You know those mornings when you don't have to be in work until 1 so you sleep a little later than usual and once you wake up you just lay in bed wasting time? Then you find out the director of your favorite movie is going to direct a pilot for HBO. I really love those mornings.

Alexander Payne, who masterminded Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, has signed on to direct the pilot Hung, which revolves around a well-endowed man who is plodding along in middle age as a struggling father and high school coach. The character was once a high school sports legend, and his luck returns when he figures out a way to use his best asset.

Here are the first seven minutes of Speed Racer. I kind of want to see this just for the sheer audacity of how it is put together, thought I'm not sure if I could take the onslaught of colors for two hours. And even though he is just a kid, do you think we could get a little bit of a better performance from the junior Speed Racer?

Directed by Judd Apatow.

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt will star in the Marc Webb-directed romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer.

Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Matthew Gray Gubler and Rachel Boston round out the cast of the film, which centers on a man (Gordon-Levitt) who falls hopelessly in love with a woman (Deschanel) who doesn't believe in love.

The Swedish Hancock trailer. Exactly the same as but with cussing!

Directed by Mr. Madonna, Guy Ritchie.

Its too big, I know, but the player screws up when I adjust its size. I'll just have to do some more posts to move it down on the page.

Its been 10 years to the month that Seinfeld finished its run on television and Newsweek marks the occasion with a debate on whether the show still holds up. It's not much of a debate, really, as even the writer taking the anti- side concedes the show's verbal dexterity and the must-see-ness of its best episodes.

Johah Hill will not be in Transformers 2 after all, according to this.

Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey will star in John Waters' upcoming Christmas movie, Fruitcake. Little is being revealed about the plot, though it is said to center on a boy, named ''Fruitcake,'' who runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are busted for shoplifting food. He meets up with a runaway girl, who was raised by a gay couple and is searching for her birth mother. I am guessing this will be a very straight forward, sobering drama.

Heather Graham, Jennifer Coolidge (For Your Consideration, Joey), Matthew Settle (Gossip Girl), and Amber Heard (The CW's Hidden Palms) are starring in the indie black dramedy Ex-terminators, which will mark the feature directing debut of Scrubs helmer John Inwood. Here is the reason I am posting this story, this plot description. The story is about three women who meet at an anger-management group and decide to form an interesting business together. I mean, wow, could you get a more exciting and less vague log line? I want to see this now, I must know what this interesting business is. I must.

EW has the first look of Oliver Stone's upcoming George Bush biopic, W. It features a pretty extensive article on the history and the fast nearing production of the film and also gives us the first photos of James Brolin and Elizabeth Banks in character.

This ultimately might be what makes me buy a blu-ray player:

Dear Criterion Collection Newsletter subscriber,

We’ve got some exciting news for this fall, and we wanted you to hear it first.

Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.

Here’s what’s in the pipeline:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

Rainn Wilson's new movie The Rocker has gotten itself a trailer that you can check out over here. Weirdly enough, it is directed by the guy who made The Full Monty and honestly looks better than I had expected, if a little over the top at times.

Not really sure why but Tom Cruise now has an official website. In all seriousness though (and is there any other way to be when dealing with Cruise), watching his 25 year retrospective you forget how many really good films he has been in.

The Alamo Drafthouse has posted photos from the Pineapple Express screening on their flickr page. Nothing that exciting but in that second photography you will notice a noticeably handsome arm jutting just into frame, adjusting his rolled up sleeve. I feel like it really makes the photo complete.

James Brolin has gotten on board David O. Russell's Nailed, while Kirstie Alley has also joined the cast of the political romantic comedy. Brolin replaces James Caan, who left the film three weeks ago largely due to a dispute with Russell over the way his politician character should choke on a cookie. Cowritten by Kristin Gore, the movie revolves around a woman (Jessica Biel) who starts up a relationship with a congressman (Jake Gyllenhaal) after she's shot in the head with a nail. Alley will play Biel's aunt, a veterinarian who can't remove the nail and is thus incapable of stopping her niece's uncontrollable behavior.

Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton have joined the cast of Oren Moverman’s The Messenger.

The duo join the already announced Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma), Jena Malone (Into the Wild) and Eamonn Walker (Unbreakable).

This marks Moverman’s directorial debut after writing scripts for (this is where I get exciting about the project) Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There and Ira Sachs’ Married Life.

Common is going to be in the next Terminator movie, the one with Christian Bale in the future blowing shit up. I could write more about this but I really don't care enough about it.

This is apparently concept art of Harvey Dent once he becomes Two Face in The Dark Knight. This fits with Christopher Nolan's direction of reality but I don't know. It almost seems a bit too much. How could anyone live through this? Then again, I should hold my judgment until a final version is released and I can see it in motion.

