What is Casting Couch? It’s one stop shopping when it comes to casting news. It’s even better than shopping though, because it’s free. Today you can pay no money to find out what Olivia Wilde and Mark Duplass are teaming up on, as well as what Bill Hader’s first post-SNL gig might be. It looks like David Gordon Green’s turn back toward directing more dramatic movies again is starting to stick. THR is reporting that his next project is going to be a drama called Mangelhorn that’s about an eccentric man who’s trying to come to terms with the fact that a past crime has cost him the love of his life. More than that though, Mangelhorn is a drama that’s going to be employing one of the most celebrated dramatic actors of all time, because the trade’s report also says that Al Pacino has been attached to the lead role. Hopefully this will wash the taste of Dunkaccino and Your Highness out of all our mouths.

Yes, that headline comes with a caveat. While fans of David Gordon Green‘s early work have bristled at his turn into more mainstream comedies (count me as one of those bristlers), the filmmaker has never denied that said comedies (like Your Highness and The Sitter) are more in line with his personal tastes and preferences. So, no, while Green might be “returning to form” after his comedic outings, that form is really the one we made for him. Let’s not fence Green in. But let’s also not try to hide our glee when he starts work on the type of film that sounds like it will fit in quite neatly next to Undertow and All the Real Girls. That possible next film? Manglehorn. What’s a “manglehorn”? Only a love story with a dark twist that could star Al Pacino. Not too shabby, eh?

Filmmaker David Gordon Green (thankfully) shied away from his recent spat of studio comedies (like the wonderful Pineapple Express and the dismal The Sitter) for his latest feature, a lo-fi affair starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch that’s based on, of all things, an Icelandic comedy titled Either Way. It does not get more lo-fi than that. The film centers on a pair of highway repairmen who are stuck spending the summer, well, repairing highway and hanging out with each other – so it’s too bad that they don’t like each other so much. Straight-laced Alvin (Rudd) is more concerned with doing his work and relaxing in the woods, while oddball Lance (Hirsch) is interested in…well, slightly different pursuits. It’s a bit more complicated than that, as the two also have a personal link that guarantees that even surviving the summer together doesn’t spell the end of their relationship, but Prince Avalanche certainly looks an unexpectedly amusing slice of life. Let’s do some highway repair with Rudd and Hirsch after the break.

There are two David Gordon Greens. But this is news to no one, so I won’t bother breaking down the differences between the Green who directed the bleak, dramatic and emotionally oppressive Snow Angels and the one who made The Sitter, but let’s all just acknowledge the massive rift in quality, character and narrative and move forward from there. His first move away from serious dramas, Pineapple Express, was surprisingly funny and exciting, and Your Highness was a highly inconsistent mix of chuckles and misfires, but by the time The Sitter hit theaters in 2011, even his most ardent and highest supporters were silently slinking away. Hopefully they booked a return trip, though, as Green’s latest film, Prince Avalanche, is one of his best and manages a fantastic blend of big laughs and affecting characters with an honest look at an unlikely friendship between two very different men.

While the 2013 Sundance Film Festival is in full swing this weekend, we thought it would be fun to look back a decade and remember the best films of the 2003 event. The award winners that year include American Splendor, Capturing the Friedmans, All the Real Girls, My Flesh and Blood, The Station Agent, Stevie, Thirteen, A Certain Death and Whale Rider. And other major movies premiering at the fest include The Cooler, The Shape of Things, Tupac: Resurrection, Pieces of April, The Weather Underground, Northfork and the Bob Dylan disaster Masked and Anonymous. The U.S. also got its first look at 28 Days Later, In America, Bus 174, Bend It Like Beckham, Laurel Canyon, The Secret Lives of Dentists and Irreversible. To commemorate such a great Sundance (which spotlighted some filmmakers returning this year, like David Gordon Green and Michael Polish), we’re spotlighting some of our favorite scenes from some of the movies listed above. Not all have quality clips online, though, and it would be too much to include bits from all those works we love from the 2003 program, so feel free to add your own favorite moment in the comments below.

