I would like to sincerely appologize to the young people of today, on behalf of my generation. See, at a certain point in the mid-1980s, my generation gave waaaaaaaaay more money than was necessary to a really, really silly movie called “Footloose” in which Kevin Bacon played a kid from The Big City who moves to a rural community and liberates it’s oppressed youth by leading a charge against John Lithgow’s evil preacher and his insidious ban on… dancing. Yes, fine, it was obviously ‘freedom to dance’ as an obvious ham-fisted sexual-liberation metaphor; still kind of a dopey premise.

But, because we made it a hit back when, this new remake is being inflicted upon you now. And for that… I am sorry…

Anybody wanna buy a pitch for a reboot of “RAD?” Cause I could probably bang that out in a weekend for the right price…

GOOD NEWS! Disney’s megabuget update of “The Lone Ranger,” which had sounded like an impending disaster of “Green Lantern” proportions pretty-much from the beginning (it was to be a “reworking” of the franchise from “Pirates” director Gore Verbinski which focused primarily on Tonto, to be played by – of course – Johnny Depp, with the Ranger himself as the supporting-character) has fallen apart. Deadline reports that the problem was primarily one of budget – Disney is nervous about how much “John Carter” and Sam Raimi’s “Wizard of Oz” prequel are costing right now – but you can almost-certainly thank the lackluster performance of “Cowboys & Aliens” for nudging this one into the abyss.

BAD NEWS! Lemme blow your mind right now: It has been A DECADE since “Austin Powers: Goldmember;” and thus a decade since Austin Powers has appeared in movie theaters. Well, that’s about to change: HitFix’s Drew McWeeny has the big scoop that Mike Meyers has signed on to ressurect the character for a fourth film. I wonder… do people remember that the original “Austin Powers” actually dissapointed in theaters and didn’t become a massive smash until it hit video-rental?

I’ll be honest – the prospect of returning to “Austin Powers” is morbidly fascinating to me, because of the bizzare way the character has been served by the popular culture. In the first film, part of the “joke” was that Austin’s mid-60s libertinism was as “lame” in 1997 as the mod fashion and Bond-era spy trappings he came bundled with… but only two years later the 60s were “chic” again and the 2nd and 3rd films went from bagging on Powers and his era to outright celebrating them. It’s almost a precursor to “Mad Men” (and now “Pan Am” and “Playboy Club”) in that regard.

Meanwhile, it’s now been so long for the series itself that the Clinton-era “end of history” ironic-optimism that was treated as a kind of utopian ideal for Austin himself to evolve up to in the first film looks today every bit as dated and naive as Austin’s “original” era. There’s an opportunity for meta-humor there; though I don’t imagine that’s where this is going.

S’okay. “Intermission” is a summer recap.

Stephen Colbert’s looooooong term “Colbert SuperPAC” stunt has been aimed at pointing out the absurdity of unrestricted campaign donations by becoming an official/legal conduit for such donations himself. Now we can see the first of what he’s opted to do with it: A parody campaign commercial asking Iowans to vote Rick PArry (as opposed to “Rick PErry”) into the Ames Straw Poll. Here it is…

Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like “eclectic” adaptations of classical plays and books that place the words and story in a unique and unexpected visual context? Are you not quite yet bored to tears by said “unique and unexpected visual context” being another mashup of Ancient Rome, Facism and the present-day United States to make a really on-the-nose “point?” Well, have I got a trailer for you…

Obviously, I have no official/specific comment to make about my business dealings with certain websites at this time. Those who know what that is in reference to, eh… probably know what that is in reference to, I guess. That’s not meant as a dodge, or cryptic language, or a “clue,” or a wink-wink, or anything of the sort – what everyone has heard on either end is all I am aware of and/or privy-to and at this time I have nothing to add.

That having been said, I want to echo what others have said and say that @ExtraCreditz are good guys and that I wish them all good luck wherever they land. I’d also like to ask that folks please keep in mind that, while obviously everyone is free to draw their own conclusions when business-issues go spilling out into the public record, businesses are made up of many levels and “hands,” and not every action is attributable to to every hand at every level – and as such, one should not be too hasty in assigning “guilt by association” to parties under that sort of umbrella when they may not have had anything to do with wrongdoing (percieved or otherwise.)

Below, the trailer for Disney’s “The Odd Life of Timothy Green;” easily one of the most batshit-insane looking “family movies” I’ve seen teased in awhile. Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton are an infertile rural couple who work through their latest round of bad medical news by playing a game of make-believe – writing down the attributes of their wished-for perfect child and burying the pages in their garden. Overnight, a magical backwards-running rainstorm occurs and a full-grown toddler apparently “hatches” out of the burial site, the proceeds to grow up into an embodiment of their wishes who also strikes more Christ-poses than an interpretive-dance version of “Superman Returns.”

