It’s often said that believing you will spend forever with the person you fall in love with in high school is a naïve notion and, while the opening montage of Celeste and Jesse Forever seems to prove that the opposite is true, once the film begins we realize that Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) are actually separated and looking to get a divorce. The strange thing is, they still spend every second together and are only “separated” by the backyard with Jesse now living in his studio out back rather than the main house with Celeste.

Last week, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival announced their first wave of programming, featuring twenty-six titles that will be screening in competition. They followed that with the announcement of their Spotlight, Next, Park City at Midnight, and New Frontiers films. It was two days of absolute madness and glee, and the festival sagely waited a few days, giving us the buffer of a weekend to catch our collective breath, before breaking out the big guns. The Premiere and Documentary Premieres. That’s a bit clunky – so the Premieres! The Premieres are here! Per usual, here’s a list of films that immediately jump out at me: Julie Delpy’s follow-up to 2 Days in Paris, the Delpy and Chris Rock-starring 2 Days in New York, Nicholas Jarecki’s Abritrage (which stars one of last year’s break-out stars, Brit Marling, in her fist big-time feature role), Lee Toland Krieger’s Celeste and Jesse Forever (which stars co-writer Rashida Jones), Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite, Josh Radnor’s second film Liberal Arts (also starring one of last year’s big stars, Elizabeth Olsen), Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer, Stacy Peralta’s Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, and Amy Berg’s West of Memphis. Check out the full list of Sundance Film Festival Premiere picks after the break.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr gets ready to celebrate Halloween in style with some horror releases… and he’s not just thinking of Footloose. Unhappy with his life, he follows the bucket list path of Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black, traveling to the bottom of the world where he finds himself in a small Antarctic town that has outlawed dancing. So Kevin takes it upon himself to help the people get their groove on only to discover they’ve been taken over an alien species that duplicate human form. Later, he takes a trip back to the heartland where he finds a feral woman chained in a cellar… pretty standard for some of the towns he’s been to. Finally, not being able to find a theater that is still playing Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), he checks it out On Demand and promptly throws up.

The cinematic doppelganger effect seems to happen on a cyclical basis. Every few years, a pair of movies are released whose concepts, narratives, or central conceits are so similar that it’s impossible to envision how both came out of such a complex and expensive system with even the fairest amount of awareness of the other. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Antz and A Bug’s Life. Capote and Infamous. Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report. And now two R-rated studio-released romantic comedies about fuck buddies played by young, attractive superstars have graced the silver screen within only a few short months of each other. We typically experience doppelganger cinema with high-concept material, not genre fare. To see two back-to-back movies released about the secret life of anthropomorphic talking insects, a hyperbole-sized rock jettisoning towards Earth’s inevitable destruction, a Truman Capote biopic, or a movie about a mall cop seem rare or deliberately exceptional enough as a single concept to make the existence of two subsequent iterations rather extraordinary. Much has been made of the notion that Friends with Benefits is a doppelganger of No Strings Attached (the former has in more than one case been called the better version of the latter), but when talking about the romantic comedy genre – a category so well-tread and (sometimes for better, sometimes not) reliably formulaic that each film is arguably indebted to numerous predecessors – can we really say these films are doppelgangers in the same vein as the high-concept examples, or [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]

We’ve seen her on TV shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation, she shows up in a lot of Internet videos at places like Funny or Die, and she even gets a handful of smallish film roles whenever she has time off from all that other stuff. But now Rashida Jones is set to get her own starring vehicle, and she also co-wrote the script. The film is called Celeste and Jesse Forever, it’s set to be directed by Lee Tolan Krieger, and it will star Jones and Andy Samberg in the male and female leads. Celeste and Jesse will tell the tale of a married couple who is trying to figure out how to get a divorce, but still remain friends afterward. I’ve had a crush on Rashida Jones that’s been growing exponentially over the last six months or so, and after this quote from the writer/actress making fun of casual sex comedies; my crush might have hit critical mass. Jones says, “Our movie is about two people who love each other a ton but they don’t know what to do with that love, and how do you let that person go. It’s very different from: ‘I like having sex with this person because I’m so modern but then, ooh, maybe I like them.’ I’m less interested in that story.” That sounds interesting to me, and God bless her for taking the piss out of the lame state of the modern romantic comedy.

Columbia Pictures announced today that David Fincher’s upcoming drama The Social Network, which chronicles the turbulent behind the scenes action during the rise of Facebook, will make its debut at this year’s New York Film Festival. They’ve also released a clunky new teaser trailer that is just like the last teaser trailer, but with chat room lingo and photos of the players involved. It’s supposed to deliver some high drama, I’m sure, but it’s ultimately a silly way to present the film. Especially now that we’re on to trailer number two. The first teaser being all voice-over was fine, but this one doesn’t work. Perhaps its time to dust off some of the footage that was actual shot and give us a real trailer, am I right? Check out the new teaser and get more details on the NYFF premiere after the jump.

In Cop Out, for the first time, Kevin Smith takes on a script for hire. In place of Jay, Silent Bob, his other stock View Askew-niverse characters, the filmmaker works with screenwriters Robb and Mark Cullen to give us his 21st century version of the age-old interracial buddy cop formula.

Warner Bros. Pictures has released their final press kit for the upcoming buddy cop comedy Cop Out, directed by Kevin Smith, and we thought we’d share some of the goodies. We know how much you all love photo galleries, so it can’t hurt.

Variety is reporting this evening that Rashida Jones, best known for her role on The Office and her current role on Parks and Recreation, has joined the cast of the David Fincher directed film The Social Network.

While none of us are man enough to say, we think that ‘I Love You, Man’ was pretty cool, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t find 5 things to break up over.

As you may know, the Paramount Pictures comedy I Love You, Man has hit theaters today. And in addition to Cole Abaius’ positive review of the film, we also wanted to give you a sneak peak via a few clips, just in case you are still on the fence.

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel talk to us about male bonding, improvising and being two of “Comedy’s New Legends.”

Many of you may not know this yet, but the international headquarters of FSR is on the move — we are headed to sunny Austin, Texas. And besides challenging the staff at Ain’t It Cool News to a wrestling match, we are also excited about the prospects of having three great film festivals — SXSW, Austin Film Fest and Fantastic Fest — right in our new back yard. And to kick off this year’s round of Austin-based festivals, we are bringing in a team of Rejects to help cover South by Southwest in March. And it looks like we’re going to need it, as the folks at SXSW sent over the first round of awesome film-related panels for their 2009 conference. Among these panels is the return of Jeffrey Tambor’s now infamous actor’s workshop, a visit from some folks in porn and the cast of the opening night film I Love You, Man. Check out the full set of details below: As if opening the 2009 festival with I Love You, Man wasn’t enough, SXSW takes great pleasure in announcing that writer/director John Hamburg (Along Came Polly) will be in attendance for a special panel with cast members Paul Rudd (The 40 Year Old Virgin), Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Rashida Jones (NBC’s The Office). They will join him at SXSW Film Conference for a spirited look behind the scenes of I Love You, Man, and an insight into their particular brand of comedy. So expect to be engaged, [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]

The folks at Dreamworks Pictures have released the first teaser trailer for the film I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. The film follows the story of a newly engaged man desperately searching for a best man for his wedding.