In news that’s so bizarrely in line with two of my greatest cultural interests that it’s frankly eerie, Deadline Hollywood reports that Sony Pictures is currently in negotiations to launch a new Little House On The Prairie feature film that would be helmed by David Gordon Green. The outlet reports that the deal is not done yet, but that it’s currently being working towards. Which is awesome, because Little House On The Prairie is awesome and Laura Ingalls Wilder is so, so awesome that she ranks as both my first female heroine of literature and my favorite female heroine of literature. If you’re not familiar with the Ingalls family –well, first of all, what’s wrong with you? Second of all, they are wonderful. Wilder penned eight books about her life growing up in the 19th century American West, a series that was published between the years of 1932 and 1943. Wilder’s life was rich and fascinating, particularly because she and her family moved so extensively around the burgeoning states, first in Wisconsin and on to Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Missouri, and their trials and tribulations and successes serve as a wonderful microcosm of life during that time period. If there was something to be experienced in the 19th century, the Ingallses experienced it. The Little House books are truly enduring literature.

File this one under “things we never knew wanted to happen, but thank God they are,” as THR reports that David Gordon Green will direct Nicolas Cage in Gary Hawkins‘ adaptation of Larry Brown‘s novel, Joe. Cage will star as the eponymous Joe, “an ex-con who becomes the unlikeliest of role models to 15-year-old Gary Jones, the oldest child of a homeless family ruled by a drunk, worthless father. Together they try to find a path to redemption and the hope for a better life in the rugged, dirty world of small town Mississippi.” The “gritty” Southern tale sounds like a return to form for the director, who started his career with such similiarly gritty films like George Washington and Undertow before making the move to more mainstream comedic fare like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter. If this signals a sea change or a happy medium for the filmmaker, we’ll gladly take it (we couldn’t take another Sitter, to be honest).

Five years ago, it looked as if Robert Zemeckis‘ interests as a technologically forward-thinking filmmaker would just lead him to the continued creation of terrifying motion captured animated films that pose as being “family-friendly” while actually being nightmare-inducing. If Zemeckis’ new bag is just doing live action films that contain the word “flight” in their titles, I’d say that’s a vast improvement over the former. Now THR reports (via ComingSoon) that Zemeckis will help Fox develop their Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw, a true crime drama about the exploits of the teen “Barefoot Bandit,” cult hero and criminal Colton Harris-Moore. Filmmaker David Gordon Green was originally developing the project, but my favorite director who continues to break my heart with every subsequent project has “turned his attentions” to his remake of Suspiria (which, incidentally, will begin shooting next month). Zemeckis has not yet signed on to direct, but is working on this as a “potential directing vehicle.”

We learned not too long ago that David Gordon Green has made a movie that’s so low budget and has so much indie cred, nobody even heard about it until it was already finished shooting. It’s called Prince Avalanche, it stars Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as a couple of road workers painting the lines on isolated and little used roads, and it’s a remake of a 2011 Icelandic film called Either Way. Since most everyone is in agreement that the David Gordon Green who makes small, experimental films is the best David Gordon Green there is, said news was generally accepted as being good news. But things get even better. Now there’s word that this new film will be bringing back memories of Green’s earlier, indie-r work even more so than we may have imagined. Consequence of Sound is reporting that Austin, Texas band Explosions in the Sky have agreed to make some time to score the film once their current tour wraps up in August. The guys from Explosions in the Sky and Green have all known each other for quite a while, as he’s already used a bunch of their music in his earlier works All the Real Girls and Snow Angels.

While we were all busy lamenting the fact that David Gordon Green has given up making interesting indie films in favor of dumb comedies and arguing about whether or not his remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria is a good idea or sacrilegious, he went and made a new movie without even telling us about it. The nerve! And turns out, not only does it sound like his new film is going to be a return to smaller, more interesting storytelling, but it’s also going to be a preview of what it looks like when he takes a foreign film and adapts it. Green’s new project is called Prince Avalanche, but it’s a remake of an Icelandic film from 2011 called Either Way. In the original, two men played by Hilmar Guðjónsson and Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson spend their summer painting lines on the roads that stretch into remote parts of northern Iceland and end up meeting danger and experiencing personal growth. In Green’s remake the two men are played by Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, and apparently they’re going to be painting lines on roads that exist somewhere that looks a lot like Austin, Texas; because Twitch confirms that the film was shot there last month.

