Mentors is now titled Role Models and will be released on November 14, 2008. There is now a plot summary, which you can read below:

Danny and Wheeler (Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott) are two salesmen who trash a company truck on an energy-drink-fueled bender. Upon their arrest, the court gives them a choice: do hard time or spend 150 service hours with a mentorship program. After one day with the kids, however, jail doesn’t look half bad.

Surrounded by annoying do-gooders, Danny struggles with his every neurotic impulse to guide Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) through the trials of becoming a man. Unfortunately, the guy just dumped by his girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) has only sarcasm to offer a bashful 16-year-old obsessed with medieval role play.

Meanwhile, charming Wheeler tries to trade in an addiction to partying and women to assist a fifth-grader named Ronnie (Bobb’e Thompson) redirect his foul-mouthed ways. It would probably help if Ronnie’s new role model wasn’t an overgrown adolescent whose idea of quality time includes keggers in Venice Beach.

Once the center’s ex-con director (Jane Lynch) gives them an ultimatum, Danny and Wheeler are forced to tailor their brand of immature wisdom to their charges. And if they can just make it through probation without getting thrown in jail, the world’s worst role models will prove that, sometimes, it takes a village idiot to raise a child.

From Enprimeur.ca

Universal options ‘Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory’
Actress Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman producing.
By Josh Getlin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2008
The deal

Universal Pictures options Mickey Rapkin’s “Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory,” which chronicles the cutthroat — but deeply human — world of a cappella singing groups, and their fierce battles for supremacy.

The players

Actress Elizabeth Banks (”The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Spider-Man 3″) and Max Handelman producing. Kay Cannon (”30 Rock” and “Baby Mama”) writing the screenplay. Rapkin is repped by Farley Chase at the Waxman Literary Agency and on film rights by Howard Sanders at United Talent Agency. The title is published by Gotham Books.

The back story

Who knew? If you’re a student in college, or graduated in recent years, you know that a cappella contests are hugely popular, pitting rival groups against each other in campus concerts that draw thousands. When they got wind of Rapkin’s book — an irreverent yet compassionate look at this sub-culture — Banks and Handelman, her husband and producing partner, moved quickly to snap up the rights.

“It’s perfect for the comedy genre that’s so big now, what’s been called geek-chic,” Handelman said. “On one level it’s a very passionate world. On another level, it’s utterly ridiculous. We knew it could be a great movie.”

But first they had to sell studio executives. Banks is a friend of Cannon’s and sensed she was the ideal writer to turn Rapkin’s scathingly funny book into a screenplay. The two women huddled in Banks’ Hollywood Hills home for several days, polishing their presentation, and then took it to five studios. “We did some singing of our own, mostly some Mariah Carey songs, and we also used videos from YouTube to show people what this world was about,” Banks said. “This movie is ‘Bring It On’ for a cappella singing. Instead of hot cheerleaders, you have a bunch of dorky singers.”

Rapkin, a senior editor at GQ, believed his book had the makings of a movie as he wrote it. But he wanted to make sure that whoever got the film rights also “got” the material. Those concerns were erased during a meeting with Cannon, who outlined her ideas for the first five minutes of the movie. Cannon had Rapkin cracking up. “So I’m comfortable,” he said. “I’m not sitting here in my office tortured and wondering what they’re going to do to my baby.”

From the LA Times

”Where is George Bush’s bedroom?”

Oliver Stone is flinging open French doors inside an enormous brick mansion in Shreveport, La., inspecting locations for his new film about the 43rd President of the United States. ”This one is too small,” he says. ”This one looks like George Tenet’s bedroom. Where did we decide to put Bush’s bedroom? It’s around here somewhere, isn’t it?”

Shooting begins in less than two weeks on W (or dub-ya, as it’s spelled out in the initial sketches for the poster), but not everything is exactly where it should be, and not only here in the house where the First Family’s residence will be re-created. The 32,000-square-foot soundstage the production is renting across town stands empty, waiting for the Oval Office and Cabinet Room sets to get trucked in from Los Angeles. The screenplay still needs work too. It’s gone through two rewrites since an earlier draft leaked to the press last month (some skeptics took it as an April Fools’ joke), but Stone would still like one more pass at it (”It’s evolving,” he says). And while most of the cast has been assembled and outfitted with prosthetic noses and hairpieces — Josh Brolin will play President George W. Bush and Elizabeth Banks will star as Laura — there is one major character still in search of an actor: a heavy named Dick Cheney.

