Back to Melmac

Go ahead and snicker, but we both know that if "Alf" creator/pupeteer/voice-actor Paul Fusco gets his way and a new movie gets off the ground a lot of us are going to go see it.

Believer

To me, the worst part about this clip is that this alleged human being has almost-certainly already reproduced...

Escape to the Movies: "Men In Black 3"

Don't bother.

"Intermission" has more Avengers.

Why We Fight

Another day, another thump from the constant drumbeat by the morally and (more importantly) intellectually bankrupt American right-wing in their increasingly-successful attempts to invent a nonexistant controversy over Katherine Bigelow's in-production "Killing of Bin Laden" movie.

John Nolte, "Big Hollywood's" once very talented but now hopelessly-corrupt bossman, has dropped all pretense that the faux-outrage is about anything but dutifully doing his part to stop a movie that might make Obama slightly more popular, writing in his latest screed against the project:

"This bin Laden film needs to scrapped. It is now tainted in every imaginable way -- artistically and as it relates to our national security. And if it's not scrapped, we can only hope that the blowback forever taints those involved."

At least they're honest, I suppose...

REVIEWERS ASSEMBLE!

Big news, friends.

A diverse group of Boston-area professional film journalists, writers, reporters, critics, commenters, etc. have officially united to form The Boston Online Film Critics Association; and they've graciously included me as a member.

There's a lot of great people in this group - a solid mix of seasoned industry professionals and fresh faces. I reccomend you meet the crew, and keep an eye on what they have to offer.

Here's a press release laying out the mission-statement. We're looking to do big things with this, so stay tuned!

Bull. Shit.

Right-wing movie-bloggers - along with politicians of questionable-priorities - spent all eight years of the Bush-era "War on Terror" excoriating "liberal Hollywood" for not churning out the kind of citizen-rallying, Pentagon-collaborative war-themed projects that folks like Capra and Ford produced during WWII. Now they're so eager to prevent the killing of Osama Bin Laden by SEAL Team 6 from aiding President Obama's election any further than it already has that they're desperately trying to damage Katherine Bigelow's film on the subject (which was in-production BEFORE reality wrote a surprise happy ending for it) by pretending that there's some kind of "controversy" over Bigelow's production team having access to the real-life participants in the mission. Never mind the fact that these same bloggers were more than happy to slobber all over "Act of Valor" (which I liked, for the record) which was made with much more filmmaker/SEAL interaction that Bigelow's people ever had.

3D Saves Another One?

The big shocker of "Transformers: Dark of The Moon" was that Michael Bay's sense of visual composition and scene-geography, which had regressed into being almost pure ADHD nonsense, had suddenly been restored to something resembling actual filmmaking... and the cause seemed pretty obvious: He'd been made to shoot the movie in 3D, which (presently) requires longer takes and deliberate compositions in order for the effect to work and massively-cumbersome rigs to be created - the process had, seemingly, cured him of his worst habits by effectively strapping a cinder-block to his camera.

Now, it appears 3D might have worked the same magic on another hodgepodge auteur; the badly-in-need-of-a-hit Baz Luhrman. Below, the trailer for his big XMas Oscar Bait release, "The Great Gatsby 3D."

Big Picture: "Stone Soup"

Part 1 of 2.

ALSO: Anonymous comments are back on. The slightly lowered workload isn't worth the downtick in traffic/visitors. We'll see how that goes.

"Skyfall" Teaser

My problem with the rebooted James Bond movies isn't that they purposefully yanked out the "signature" Bond stuff that defined the series for decades, but that they still haven't found a new signature to replace it with. That worked out alright for the origin story in "Casino Royale;" but "Quantum of Solace" was a thuddingly-generic actioner distinguished only by Craig calling himself "James Bond."

The new one, at least, makes the interesting move of putting things in the hands of Sam Mendes; which should at least make for a unique looking/feeling film. We'll see.

He Has Risen

The makers of ANCHORMAN 2 know how excited you are for ANCHORMAN 2 - so much so that they've cut a teaser for ANCHORMAN 2 even though ANCHORMAN 2 is still being written.

ANCHORMAN 2.

Hail The Terrible Wings Of Star-Lord Xenu!

Below, the cryptic but entrancing teaser trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's "THE MASTER;" a long-gestating project which is based-on that is absolutely not at all in any way, shape or form honest really no-fooling a fictionalized account of L. Ron Hubbard and the rise of Scientology. Philip Seymour Hoffman has the Hubbard part - the titular Master - but doesn't appear in the trailer; which seems to show Joaquin Pheonix as a sailor undergoing some sort of pyschiatric-interrogation.

This will probably end up being one of the big ones this year; but the real interest will be in seeing how the notoriously-litigious, cartoonishly thin-skinned extremely reasonable and clearheaded Church of Scientology reacts to it.

Regrettable

Until further notice, anonymous commenting is no longer available on this blog. I don't like it, but there's been too much bad behavior as of recent and this is the only way to curb it while still allowing the majority of readers to still post. Google and/or OpenID registrations are free, and while I understand and sympathize with those who don't want to register in some way to post online there really is no other way.

Some Memories Should Stay Buried

Someday, someone is going to write an AMAZING book about just how hillariously, disasterously stupid the "pop-culture tie-ins" side of the Reagan/Bush era "War on Drugs" push was.

