According to Chortle [via AICN], The Daily Show’s Produce Pete Steve Carell will star in the US version of BBC’s The Office. A great choice, if true.

Of course, it’s a bad idea to remake the original, but it could be in worse hands. Greg Daniels, who co-developed King of the Hill and wrote some Simpsons and Seinfeld episodes, is heading it up, and Ricky Gervais is helping out in some capacity.

For those who don’t know, The Office ran on the BBC for two seasons at six episodes a piece. Both seasons have aired on BBC America. A couple years later (last month), two Christmas specials ran on consecutive nights in the UK, ending the series for good. Those two episodes have yet to air in the US.

The Series 1 DVD has been out for a while, and the Series 2 DVD hits April 20th. According to early specs, it looks like the Christmas specials aren’t included. For the determined and impatient, getting these episodes online isn’t too tough. They’re worth seeking out, as they end the show quite nicely.

And for those who’ve never seen the show, it’s pretty fucking brilliant. I’ve said to a couple people that The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the recent Arrested Development are three of the best comedies since Seinfeld.

Yahoo! Movies has the exclusive on the Kill Bill Vol. 2 trailer. It’s a fun trailer, with its cheesy rear-projection and over-dramatic musical cues. It’s out April 16, against Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Punisher, featuring Pulp Fiction’s John Travolta.

Speaking of Travolta, at the supermarket yesterday, the guy in front of me was set to purchase the DVD of Staying Alive (yes, at the supermarket) until the cashier explained to the guy that it wasn’t the same movie as Saturday Night Fever, but rather a shitty sequel, co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone’s next project, according to the IMDb? Co-writing and directing Rampant Scandal, a film about the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Is that a fucking joke?

Web Developer Extension for Firebird & Mozilla — thanks to JtB for pointing this out. It’s a pretty amazing tool kit.

For those of you wondering what the hell the deal was with the bloody cleaver picture on EXITWOUND all week, here’s the scoop:

Last weekend (Friday through Sunday) I shot production stills for a student short film. Francis Choung (who some of you might know as the drummer/Korean of FMTM) was the director. I’m pretty sure he wrote it, too. It’s called Father’s Keeper.

Overall, the shoot was quite a learning experience. I think a lot of people take for granted the work involved in producing a film. It can require a staggering amount of time to block, light, rehearse, and film even a ten second shot. Furniture has to be moved, lights set up, things measured, mags changed, and who knows what the hell else was going on that I didn’t understand. The final cut of the short is to be between five and seven minutes, but it took forty hours to set up and film about seventy minutes of footage. Crazy.

It’s quite exhausting. And really, I didn’t do shit. I just stood around and took pictures, but I was fucking beat at the end of each day of shooting.

It was a lot of fun, though. I would definitely do it again.

Anyway, over the three day shoot, I took close to 1200 photos. About half of them were trashed for being either out of focus or shaky (a good amount of stuff from Day 1 was junked because I didn’t think I needed a tripod) (I was wrong, obviously). About half of the remainder were at least clear, but they weren’t all that interesting. And that left about 300 that were good to great.

I posted 120 of those for Francis to check out. Most of them need to have their white balances corrected and some of them need to be cropped (which I didn’t do because I just wanted to get them up), but otherwise they’re the best of the bunch. I won’t be posting any of them to XW proper, so this will be the only place to see them (unless they make their way into an eventual press kit).

Have a look.

…and speaking of Ferrell, he has a cameo in Todd Phillips’ upcoming Starsky & Hutch movie, the trailer of which also just debuted online. I never really watched the show, but the movie looks good. Vince Vaughn’s moustache is gold. Incidentally, Vaughn is in Anchorman, so it all comes full circle. [via AICN]

Update [Jan.23]: Apple now has multiple sizes of the trailer (and the WB watermark is gone, too).

A great new trailer for the upcoming Will Ferrell movie Anchorman is up at the film’s official site.

Installing SoulSeek (nicotine 1.0.6) on Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3 — a SoulSeek client via X11 isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

The instructions are easy enough to follow. The only thing I’d add is that setting up Fink will take a good amount of time, about an hour in my case. The instructions note that the last step, compiling nicotine itself, will take many hours, but it doesn’t estimate times on any of the other steps.

The Get Up Kids site is getting some content in anticipation of their upcoming release, Guilt Show. There’s an MP3 of a new song called “Martyr Me”, as well as a video that covers some of the making of the album, most of which was shot at their own Twin Peaks-inspired recording studio, Black Lodge (note the checkered floor in some parts of the video).

The GUK’s previous album, On A Wire, made my list of most disappointing releases of 2002, for, in my opinion, being rather flat. There wasn’t enough rocking.