David Gordon Green has been talking about helming a remake of Dario Argento’s warped ballet-academy-turned-witch-coven horror movie classic Suspiria for so long that it started to sound like a project that was never really going to happen. But then, a little over a month ago, a press release came out officially naming it as the director’s next project. Suddenly the idea that there was actually going to be a new take on Suspiria coming our way looked a lot more likely. And now that the first round of casting on the film has been completed, cold hard reality has set in. Variety reports that the film’s lead role, that of a young student from America who travels to a well-respected, European ballet academy, has gone to Isabelle Fuhrman. At only the age of 15, Fuhrman is an actress still at the very beginning of her career, but many people might already know her as the creepy little girl in Orphan, or for playing the side character of Clove in this year’s smash hit The Hunger Games.

Director David Gordon Green has been trying to get a remake of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria off the ground for several years now. But in the last year or so he’s finally seen quite a bit of movement on the project. Back last March he was hopeful that he would be able to make it his next job, and as recently as December he was saying that things were looking good. He had a script turned in, a budget was being calculated, and he just needed to find the funding in order to go ahead with filming. Finally that day has come, because Crime Scene Pictures has sent out a press release announcing that their next project is David Gordon Green’s Suspiria. According to the release, Green adapted Argento’s film into a new screenplay alongside Chris Gebert, casting is currently ongoing, and shooting on the film is scheduled to start in September. Producers Adam Ripp and Rob Paris said of the project, “We love the style and energy of the original film — and David’s script brilliantly updates the world, presenting a rare opportunity to create an elegant, classic horror film.”

We have another great week for movies out on DVD and Blu-ray. However, which one would be best for a drinking game? On one hand, a game for The Muppets would be great, but we already published one of those in November, so check that out if you want to knock a few back with Kermit, Fozzie and the old gang. We could have also done one for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but those could throw you into a depression or put you to sleep. So, let’s raise a glass to the current box office champ and Oscar nominee Jonah Hill with his December headliner, David Gordon Green’s The Sitter. After all, if you’re going to watch this new adventure in babysitting, you’ll want to have a few drinks in your belly.

When you really think about it, Eastbound and Down is one of the HBO’s most depressing shows — no small feat. The hero’s journey Kenny Powers has been wandering through gets sadder and sadder with each season, as the character falls hard from the top, unlikely to ever obtain the glory he once had. This show challenges its characters to the fullest, and that’s something Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the rest of the creative team behind Eastbound and Down seem to revel in. Not many television characters can match the sheer narcissism, misogyny, delusion, sadness, and hilarity of Kenny Powers. Somehow, the worse he acts, the more human and oddly lovable Hill & Co. make him. Powers is about as anti-heroic as a television character can get. Here’s what Jody Hill had to say about what we can expect from season three, the highs and lows of Kenny Powers’ arc, Stevie Janowski’s warped coming-of-age Stevie story, and more:

Indie director turned studio comedy director David Gordon Green has been talking about doing a remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror classic Suspiria for a couple years now. Back in March of this year, he insinuated that he would be making the remake his next film after the release of The Sitter. Well, The Sitter is out now, and it’s time for Green to move on to his next project, so what’s the deal with Suspiria? The director recently told IFC, “I’ve turned in the script. We’re just looking at casting and locations and trying to figure out budget and if it works.” Fans of remakes all over the world probably just let out a cheer at the news that the script is finished, but what is that about figuring out budgets? Does it seem likely that an agreement on the price of this thing will be reached, or is this a script likely to sit on the shelf because it can’t get financing? “I’ve been trying to make it for four years and trying to find the support entity to finance it,” Green says. “It’s a very specific movie and the horror genre is in a very specific place right now that’s very much inspired by the success of movies like Paranormal Activity that show you can make a very economical killing at the box office, so to speak.” That doesn’t sound good to me. Any remake of Argento’s work is going to have to be pretty visually astounding

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr hunkers down and braces for award season. He also prepares for an onslaught of celebrity guest stars in New Year’s Eve, which features a poster that looks like a “Friends available to chat” sidebar on Facebook. In order to watch all the movies for the week, Kevin hires the only babysitter available… Jonah Hill. What could possibly go wrong with that? Fortunately this frees him up to see some of the smaller releases, like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, W.E. and I Melt with You. And he wraps up the week wondering why everyone needs to talk about him.

