From Drink at Work:

This week, check out Ned's re-imagining of the classic rant, "Hollywood is Out of Ideas." With the recent rash of remake and adaptation deals going on in the movie business, there's only one thing an aspiring screenwriter can do: pitch his own.

Included: a sneak peek at Ned's next cinematic masterpiece.

Comic Con Wrap-Up

Here's my latest video for the good folks at Drink at Work. In this week's installment, it's time to review what I learned during my five days in San Diego for Comic Con — aside from where all the open bars near the convention center were. Seriously, I think I was drunk for five days straight. God knows what I really said to Lucy Lawless, but at least she didn't find it offensive.

Anyway, enjoy!

Watching is the new reading

Big news! So my fancy "Drinking in L.A." column over at Drink at Work is now a video series! Because reading is hard! Check it out:

Where to find me

I've started a new weekly column over at Drink at Work.com called Drinking in L.A., chronicling my misadventures in sunny Southern California. Dig in! Also, each column links back here at the bottom, so you can even get yourself in a fun, neverending Ned loop!

Also, I'm on Twitter now. Just like Ashton! You can follow me, if you like.

We're Just That Into Drew (Barrymore)*

Drew Barrymore has one hard and fast rule for ending a relationship: It has to be done in person. No phone calls, no e-mails, no texting — and certainly no changing your relationship status on Facebook. “The older you get, the less OK it gets to do it over any technological device,” she says. “The in-person is a must. Fly, do whatever you can.”

But that aversion to technology doesn’t just go for breakups. Barrymore, who turns 34 later this month, is proud to call herself something of a luddite. “I still have a wall phone, and I love tape and shoot on film,” she says. And Mary, her character in “He’s Just Not That Into You,” is very much the same way, dismayed by technology, trying in vain to make dating work in the age of Myspace and Facebook. “No guys call anymore,” Barrymore laments. “It’s just texts.”

Growing up very much in the public eye, Barrymore’s love life has long been on display — she even co-stars in the film with ex-boyfriend Justin Long. One of the things that drew her to the film was its frank discussion of the perils of modern courtship. “At a certain point, you’re just not willing to accept less than what your heart desires, what you deserve,” she says. “You run into that wall so many times and you hit your head so many fricking times that it’s just there on the floor and bloody, and you’re like, I get it.”

The message of the film — inspired by the book of the same name, which was inspired by a single line of dialogue in an episode of “Sex and the City” — speaks to that growing awareness, Barrymore says. “I think there’s something so great about your friends not coddling you, but being honest,” she says. “You think that you’re helping your friend by being nice, but really the truth will get them so much further in life.”

“It’s real life,” she says of the film. “These not fantastical storylines where someone misses someone in an airport, or someone’s a prince, or someone’s your boss. This is what we’re all really dealing with.”

Barrymore also served as a producer for “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and she’s produced several other films already. Adding an extra hyphen to her job description, she recently made the jump to directing with her debut, “Whip It!” about a girls’ roller derby league in Texas, starring Ellen Page and due out later this year. Acting-wise, she’s due next in “Grey Gardens,” opposite Jessica Lange.

And as for potential boyfriends? “Men build bridges if they want to get from here to there,” she says with a laugh. “They can find your phone number if they want to.” Let’s just hope they don’t decide to send her a text message.

* As the writer of these pieces, I generally have no control over the headlines that run with them, but of course I'm free to give an item whatever headline I want here. But this one? I just had to share it.

Profile: Cornelia Funke

When German author Cornelia Funke sat down to write the main character for the book that would become “Inkheart,” she had someone in mind: Brendan Fraser. Looking for inspiration, she noticed her young son watching “the Mummy” over and over and was impressed with Fraser’s range. “He is very funny sometimes and very melancholy,” she says.

But casting Fraser in the eventual adaptation, Funke learned quickly, was not so easy. “When I said to the studio, ‘I know who the leading man is,’ they didn’t like that,” she jokes. Even Fraser, who had become a close friend since the publication of “Inkheart,” cautioned her to be more flexible, warning that the project could collapse if she continued to insist on casting him. But Funke wouldn’t be deterred. “Of course I had to do it. I’m old-fashioned in that. Then the movie doesn’t happen, so what?”

That cavalier attitude comes from a very successful career — Time magazine dubbed her the “German J.K. Rowling” in 2005 — with many adaptations of her work under her belt. “[‘Inkheart’] is the sixth movie they’ve done from my books,” Funke admits. “I’ve had hundreds of theater productions, children playing them in schools. I’ve seen puppets do my work. A movie cannot be worse.”

Funke came late to writing, starting her career as a social worker. And as a child, she wanted to be an astronaut. “I would never have thought I could do such a magical thing as write a book,” she says. And “Inkheart” was in part created for book lovers like her. “I wrote it as a love song to book-ophiles like me. I wrote them for that rare breed that can’t live without piles of books next to their bed.”

When it comes to these kids today losing interest in books, Funke doesn’t understand the concern, pointing out that when she was a young girl, she stood out for being a book lover. “There were maybe two other children who were passionate about books. The others thought books were boring and want to touch them,” she recounts. “There weren’t these ferocious readers that everybody now says we lost.”

Funke insists that kids have always needed to be encouraged to read, just like today. “You have to show them that a book can be a beautiful thing,” she says, but is quick to add that there are other media through which children express themselves.

“Our children tell their stories in movies or through TV, in games and in videos,” she says. “That is their way of storytelling.” The important thing is to encourage creativity, wherever it pops up. “We have to teach them to do it actively. If they then find their way back to books, that solitary place where they can create their own worlds, wonderful. But we can’t keep saying books are good thing and all other things are bad, because they will always go for the bad things.”

Sad Klaus: Episode 4