Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Walter Kirn’s novel ‘Up in the Air’ features Anna Kendrick as the female lead. Does the name sound vaguely familiar? Her most recent onscreen appearance was in a small role in Twilight where she played Bella’s high school friend, Jessica. She also acted in Rocket Science where her performance was called ‘career-making’ by one critic. However, this new role in Reitman’s follow-up to Juno could be the perfect platform to launch her career in the film-making industry.

Kendrick was cast in the role after a series of auditions which sources say involved almost all young actresses in Hollywood, with Ellen Page and Emily Blunt being on the list.

She will star opposite George Clooney who plays the part of Ryan Bingham, a man with a simple goal – to accumulate one million miles in his frequent flyer account. She travels around the firing circuit with Bingham [played by Clooney] to learn the system she wants to revolutionize.

Playing Clooney’s love interest in ‘Up in the Air’, Kendrick plays a prim and proper girl who pitches webcam firings as a cost-effective manner of handling downsizing matters. Her ponytail in the movie will, of course, be the tightest you have ever seen! Kendrick says, “Oh God, thankfully I am not responsible for that. That pony tail looks so simple, and I swear to God, they spent half an hour on it every day. There was teasing and stuff involved. It looks like it should have been really easy but I hated that pony tail by the end of the shoot.”

Not all Hollywood actors can say they were set on fire for a movie. Matt Dillon can. This is apart from a whole host of interesting things he has done throughout a long and succesful career.

Speaking of being set on fire for the new movie he is in, Armored, he says, “This is the first movie I have been set on fire. This is fun. I think this rolling around in the dirt doing this stuff, it is like being a kid again, you know. It is just a lot of fun. I know they have got fire gel all over me under this thing.”

Nimrod Antal, Director says, “They like it better than with the leg on fire? Well, I do not care. I want them to use the best thing, and I really trust Nimrod. I think he has got a great eye, he has got really good instincts, but look, you go have to go for it. These guys have stunt men around and they might be able to use something, you know.”

Wondering what happens in the movie to bring this Oscar nominee to being set on fire? With much care not let out too much of the plot, all Dillon says is that an explosion of one of the armored cars takes place. “It has been rigged and It is right at the moment when myself, Jean Reno, and Laurence Fishburne are going into the truck, and I end up, fortunately, I am not inside the truck, so I survive the explosion. So that is how my leg catches on fire,” says Dillon.

The movie, Armored, which opened on December 4 at theaters, is all about a gang of security guards who decide to hit on their own armored money truck.

In renewing their contract with production company BermanBraun, NBC Universal has added a bit of stability to an otherwise uncertain future. NBC continues to struggle to get the network’s ratings out of fourth place, where they have been for several years. The recent shift of Jay Leno into the 10 p.m. time slot yielded disappointing results, and upset many NBC affiliates. Adding to the uncertainty is the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal. Regulatory approval for that deal could take a year or more.

BermanBraun’s original contract with NBC Universal began in 2007, and was set to expire next summer. The new deal, which lasts for three years, allows BermanBraun to operate autonomously within NBC Universal, while giving NBC the chance to buy any of BermanBraun’s projects before they are pitched to other networks.

BermanBraun currently produces the NBC drama “Mercy”, which has been picked up for the fall. The company has had success at other networks, with “Accidentally on Purpose” at CBS and “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” at MTV. They are also producing a pilot for the series “Alphas” for Syfy.

BermanBraun was formed in 2007 by Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun. Gail Berman was president of entertainment for Fox TV when several popular shows, including “American Idol” and “House”, were introduced. Lloyd Braun, former chairman of ABC Entertainment, played a role in developing “Lost”, “Desperate Housewives”, and other series for ABC. NBC Universal is hoping Berman and Braun’s impressive list of hit series is still growing.

“Me and Orson Welles” is perhaps among the most heartfelt movies that have ever been made. Orson Welles casts Richard Samuels for the part of Lucius in an interpretation of “Julius Caesar,” and it is the final week of rehearsal. Most of the actors are lusting after the Welles’ assistant, Sonja, who finds Richard’s innocence amusing and leads him on. Richard, returning the infatuation, believes it to be true but then discovers her relationship with Welles is something other than business.

A moment is shown where Welles drops his guard after seeing Richard pull out a copy of the novel “The Magnificent Ambersons”, and Welles, with sadness in his eyes, mentions how it is about how “it all gets taken away.” It is a moving moment because we already know he directs the film years later and subsequently had the film taken from him and recut. He speaks about the loss of the film with such despair that it is almost as if he had lost a family member, or even a child. It moves us to think that self-destruction is already gathering force.

Opening night comes and “Julius Caesar” receives a standing ovation, prompting Welles to question how he will do better next time. In his eyes, however, there is a glint that assures the audience that he is not worried in the least. Richard, meanwhile, just experienced something much larger than himself and in the end, he feels all life seems to be far more ahead of him, but that he cannot help but share in his rapture.

Embodying a ‘Thank you for smoking’ vibe, Up in the Air follows a fast paced story line which follows how Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, an aloof, top corporate executive whose millions of frequent-flyer miles just cannot keep him above the emotional turbulence he tries to avoid. Bingham spends most of his life traveling around the world firing people for corporate executives who cannot bring themselves to do the dirty work.

