Here's your dose of quick news bits for Jan. 6, 2009...

• Regent Releasing has aquired the North American distribution rights for Yojiro Takita's "Departures" (Okuribito), a drama that focuses on a cellist who loses his job and decides to move back to his hometown, where he starts to work as the local undertaker. The film is also Japan's submission for the best foreign film. (Hollywood Reporter)

• Director Adam Shankman talked to MTV about "Hairspray 2." Here's part of what he had to say: “[The treatment] is amazing, but it’s crazy. There are things in there that I was like ‘Can we do that?’ It’s real John Waters-y stuff, and it was more like a sequel to his movie than to our movie. Which I love, because then that becomes re-interpreted.”

• MTV also talked to "Sex and the City" stylist Patricia Field, who talked a bit about the sequel to last year's big-screen adaptation. “I do believe it will happen, because [creator] Michael Patrick King himself told me it’s gonna happen. But I haven’t really received any official information yet,” she said.

• Jay Chandrasekhar recently talked to Movieweb about a sequel to "Super Troopers." Here's some plot info: "We pick up the story essentially right were we left off. Maybe about three months later. We are all working undercover for the lumber industry. What has happened is that there are all of these eco-terrorists that are trying to blow up the lumber mills. And we are there working as security."