This can’t possibly be as strange or interesting as it seems, but for now… WTF?

Funny thing is, I’m not even in a particularly bad mood…

To say that “all religion is bad” is an oversimplification bordering on intellectual bigotry and does not hold up to any measure of scrutiny. However, to say that “NO religion is bad” is equally over-simplified and holds up even less. I can think of FOUR religions, off the top of my head, that would make the world a better place by having their influence diminished to near-total obscurity – two of them are very large, two of them are sort of new, one of them is VERY new, and none of them are Judaism or Buddhism. Have fun guessing.

Barack Obama is NOT “playing chess while the Republicans play checkers.” The Republicans are playing checkers, and Obama is wondering why they can’t just all take equal numbers of red and black pieces, call it an “everybody wins” and go outside to guess what clouds look like.

Widespread legalization and acceptance of gay marriage will probably NOT cause an errosion in the societal stature of marriage itself, monogamy, the ‘traditional’ family unit, etc; ultimately leading to a kind of benign sexual/romantic anarchy (at least compared to the current model)… but if it DID, I wouldn’t necessarily call that an innately bad thing.

The idea that “amoral” and “immoral” are treated as being the same thing causes an awful lot of unnecessary consternation and social-slowdown.

Making a certain “baseline” of medical care government-run and taxpayer funded would not only pay for itself but start paying DIVIDENDS if said “free” care was NOT made available to those who injured themselves through acts of willful stupidity – re: repeat hard-drug abuse, improperly-supervised “Xtreme!!!” sports/stunts, etc.

I do not object to one man being able to attain, without even running for or being elected to political office, the level of power and influence over world events that Rupert Murdoch has – I only object to that man BEING Rupert Murdoch. If I found out someone was bribing officials and subverting the will of “the people” to ends I agreed with, I’d probably be okay with it… unless it involved serious wrongdoing, like people getting killed or whatnot.

Science has not and probably will not “disprove” the existance of God. However, it’s doing a very good job of making the prospect of an all-knowing, loving, benevolent God to seem very, very unlikely. Ironically, the much more ancient notion of god(s) as a super-powerful yet petty and scatterbrained uber-being treating the world like a bucket of not-especially-well-cared-for toys seems more plausible by the day.

The “Tea Party” wing of Congress (as opposed to individual citizens still for whatever reason comfortable with identifying with said movement) is speaking with 100% accuracy in it’s opinion of itself as the representation of “average, everyday, ordinary folks” outlook on the world. As such, they are the clearest example ever presented of why “average, everyday, ordinary folks” are best kept as far away from exercising actual, direct power over the running of a society as humanly possible.

When I say “Hey science, it’s the 21st Century – where’s my jet-pack!?,” I am NOT interested in hearing about how infeasible it is because air-traffic would be so difficult to manage. After all, please notice I was asking about MY jet-pack – not everybody else’s jet-pack.

If Godzilla or something like Godzilla actually came into being and began an unstoppable destructive rampage the likes of which the world had never seen; so long as said rampage didn’t kill anyone I know or destroy anything I hold in particular affection it would take at least a month for me to even think of acknowledging said events as anything other than “REAL GIANT MONSTER!? AWESOME!!!”

The worst thing that has happened to modern culture by far is that “elite” has become a derrogatory word.

I disagree with people who say “I have no problem with faith, it’s organized religion that’s the problem.” Frankly, organized religion is fine by me – I “get” people needing/wanting some kind of structured sense of community and ritual to build get-togethers and holidays around; and that’s cool by me. MY problem is when the actual faith/beliefs involved are take SO seriously by adherents that they actually want it to effect the way the world is organized and run.

I would be absolutely fine with NASA forging photographs proving to have found oil on Mars if it was successful in “tricking” the U.S. to turn the space-program back on and get some permanent installations built up there already.

Taylor Lautner has the mother of all damned-if-you-do paradoxes hanging over his career: Already widely-known at a comparatively young age and gifted with a presence (that may be too generous of a term) well-suited for action roles… BUT! His said early/instant fame comes from having appeared in the “Twilight” movies – which is exactly the sort of pedigree that the audience a would-be action-star needs to cultivate would hold against him.

Below, the kind of hilarious trailer for his first stab at a solo action career, “Abduction,” which for some reason isn’t getting the sort of point-at-it-and-laugh hype you’d expect so far (and doesn’t seem to have caught the attention of “Twilight” fans, either)…

It’s “The Face On The Milk Carton” meets “The Bourne Identity.” Having heavyweights like Signourney Weaver and Alfred Molina LITERALLY cast as the folks leading him through the movie by the hand is a little on the nose, if you ask me…

I wonder how many people, when this plays in theaters, assume that it’s actually a “Jacob” spin-off before the spy stuff kicks in?