Slow News Day: Professor Jables, Weeklong Swim, No-Name Nowhere Director

ITEM: Jack Black and the Acceptable TV crew have added more hilarious amateur filmmaking tutorials to their website, concluding with a depressing guide to rejection, complete with Heat Vision and Jack reference. By the way, if you haven't been watching Acceptable TV, you should really get started.

ITEM: Adult Swim is expanding to a full week of 11-6 programming, which will make room for more new shows like the previously reported Fat Guy Stuck in Internet (formerly known as Gemberling), a full season of Lucy, Daughter of the Devil, and the long-developing Superjail. Meanwhile, the second seasons of The Boondocks and Metalocalypse are coming this summer, and new episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies, and (if finished in time) Venture Bros. this fall.

ITEM: Karey Kirkpatrick has signed on to direct Eddie Murphy in the promising-without-Eddie-Murphy Ed Solomon/Chris Matheson script NowhereLand. Kirkpatrick is probably best known for butchering the script to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but he also penned the super-affable Chicken Run, and his offbeat cereal-themed directorial debut Flakes is getting pretty good notices in its current festival run, so let's say his involvement pushes NowhereLand further towards the "yes" end of "maybe."

Slow News Day: Fatty Black, Pregnant Poehler, Hawaiian Freak, Preview Pie

ITEM: Jack Black is the latest actor to join Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, playing an overweight comedian named "Fats." One can only hope the movie's other jokes play on a slightly higher level.

ITEM: Austin Powers scribe Michael McCullens will make his directing debut with Baby Mama, in which Tina Fey hires Amy Poehler as a baby surrogate to avoid taking maternity leave. Hopefully that promising casting can eclipse the dumb-ass title, not to mention the plot, which is not only bland and predictable, but also strangely similar to SNL co-star Will Forte's recently wrapped script for The Brothers Solomon.

ITEM: Jason Segel, still best known as the lovelorn drummer of Freaks and Geeks, has lined up his first leading film role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a romantic comedy about a guy who decides to get over his break-up blues with a Hawaiian vacation, only to find his ex traveling to the same island with her new beau. Kristin Bell of Veronica Mars will play the titular role. How did Segel land the gig after years of wacky sidekick background acting? Well, he wrote it himself.

ITEM: The anticipated dramedy Waitress, written and directed by the late Hal Hartley protege Adrienne Shelly, finally has a trailer up. Unfortunately, it looks like an obnoxious, cutesy retread of every other uber-Southern indie flick you've ever seen, but will hopefully be saved by the comic talents of Nathan Fillion and Cheryl Hines.

Jack Black Wants You to Watch Him, Control Him, and Create For Him

A couple months ago, we announced that Jack Black, Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon, and VH1 were teaming up to create a multimedia program called Acceptable TV, based on Schrab and Harmon's popular Channel 101 website. We now have a date for the premiere: March 23. We could either explain how the whole thing works again, or we could let Jables himself tell you in these amusing promo spots.

Schrab and Harmon, who recently wrote the Oscar-nominated Monster House and are now pulling various strings behind The Sarah Silverman Program, previously worked with Black on the popular unaired pilot Heat Vision and Jack (check your favorite illegal video site), and will work with him again in the CGI Kung Fu Panda. Black also has Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind and Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding in post-production.

Tenacious D Announce D-VD, Launch Lamest Viral Video Site Yet

The less-than-well-received Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny comes to DVD on February 27, and will include commentary from the band and Liam Lynch, as well as some of the ample unused footage from the film, including the cut "The Goverment Totally Sucks" sequence, starring David Koechner as a surplus army store clerk. The disc will also feature music videos and a behind-the-scenes documentary, which is probably just going to be recycled from the amusing Hell O'Clock News segments on the official site.

In celebration, Sony has set up a pointless "video mixer" that allows users to sign up for an account and string together random clips of the "Pick of Destiny" and "Classico" music videos. If we're wrong, and this actually has some useful or even mildly entertaining purpose, please let us know what we're missing.

In other news, KG side project Trainwreck has a new EP out, simply entitled The EP, featuring the tracks "TV Theme," "Rock Boulder Mountain," and "John Bartholomew Shredder," which can all be heard for free on their MySpace page. If you haven't yet made their acquaintance, Trainwreck features Jason Reed (best known as Lee to D fans) as the cowbell-smacking lead singer of a parody 80s M.O.R. Southern rock band. They put on a pretty damn funny live show, if you get the chance. The EP is a warm-up for a full-length debut album that will come out later this year, produced by Kyle and frequent collaborators the Dust Brothers.

Olivia Goes Nowhere

According to Variety, Eddie Murphy has signed on as the lead in NowhereLand, a new comedy from Paramount Pictures about a man who solves a career crisis by visiting an imaginary world thought up by his daydreaming daughter. Before you shrug it off as another goofy diet-gross-out family comedy in the vein of Doctor Dolittle and Daddy Day Care, keep in mind that the producers specifically chose Murphy based on his late-breakthrough performance in Dreamgirls, and more importantly, keep in mind that it's from the offbeat writing duo of Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson, best known as the creators and writers of the Bill and Ted series.

Variety doesn't mention it, but we're pretty damn sure this is the same project as the previously announced Me and Olivia, which was inspired by Solomon's own kid. Solomon was also attached to direct at that point (he previously directed Billy Bob Thornton in 2003's Levity), but there's no mention of a director in this new development. Matheson has also taken a stab at the chair before, with the underseen sci-fi comedy Evil Alien Conquerors, starring Diedrich Bader and Chris Parnell.

It's great news to see the pair working together again, but it's a poor substitute for any new information on Automatons, their dream project which was in the early stages of development a few years ago but died out without studio support. That little treasure involves two robots who were long ago programmed to kill Adolf Hitler, but got chucked into the ocean after he killed himself, where they continue to this day searching for their target on the sea floor, until Hitler is cloned and put back in action, causing the U.S. government to seek out the droids and let them finish their job. Supposedly, voice over was already recorded, with John C. Reilly and Jack Black as the titular characters, and John Cleese as the Great Dictator. Yes please?

Jack Black and Michael Cera Latest on Web TV Bandwagon

Today there are two new pieces of news from the "you can pretty much cancel your cable and Tivo" department. Michael Cera, best known as George Michael Bluth on the lamented Arrested Development, has signed on with CBS to bring a new Web series called The Good Life to their online station Innertube. Cera and writing/acting partner Clark Duke, who also perform in the band The Long Goodbye, have been posting low-budget videos via YouTube on their MySpace Film page, which apparently grabbed the attention of the network, who has ordered eight episodes of the mockumentary about two TV producers who begin prematurely living it up like fat cats before they've actually sold their TV show, or to paraphrase Cera's ex-narrator Ron Howard, spending money they haven't yet earned from jobs they don't yet have.

Meanwhile, Jack Black is teaming up with Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon, creators of Scud: The Disposable Assassin and Monster House, to bring a new viewer's choice show to VH1 and VH1.com, based on Schrab and Harmon's innovative Channel 101. Just like that "channel," The Department of Acceptable Media Presents: Acceptable TV will feature an ever-expanding array of short TV pilots created by Black, Schrab, and Harmon, and amateur Internet filmmakers. The best pilots will be compiled on each Acceptable episode, and viewers can vote online for which shows should get followup episodes. All of the pilots, accepted or not, will be on display at VH1.com.