Guilt Show is out March 2nd on Vagrant, and hopefully it will rock the fuck out like GUK’s earlier albums.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 has been delayed from February 20th until April 16th. The Kill Bill Vol. 1 DVD has also been delayed from February 3rd until April 13th. More info is at CHUD.

Can’t Lose With Bargain DVD Player, But Low Cost Carries Price [via Gizmodo]

A Hole Punch Cloud Over Alabama

Recon SF Figure Collection — Colin Miller’s toy collection has some great stuff, like custom Three Kings figures, but what’s also interesting is the weird French Big Lebowski movie poster and, if I’m not mistaken, a stand-up cut-out of Larry Fishburne?

Spartan — at least there’s a trailer at this generic site for David Mamet’s next picture. (Isn’t it kind of uncreative to start a synopsis with “This is the story of”?)

Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, Ed O’Neill, and frequent Mamet player William H. Macy star. What’s interesting is I don’t see Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, in the credits. She co-starred in Mamet’s last five movies.

Mamet’s most famous for writing Glengarry GlenRoss (he won a Pulitzer for the play), but he’s also directed some excellent films, like House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, and most recently Heist, all three of which feature lots and lots of double- and triple-crossing.

For those who have Encore, The Directors: The Films Of David Mamet recently debuted and will be on quite a bit in the next few weeks.

Twisted (trailer) — Starring Ashley Judd, who has an almost Jeff Bridges-like box office losing streak (no offense to “The Dude”, but his movies don’t do well, The Big Lebowski included). Anyway, Twisted. It’s got Sam Jackson, Andy Garcia, and Leland Orser, who’s probably most famous for being the dude that was forced to be a part of the “lust” murder in Seven. It’s directed by Philip Kaufman, who did The Right Stuff and most recently Quills. Finally, it’s set in San Francisco. What’s interesting, or maybe sad, is that I was more interested in the locations featured in the trailer rather than what was going on.

I’m better off re-watching Vertigo.

I’m not sure how long the price/stock will last, but you can get Moe’s Tavern (with Duffman) from EBGames for $4.99 (regular price $39.99). It’s not a typo. Mine just shipped and the $4.98 price was honored.

Update [Jan.08]: It’s $24.41 now. That didn’t last long.

My thoughts on the keynote?

Final Cut Express 2, iMovie, iDVD, Xserve — whatever.

Office 2004 — I only use Entourage, and they didn’t spend too much time on it. I would have rather seen a demo of the upcoming Virtual PC 7, since both versions 5 and 6 run significantly faster in OS 9 than X. I’m curious to know optimized it will be (if at all).

iPhoto 4 — photo sharing and ratings are nice touches. I’m guessing that there’s still no Camera RAW support, though, which means I won’t be using it to organize my 10D photos.

GarageBand, which I keep reading as “GarbageBand” — wood grain, eh? As if the current OS X user interface wasn’t already a mish-mash of Aqua, brushed metal (with its own hodge-podge of satin and glossy buttons), and whatever the hell the “pro” apps use, Apple throws in wood grain mixed with dark brushed metal. As far as what the app does, it looks pretty cool. I’m not a music maker, so I’m not that interested, but I’d like to try it. [“Mish-mash” and “hodge-podge” in the same sentence. Recognize.]

iPod Mini — I think “miniPod” would have been better, but whatever. $249 is a lot of money, considering $50 more will get you a 15GB iPod now. The small size is very nice, though, and I’m sure some people are willing to pay a premium for it, and the colors. But not me. I do prefer the mini Click Wheel over the full size Click Wheel and four separate buttons that the big iPod has. Maybe the 4G iPod will get that optimized wheel (and maybe a line-in so it can take an external mic and record high quality audio?).

Overall, I’d say it was on the of the least exciting keynotes in recent history, but it did give me something to do at work for a couple hours.

A group of [not-so-new] articles at The Austin Chronicle on Explosions In The Sky:

Born on the Fourth of July, where a history of EITS is given, as well as an explanation for my only complaint about their latest album (that “Six Days At The Bottom Of The Ocean” ends kind of abruptly);

Explosions in the Cinema, where EITS give props to every Bottle Rocket fan;

& The Classical Perspective, where Austin Symphony conductor Peter Bay hears EITS for the first time, and compares them to Philip “Just An Evening?” Glass. [via kerm.net]

Not to be overlooked regarding the new iPod Mini is the optional arm band attachment. Now you can listen to your music while protesting or showing solidarity.

SightLight — I don’t have an iSight, but if I did, I’d probably get one of these. I don’t know about performance (Griffin usually makes quality goods, though), but it at least looks slick, almost like a standard macro light.

The Dan Band — they played the wedding in Old School. They have a CD of the two songs they covered in the movie, plus one other (although at $7, the price is kind of steep). According to IMDb, the singer, Dan (if not the whole band), will do a Bat Mitzvah in Todd Phillips’ next film, Starsky & Hutch.