Sure, I've already shared Seth Rogen's audition for Freaks and Geeks, but since the comedic wonder that is The Pineapple Express is finally here, it's a pretty good time to share old-school Saul and Dale before they reunited, hit the chronic, and got themselves in trouble with dangerous drug dealers. A good ten years ago, they were living in 1980. In the above clip, James Franco's Daniel spends a lot of time going punk, and then Nick (Jason Segel) and Ken (Rogen) make fun of him for his new look, full of distressed clothing and eggy hair.

Most of the kid's from Judd Apatow's old show have come a long way, many of them reuniting over and over in the Apatow universe. But I have to say -- it's high time Sarah Hagan gets a piece of the action. It's just wrong that her last movie was Orange County. Even a little cameo. Just a tiny one to start ... Whaddya say, Judd?

• Whether you watch Entourage or not, you've probably heard that the show's premise is loosely based on Mark Wahlberg's own experiences as he stepped into the movie business. Now he's finally getting into the action. Mixed in with his upcoming work with The Fighter and The Brazilian Job, Ace Showbiz reports that Wahlberg has filmed a scene with Jeremy Piven for the show where they go at it. There's no word on who Wahlberg will play.
  
• Louise Linton, who played a Skin Care Consultant in Lions for Lambs, and Katie in The Echo, is now going sporty. Variety reports that the actress has signed on for a role in the indie comedy The Wiffler: The Ted Whitfield Story. She'll play a woman called Shannon Storm in the film, which focuses on the MLB strike in 1994, that let the nation turn its eyes to wiffle ball.
• Finally, Alex Pettyfer, who you might remember as Alex Rider in Stormbreaker, is getting ready to be Tormented. Variety reports that the actor will topline the horror film, which centers on "a bullied teen who comes back from the dead to take his revenge." And people think they just have to fear karma... He'll be joined by the likes of April Pearson, Larissa Wilson, Mary Nighy, and Dimitri Leonidas.

What with the Olympics and the Batman and the pineapple express and the pants, you might be a little overloaded with things to watch this weekend. On the other hand, maybe you've seen all that and want something different. In that case, hooray for the Indie Spotlight! It's our weekly roundup of what's opening beyond the multiplexes, designed so movie fans can keep an eye out for those less-publicized titles.

There are eight indie films for you to examine this week: Beautiful Losers, Beer for My Horses, Bottle Shock, Elegy, Hell Ride, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Red, and What We Do Is Secret. Here's the skinny on each of them.

Bottle Shock
What it is: A fictionalized account -- very heavily fictionalized, it would seem -- about the plucky California winery that managed to beat French wines in a blind taste test in 1976.
What they're saying: The reviews at Rotten Tomatoes are almost evenly split down the middle. My own take: It's the Two Buck Chuck of wine movies.
Where it's playing: Various places throughout Northern and Southern California, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.
Official site: Take a sip.

Hell Ride
What it is: Executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino, it's Larry Bishop's homage to the sleazy biker movies of the early 1970s.
What they're saying: They're saying they hate it. Ten of the 12 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes are negative, and that includes the two from Cinematical, by James Rocchi and yours truly.
Where it's playing: Quite a few cities, actually; check out the map here.
Official site: Hop on, easy rider.

When Stephen Frears' The Queen came out in 2006, all the buzz emphasized Helen Mirren's icy performance as London's reclusive royal highness. The ubiquitous praise lead to her Oscar win, but it overwhelmed recognition of the movie's secret weapon: Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, quietly pressuring his Majesty to face the public in the wake of Princess Diana's untimely demise. There's a reason why Sheen conveyed the nuances of Blair's role in the event, which transpired a mere three months after the Prime Minister rose to power -- he had practice. The Deal, a fantastic made-for-TV movie Frears directed in 2003, tracked Blair's cunning (and morally questionable) instincts in the years leading up to his position at the top of the Labor Party.

Sheen played Blair in The Deal first, and it's both a superior performance and a superior film. Whereas The Queen had a tabloid hook and only tangentially explored the deeper political ramifications of a reclusive national leader, The Deal delves into precisely how Blair managed to emerge at the top of British politics with a series of calculated maneuvers. Political drama at its finest, The Deal hit DVD in the United States last month, where it has been touted as "the prequel to The Queen." That's not quite fair; The Queen is the sequel to The Deal, and the two movies ought to be seen as a single, wholly fascinating package depicting British politics in the 1990s.

Cross-overs, an old television standard, have been slowly making their way through the world of cinema. But forget the geek crossovers that popped up this summer because there might be a more comedic twist on the way. While talking with MTV, James Franco says there has been discussion about a crossover sequel for Superbad and The Pineapple Express. But it wouldn't be a normal intermingling of characters.

Franco noted that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg weren't very interested in the idea of a Superbad sequel, "And so, an answer to that was to do a Superbad/Pineapple Express crossover, an unprecedented crossover movie with two directors, Greg Motolla and David Gordon Green, each directing half of the movie and somehow these characters get together, which doesn't make sense at all, but could work."

I could see a scenario where Seth gets too into Saul's weed after feeling shunned at the burgeoning friendship between McLovin and Evan, gets into trouble, and Evan has to save him ... maybe with help from the flying-through-the-air Dale and information from Saul. What I don't see is how it would work to do a half-and-half movie.

