Fast Laughs and Presidential Plots

We’ve all been waiting for Will Ferrell to get back to the sort of comedy he does well. After that disappointingly bleak cameo in Wedding Crashers and the frankly appalling Kicking & Screaming, it’s good to see him back with Anchorman director Adam McKay, with the pair co-writing this NASCAR comedy about spanner-brained Southern racing champ Ricky Bobby.

With the likes of John C Reilly, Gary Cole and our own Sacha Baron Cohen (as a feelthy French racing competitor to Bobby), Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby will, by the grace of Tom Cruise – you’ll have to watch the trailer to get that one – put Ferrell firmly back in the quality comedy column. Unfortunately, the trailer’s only in an annoying flash format for now, but check it out here .

Meanwhile, Jack Bauer is having a very bad day at the cinema. All right, so it’s actually just Kiefer Sutherland sharing the screen with Michael Douglas in conspiracy thriller The Sentinel, but it certainly bears all the hallmarks of a 24-style plot, with Douglas’s Secret Service agent Pete Garrison blackmailed and framed as a suspect in a plot to kill the president. He’ll have to avoid the likes of David Breckinridge (Sutherland) and his team – the very agents that Garrison himself trained.

Directed by The Shield and SWAT helmer Clark Johnson, click here for The Sentinel trailer.