For now, here's the finale of "The Flintstone Kids: Just Say No!;" with Michael JackSTONE belting out a re-worded anti-drug cover of "Beat-It" for toddler-versions of Fred Flintstone and friends - yes, complete with animated crotch-grab at 0:58. You're welcome.

Silly Season

Below, a trailer for "2016: Obama's America," a political-propaganda documentary that alledges to explain the "real motivation" behind all the sinister things paranoid dumbfuck white people conservatives were sure that Barack Obama was going to do but didn't do so now they're sure he's just waiting to do in his hypothetical second term. The bulk of this particular theory is coming from one Dinesh D'Souza, whose supposed "eureka!" concerning Obama is that he's not a socialist but rather an Africa-centric anti-colonialist who wants to dismantle American/Western power to the benefit of nations/peoples who previously suffered under Western colonialism - the "between the lines" on that, of course, is "White people, look out! Obama is going to take your stuff and give it to brown people!"

D'Souza, incidentally, is the author of "The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and It's Responsibility For 9/11;" which argued that secular American cultural exports like feminism, abortion-rights, atheism, gay-equality etc. are to blame for making Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists decide to attack the United States. So... yeah, charming guy.

Escape To The Movies: "Battleship"

How'd did you think it would turn out?
"Intermission" has some other movies based-on/around branded products where the connection was tenuous at best.

REVIEW: "The Dictator"

Sacha Baron Cohen is a great comic talent and a good actor with a lot of potential, so it's encouraging to see him trying to move beyond the "ambush-interviews-as-a-wacky-character" genre that initially made him a sensation. Let's just hope that the next "something new" he tries sticks better than "The Dictator" does.

The Premise Is 90% Of The Work

The premise of "Bait?" A group of random strangers are in an Australian supermarket when a robbery breaks out. Then a freak tsunami hits, trapping them inside the now half-flooded building... with a Great White Shark who rode in on the wave.

That'll do.

Raimi's Ghosthouse Offers Jewish Exorcism Flick

It's a cultural curiousity that, despite the much-ballyhooed presence of Jewish voices in American cinema; you don't actually see many mainstream movies mining the religious arcana of Judaism the way Catholicism or even Paganism are used by, for example, supernatural films. In fact, most non-Jewish U.S. audience probably couldn't tell you much about the actual faith beyond kosher diets and a lack of Jesus.

Big Picture: "Last Starr"

Strength of the bear!!!

Shout! Factory Announces Plans to Begin Printing Money

Generation Y is beginning to graduate from College and head out into the big scary adult world, which in the marketing biz means it's time to start re-selling them comforting reminders of their suddenly-evaporating youth.

I was (or, rather, considered myself to be) just a bit too old when the "Power Rangers" first happened to get big into it - though, obviously, the "tokusatsu" series that the franchise grew out of have been and remain a pretty big influence on me - in fact I remember being a perhaps-too-vocal "hater" of it when I was in Junior High and my then-kid sister was a MASSIVE never-miss-an-episode fan of it. I will say, however, that thanks to Linkara's hugely-watchable efforts I'm more or less becoming sort of a "retroactive fan."

In any case, I'm sure that while the image to the right is more of a "huh, cool" to me it's a MASSIVE "about fucking time!!!" to many others. What I CAN say is that Shout! Factory and Saban Inc's recently-announced plan for releasing the series on DVD is a master-class in how to "do" nostalgia-selling right...

Is It Amazing Yet?

So, two weekends ago Sony found out definitively that "The Amazing Spider-Man" is now all-but-destined to be the third-place finisher of Summer 2012's superhero blockbusters. "The money people" are already whispering that "Dark Knight Rises" probably won't beat "Avengers" boxoffice, and there's no way this is opening ahead of that, so... yeah.

Hence yesterday evening's huge multi-channel "special presentation" of a 4-minute preview of the film... about 2 1/2 minutes of which were all the scenes you've already seen in the trailers. The first minute and a half, however, are "new" and appear to be a major action scene that's been awkwardly re-edited/scored into trailer-beats - unless this is actually how they're cutting and scoring this thing, in which case... yikes...

Game OverThinker on Ollie North & "Call of Duty"

I don't typically cross-post new Game OverThinker episode stuff to this blog, but this new one that is now up for all audiences at ScrewAttack has a lot of bigger political and general-culture ramifications so I think it's appropriate enough.

The subject in question is the new "Call of Duty" ad campaign, which trots out Iran-Contra creep turned Fox News creep Oliver North to do some reactionry fear-mongering as a game advertisement and (maybe?) make "Call of Duty's" status as right-wing military-propaganda "official."

Escape to the Movies: "Dark Shadows"

It's alright.

"Intermission" has Bobcat Goldthwait talking "God Bless America"

Post-Movie Podcast: Avengers

I was back on the Post-Movie Podcast with Steve Head and John Black this week, talking about "The Avengers." Here's the link to the iTunes page where you can download this and other episodes; embed is below the jump:

The Good Guys Win - For Now

The President of The United States has come out in favor of Marriage Equality.

This is the big one - second only to the killing of Bin Laden in terms of "things Obama will be remembered for." It's been widely assumed that he supported equality all along, but was holding back on outright support in order to not anger certain voting-blocs (churchgoing African-Americans/Latinos and Catholic-descended blue-collar Union laborers mainly) known to be reflexively-Democrat voters but socially conservative. Whether this was planned via Biden's "trial-balloon" admission of support or whether that really was a "gaffe" that forced the President's hand is for the pundits to decide.