Filmmaker David Gordon Green continues his strange journey through ’80s cinematic iterations with The Sitter, which resurrects the babysitting comedy form most famously portrayed in the minor classic Adventures in Babysitting. And if it’s still not entirely clear why the once-respected indie auteur has devoted such energy to painstakingly mainstream work, at least The Sitter is a tolerably mediocre trifle, not an abomination on par with Your Highness, Green’s other comedy from earlier this year. Jonah Hill, sporting his since-shed heft for the final time, stars as aimless college dropout Noah Griffith. Convoluted circumstances find him at the home of his mom’s friends the Pedullas, babysitting their three nightmare children. Eldest son Slater (Max Records) is a cauldron of anxieties, daughter Blithe (Landry Bender) is an aspiring celebutard, and the recently adopted Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez) loves destroying things. When Noah’s manipulative love interest Marisa (Ari Graynor) promises sex in exchange for a cocaine delivery, he packs the kids in the minivan and a surreal road trip through Brooklyn begins.

David Gordon Green is one of those rare filmmakers who has the comic power to make fairly despicable or unlikable characters oddly sympathetic, and oddly, likable . While Green believes everyone in the world is likable – and how he thinks that I have no idea – he certainly seems to love his antiheroes. Very few David Gordon Green characters one would want to hang out with in real life, but on the big screen, he makes oblivious, frustrating, and moronic fools highly watchable. Hopefully that’ll remain the case with his latest R-rated comedy, The Sitter. Thanks to David Gordon Green being able to say a 1,000 words a minute, similarly to Danny McBride, in my 15-minute conversation we were able to cover a lot of ground. From the greatness of breakfast tacos, a topic I didn’t foresee being discussed, to Soul Surfer topping Your Highness earlier this year, Green goes in every direction possible with any mentioned topic. Here’s what The Sitter director had to say about why one should live in Austin, going through hell with actors, dealing with ego, and when too much Sam Rockwell crying becomes self-indulgent.

Here’s something you won’t hear me say very often – thank you, Hollywood. David Gordon Green has long been my go-to choice when naming my favorite contemporary filmmaker, what with his stunning works like George Washington, All the Real Girls, Snow Angels, even his crack at a thriller, Undertow. DGG’s first four features were all finely tuned dramas that, while all different, seemed to fit into one vision – one clear, dramatic, character-driven vision. And then came Pineapple Express. While I am a fan of DGG’s stoner comedy, there’s a part of me that hates it, because his success with that film led directly to his ability to make the dismal Your Highness, and a continued spiral into films that seem to rely on cheap comedic conceits for the giggles (marijuana! medieval thingies! James Franco!). Next up, The Sitter, a Jonah Hill-starring affair that, at worst, looks like a direct rip-off of Adventures in Babysitting. Are my expectations low? Yes. And that does not make me happy to type. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Columbia Pictures is reportedly in final negotiations to buy the rights to Evan Mandery‘s novel “Q,“ which was published just this last August. Should the deal go through, Green would write and direct the adaptation, which is blissfully described as “an unconventional love story.” Swoon.

The main deception of Jeff Nichols’ apocalyptic drama Take Shelter is that its plotline can be summed up so quickly and cleanly, though the film itself neither passes quickly nor lets anyone get away cleanly. And that’s meant as a compliment to the film (and Nichols and his entire cast and crew), one that mines a simple idea to its most fulfilling (and often unsettling) ends. The film stars Michael Shannon as Curtis, a family man who starts having disconcerting visions of nature gone mad (black rain falling from the sky, clouds that roll and swirl too swiftly, birds dropping dead at his feet), and responds in the only way that seems wise – he builds a souped-up fall-out shelter for his wife and daughter. As the layers of Curtis steadily get peeled back, it becomes obvious that it’s not just this singular (and relatively new) fixation on the end of the world as we know it that’s driving the man, as Curtis’ creeping concerns that he’s actually going insane have a real world root. His mother is crazy, and in a basic, hard-and-fast way. And she has been since, well, since approximately the same age Curtis is now. The delusions and nightmares and visions and creeping paranoia would be enough to make anyone worry, but with a possible genetic predisposition to psychosis, it’s a wonder that Curtis hasn’t broken down sooner.