Let’s shift from movies coming out on DVD to movies getting ready to made. If you’re a fan of Chuck Klosterman’s writing you’ll be happy to know that his book Fargo Rock City is getting made into a movie. That, in and of itself, is kind of interesting. But what makes it more interesting is WHO is making the movie: Craig Finn, lead singer of The Hold Steady, and Tom Ruprecht, a writer for Late Night with David Letterman. No word on a release date yet, but you can bet I’ll be there.

Speaking of Chuck Klosterman, I just finished reading his new book Eating the Dinosaur, and it’s really, really good. It’s a collection of essays about topics ranging from the connection between Nirvana’s In Utero and the ATF’s raid of the Branch Davidian complex to the artistic merits of ABBA and the proliferation of the read option in college football. Yeah, it’s all over the map, but each essay is well written and thought-provoking, and comes from Klosterman’s slightly off-kilter perspective. If you’re a fan of his writing, or of any writing that entertains and makes you think, I highly recommend it.

Moving from writing about music to the music itself, uber-hip rock band Spoon has announced that their followup to 2007′s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga will be called Transference and will be out in January. Can’t wait.

Going back to movies, there was a pretty big casting announcement this week for Thor. Anthony Hopkins has signed on to play Odin, Thor’s dad and chief muckety muck of the gods. I have no idea if this movie will end up being good or not, but it certainly has some talent associated with it. Kenneth Branagh is directing it and Natalie Portman is on board to play Thor’s love interest. We’ll have to wait a while to see how it comes together though, since it isn’t set to hit theaters until May 20th, 2011.

In slightly funnier movie news, Christian Bale revealed the influence for his maniacal portrayal of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: Tom Cruise. Apparently Bale got the idea from seeing Cruise on Letterman. He said Cruise had “very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes”, which seems like code for “batshit crazy” to me. Congrats to Bale on noticing this long before most people realized just how nutso Tom Cruise is.

Finally, BoingBoing posted a video of what seems like the best possible use of office time: lip-synching “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. There are five co-workers involved. Four of them are really into it, dancing and acting out the song. One is not. She’s what makes this funny. Check it out:

Now that he’s gotten Inglourious Basterds out of the way, people have started speculating about what Quentin Tarantino is going to do next. Well, if you believe what he said on an Italian talk show, his future holds a sequel: Kill Bill vol. 3. But it’s not likely to be his next project. He’s saying that “the Bride will fight again”, but his next movie will likely either be a western or a gangster film. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be interesting.

Most of the fall TV shows are back already, but there’s been one notable exception: 30 Rock. That’s all about to change, as the premiere of season four is set for October 15th. This season promises to continue the show’s award-winning tradition, and help it stay one of the funniest on TV. NBC has put together a preview of the season, along with some behind-the-scenes stuff, to get us ready for the new season. From what they show the season should be a good one, starting off with Lemon looking to add a cast member to the show, and a guest appearance by news anchor Brian Williams. Can’t wait!

Good Eats is the best cooking show in the history of television. Host Alton Brown does a great job explaining the whys of cooking as much as the hows. And he manages to make learning fun. Incredibly the show is celebrating 10 years on the air, and Brown went on an Atlanta radio station to promote the live shows they put on for the anniversary. While he was there he gave the lowdown on his fellow Food Network chefs, with his typical wit:

Finally, you may remember that Frightened Rabbit’s Midnight Organ Fight was my favorite album of last year. Well the Scots are back, streaming two new songs on their label’s site. The songs are from the band’s upcoming single, Swim Until You Can’t See Land, due out November 16th. They’re prepping for a full-length album release in Spring of next year. Awesome.

In case you missed it when I posted it before, here’s Scott from FR performing “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” all by his lonesome:

George “Bad Idea” Lucas and Steven Spielberg are working on a script for a fifth Indiana Jones movie, and apparently they’re leaving the door open for Sean Connery’s return as Dr. Henry Jones. Ugh. Just let it go already. The fourth one was godawful. What’s the story for the fifth one? Indy and dad track down bigfoot?

