Martin Starr

The director of Adventureland, Greg Mottola, is no stranger to the Summer comedy. His last film, the funny (and sometimes vulgar) Superbad, was a big hit with audiences and followed two high school buddies through one crazy night at the end of their senior year. Adventureland follows a recent college grad through one crazy Summer, so it's no surprise that the director's movies would be compared to each other.

However, now that I've seen the movie I take issue with the recent ads that go something like, "If you loved Superbad you'll really love this one!" I actually think this movie has more in common with the likes of American Graffiti in terms of capturing the cultural milieu of a generation, and maybe even Juno for the warm way it approaches post-adolescent angst.

Maybe my comparisons won't sell millions of tickets but I loved this movie, and I think that in addition to laughing a lot you'll likely leave the theater in a happy haze of nostalgia. To see why, read more

Starz isn't necessarily the most popular of the premium cable channels, but here's a good reason to rustle up a subscription: Next month, the channel will premiere Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas's new series, Party Down.

Thomas is one of the co-creators of the half-hour comedy, which revolves around a team of cater-waiters and aspiring writers and actors in Los Angeles. The cast includes Lizzy Caplan, Adam Scott, Ken Marino, and Martin Starr, and there are a few big-name guest stars lined up — including Ms. Mars herself, Kristen Bell, who will appear in the May 22 season finale. Another Mars alum, Jason Dohring, will pop up in the series as well.

The trailer made me laugh out loud a bunch ("Who's your agent?" "State Farm"), and if you've ever known any struggling creative types, you've probably known people like this. I'm excited to check it out when it premieres March 20. To watch the trailer, just read more

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni — cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig — took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. I've already told you how the series got started and passed on some tales from the set. In today's final installment, I have trivia from the show, plus news on everyone's new projects. Here goes:

• Linda Cardellini still has the green Army jacket that was practically a part of her body when she played Lindsay. "I thought about bringing it," she told the audience, "but I thought I might look like a gigantic loser."
• Sarah Hagan, who played the conservative Millie, was apparently a shocking amount like her character. Cardellini recalled that in one scene, Millie was supposed to ask Lindsay if Kim "fornicates," but Hagan (who, Cardellini recalled, hadn't talked much about sex at that time) accidentally asked if she "fornicated it." That take ended up in the show.
• Busy Philipps only did the show because she ran into Cardellini in the airport in LA shortly before the show was supposed to start. Philipps' agent had been against her taking the role of Kim Kelly because it was initially only a guest spot for the pilot, but Cardellini — whom she'd known in college — insisted that working together would be fun.
• Samm Levine and Martin Starr were both terrible about learning their lines and would typically just cram the morning of the shoot.
• Linda mastered the art of never eating food on screen; in the dinner scenes, she mostly just pushes her food around and gestures with it, which Paul Feig pointed out is "very teenage girl." She said it was all because of an early job where she didn't realize that if she ate food in one take, she'd need to eat in every take; that experience turned her off lasagna for 10 years. Philipps said it took a Freaks and Geeks scene where she ate more than a dozen donuts over the course of shooting for her to learn that lesson.

To hear my favorite story from the whole discussion and see where you can find your favorite Freaks and Geeks now, just read more

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni — cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig — took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and this week, I'm sharing some of their best stories with you. Yesterday, I told you how the series got started; today, I have tales of what it was like on set:

• While it seems like the whole cast genuinely likes each other now, that wasn't always the case. "It was really too much like high school sometimes," Cardellini said, with cliques and alliances forming and disbanding.
• Daley said at the time of the show, he was "14 years old and alone," and the big kids wouldn't let him hang out with them. But, he acknowledged, it probably would have been weird to have a young teenager hanging out with actors who were out of high school.
• Some of the nastiest disputes on the set came between Philipps and James Franco. At the time, Philipps said, they could barely even speak to each other: "It was legendary how much we hated each other."

To hear about the biggest dispute Philipps and Franco ever had, and to see where the characters might have gone had there been a season two, just read more

Over the weekend, a group of Freaks and Geeks alumni — cast members Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos and creator Paul Feig — took the stage at San Francisco's Sketchfest to share their memories of the great, underappreciated show. I was there, and over the next few days, I'm going to share some of their best stories with you. Let's get started:

• Paul Feig said that when the series began, all of the writers filled out questionnaires about their own best, worst, and most memorable high school experiences. When someone came up with something truly awful, Feig said, his reaction was: "Oh, that's a terrible story! We'll use that on the show!"
• Cardellini, who played geek-turned-freak Lindsay Weir, said sometimes she'd think the stories were so awful or out there, they had to be made up. "Then you would look at Paul, and you'd see the earnest look on his face and the sadness in his eyes, and you'd realize that most of this happened to Paul."
• Feig said he set the show in 1980s Michigan largely because that's what he knew best, but he also had a few specific reasons for that setting: He wanted it to be set in pre-AIDS times so that people were afraid of having sex because they were afraid of sex itself; he wanted his show to be pre-cell phone because technology restricts interpersonal interactions; and he wanted to show Midwestern life because it's so common and real.

More, including Feig's inspiration for Lindsay, if you read more