What is Casting Couch? Maybe not more casting news than you can shake a stick at, but just enough so that you’ll feel comfortable shaking a stick at it. Today we have news of movie roles for TV stars Allison Williams and Jon Hamm. Get shakin’. Back a few months ago it was looking like Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbender were going to be working together on Jane Got a Gun, but we all saw what happened there. No dice. Those who were hot and bothered by the idea of a Portman/Fassbender pairing need not worry though, because not only will they both be appearing in Terrence Malick’s newest project in some form or another, but they’ll definitely be sharing serious screen time in Justin Kurzel’s new adaptation of Macbeth. Just two days ago we learned that Fassbender would be taking the title role of the stage-to-film adaptation, and now Screen Daily is reporting that Portman has signed on for the role of his scheming, murderous wife, Lady Macbeth. This should give her more of an opportunity to cultivate that creep factor she showed flashes of in Black Swan. Intriguing.

Tonight on Movie New After Dark, you know you’ve made it when you become part of the rumor mill for a distant, not entirely in-production reboot of a superhero franchise. If only I could get my name in the hat for the 2020 reboot of Blankman…

Editor’s note: Apologies on this late post of our most beloved Girls column, as editors Kate Erbland and Rob Hunter have been tied up with equally important endeavors – Kate moved cross country and Rob is eating veggie breakfast tacos at SXSW. It will never happen again. Onward with the embarrassment and sadness! Discomfort and embarrassment were the order of the day in the latest episode of Lena Dunham‘s Girls, the appropriately-titled “On All Fours,” as Hannah continued to spiral downward into her newly-revealed OCD, Marnie shamed every white girl who thought she could sing Kanye West in the middle of a crowded tech party, Shoshanna almost revealed her biggest mistake to Ray, and Adam attempted to live a happy life (emphasis on the “attempted to”). Were you sad last week? Yeah, meet this episode and recalibrate your depression appropriately. After the break, Hunter and I explore Adam’s inability to be happy, Dunham’s major acting step-up, and the worst party in the history of parties.

Things are getting tough in Girlstown. A week after Lena Dunham‘s series had its most controversial/wonderful episode yet, we get plunged back into the darkest depths of life in the big city with “Boys.” Well, as dark as they can get. While Hannah (Dunham) gets an e-book deal (which is a thing now?), seemingly setting the stage for a happy episode, she vomits into the bushes immediately after getting the biggest career boost of her life. How fitting, because it’s all downhill from there, as Marnie (Allison Williams) is forced to confront the real nature of her relationship with the unbelievably-still-around Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone), Jessa (Jemima Kirke) apparently abandons bathing, and Ray (Alex Karpovsky) and Adam (Adam Driver) (yes, you read that pairing right) go on an adventure to Staten Island. You won’t believe how many people cry by this episode’s end – and maybe you will, too. After the break, Rob Hunter and I discuss the most depressing episode of Girls yet, wonder just what the hell an “e-book” is, and envision our own Adam and Ray variety hour.

If you’re like me and have slumped into a mind-numbing semi-sleep for the past five Sundays thanks entirely to the comings and goings of Westeros, then you have probably woken up with a jolt halfway through your Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) dreams to discover yourself staring down the barrel of a gun. And that gun is HBO’s freshman series Girls, a show so fraught with first world problems and entitlement it’s nearly impossible not to experience polarizing feelings. On the one hand, Girls is an engaging slice of life dramedy revolving around the personal and (maybe) professional lives of three recent college graduate lady friends (and one still-in-school cousin). Setting Girls apart from most shows currently broadcasting is creator and head writer Lena Dunham’s dedication to exposing the warts and imperfections of her four post-Sex and the City women while they each navigate the troubling landscape of sex, love, feelings, and career in New York. It’s just that her women, like their HBO godmothers, are living in a New York that doesn’t exist for most city dwellers.

Editor’s note: With Girls premiering on HBO this weekend, we thought one of Kate’s favorites from SXSW was in need of a re-run. This review was originally posted on March 13, as part of our SXSW Film Festival coverage. Multi-hyphenate Lena Dunham has previously hit SXSW with two unique efforts – in 2009, with the debut of her ambitious, lo-fi Creative Nonfiction, and follow-up in 2010 with the controversial Tiny Furniture, which earned the Narrative Feature award in that year’s section. Dunham’s work has proven polarizing – some people admire her self-effacing and very personal brand of filmmaking, while others balk at her navel-gazing style. Returning to SXSW this year, Dunham again brought along a personal project about self-effacing, navel-gazing, shaky-legged twenty-something girls in the big city, but this time Dunham is serving as star/writer/director/producer on a television series, HBO’s Girls, produced with Judd Apatow. And while her previous works might not have the sort of widespread appeal that a television series would require, Dunham’s Girls is wickedly hilarious, quite accessible, and it proves that Dunham’s in-character pronouncement that she could be the voice of her generation is not far off – at all.

Let’s get it out of the way right now – I liked Tiny Furniture. I was not wild about it, and I didn’t hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. I’m in the minority on this one – the middle. Should it have won Best Narrative Feature at SXSW 2010? Perhaps not. Should it already have its own Criterion Collection release? Maybe. But I find Lena Dunham interesting, and there were moments of brilliance in Tiny Furniture, moments that absolutely spoke to twentysomething ladies looking for whatever “real life” happens to be (ladies like, well, me). And perhaps Dunham’s humor and insight and experience is better-suited to the series treatment, a structure that would condense her more twee affectations into shorter bits, and one that would benefit from a larger cast. And so there is Girls – Dunham’s new HBO series, produced by none other than Judd Apatow. Like Tiny Furniture, Girls chronicles the lives of twentysomething ladies trying to find their way in big, bad New York City. Dunham is joined by Jemima Kirke and Allison Williams, and the series centers on the gals and their lives (often funny, sometimes kind of heartbreaking). The series will premiere at this year’s SXSW, with a three-episode screening on March 12 at the Paramount. Check out the full trailer for the series after the break.