The Broken West, one of the most promising young bands out there, has broken up. Very disappointing. Their first album, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, was great, and the followup Now or Heaven was very good. So it’s sad to see them go. Lead singer is going solo, so hopefully we’ll keep getting good music.

Finally, on a more positive note, Quentin Tarantino’s best movie is now his most successful. Inglourious Basterds has now made more money than his previous box office winner, Pulp Fiction. Bravo QT.

We got a trailer for Sasha Baron Cohen’s new movie Bruno a couple of weeks ago. Now we get the first poster. And it’s fairly disturbing. If anyone knows how I can scrub that image out of my brain, please let me know. Bruno follows an Austrian fashion designer who makes everyone around him very, very awkward. If it’s anything like Borat it should be the most uncomfortable kind of fun possible. (click on the picture to see it full-sized)

Nobody realized it at the time, but looking back, The Dana Carvey show had an unbelievable cast of writers. The show had almost as many great writers as episodes. It only lasted 8 shows, but check out this list of writers: Louis C.K., Dana Carvey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Smigel, and Charlie Kaufman. Yeah, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich Charlie Kaufman. The episodes are all up on Hulu now, so you can try to figure out how such a great team of writers didn’t succeed.

I love a good trailer mashup, and this one’s pretty damn good. Take the audio from the Ocean’s Eleven trailer, and video from The Great Muppet Caper, and you get something totally awesom:

And finally, from the WTF department, watch as Richard Simmons flips the fuck out:

Moving on to good television, if you were a fan of The Wire you don’t want to miss this. It’s original scripts for three episodes (including the first and last episodes) and David Simon’s original pitch to HBO for the series. It’s fascinating stuff. The pitch in particular makes you realize just how much of the series was thought out ahead of time, and how many layers there really are to it. And it’s pretty funny that Stringer Bell was originally supposed to be called “Stringy”. Aw hell no.

Bad news Bourne fans: We won’t see a new Bourne movie until 2011. Apparently everything is in place except, you know, the script. No biggie.

So you went 0-16 last season. What do you need to do to improve? Get a new coach? Nah. New players? Nah. Make your logo looks slight more intimidating? Yep, that’ll do it. Even without Matt Millen the Detroit Lions are morons.

Drummer Josh Freese’s unique album packages are working. Read about the guy who bought the $20,000 package and played mini-golf with rock stars. I’m not sure it’s worth $20k, but it’s pretty damn cool.

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon went back home and performed with his old high school’s jazz ensemble. Check out the videos of him performing his songs as well as some standards. Must have been pretty cool to be one of those high school kids.

Finally, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week. It’s the TV edit of the famous line from Snakes on a Plane:

After 20+ years on the air The Simpsons are finally getting some recognition. The Postal Service announced Simpsons stamps this week. Fans of the show can go to the USPS site and vote for their favorite stamp. Oh, and the release of the stamps in May happens to correspond with the price of stamps going up 2 cents. D’oh!

Speaking of things that are overdue, every Beatles album is getting remastered and re-released. The new editions will be out on September 9th, corresponding with the release of the Rock Band Beatles edition. Truthfully I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, the mix on the current batch of Beatles CDs isn’t great, so it would be nice to get an upgrade. On the other hand, the vast majority of music these days is mixed WAY too loud, to the point where it eliminates the dynamics and clips damn near everything. Don’t want to see that happen to The Beatles. We’ll just have to wait and see how these turn out.

Are we getting to the point where Lego is a legitimate artistic medium for sculpture? Or at least as a serious model making medium? Seeing this recreation of the Japanese Battleship Yamoto in Lego I would have to say yes. The artist’s site has more pictures of this amazing creation.

Eastbound and Down is coming back for a second season. If you didn’t catch the first season on HBO you don’t know what you’ve missed. Danny McBride, who you may recognize from Pineapple Express or Tropic Thunder, plays a former major league relief pitcher whose arm gave out. He returns to his hometown and teaches gym while he works on his comeback. The show’s not for the faint of heart though. McBride’s character, Kenny Powers, is a racist, egocentric redneck. His catchphrase as a pitcher was “You’re Fuckin’ Out!”. In short, if you’re easily offended, maybe this isn’t the show for you.