Called a ‘slickly engaging piece of lightweight existentialism’, the movie is Jason Reitman’s third film which cleverly taps into certain cultural aspects of a present-day zeitgeist, which is portrayed in a slightly comical manner.

Clooney’s excellent comic timing and the wonderful interplay between Clooney and Natalie played by Anna Kendrick put together a delicious comedy you must watch. The story adapted from Walter Kirns novel with Sheldon Turner has wonderful overhead shots of a few American cities, giving the movie excellent production value, as are the transitions as characters move around the country.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus on the movie was “Led by charismatic performances by its three leads, director Jason Reitman delivers a smart blend of humour and emotion with just enough edge for mainstream audiences.” The reality portrayed in the movie rings true to what everyone goes through at an airport with the racial stereotypes much around, even though we would like to think that society has progressed for the better. Another review on Up in the Air stated, “Any film that tells his [Bingham's] story would have to be light on its feet, but the deftness and surety of Jason Reitman’s latest work defy the law of gravity. Look, up in the sky: a terrific, nimble movie.”

Called ‘a series at the top of its game’ by Robert Canning of IGN, 30 Rock’s third season scored a whopping 9.3 on a scale of 10, is now available on DVD by Universal Studios.

Alynda Wheat of Entertainment Weekly on a review of the DVD release said “sort of like the first day of school after summer vacation: sort of awkward at times, but fast and buoyant and warmly familiar all the same”. Although Brian Lowry of Variety called the third season “wildly uneven” and said 30 Rock was “merely a good comedy whose shortcomings prevent it from joining the ranks of great ones.”

30 Rock’s third season received 22 Emmy Award nominations, which is the most for a show in 2009, and broke 30 Rock’s own record for the most nominated comedy in a single Primetime Emmy Award year.

This series features a short on the Muppets show: the Muppeteers who work on the set of 30 Rock. The ‘He Needs a Kidney’ musical performance is fabulous and is in the ‘behind the scenes’ segment. The entire segment, though being very factual, goes on to relate how the song was put together and the orchestration mechanics of the performance. Tina Fey’s charater, Liz Lemon attempts to juggle her job and personal life, focusing on trying to adopt a child and find a new boyfriend. Jack Donaghy is also heavily pursuing his love life with Jenna Maroney, and undertakes a film project, while Tracy Jordan reaps the benefits of a video game that we saw at the end of season 2.

Audio commentaries on the DVD are not so hot, because they are simply normal commentaries. The speakers do not have much to say, while Tina Fey is mostly speechless.

While HBO is still contemplating whether or not to do a feature film based on their hit series Rome, the game seems to be afoot for Entourage. Even though the series is far from over, executive producer Mark Wahlberg seems to be indicating that this is where the series will head to, when it finally wraps up.

At the premiere of the movie The Lovely Bones, Wahlberg was asked if he wanted to push the network for a movie, and he replied saying: “Quite possibly, yes. We still have a couple more seasons to do, but yeah. We would like to follow in the ‘Sex and the City’ footsteps and do a movie. People have always complained that the episodes are too short. And that the seasons are not long enough, and they want more.”

“It is not out of the realm of possibility,” an HBO spokeswoman said about the prospect of an Entourage movie. “Right now, the creators are concentrating on the new season.”

Entourage was recently picked for its seventh season and reportedly has two more seasons to go before calling it quits, so with a movie prospect possibly in the works it could set up quite the cliffhanger. Wahlberg, however is tight-lipped about the direction the series will take, “I cannot tell you which story lines we would leave unresolved. I am sworn to secrecy. There are so many different directions to go.”

The show takes a quasi-satirical inside look at the world of show business and is presented in a fake documentary format. The show premiered on July 18, 2004 and has featured several A-list celebrities who appeared as themselves on the show.

Robert Rodriguez’s visual assault or Shorts, as it is more commonly known, is out on Blu-Ray. If you have not seen the movie, here is a short (no pun intended) synopsis.

The suburban neighborhood of Black Falls is home to the irksome 11-year old Toe Thompson and Black Box Industries. The plot is crammed with mini-aliens, maxi-crocodiles, and a size changing James Spader. The story centers around The Black Box, the sole product of the aforementioned Black Box Industries. The multipurpose gadget resembling a Rubik’s cube can be anything to anyone. From a cheese grater to a solar panel it attempts to be a wishing rock to its holder and bounces around from one character to another granting computer generated fantasies and creating general mayhem. In the attempt to have at least one moral lesson, the story ends up with three: Parents should give more attention to children than work; Talking is healthier than texting; and Be careful what you wish for.

Considering that Robert Rodriguez wrote, directed, edited, produced, photographed, composed some of the music, and supervised the visual effects, it is a great effort on the man’s part. But perhaps as a result the movie feels underwritten and overdressed. The fact that it is also structured as five short stories that Toe narrated, it zips forward, pulls back, pauses, and jumps around in an insane manner does not go in its favor, either.

However, kids are likely to find the movie funny, and if they last the journey adults will find the absurdity palatable as well. The one thing you will hope for after the movie is that it will not have a sequel.