"The Office" gets its new boss

First things first, the rather intense photo above is of John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe in James McTeigue's (let's go with "V for Vendetta" rather than "Ninja Assassin") thriller "The Raven," set to come out March 9. In the flick, Poe joins forces with a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans) to hunt down a mad serial killer who’s using Poe’s own works as the basis for a string of brutal murders. Should be pretty darn fun, and it seems like forever since I've seen Cusack in anything.

It would certainly be better if that were actually filmed in the great city of Baltimore rather than in Serbia, but oh well. Moving on, there certainly are more important and sometimes indeed more disappointing things in life than TV, but there really wasn't anything more disappointing in last season's finales than the dud that was delivered by "The Office."

With each potentially very funny guest star getting at most two minutes to work with almost universally blah material, it was much more like a pilot looking for its funny rather than a well-established show making an essential transition. Now, however, it seems they've at least picked the guest who made the most of his time, James Spader's Robert California, to be the new boss.

The thrall he has over Jim, Dwight and others should make for a big dose of fun on a show that's sorely in need of it, but Spader's character apparently has bigger plans than taking over Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch. According to Entertainment Weekly, he'll soon move on up to replace Kathy Bates as CEO of parent company Sabre, leaving another void to fill.

And, according to EW, the favorite to replace him then would be my favorite candidate going into the finale, "Doctor Who" vet Catherine Tate (who also appeared in the charming little British romantic comedy "Starter for 10" - rent that one if you can find it.) Combined, these two developments should bring some new life back into a show which, in my opinion, has fallen to the bottom of NBC's Thursday night comedy lineup, with them being, in my order, "Parks and Recreation," "Community," "30 Rock" and then "The Office."

For a taste of what Spader could bring to "The Office," here, courtesy of Hulu, is the first half of last season's finale with, unfortunately, way too many commercials. Enjoy, and then stick around for word about a fun new project for "Office" funnyman Ed Helms.



"The Office" star Ed Helms has the distinction of starring in one of my favorite comedies of the year in "Cedar Rapids," but also easily the worst I've seen, "The Hangover Part II." and now comes word of a new pitch that could be a lot of fun.

The project pitched by writer-director Rob Pearlstein will be titled "True North," and it's set to star Helms as a high-powered, workaholic talk show host and father who slips into a two-year coma after suffering through a horrific plane crash. Upon emerging from the coma, the once-debonair man finds that he has undergone reconstructive facial surgery and looks nothing like his former self. He then must track down his family and reconnect with his former life.

Sounds like pretty deep stuff for a comedy, so stay tuned for more on this whenever I can find it.

And to close, bringing things back to TV, "True Blood" returns to HBO this Sunday, and for the premiere episode it will be bringing along a fairly groovy new tune by Neko Case and Nick Cave. Actually, it's just a cover of the Zombies' "She's Not There," but it still sounds great. Enjoy this audio-only clip, and if you like to laugh, go see Jake Kasdan's "Bad Teacher," which for raunchy fun is a whole lot better than most critics make it out to be. Peace out.

Nick Cave, Shane McGowan and ... yes ... Johnny Depp "Put A Spell on You"

Although there's certainly no way this will raise more money for Haiti than the new "We Are the World" confab, I'm just as sure the folks who turned out for that didn't have nearly as much fun as these guys (and gal) did.

Now, when you're talking about a party convened by drunkard's saint Shane MacGowan, things could have certainly gone South very quickly. As you'll see from the video below, his view-askew all-star gathering of sorts to croon Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" actually turned out something remarkably listenable - and even bordering on good.

As you'll see, the vocals are handled by sometime Pogue MacGowan, Nick Cave, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, and if you stick around to the end, you'll find none other Johnny Depp contributes a passable guitar solo too.

And all this madness is meant to benefit the Dublin-based charity World Concern as it works to help rebuild Haiti, so if you like the song, consider buying it when it goes on sale later this month.