I thought I had already posted this but I was wrong. A new trailer for The Dark Knight has shown up on the internet. I saw this last week before Iron Man, not much to say other than it looks fantastic and Heath Ledger's performance could be something special.

Collider.com talked to writer/director/producer Adam McKay who says that he and Will Ferrell are definitely planning a sequel to 2004 comedy hit Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

"I'm looking to do another movie, I might do this other movie called 'Channel 3 Billion' which is kind of this science fiction/Brazil type comedy. Then after that, Will and I are like let's do 'Anchorman 2'... so you're talking like 2 years maybe we'll do it. But we're going to do it, for sure," he said.

Pineapple Express

In lieu of an actual review I thought it was a better idea to recap the entire event, hitting on the most interesting aspects as well as the movie. This is going to be a little scatterbrained and stream of consciousness, so I am sorry for that. I originally intended to take notes but then I got caught up in everything and never picked up the pencil again. There will be no cohesive narrative to this story, just my random thoughts and memories from one of the best movie theater going experiences of my life.

We showed up to the Alamo Drafthouse on Lamar an hour early with the parking lot packed and were greeted to a line of about 200-300 people wrapped around the side of the building and around the corner. I had a bad feeling that the night was going to be filled with waiting in lines. It was then we walked into the theater and realized all we had to do was check and and were placed in a line inside, one made up of about 20 people and right next to the bar.

After only about a 10 minute wait we were ushered down the hall and towards the theater. Before we could enter we had to have security guards wave one of those metal detector wands over our body and Emily's bag was checked. My small video camera and her digital camera were discovered at this point and she was made to return them to the car, my plans to film the post film Q & A were dashed.

Entering the theater I was given a free box of popcorn. I was one of the first in so I had pretty much any choice of seats I wanted, outside of the first two rows of stadium seating, which were reserved. I chose four rows up on the left aisle, knowing the theater would be completely full I wanted to avoid any and all chance that I would have to be seated next to a stranger. Pre-show entertainment was already playing on the screen, a variety of hilarious old anti-drug psa's. One featuring Sonny Bono (a clip is embedded below) and another with the message that its okay to have a few drinks after work, it gives you a sense of accomplishment, just don't get high. Also, one of the stranger trailers I have ever seen, from the Peter Fonda film The Trip (also embedded).





As the theater filled to capacity, and then even past that point (folding chairs were brought out to make new rows along the wall and in the front walkway) AICN'S Harry Knowles made his way to the front to to introduce the film. He mentioned that we were the first audience to see the film outside of test screenings and that he received over 7,000 entries for this contest and that we should feel very lucky we were picked to see the film, I did. He then introduced the special guests, David Gordon Green, Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Danny McBride. Nothing much was said at this point, just thanking everyone for coming out to "get drunk, nibble on some food, and watch our crazy movie." Danny McBride added that if David got up and left during the movie, its because he has diarrhea.

I don't want to get into too many specifics about the rest of the movie, seeing as how it won't be released until August. I will just touch upon my initial thoughts and a few random items I noticed.

• The movie starts with a prologue shot in black and white that really has nothing to do with the rest of the story, I sort of love it for that fact. It features Bill Hader and is very funny. It could be cut from the movie and nothing would be missed but I hope they don't.
• Tim Orr shot this, immediately making this the best looking of all the Judd Apatow produced film, even though it is the least interesting visually of David Gordon Green's films.
• I'm not 100% positive but I don't think David Wingo did the score. At least I can't imagine it was him. It's very synth heavy with a number of 80's songs dominating the soundtrack. Though I didn't recognize it in the movie, I noticed during the closing credits that the film features a song by Shaq.
• Huey Lewis' theme song plays over the closing credits.
• The film is very much in the vein of 80's action/comedies like 48 Hours and Midnight Run, just much funnier and crazy. The third act is out of control.
• Don't go into this worried about the plot, it's basically an excuse to watch Seth Rogen and James Franco run around, be funny, and shoot lots of guns. Their is a bit of heart in this, as it's more about friendship than a drug war.
• This is a career changing performance for James Franco, please find more good comedies to put him in.
• David Gordon Green is really good a filming action scenes.
• This features probably the funniest fight scene I have ever seen, with Rogen and Franco doing battle with Danny McBride in his home.
• Before the fight, Danny McBride delivers what may be the best moment of the film, a monologue about his dead cats birthday.
  
• Craig Robinson is very funny in his limited screen time.
• The trailers only hint at the hilarity and craziness this film offers.