Speaking of coming back, The Rentals have a set of new EPs on the way. They’re calling the series Songs About Time, and there will be one release every three months through the end of the year. You can pre-order the set now, plus purchase or stream the four songs from the first installment, The Story of a Thousand Seasons Past, at their site.

This is just unholy: Peeps Lip Balm.

Google and Univeral Music have decided to play nicely. In order to appease Universal’s concerns about their music videos on YouTube, the two companies will launch Vevo, a site dedicated to videos from Universal artists. I feel like as a music fan and internet junkie I should have an opinion on this, but oddly I don’t.

Finally, a group of film students in England have started what I hope will be the next big internet trend: Films in One Minute, One Take. They’re remaking big Hollywood movies, but in one continuous take that lasts one minute. Since they’re made on a very low budget, props are homemade. They’ve put together two so far, Forest Gump in One Minute, One Take and Kill Bill 1 & 2 in One Minute, One Take. Both are brilliant, but I’m partial to Kill Bill. Check it out:

Shooter McGavin gets more ass than you do. Still. Even though Happy Gilmore came out 13 years ago.

This explanation of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is exactly what I miss about being a music major. I love taking a piece of music and putting into its original context, then breaking it down to see how the pieces tell a story. And in this case it’s a great piece of music and a great story. Almost makes you want to be Russian, doesn’t it?

Statler and Waldorf went on Jimmy Fallon’s show to talk about Jason Segals’ upcoming The Greatest Muppet Movie of All Time, which apparently has a script that doesn’t suck:

The Felice Brothers have a new album coming out April 7th. You can pre-order Yonder is the Clock now, and you can check out the first single, the rollickin’ “Run Chicken Run”:

The ShamWow guy got arrested for allegedly battering a prostitute in Miami. The Smoking Gun has the mugshot goodness. I guess Slap Chop doesn’t work on hookers. Say what you will about Billy Mays; at least he’s never beat up a hooker (that we know of). This is a bit of a bummer though, since good ol’ Vince is fighting against Scientology.

A homebrew adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark is coming to the bigscreen. Three teenagers put together a shot-for-shot remake over 7 summers. That was almost 15 years ago. Now the film’s finally getting a release in Britain. Check out the trailer:

VH1 is bringing back Behind the Music. This seems like it should be a good idea, but then I got to thinking: what bands from the last decade would they do? And would any of them be interesting? I can’t imagine any scenario where I’d want to watch a Nickleback epidode of Behind the Music…

The SciFi Channel changing its name to Syfy. Must be Klingon for “watched by dorks who speak Klingon”. I’m not sure I understand this move. Geeks are notorious for resisting change. And you have to think SciFi’s core audience is geeks. So why change the name? Smells like desperation to me.

More bad news for geeks: Darth Vader has cancer. David Prowse, the man in the Darth Vader costume, is battling prostate cancer.

Here’s a little something to keep our geeky friends going though: The International Society of Supervillains.

Jim Carrey’s new prison comedy is too gay for American audiences. This is a change from most of his recent movies, which weren’t funny enough for any audience…

Now THAT’S a proper way to pay tribute to a pig: Take bacon, sausage links, ham, and ground sausage, form it into the shape of a pig, add some chili peppers for a ears and a tail, and worship at a porcine shrine.

Jason Segal’s script for The Greatest Muppet Movie of All Time is apparently shaping up nicely.

The first poster for Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is out, and it’s good. Really good. Click the picture to see the full thing. The wild thing itself looks particularly good. The first trailer should be out shortly, and I’m hoping it will build on the test footage that leaked out last year. The movie is currently set to hit theaters October 16th.

Finally, in light of all the controversy about the male full-frontal nudity in Watchmen, check out this fake NES game starring Watchmen‘s Dr Manhattan and his big blue schlong: