Everybody knows that the world is going to be ending sooner rather than later. Heck, the end of days is getting so close that we’ve been counting down our must-see apocalypse films. But until I watched the trailer for the upcoming comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, it didn’t occur to me how much fun those last few days we all spend on Earth are going to be. I mean, other than when faced with impending asteroid-related doom, when else is a guy like Steve Carell going to get a chance at a girl like Keira Knightley? Stress-induced romantic hook-ups aren’t the only perks of the world ending, either. There’s slacking off at work, taking part in some cathartic looting, and who knows how many other base pleasures to partake in. Heck, this movie sees Patton Oswalt turning into some sort of hedonistic little Satyr, Gillian Jacobs kissing everyone on the mouth, and Connie Britton hosting dinner parties for her single friends. Not only are these all great ideas for how to spend your last days, they’re also glimpses at a movie that seems to have a stellar supporting cast. Check out how the end times might look with the first trailer for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World after the break.

Fire up the kettle and break out the Jaffa Cakes, because I’m ready to curl up with a cup of tea and devote my television habits exclusively to the efforts from across the pond. Okay, even I know I couldn’t live without a weekly one-two punch of Leslie Knope and Liz Lemon (returning this week on Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock, respectively), but the BBC has been offering up a bevvy of programming that seems tailor-made for TV geeks like myself, and I’ve aristocratically sipped the British Kool-Aid in a big way. I’ve long been a fan of television with a stiff upper lip. At a young age, my European mother, bored with some of the comedies of the 80s (not everybody loved Mork & Mindy, apparently), turned to the programming of her mother continent – re-runs of Are You Being Served?, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, heck, even Mr. Bean, and I soaked it up like a tea-soaked sponge; the only second grader at Maple Hills Elementary to practice her cockney British accent on the playground. So it should come as no surprise that when it came time to curate my own cultural landscape, I looked to the Brits for inspiration. Sure, most teenagers listen to The Smiths at one point or another, and The Clash is pretty much a staple of adolescent angst, but as for TV? I watched each episode of Ricky Gervais’ take on The Office ad nauseam, got an education from Doctor Who, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

“Guys like me are born to like girls like you.” If you’re one of those guys – someone who finds unrelenting asshole women irresistible – Young Adult will leave you with a new crush. If you’re a socially normal human being who knows how destructive an asshole can be, Young Adult will leave you with a new on-screen enemy. I fall in the middle. Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) could not be further from likable and sympathetic, and that’s the whole point. The young adult writer, not the most subtle character trait, is never glorified as being a “cool smokin’ bitch,” something that she only starts off as. As the film progresses, the beautiful womanchild is stripped down to something so ugly, unappealing, hopeless, and, in some uncomfortable ways, a little relatable.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes rogue and infiltrates his local IMAX theater. First, he scales the wall of the plus-sized building and slides in undetected through the air vents. He slowly lowers himself into a theater seat to enjoy an early screening of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a wild crowd of six-year-old kids for the early screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. To deal with the psychological damage, Kevin then stumbles into the Sherlock Holmes sequel and later finds an extra seat in Young Adult, where he can imagine that his chubby caboose could land a hottie like Charlize Theron.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of things, movie related and otherwise, that will entertain you, astound you and most likely give you that much needed late-night push toward deep, restful sleep. We begin tonight with the new logo Paramount Pictures has released for their 100th anniversary celebration. I caught it this evening on a massive IMAX screen in front of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which was quite awesome. But more on that later. Up first, some trivia: Did you know that the original Paramount mountain was based on a doodle by W.W. Hodkinson and that the live-action logo is based on Peru’s Artesonraju? Wikipedia did.

Because I have the sleeping habits of a 75-year-old golden girl, I rarely stay up past 11:00 pm (sometimes even 9:00 is pushing it). But I’m more than willing to cast aside my senior citizen bedtime if it means that I get to watch The Heart, She Holler—Adult Swim’s latest foray into live-action comedy. This twisted six-part miniseries, starring Patton Oswalt and Bob’s Burgers’ Kristen Schaal, is a hodgepodge of Lynchian surrealism, Southern Gothic melodrama, and absurdist humor. Although Adult Swim is known for its incendiary programming, The Heart, She Holler, which first aired earlier this month, is arguably the most subversive and definitely the most disturbingly funny live-action comedy currently on the network (and who would expect anything less from a show produced by PFFR, the company behind Wonder Showzen?).

For the past few weeks, director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody have quietly been bringing special “pop up screenings” of their new collaboration, Young Adult, to small arthouse theaters across the country (and Canada!). Invites were scarce, but those who were quick enough (and savvy enough) to get into one of six screenings was treated to a first look at the film, a special Q&A with its makers and stars, and a unique poster to take home with them. I was lucky enough to get into this week’s Los Angeles pop up screening at the New Beverly, during which Reitman trotted out Cody, Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Elizabeth Reaser for a pre-screening introduction and a post-screening Q&A. While it’s been widely speculated as to why Reitman didn’t take Young Adult on a more traditional festival jaunt (which he’s previously done for his biggest hits), the director himself explained it simply, he wanted to take the film on its very own festival route, picking cities and venues that fit the film. To add to that festival atmosphere, each pop up screening got its own specially crafted poster, made by a local artist and distributed to the audience at each screening. Young Adult is a departure for Reitman and Cody, shunting aside the sunniness of their previous collaboration Juno for a much darker (and deeper) tale of female maturity gone totally wrong. After the break, check out all six posters for each of the pop up screenings, each taking a different [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that melts in your mouth, not in your hand. It also delivers a taste that doesn’t linger. Because we know you need to sleep soon, and we don’t want to disrupt such an important ritual. Lets be honest with ourselves for a moment. Even though we know that it will be a kindred spirit of Zack Snyder’s 300, we still can’t escape from the fact that Tarsem Singh’s The Immortals looks pretty badass. The evidence of this is all over the place, most notably in a new gallery of Immortals images over at Screen Rant. Tonight’s lead image features Theseus, the hero, vs. a Minotaur. I’ll watch that.

In a post-Juno world, director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody have re-teamed for a much darker spin on inappropriate maturity levels and their inevitable consequences. Whereas their hamburger phone-chatting, bon mot-spouting teen Juno was almost too mature for her own good, their latest heroine is undoubtedly too immature to even be considered a real adult. In Young Adult, Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a YA author who has much more in common emotionally and intellectually with her characters than she does with anyone her actual age. Mavis heads back to her small hometown, still gorgeous as ever, but with a real chip on her shoulder (to put it mildly). Mavis wants her high school sweetheart back (Patrick Wilson), and she doesn’t care if he’s married, and she doesn’t care if she’s a real bitch to everyone else, and she just…well, she just doesn’t care. Check out the first trailer for Young Adult after the break, with bonus Patton Oswalt as one of Mavis’ former classmates who is also a bit stuck in the past.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column that refuses to wear a fat suit. Unless it’s Halloween, because then it will be dressing up as Patton Oswalt. Because no one else is doing it, even though they should be. For those who have not heard yet, Eddie Murphy will host the upcoming 84th edition of the Academy Awards. According to show producer and Murphy fanclub vice president Brett Ratner, Eddie Murphy was meant to be Oscar host. Because the golden guy’s special night needs nothing more than a little fatsuit comedy — that’s why!

If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing Johnny Knoxville and Patton Oswalt play bickering brothers on screen, as imagined by the guy who brought us The Catechism Cataclysm, co-starring a bunch of young boys, have I got a movie for you. Knoxville and Oswalt will co-star in Todd Rohal’s next film with precisely all of those elements, plus camping! The as-yet-untitled film follows Knoxville and Oswalt’s characters, “a pair of battling brothers who attempt to honor their ailing father by taking a troop of boys on a last ditch camping trip that goes wildly wrong.” I suppose every family has its different ways of honoring its elders and, in this case, that means participating in something that sounds almost exactly like a terrifying horror film with an upbeat “hijinks ensue!!” tacked on the end of its plotline. We should also expect the unexpected, and ready ourselves for hilarious consequences. However, if you’re at all familiar with Rohal’s work (particularly Sundance’s The Catechism Cataclysm), you’ll know that the writer and director’s films tend to skew a bit more twisted than such a standard “be ready for crazy laughs!” plotline would typically hint at. And, as the film is apparently “loosely based on Rohal’s experiences growing up,” his brand of off-kilter comedy may also find itself infused with some genuine familial emotion.

It used to be that shilling your film at a festival meant you were some scrappy up-and-comer who needed a break (or, at the very least, a hot shower). But as festivals have gotten bigger and more dazzling (any event that serves free Stella Artois is dazzling by its very nature), bigger name filmmakers have used them as launching pads for new projects. Jason Reitman is a prime example of this – he premiered both Juno and Up in the Air at the Telluride Film Festival and took them on to Toronto to pump up buzz so that cinephiles everywhere were primed when they finally hit theaters. Did it work? Heck yes it did. So it seemed a bit of a no-brainer that Reitman would bring his next collaboration with Juno scribe Diablo Cody to Telluride and then TIFF. Apparently, not so. Young Adult won’t make an appearance on the festival route this year, and though there’s nothing I love more than needless negative speculation and crying that a festival non-appearance or a release date change means that a film is a flaming brown bag of excrement, that may not be the case with Young Adult. As those eggheads over at The Playlist note, the film “is decidedly darker and much different than what we’ve seen from Reitman before.” The film stars Charlize Theron as a novelist who writes young adult fiction, who heads back to her small town to hook her high school sweetheart, played by Patrick Wilson. It’s [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? Someone said something nice about it the other day, so it’s feeling sort of full of itself. Luckily this means that there will be more news, more snark and even a few surprises in tonight’s entry! There really is nothing like a self-aware movie news column with a sense of purpose. In addition to the surprisingly dark first trailer, Fox has released some HD concept art for the ineptly titled Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The art is also quite stunning, showing off some large scale scenes. Most interesting is the fact that it hints at a movie that focuses much of its time on the actual ape uprising, rather than the build-up. I’m ready to see humanity swallowed by simian rage. Aren’t you?

Have you ever seen Comedians of Comedy? It’s a wonderful look into the lives of comedians and the brainchild of Patton Oswalt. If you have seen it, then I have no doubt that you’d agree with me when I say that Patton Oswalt is a very funny man. Perhaps one of the best, if I might dive headfirst into an empty pool of hyperbole. That said, whether or not he’s been cast in Harold and Kumar 3 is unconfirmed, and thus irrelevant. However, on speculation, him being cast in Harold and Kumar 3 is — to quote one of the franchise’s other stars — Legendary.

A guide with a new challenge everyday to drag you, willfully kicking and screaming, from the rut that you’re in. Sing a song, throw something you love away, write to the Pope. If you follow the book’s instructions, you’re promised 365 new experiences.

I am very excited for Big Fan. There is a few reasons for my growing excitement but today’s excuse is this wonderful trailer.

In addition to the announcement of the competition film slate for 2009, the Sundance Film Festival also provided us with a bunch of images from some of the films that will be featured. We begin our preview with some higher profile pics.

The 2009 competition lineup for the Sundance Film Festival has been announced, and among the entries are some big names and some small ones, all of which are intriguing nonetheless.

With the release of Kung Fu Panda, Jack Black becomes just the next in a long line of comedic talents, both stand-up and otherwise, to take the lead in a major animated film. So how does he compare to others who have come before him?