Stone is famous for courting controversy with dramas like JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). But with W, the 61-year-old filmmaker isn’t merely courting it — he’s grabbing controversy by the lapels and giving it a big wet smacker. For the first time, he’s turning his cameras not just on a living president but on one who’ll still be knocking around the White House when the movie premieres late this year. As if that weren’t provocative enough, Stone could end up releasing the film as early as October, at the height of a presidential campaign in which one of the major issues will undoubtedly be the legacy of the guy on the screen. The movie has become a lightning rod before Stone has shot a single frame. If that bootlegged script is any indication, the film will feature such flag-waving moments as the Commander-in-Chief nearly choking to death on a pretzel while watching football on TV and a flashback of him singing the ”Whiffenpoof” song as a frat pledge at Yale, not to mention scenes in which he refers to his advisers by dorky nicknames — ”Guru” for Condoleezza Rice, ”Turdblossom” for Karl Rove, ”Balloon Foot” for Colin Powell — while discussing plans for the invasion of Iraq with the coolness of a late-night poker game.

Stone has publicly promised W will be a ”fair, true portrait of the man,” but already there are those accusing him of the politics of personal destruction — and, worse, of trying to influence the election by painting the current Republican administration as reckless doofuses (although presumptive Republican nominee John McCain makes no appearance in the script). Naturally, Stone vehemently denies all charges. ”Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history,” he declares as he peeks into room after room. ”I think history is going to be very tough on him. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a great story. It’s almost Capra-esque, the story of a guy who had very limited talents in life, except for the ability to sell himself. The fact that he had to overcome the shadow of his father and the weight of his family name — you have to admire his tenacity. There’s almost an Andy Griffith quality to him, from A Face in the Crowd. If Fitzgerald were alive today, he might be writing about him. He’s sort of a reverse Gatsby.”

As it happens, Oliver Stone went to school with George W. Bush. They both attended Yale in the mid-1960s — until Stone dropped out and served in Vietnam — although they didn’t mix in the same circles. ”If I met him there, I don’t remember,” Stone says. ”But I do remember John Kerry. He was big man on campus, head of the Political Union. I definitely remember him.” Thirty years later, in 1998, Stone had a closer encounter with then governor Bush at a Republican breakfast. ”I don’t usually go to breakfast with anybody,” he says, ”but I wanted to prove that even though people thought I was a leftist I wanted to hear what they had to say. It was funny, though — the minute I walked in the room the sound of the silverware kind of died. People were like, ‘What’s he doing here? Satan has walked in.”’ He laughs. ”But I met George Bush and I remember thinking that this man was going to be president. There was just a confidence and enthusiasm I’d never seen in a candidate before, especially in a Republican.”

(more…)

Elizabeth has placed on this year’s list of “100 Sexiest Women of 2008″ by FHM magazine. She has ranked at #72. Check out the complete list at FHM Online.

Elizabeth Banks
New Entry
After getting your attention as super-freak Beth, in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Elizabeth Banks will tantalize you again in Kevin Smith’s upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno

The New Republic is reporting that W. will begin production on April 21st. Earlier reports are stating that the film will be shot in Louisiana. You can check out the complete article below.

W, the highly-anticipated Oliver Stone biopic on America’s 43rd president, has been making a slow march toward its April 21st production start date. Josh Brolin (a dead ringer who can act!) has been slated to play Dubya for months, but in recent weeks, producers have continued to flesh out the cast list. Ellen Burstyn and James Cromwell, of Requiem for a Dream and Babe, respectively, are slated to play Barbara and George H.W. Bush. Thandie Newton of Crash and Elizabeth Banks of…uh…will play Condi Rice and Laura Bush. (First thoughts: too hot!) Welshman Iaon Gruffudd is in talks to play Tony Blair, and Jeffrey Wright is being floated as Colin Powell.

ABC News and Politico, both apparently in possession of a draft copy of the screenplay, offered separate rundowns last week of the father-son dynamic that has filled pop psychology regarding Bush 43. Key scenes include the drumbeat to war in 2002, the “Mission Accomplished” landing in 2003, as well as the softer side: college-age W guzzling garbage-pail vodka; leader-of-the-free-world-age W choking on a pretzel. The tendentious Stone summed up his film in one sweep: “How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?”

Of course, the Hollywood treatment could detract from the film’s political credibility. (Judge/read the first page of the script yourself here [pdf].) But in the end, its success rests squarely with the talent. So, Talkbackers: Who are your picks for the rest of the Bush gang (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, Powell, Chalabi, Miers–Perino)? I nominate this guy for VP.