If you've been longing for a re-pairing of rival NASCAR champions Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard, only this time in something a little more fog-enshrouded, well, then, hold on to your pipes: It was announced today that Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell will star in the working-titled Sherlock: Elementary Deductions For Solving Puzzling Murders Throughout Queen Victoria's London in a Deerslayer Hat—an updating of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic mysteries. From Variety.com:

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Judd Apatow's comedy-godfather status isn't quite translating overseas, The New York Times noted in a probing piece on Sunday. While the filmmaker-producer looks set for a late-summer spike in the States with the upcoming Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, his signature blend of pop-culture refraction and infantile male bonding has come to symbolize American cinema's rut in Europe and Asia. For disappointing starters, we hear France and South Korea have developed interests of their own outside our sex-and-drug romps, piling panic on top of panic as the dollar crashes and the world turns its back on Genius:

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A little-known Hollywood antitrust ruling from the early 1900s—passed to prevent Fatty Arbuckle from an abuse of monopoly power—proclaims that every 15 months, a Next Big Funny Thing must be announced. That coronation is immediately followed by the casting of the new cat's whiskers in every humorous screenplay in existence, where he'll be called upon to play a variety of subtly tweaked takes on the same buffoonish character. Previous beneficiaries of the Doughy-White-Comedian Competition Law include Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, and Will Ferrell, and now, the star of Sundance breakout hit The Foot Fist Way, of whom an LAT headline demands to know, "Is Danny McBride the next comedy superstar?"

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· As anyone who has ever done it will attest, there are few feelings more liberating than quitting one's job. The following video is of an assistant on the Ellen show who found himself teetering on the brink of sanity until he up and quit his job on May 20. He describes the decision on his blog as being "an exciting stupid move to prove to myself that I need to keep moving toward my dreams... Every time I've made a major move to pursue my dreams I have lost something (2 girlfriends both 3year relationships) but I've gotten a step closer. This time around I don't know what I have to lose... as I look at it right now I have nothing to lose, and those seem to be pretty good odds. If I never do anything, don't ever say that I didn't try." Good luck making your Hollywood dreams come true, Delbert. [Delbert Shoopman]
· Finally, a device for those of you who prefer your exercises in misogyny to sound crisp and lifelike! [Videogum]
· A few months ago, we told about the disastrous first screening for Will Ferrell's Step Brothers. Our operative described it as being "less entertaining than Two And A Half Men." From the looks of this preposterous red-band trailer, that description might end up actually being a compliment. [/Film]
· While we're having a hard time fathoming why on earth Kill Bill billboards are still up in New Zealand, the simple fact of the matter is that this is our third favourite billboard of all-time (behind Angelyne and Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny blowjob). [Copyranter]

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If your last glimpse of Universal's Land of the Lost movie—featuring Will Ferrell smoking a butt by the La Brea Tar Pits—left you a little underwhelmed, we think this official first leaked image should help ease concerns that a beloved Saturday morning memory of your youth is about to be gang-raped by Hollywood. In it, the part-reptilian/part-insectoid/all-badass Sleestaks of the original are shown to have made the transition to big-screen Ferrell buffoonery largely intact. Director Brad Siberling explains why:

[Silberling] (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) says he fought to keep the human shape of the Sleestak from Sid & Marty Krofft's original production, and not give into the urge to render them as spindly computerised beings. [...]

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Die-hard Will Ferrell fans who endured Semi-Pro will recall a set-piece in which Will's farm-league basketball team owner Jackie Moon wrestles a bear as a ploy to fill seats. That bear, a 700-lb grizzly named Rocky, fatally attacked a trainer at an exotic animal training facility in Big Bear yesterday. From the LAT:

For unknown reasons, the bear lunged at 39-year-old Stephan Miller, a trainer at Randy Miller's Predators in Action, about 3 p.m. and bit him in the neck, said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers. [...]

She added that officials from Cal OSHA and the state Department of Fish and Game were investigating, and it was not immediately known what would happen to the bear. [...]

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JFXOnline gives us the first glimpses from the set of Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell's next big screen foray, based on the beloved Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning sci-fi adventure. Originally conceived as a huge budget adventure comedy, the disappointing™ performance of Semi-Pro has led jittery Universal execs to cut some budgetary corners wherever possible. That means plans for spectacular soundstage sets and expensive CGI sequences will be replaced with location shooting, sending the actors and crew on an L.A. scavenger hunt that brought them to the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (above), the terrariums of Santa Monica's Water Garden, and the Apple Store at the Grove, which stood in nicely for the Pylons and matrix tables.

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Tend to the wounds of your ill-advised weekend bear-wrestling adventures with the box office numbers:

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The first review of Will Ferrell's new movie just came in and, wow, it's a doozy. No, we're not talking about Semi-Pro, which opens today; we're talking about Ferrell's next movie, Step Brothers, which was produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Adam McKay. The film, set to open in late July, screened in Los Angeles last night. A Defamer tipster was in the audience and passed an early review our way. Based on some of the pullquotes (if, indeed, you can call words lifted from an email tip "pullquotes"), this sounds like it's going to be closer to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story than Talledega Nights in terms of both laughs and B.O. We hate to say it, but it's looking more and more like John C. Reilly is Box Office Poison when cast in anything other than a supporting role. Full review after the jump, but here's a few of the choice quotes: "The story makes no sense - repetitive, forced and predictable would be compliments" and "the dialogue is less entertaining and envelope-pushing than anything on Two and a Half Men." Ouch!

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We must hand it to Will Ferrell. Having just delivered another homerun performance as Chaz Bobby Burgundy the Tank in Semi-Pro, the actor is already thinking ahead to his next project, promoting the just -started -filming Land of the Lost adaptation by wearing this Enik- the- Sleestak- inspired smocksuit to last night's premiere. For purists worried that their beloved, Saturday morning memories of the Marshalls, Cha-Ka, and the rest of the Lost gang might be tainted by crass Hollywood cynicism, fear not: The delightful premise, in which Ferrell stars as an arrogant, womanizing movie star cast in a remake of the Sid and Marty Krofft series, only to discover that real Sleestaks (Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller) exist among us, is post-modern self-referential hilarity at its finest!

[Photo: Getty Images]

• SemiProMovie.com