The three craziest rumors you'll hear ... well ... at least today

With a post like this, there's really no better place than to start with Quentin Tarantino, who, if he followed through on everything he mentioned in the media, would have one whale of a great movie canon by now (the one he really has is, of course, pretty darn good as it is.)

This appeared in a New York Daily News item titled "Brad Pitt doesn't smoke pot while acting; I don't smoke pot while directing," so certainly take it with more than a few grains of salt. Even if that headline is true (which I kinda doubt), I'd still have to believe he at least smokes up a bit when he comes up with his movie ideas, like this one he let slip in the Daily News piece:

"I'd like to do a Western. But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let's shine that light on ourselves. You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it 'A Southern.'"

Now, he's mentioned making a movie about slavery before, but now that he's made World War II into some kind of crazy revenge fantasy about killing Hitler with "Inglourious Basterds" (and even managed to make it into my single favorite movie of 2009), I'd imagine anything's possible, so we'd better take even his craziest ideas a little seriously. A "Southern" that makes slavery "exciting"? I don't doubt he can do this, but whether he actually does or not ... stay tuned.

OK, these are actually coming in order of how much I'd like to see them happen, and just behind QT's madness comes a potentially fantastic collaboration between Nick Cave and Andy Serkis.

While on tour plugging his Ian Dury biopic "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" (yes, I'll watch that, please), Serkis let slip that he's planning a motion-capture movie version of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera." Even better, Nick Cave is writing the screenplay with him, and will presumably have a big part in the music too.

The piece, which seems tailormade to Cave's rather odd brain, is based on "The Beggar's Opera," which tells the story of the sociopathic criminal Macheath, who marries the daughter of Mr. Peachum, who controls all the beggars in London. Peachum opposes the match and conspires to have Macheath hanged.

This has, of course, already been made into a movie once - as the simply dreadful "Mack the Knife" - so it's screaming out for a version that people can actually sit through without visibly cringing. Details to come if this actually all comes together, but for now, enjoy this rather sublime clip of Cave performing the song "Mack the Knife."



OK, with that, the goodwill ends, because the next two items fill me with nothing but bile (I did warn you.) It seems that Lars Von Trier, who I've never much cared for (his sole mission seems to be "shock" people into complete boredom, but I concede it's entirely possible I simply just don't get his flicks), ran into Martin Scorsese at the Berlin Film Festival and, perhaps drunk, crazy or both, has challenged the old man to something of a cinematic fist fight.

The story is more than a little odd, so bear with me. According to the Danish mag Echo, he has apparently "challenged" Scorsese to remake "Taxi Driver" (pause a minute or so and let that sink in), with Robert De Niro but also with several "obstacles" thrown in to make things "interesting," as Von Trier apparently did to fellow Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth in his 2003 doco "Obstructions."

The idea of remaking "Taxi Driver" under any conditions would, I certainly at least hope, just make Scorsese laugh in Von Trier's face, but can you imagine this old dude jumping through all kinds of hurdles just to turn his signature movie into some kind of game? It's ludicrous to the point that it could actually be kind of fun if it were ever actually to happen, but even if I still were a betting man, I wouldn't touch this one with even the longest of odds.

Scorsese, however, apparently isn't immune to incredibly bad ideas. It's fairly certain now that his next movie will be "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," and since I've read that children's book (I read quite a few of those, actually), that makes me nothing but giddy. It's a magical tale about a young boy in Paris who lives in the wall of a train station, where he tends to the clocks, doing the work supposedly performed by his drunken uncle. In the course of the story he eventually encounters Georges Melies and his wild automatons, and it just gets better and better from there.

So, what could possibly be the bad in this? Well, also while in Berlin, Scorsese let it slip that this will be shot in 3D, because, well, I guess everything has to be that way now. Sheesh. Can't I just go to a movie without putting on a second set of glasses? Apparently not, but that's really all I have to say about that potential disaster, because I have to get ready for the job that somehow still pays me enough to keep the lights turned on. I'll leave you with this new teaser trailer for "Despicable Me," which at least looks like it will at least be a lot of fun when it drops this summer. Enjoy, and have a perfectly bearable Tuesday. Peace out.

