Movie Make-out

Surprisingly enough, Humboldt County is not another stoner comedy — it’s a drama, and it looks like a surprisingly smart and affecting one, at that.

Peter Hadley (Jeremy Strong) — a promising yet disillusioned medical student failed by his professor (Peter Bogdanovich) — stumbles upon a remote community of counterculture marijuana farmers [in Humboldt County, naturally] and a warmly embracing, yet eccentric family played by Frances Conroy, Fairuza Balk, Chris Messina, Brad Dourif, and newcomer Madison Davenport. From directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, who also co-wrote the screenplay, Humboldt County is a story of the human soul in search of happiness, and the unexpected places we can sometimes call home.

You can see the trailer in high def over at Apple. Humboldt County hits theaters on September 26.

Anybody know the name of the song in the trailer? It sounds a bit like Aimee Mann.

My friend Tori Morris is a huge fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, but she’s definitely one who has her head screwed on straight, as you can see in the blisteringly honest reviews/critiques of Sorkin’s last TV effort “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” that she wrote for Sequential Tart. So when she recently said that she admitted to Sorkin directly on Facebook that she’d talked smack about him, I took it for her making a silly joke and moved on.

Until… (Source: Variety)

Columbia Pictures will be financing the currently unnamed film, Scott Rudin (There Will Be Blood) will be its producer, and both parties were surprised when Sorkin actually went and created a Facebook profile and his own group — and no, you cannot add him directly as a friend, believemeItried — in order to do research. From the synopsis in the Variety story, it sounds like Sorkin’s filming a documentary about how Facebook got started; from my scans of the earliest posts where Sorkin was actually responding to comments, he’s disappointed that everyone’s been so nice to him so far. The prevailing theory is that unless you’ve created a fake first name and surname for your Facebook profile — or use your first name and middle name like I do to protect my family’s privacy — everything you say can be held accountable to you, and that prevents many people from adhering to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

20th Century Fox announced on Wednesday that it is moving the U.S. release of its epic period romance Australia — starring Aussie celebs Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman as lovers in the Outback, pre-World War II — to November 26 with the world-wide premiere in Australia also moving back from their previously scheduled slots around November 14. (Source: Variety)

I’m not an industry insider, but since the new Bond film moved to that date, Fox probably decided it was in their best interest to get the heck of out James Bond’s way. This, on top of the the other previously announced release date changes has probably made a mess of your November movie viewing plans, so I’ve handily summarized the changes for you here:

November 14: Quantum of Solace
November 21: Bolt, Twilight
November 26: Australia

Any questions?

Michael Pinto mostly blogs about anime and geek culture, but he keeps another, separate blog about being a vegetarian nerd in the hipster capital of NYC, Williamsburg in Brooklyn. A recent post of his has me very curious, since it looks like it’s for a major production because only for a major production would someone go to the trouble of exterior set decoration.

My Google-fu (and NYC’s very helpful “Please shoot your movie and spend money in our city!” site) has told me that it’s not the comedy called City Island, and that’s thanks to director Raymond De Filitta’s blog about that film’s production. I’ve bookmarked it to read and pour over later, mostly based on the fact that there’s tons of behind-the-scenes clips that he uploaded to YouTube.

It’s not Entre Nos either, and that’s based on the fact that the indie movie is set in Queens, and if Queens residents ever got wind of the fact that Brooklyn was going to be their stand-in, there’d be some trouble somewhere… It, too, has a blog that I’m probably going to check out.

The Exploding Girl doesn’t have a blog and doesn’t have a page on the IMDB, which makes me wonder if it’s either too small to be the movie in question or a pseudonym for some other bigger movie.

It’s not Revolutionary Road because that movie takes place in the suburbs of 1950s Connecticut. Reading about that film, btw, makes me curious enough to consider watching it because not only does it star Leonardo diCaprio as a father (yes, he’s old enough to do that now) his co-star is Kate Winslet, and it’s the first movie they’ve made together since Titanic. I’m not a huge Leo fan, but I have always respected his acting choices.

Which leaves us with The Tested, and I think this one might be the winner. The synopsis on the IMDB site is flimsy and kinda makes it sound like the other, larger production film that was filming in Brooklyn, but that will all change once more details appear.

Of course, there’s only one way to be sure of which film’s shooting and that’s for me to go to Williamsburg today to grill some crew members…

UPDATE: Possible false alarm, as NYC real estate blog Curbed thinks it’s for TV series “Life on Mars.” This post isn’t a complete wash, though, because now I have two new interesting production blogs to read! - TL

Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, and Willie Nelson star in this surfer-stoner comedy that’s managed to slip past my radar until now. I can’t tell if it’s just the shitty video quality, but it looks pretty low-budget. Maybe they paid the cast with weed?

Whatever. The trailer has boobs and buds. If Pineapple Express harshed your mellow, you’ll probably want to check this one out. Surfer, Dude hits theaters on September 12. NGTV.com has a bigger version of the trailer and some clips.

UPDATE: However, if you happen to be living in Austin, Texas, you can catch the movie’s red carpet premiere on September 5, or if you’re a member pay some bucks to mingle with McConaughey and writer/director S.R. Bindler at a fund raiser for the Austin Film Society on September 3. - TL