A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas is the world’s first interracial stoner buddy holiday comedy to be presented in the third dimension. It’s sure to be the last, too. A twin celebration of the joys of yuletide and bong rips, the flick is an appropriately manic and thoroughly nonsensical entrant in the popular trilogy that’s celebrated the joys of White Castle in one movie and condemned Guantanamo Bay in the next. This Christmas takedown is a one-time only feat, a symphony of pristine ridiculousness. You go into a Harold & Kumar flick expecting a heavy dose of weed-tinged surrealism, and director Todd Strauss-Schulson, working with the familiar team of writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, doesn’t disappoint. This is a madcap farce that sends the now estranged heroes (John Cho and Kal Penn) on a frantic Christmas Eve journey into New York City to find a replacement tree.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr is inspired by Larry the Cable Guy and his character of Mater in the Cars movies. After all, if a buck-toothed rusty redneck pick-up truck can travel the world, why can’t a bald-yet-hairy fat guy from Ohio can do so as well. Kevin lurked in the streets of Tokyo, hoping to stumble onto some classy British spies and uncover a plot to undermine green energy sources. Then he brushed off his teaching degree and got a job at a middle school where he drank profusely, slept through the day and threw dodge balls at the kids. When he tried to explain to the cops that he was just following in the way of Cameron Diaz’s character from Bad Teacher, they just laughed at him and hauled him away.

Good news for a once bankrupt and destitute MGM, their first new production since hitting skid row is on the way. And, perhaps poetically, their new production teams them up with a man who is also on his way back up in the business. The Machine has signed Vin Diesel to star and produce. At the beginning of the 2000s many people saw Diesel as the next king of the action movie genre, but his career never really worked out that way, and Diesel saw his star power fade a bit over the past ten years. With the release and huge success of this year’s Fast Five, Diesel has another chance to make it to the top of the mountain. Could this be the smash hit that will finally anoint him as Hollywood royalty? The Machine sounds like kind of a cross between The Terminator and The Iron Giant. Those are two things that I love, so if they can find a balance in tone, I would say that this project has some real potential. Diesel will play a government weapon that was built to look like a human being, and who has been deactivated for many years. As this film opens, the killer robot is found, reactivated, and befriended by a small child. Presumably a lot of bonding happens after that, then followed up by a big action sequence where the government comes to try and reacquire the machine. Kind of like E.T., only Diesel’s character will love steroids

Rapturepalooza – a movie where Anna Kendrick and John Francis Daley (Freak and Geeks) team up to go fight the antichrist (who is, of course, played by Craig Robinson) – already sounds brilliant. High concept comedy, especially where the end of the world is in the mix, never fails to excite. Fortunately, Variety is reporting that the movie now has Rob Corddry, Rob Huebel and Thomas Lennon on board for the possible destruction of all reality as well. It’s great news, but it’s hardly surprising. Comedies like this tend to draw in names from the same extended group of comedy veterans that continue banding together to take smaller roles or cameos in each other’s projects. Still, here’s hoping that Thomas Lennon plays an old fashioned guy. Could other State members be far behind from signing on?

A few months ago while covering the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Carol Marshall of Carol Marshall PR invited me to attend the LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival at the Independent Theater in downtown Los Angeles. I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to be able to swing it, and was uncertain as to my ability to attend almost until the last day.

Last week I attended the LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival at the Independent Theater in downtown Los Angeles. It was a fantastic fantastic four days of entertainment, and had some great panels. On their way out of the venue, I caught up with Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, of The State and Reno 911! fame, and asked them about any upcoming projects, and what it felt like being such a significant part of my generation’s comedy upbringing.

Wouldn’t you like to be cool like Zac Efron? Wouldn’t you like to attend his pool party with a bunch of famous people? Well, the folks at Funny or Die are here to oblige your every desire.