Mel Gibson is clearly just an angry old man

Actually, I doubt anyone had any real doubts about that already, but the video proof is still worth watching simply to see just how little he's changed in the last five years or so.

But, before we get into any of that, there are at least a few other things out there that caught my eye, so here goes.

The two funniest people in Judd Apatow's "Funny People" were very easily Aziz Ansari and the RZA (and the latter's "my n****" joke about Michael Richards made me laugh out very loud.) And though he got scant on-screen time in that flick, Ansari went to great lengths to become his character, Randy, who tells dick jokes with such glee that they seem much funnier than they are. I'm really not describing that anywhere near as funny as it is, so here's a clip of him doing standup in character (and please, be warned, along with being extremely crude and juvenile, this is also certainly nothing you want to watch at work without headphones.)



Like I said, the character and the delivery are a lot funnier than the jokes themselves, but if you were to make a movie about Randy, I'd certainly watch that, and I'm apparently not the only one. Here, according to Mr. Ansari himself, is what Quentin Tarantino had to say about it:

Yeah! That was one of the coolest things. I was at some party and he showed up and yelled “RAAAAAAAANDY!” I couldn’t believe it. I talked to him for a bit about it. One of the three movies we’re doing with Judd is a Randy movie; we’re not sure what order we’ll do them in. People on the Internet were like, “a Randy movie would be terrible!” How do you know? You think we just said “Randy movie” and didn’t think about it at all? But Quentin Tarantino was like, “Man, a Randy movie, I would love to see that!” So I just want to send a mass e-mail to all those Internet people who thought a Randy movie would be terrible: “You know who thinks it would be a great idea? Quentin Tarantino.”

Actually, I wasn't aware of any Internet attention to this at all beyond my bizarre fixation on it, but I certainly think it's a great idea too. But what are those other two movies he's talking about? Well, they are apparently something called "Let's Do This," a road movie about guys working at a motivational-speaking company, and an "untitled astronaut movie" about "two disgraced astronauts who have to go back to space to clear their names," according to The Playlist.

No idea when or if any of these three would actually happen, but Aziz Ansari is one seriously funny guy (new "Parks and Recreation" tonight, huzzah!), so hopefully at least one of them gets going very soon.

OK, enough about that. Before we get to the main Mel event, I have a couple of other nuggets.

"Scrubs" has been so bad in what must be its 18th season that I have finally stopped watching, but I'll tune in to at least a few episodes of just about anything with Sarah Chalke in it, especially something that sounds this promising.

Chalke, who had a great guest run recently on "How I Met Your Mother," has signed on to star in a new ABC comedy "The Freshmen" from HIMYM executive producer Greg Malins and Arianna Huffington (yes, that Arianna Huffington.) The show will center on the friendship of three freshmen members of Congress - two men and a woman, Chalke - who live together in D.C.

A comedy about Congress, the most unpopular group in the country? An odd idea, but I'm still betting this will be funny whenever it hits the air.

And finally, before we get to Mel, anything people want to do to help the people of Haiti is great, but few things sound more fun than what Shane MacGowan has cooked up.

In what could I guess be described as a "We Are the Rest of the World" kind of thing, the Pogues leader has recruited Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, Chrissie Hynde, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, Mick Jones of the Clash, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols and others to record a version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins "You Put a Spell on Me," with all proceeds going to Haiti relief.

I wish I could say I had a sample of it to share, but it hasn't been released yet. I do know that I'll certainly buy this when it's released later this month, both for the cause and because that much alcohol and debauchery in one room has to lead to something at least comically amazing.

And, speaking of alcohol, we're finally back to Mel Gibson. And before you play this, if you haven't seen it yet, please know that I enjoyed "Edge of Darkness" quite a bit. That, however, has nothing at all to do with the man, and if you play this interview with Chicago TV host Dean Richards until the very end (it's only 90 seconds or so long), you'll see that in terms of muzzling himself or not revealing his own inner a**hole, Gibson has learned absolutely nothing since his drunken tirade about Jews from a few years back. Enjoy, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.