not to spoof either candidate more than the other, instead focusing on the larger campaigning process. It's hard not to laugh at the goofy visuals and smartly composed lyrics (especially those involving the Clintons), but it seems to me that the Spiridellis' work will never attain the degree of insight offered by the satire on The Daily Show (or The New Yorker, for that matter) because of this resolutely non-partisan approach. What do you think?

Well, there has been another bidding war in Hollywood, and another studio gets to emerge victorious. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Warner Bros. have purchased the film rights to Josh Lieb's young adult novel, I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President (and while I'm normally not a huge fan of overly long titles, this one is pretty cute).

The story centers on a chubby and awkward 13-year-old boy with the reputation of being the dumbest student in the seventh grade. What his classmates don't know is that, in fact, the boy is actually an evil genius with one of the largest fortunes on the planet. He's even got an underground lair underneath his suburban split-level. In an attempt to please his do-gooder dad, he comes up with the idea of running for class president.

Ah, YouTube we hardly knew ye. The video upload site grew rapidly into a site big and bad enough to make Google sit up and take notice to the tune of a $1.65 billion buyout last month, largely because YouTube kind of overlooked the whole issue of who actually owned the stuff people were uploading to their site. Hence, users would upload the funniest bits from shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report -- the kind of stuff people actually want to watch -- in addition to the plethora of videos like that fascinating footage of ripping off a nasty fungal-infected toenail, or a banana spider munching a grub (okay, that one was actually kinda cool). Now that Google and its deep pockets are in the game, though, the rules are changing.

After watching one of his fake news anchors jump ship and board an express train to super-stardom, Jon Stewart is making sure no one else loses their virginity without a little involvement on the part of The Daily Show host.

Paramount Pictures has picked up The Donor, with intentions to develop it as a starring vehicle for Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry. The deal came based off a comedy pitch by Stewart, Ben Karlin and Corddry, with Jason Mantzoukas, Brian Huskey and Corddry set to pen the script. Currently, the premise is being kept under wraps though, based on the title, I imagine it will revolve around some sort of donor. Oh, and it will probably be funny. Pic will mark the first feature film project for Stewart's Busboy Productions (The Daily Show, The Colbert Report); he'll be producing alongside Karlin.