A Wednesday clip show, with Fincher, Pulp and even "Star Wars"

Actually, before we jump right into that, there's an intriguing bit of movie news out there today about a reunion of director Noah Baumbach and Jesse Eisenberg.

If you've never seen "The Squid and the Whale," while not the most uplifting of movies, there are few rentals I can recommend higher. Baumbach's directing debut (I believe) was an autobiographical tale of sorts about the divorce of his parents, played by Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels, with Eisenberg playing a character at least loosely based on Baumbach himself.

It was just a sweet little movie, and of course since then, Eisenberg has gone on to become more than a bit of a star. He'll next be seen in August in the Ruben Fleischer ("Zombieland") comedy "30 Minutes or Less" with veryfunnyman Aziz Ansari, and now comes word this morning that he's set to make another movie with Baumbach.

The movie, titled "While We're Young," is apparently about a Brooklynite 20-something couple who inspire an older, uptight documentarian and his wife to loosen up (according to the always reliable The Playlist, at least). If this all comes together, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts would play the older couple, and Eisenberg and an actress to be named later the younger one.

Sounds like a comedy of manners (or lack thereof) perfect for Baumbach, so here's hoping this all comes together.

And now, because I'm in a bit of a hurry to go swimming before work, let's just jump right into the clips. For about a week or so, a very shaky camera pirated copy of the trailer for David Fincher's thoroughly unnecessary remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" has been circulating on the Internet. Well, Sony apparently finally got fed up, and pulled that copy while replacing it with this spiffy official version.

I have to say, however, that as shiny as it all looks, it seems to be pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the original Swedish movie, which is already pretty sublime entertainment, so what's the point of all this? Daniel Craig may well turn out to be an upgrade as Blomkvist, but in movies, there will always only be one Lisbeth Salander, because Noomi Rapace took over the role so completely. Having been burned once by what Matt Reeves did to one of my favorite movies with "Let Me In," I'm not ready to give in yet and believe there's any reason for this to be happening. Anyways, after that mini-rant, here's the cleaned-up trailer for you to "enjoy."



Next up, HBO has been on a real roll lately with "Treme" and even more so with "Game of Thrones," which really does get better and better as the weeks go by. And very soon (June 26, to be precise), the fourth season of "True Blood" will premiere. Though I'm not terribly enamored with the sometimes extreme liberties the show takes with Charlaine Harris' already very good Sookie Stackhouse novels, the show still remains a fun and funky brew. And now, through it's HBO Go toy and on to You Tube, HBO has leaked the first three minutes or so of the season 4 premiere, with more chunky bits to come before it's all unveiled. Enjoy, and then stick around for the return of Pulp and even pure, unspiffied up "Star Wars."



When I was supposedly in graduate school (but actually just having a blast in Athens, Ga.), Pulp's "Different Class" was easily one of my favorite albums, and it's one that I still listen to fairly often today. Here, performing I'm not sure where, is Pulp reunited, with Jarvis Cocker clearly just as cheeky as ever, performing "Disco 2000," and sounding great. Enjoy.



And finally today, where can you see the original "Star Wars" (now episode IV, I suppose), without any 3-D, extra footage or any other kind of enhancement? Why here, of course. I couldn't think of anything better to brighten up a Wednesday morning, so here, as promised, is the movie in its blissfully low-tech entirety. Enjoy, and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

Yes, there will be a new Wes Anderson movie

After his last two flicks I wasn't completely sure I really wanted this day to come, but it seems there really will be another Wes Anderson movie, and it will indeed be opening the London Film Festival in October, and then supposedly get a very wide release in the U.S. beginning Nov. 13

And to that I can at least conditionally say bring it on, in large part to the new gallery of photos from "Fantastic Mr. Fox" that they've just put up at the movie's official site, which so far has little else on it.

The pictures, however, are well worth a visit, because they reveal an attention to detail, especially in the Fox family home, that compares favorably to - and I know I'm getting my hopes up way too high for what is an animated children's story, albeit a classic one - the Tenenbaum home in "The Royal Tenenbaums," by a nose my favorite Anderson movie.

With George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson and even Jarvis Cocker providing voices, it should at least hopefully be a lot of fun.

And in other good news, I was proven even more wrong than usual when - even after the positive reviews came pouring in - I just couldn't believe that any movie directed by Ben Affleck would be fairly great. Well, anyone who's seen that flick, "Gone Baby Gone," will probably agree that it was one of the best of 2007, and now he's back with a cast that sounds really promising.

Affleck will star in and direct "The Town," based on the novel by Chuck Hogan, and he'll be joined by Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" and, in even better news in my book, Rebecca Hall of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (and, I like to point out, "Starter for 10," just because it's a fun little British teen romantic comedy very few people have seen.)

Affleck is playing a bank robber who becomes smitten with the teller of a bank he held up (Hall, natch), and Hamm is an FBI agent on his trail. The teller, of course, makes the robber want to go straight, but she is also the FBI's golden ticket to catching Boston's most wanted bank robber.