But what do you think? Should all the kids meet? If so, how should it be done?

So we already know that White Stripes' frontman Jack White and Alicia Keys are all set to record the latest Bond song, titled Another Way to Die, but what about those folks who missed the cut. Ya know, the songs that almost were ... or tried to be ... or pretended to care? Case in point: You simply have to check out Joe Cornish's proposed version of the Quantum of Solace theme song up above because it's just ... fabulous. Seriously, not only does he work in a number of plot points that bring us up to date on the story and the characters, but he also works in the title of the movie. I mean, sh*t, shouldn't the theme song for a movie include the title of the movie? If not, you might find people who like the name of the song (ie: Another Way to Die) better than the film's title (ie: Quantum of Solace).

But enough babbling from me -- check out the video above, listen real closely to those captivating lyrics and maybe we can get enough people together to convince Bond producers to use this somewhere in the sequel.

It's not some big, gasp-worthy piece of news here, but if you are among the masses who love Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Jessica Hynes, and devour all things Spaced, you should check out the Pegg-run interview over at Collider.

Why would he run the interview? Well, Collider head Steve Weintraub got smacked in the head by a falling, curtain-holding beam as the back of Hall H collapsed at Comic-Con. Since this world isn't one of brief birdies and quick, 100% recoveries, Pegg agreed to take over the interviewing duties.

As you can imagine, this is no well-paced interview or thought-provoking questions and serious responses. This is full-force Pegg, Wright, and Hynes. Imagine a lot of jokes, riffing on Weintraub, and a neverending sea of media references in true Spaced form. Should Pegg's career ever tank, or slow down a bit, that man could make a fortune with his own reality show -- Simon Pegg and the Ultimate Geek Showdown.

Although I'd seen it twice already, I went ahead and accompanied my father to a showing of Pineapple Express last night, only to be greeted with a surprisingly packed 8:10 showing in the theater's largest auditorium. When we exited, the immediate lobby was fairly lined up with those waiting to catch the next showtime, and when I dashed across the hall to peek in on the 9:30 showing that some of my friends had caught, it was in an auditorium half the size and equally packed, down to people actually sitting on the floor space typically reserved for those in wheelchairs (fire hazard, schmire hazard).

I only say this because, if I hadn't gone last night, I would've been truly taken aback with the film's record-breaking $12.5 million opening yesterday. (In comparison, Superbad opened to $12.3 million last year, but on a Friday.) This bodes better for Pineapple than I had expected in general, what with it only having a week to itself before Tropic Thunder does its best to snatch away its overlapping audience.

Oh, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 also raked in almost $6 million itself, so, um, yay for that.

If you pay attention, you can learn a lot from movies, even ones you haven't seen. For example: No one dragged me to see Sex and the City and I wasn't inclined to spend money on a dialogue-heavy show that played just fine on TV. Oh, boy, did I miss out! The movie sparked raging debates, both pro and con, and became a rallying cry for neglected female audiences. What I learned: It can be enlightening to expand the range of movies you watch.

Determined not to avoid the next chick flick phenomenon, I hustled out to see Mamma Mia! The audience was overwhelmingly female and mostly as old or older than (middle-aged) me, and it was great to see almost everyone enjoying themselves. Too bad the movie itself was shrill and poorly-directed; even Meryl Streep floundered at times. What I learned: Abba's songs are incredibly catchy; it's OK to have sex with multiple partners within a few weeks time, as long as you can retreat to your own hotel on a gorgeous Greek island to raise your child on your own.

The audience for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 was younger but more racially diverse, though I didn't understand the message of sisterhood that was supposed to be underlying everything. What I learned: You can neglect your friends' obvious emotional needs for weeks at a time as long as you have access to millions of frequent flyer miles and can retreat to a gorgeous Greek island to reconnect.

What have you learned from the movies lately?

Over the past few weeks, movie ratings have been a popular topic for discussion. While Kevin Smith's upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno appealed an NC-17 rating (and won), The Dark Knight was enjoying a record-setting box office take and a pretty controversial PG-13 rating. Once again, we ask: Why is sex more inappropriate than violence? Should raunchy language and a few "thrusts" be condemned while a dude with half his face falling off and a psychopathic, murderous clown get off practically unscathed? And are there other issues at work here? Does a film with a giant budget and an all-star cast get it "easier" than a smaller film with a lesser-known cast and a director who chain smokes profanity?

No doubt there are shady politics at play here (as is all over this fine country of ours), and over the years there have been a number of films that deserved a different rating. Over on OMG Lists, they currently have up a list of six wrongly rated movies; films that, for one reason or another, deserved either a lower or a higher rating. It's a weird system, for sure -- these days, if you're a comedy, you kinda want that 'R' rating because your box office take will most likely be higher. However, if you're a horror flick, you want to try for a PG-13. Strange world we live in ...

But anyway, among the films featured on their list are Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which, at the time, received an R-rating because of a few profanity-laced scenes, but totally could've gotten away with a PG-13. Or what about Jaws ... with its PG rating! Hey, it's a film about a giant shark that devours people -- bring the whole family!