The film ended with rapturous applause. Tim League, the owner of the Alamo Drafthouse, went up front to start a contest. They had five people come up to a table in the front and were given a few small supplies, including a miniature pineapple, and they were to race to see who could make the pineapple into, well, essentially a bong. Of course the dreadlocked gentleman won and was given a signed Pineapple Express poster.

Next, Harry Knowles came back up front to re-introduce the guests. They took their seats and the Q & A followed. This is where my note taking should have come in handy but since I had abandoned that at his point, my memory will have to do. Here are a few of the details I remember:

• Seth Rogen dominated the conversation, with the others only receiving a couple of questions each.
  
• The idea for the film came from Judd Apatow who thought it would be funny to make an action film starring two stoners. Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg then just took the idea and put a lot from their lives into the story, such as the drug dealer who always wants to hang out.
  
• Seth Rogen has smoked a lot of weed in his life
• David Gordon Green hopes that this film gives him the opportunity to explore other genres, saying he didn't want to get bored making nothing but dramas.
• James Franco doesn't think much of his early films.
• Most audience members didn't ask relevant questions. With the guests actually skipping over a few to get to the next question.
• Everyone on the set of Knocked Up watched The Foot Fist Way over and over in their trailers.
• Danny McBride and Seth Rogen were both injured in their fight scene.
• There is a real Pineapple Express, its just not what you would expect it to be.

The be honest, I wish the Q & A had gone one longer, I could have watched it all night. Someone from Fantastic Fest filmed the whole thing, so hopefully it will show up online sometime soon. After it was over, the guests made their way to the hallway outside the theater where everyone soon crowded around them. I took a photo of James Franco's back on my phone before making my way to the exit. It was only once I was in the lobby that Emily told me nobody was standing around Danny McBride. I rushed back in to see him standing basically alone on the outskirts of the group. Once he saw Seth Rogen leave, he followed suit. I was about two feet from him and couldn't think of a word to say.

I will definitely be seeing this again once it is released. I need to view it in a normal atmosphere to see if the whole experience clouded my over all judgment of the film, because where it stands now, this is the best film I have seen all year.

This looks more like a video game than a movie.

A new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has shown up at the official site. I saw this play before Iron Man on Thursday and its much better than the original teaser, which I thought was pretty damn good.

Alan Ball's first film since American Beauty (he directs this one also) and his follow up to Six Feet Under, the trailer for Towelhead.

Comedian Demetri Martin (who I only know from his appearance in an episode of Flight of the Conchords, which he was funny in) is in negotiations for the starring role in Ang Lee’s next project, Taking Woodstock.

Martin is best known for his "Trendspotting" segment on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Martin will star as Elliot Tiber, an in-the-closet gay man(Lee had luck the last time his central character was gay) working at his parents' motel in the Catskills, who inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969.

Maggie Gyllenhaal will replace Toni Collette in Sam Mendes' upcoming untitled relationship comedy.

Gyllenhaal will play a bohemian college professor who is an old friend of the character played by John Krasinski.

Collette dropped out of the film due to scheduling delays on the shoot, which recently got under way in Connecticut.

Since Roger Ebert has been out sick his website has been reaching back into his archives to provide random stories written in any number of years. This week they have posted a list of his ten favorite films of all time, written on April 1, 1991. I always find these lists fascinating, it is as follows (posted alphabetically), head over to the story to read why he chose these films.

Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Floating Weeds
Gates of Heaven
La Dolce Vita
Notorious
Raging Bull
The Third Man
28 Up
2001: A Space Odyssey

Iron Man

In terms of superhero movies, this one is just a step below Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2, which I consider to be the crown jewels of the genre. It is a completely respectable B picture with a wonderful central performance by Robert Downey Jr. In fact, his performance was so engaging that I found myself a little bored anytime he was off the screen and cared little for the subplot showing the main villains rise to power.

It really is the cast that makes this movie, even when the action slows down (and to be honest, there isn't a whole lot of action) the actors shine while muttering the most ridiculous of technical gobbledygook. It's good to see on the big screen with the speakers on high, which is what every summer movie should strive for.

On a side note, be sure to stay until the end of the closing credits to see a set up for possibly another superhero film. It's not much but it actually stirred my blood up a bit and the actor who makes the cameo fits with the character perfectly.

Moviehole has a plot and cast breakdown for Clint Eastwood's next, Gran Torino. The official synopsis:

Walt Kowalski is a widower, a grumpy, tough-minded, borderline-hateful, unhappy man who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in cherry condition. Drawn against his will into the lives of the Hmong family that lives next door to him, Walt grows increasingly fond of TAO and his sister SUE, and takes steps to protect them from the gangs that foul his neighborhood with their strutting presence…