Sounds pretty standard to me, but with that cast, I'm in.

And fans of "How I Met Your Mother" - of which you can still count me one, even if it slipped a bit last season - might be curious to know that Ted himself, Josh Radnor, has apparently directed his first movie.

Radnor also wrote the script for "HappyThankYouMorePlease" (wow is that a bad title), which stars Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, Richard Jenkins (huzzah!) and even Buster Bluth, Tony Hale.

In what sounds a heck of a lot like "HIMYM" itself, the comedy "follows the lives and loves of six New Yorkers not quite ready to embrace adulthood. Sounds awfully meh to me, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

And speaking of "Mad Men," I'll close with an extended Comic-Con clip from AMC's coming update of "The Prisoner," which I had thought was going to premiere directly before or after "Mad Men" finally returns Aug. 16 (the day after I get back from Mexico!)

It now seems AMC's "new" show won't appear until November, but with Sir Ian McKellen as the mysterious interrogator I'm gonna tune in for at least a few episodes, and the nine-minute-or-so clip (I did warn you) actually raises some hope that this might have been a good idea in the first place. And with that, it's off to the salt mine. Peace out.

What's going to happen under "Friday Night Lights"

"The Dark Knight" has, thankfully, knocked the wretched "Spider-Man 3" from the perch of opening-weekend champ with a take of $155 million, but in its shadow another Hayao Miyazaki movie (huzzah!) has also apparently opened in Japan to strong box office numbers.

"Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea," which is about a five-year old boy, Sosuke, and the Princess goldfish, Ponyo, who wants to become human, had scored 83 percent of the first day total of Miyazaki's 2001 megahit "Spirited Away" as of 3 p.m. Saturday. "Spirited" went on to earn $284 million in Japan - an all-time BO record for the Japanese market. Here's hoping "Ponyo" gets an American release very soon, with or without the usual English dubbing that goes with the Western versions of his flicks.

And, in one more bit of movie news before we dive into "Friday Night Lights," it seems that if Wes Anderson ever does manage to make his first animated flick - based on the Roald Dahl work "Fantastic Mr. Fox" - Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame will be doing much of the music (and, just for the record, the IMDB does indeed have a November 2009 release date set for "Mr. Fox.") I like Jarvis Cocker even more than I do slightly twisted movies for kids, and Pulp's "Different Class" is a record I just keep going back to again and again, so that should just be tons of fun.

From here on out, however, I promise it's all about "Friday Night Lights." To find out more than was recently revealed by TV scribe Michael Ausiello, unless you have DirecTV, you'll have to wait until January or so, but here's what we know so far, with some commentary from me. As far as current, hour-long serials go, I'd put "Friday Night Lights" behind only "Battlestar Galactica" and "Mad Men," so here's hoping they don't just completely screw it up before I get to see it again.

Here goes:

* It's already been revealed that Tim Street and Smash Williams will be fazed out in the first four episodes or so (since they're not in high school, after all), but now comes news that Tim Riggins, Tyra Collette, Lyla Garrity and Matt Saracen will all be graduating seniors when the show returns. Is it just me, or wasn't Matt at some point younger than all the others? I would have assumed this makes Landry and Julie seniors too, since I thought they were in the same grade as Saracen, but perhaps not.

* In dishier news, once the new school year starts, Tim and Lyla will once again be a couple, but Tyra and Landry will not. I have a feeling that Tyra and Landry will be together again by the end of the season (if it gets another full run), but it only makes sense that - for now at least - she would break his heart once again (and that cute geek girl that Landry dumped for her - Brea Grant - will be Hiro's new sidekick on the new season of "Heroes," so a hearty huzzah to that!)

* Tami Taylor, played by the simply fantastic Connie Britton, will get a serious boost in pay when she goes from guidance counselor to principal of Dillon High. Doesn't sound terribly realistic to me, but that should still make for some real tension on the Taylor homefront and for some great TV.

* A new hot-shot, freshman quarterback named J.D. McCoy will challenge Saracen for the starting job. I'd imagine that, with so many of the regulars graduating this year, he'll be the first of a big new wave of characters if the show is going to have a life beyond this year. Going in the opposite direction, "Gilmore Girls" veteran Matt Czuchry (Chris, the rival for Lyla's affections) and Benny Ciaramello (Santiago) will not be back.

So there you have it. Even if I do have to wait quite a long time to see this on NBC again, I'm glad to hear that the creators are still putting a lot time into one of my favorite shows.

And we'll close with something that's sure to brighten up even the dreariest of Mondays. The "Watchmen" trailer that preceded "The Dark Knight" was easily the best of the bunch, and even better is this Varga-esque painting of Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter by artist James Jean that turned up on Aintitcool.com. It had the ring of something rather exclusive, but since my love for Carla Gugino knows no bounds, I decided to swipe it anyway and share it here. Peace out.