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.

I don’t know that “Alf” (it means “Alien Life Form”) has the kind of longevity that other properties have had – i.e. I don’t know that anyone born after it went off the air knows/cares that it ever existed; but the basic pitch was “What if E.T. stuck around, and was a sarcastic pain-in-the-ass?”

Part of the running joke of the series was that we only ever heard about Alf’s (real name: Gordon Schumway) destroyed homeworld of Melmac through his own second-hand accounts, and the descriptions vacillated between the entire civilization being as boorish/silly as he was and the occasional bit of unexpected depth or pathos – at one point we learn that Alf/Gordon was some sort of soldier; an “orbital guard” who was spared because he was offworld when Melmac exploded. (I recall that actual cause of the destruction is alluded to have been either a nuclear accident or conflict; though at least once Alf’s answer was “we all plugged in our hairdryers at the same time.) Presumably, a feature film would expand on that sort of material in some way.

If it happens, this would be the second “Alf” movie. The original series was canceled after ending on a cliffhanger where Alf is finally captured by government alien-hunters, and wasn’t “resolved” until a terrible TV movie called “Project: Alf” many years later.

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

Don’t bother.

“Intermission” has more Avengers.

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…

What truly drives me mad about this nonsense isn’t so much the manufactured “campaign” itself – American “conservatives” behaving poorly stopped being shocking a long time ago. What infuriates me is how little coverage or even FACT-CHECKING this is getting from the rest of the entertainment press.

Somehow, “digging up” the real reason for Paramount bumping G.I. Joe 2 ahead nine months is more pressing/interesting than a cabal of political hacks actively trying to destroy a movie because it’s presence might be beneficial to their political rivals. How is this not news? Why am I not seeing people other than ME calling the Breitbart Gang out on this sleazy, disingenous, nakedly-agenda-driven hackery?

The advantage that the right-wing “new media” has is that no one in the legitimate press takes them seriously until it’s too late. These are the people who framed Shirley Sherrod, turned “health care” into a four-letter word and are busily working to “de-habilitate” the late Trayvon Martin’s image into that of a “thug” who deserved his murder; and they keep getting away with it because the “real” media won’t pay them any mind until the damage is already done… refusing to understand that right-wing activism’s ability to weaponize the paranoia and stupidity of the masses has become a potent tool in the age of social-media.

This not (only) about politics, this is about decency and duty: People in the Film Press are, fundamentally, supposed to be here because we love and support films and filmmakers. Katherine Bigelow is a hell of a filmmaker who waited far too long for recognition; and these shameless savages are looking to destroy her unfinished, unseen-by-them-or-anyone-else movie NOT because it’s “bad,” NOT because it’s “wrong,” but because destroying it might help their prefered presidential candidate.

This is something that anyone who claims to hold films and the art of filmmaking in any kind of regard should not simply be “against;” but madly, passionately and VOCALLY against. If we can sign petitions and pimp kickstarters to save old theaters, restore fading prints, promote struggling productions, etc., then surely it’s not only right but righteous that we stand up and say that this disingenuous smear-campaign is wrong and cannot be allowed to rage on unchallenged… that we use our voices to throw a spotlight onto this nonsense. The movie may be good, bad, or average; but it deserves to get made and be judged on it’s own merits – not killed in the crib for the short-term goals of Teabagger political hacks.

This is me issuing a call to all film lovers who read this; particularly those of you with columns, blogs or other movie-related platforms of your own: Don’t ignore this. Don’t let this slide. Speak up. Tell people that this is going on. Support this film and it’s makers. Speak out AGAINST the politically-motivated attempts to preemptively “taint” or damage it. Make sure that people know about it, and make sure that they know the campaign to kill it is bullshit being propagated by activist hacks.

Speak up. Speak out. Don’t let the bastards win this one.

Thank you.

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!

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.
I get why they’re pissed off, don’t get me wrong. Republicans have spent DECADES propping up the ideal of stern, square-jawed, conservative caucasian men, preferably with an air of rural machismo – the Cowboy Ideal… reborn!!! – as the only human beings capable of protecting the world from evil via bold political/military leadership; so it’s just killing them that no matter what history will record that it was a black liberal “intellectual” from Chicago who got to give the “take him out” order on Osama Bin Laden. So yeah, I understand. Poor things.

But guys… y’really have to let this one go. Some stuff you just can’t work around – Osama ate it on Obama’s watch, he got to make the call, he got to give the speech, there’s nothing you can do to make this NOT reflect well on him, and trying only makes you look foolish and diverts precious resources desperately needed over in your “Make Mitt Romney Seem Less Like Pod-Person” division. Focus!

The fact is, the movie was already in-production for over a year before the operation took place; so the idea that this was hastily put together as an “election movie” is asinine – unless, of course, people who are deluded enough to believe that Bin Laden’s killing was “stage managed” and the film is part of the conspiracy… but to buy that, you’d have to be dumb enough to believe that the President was born in Kenya, that there are socialist sleeper-agents in the U.S. government in 2012, that Soviet-style communism is still ANY kind of real threat, that Global Warming doesn’t exist, that evolution doesn’t exist, that… oh, right. Nevermind.

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.”

It’s just a trailer, but if it’s an accurate representation of the final product this is easily the best looking thing Luhrman has ever turned out; all his strengths (opulence, enthusiasm, earnest bravado) with his weaknesses (see: everything after “Romeo + Juliet”) seemingly mitigated by the technology.

What’s left is the truth of the matter: Love him or hate him, Luhrman is perfect for this material; and I’m feeling like it’s going to be a real treat to see a version of “Gatsby” go all-in on the era-appropriate exuberance and ribaldry that previous attempts haven’t quite captured. The “Roaring” 20s is a fascinating period, but it’s seldom been done justice onscreen – partially because so much of what made the period interesting in terms of art, culture, fashion and social behavior went back to being taboo after The Depression/WWII… in fact, in many respects we’re only just now getting back to where we already were then.

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.

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.

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.


http://www.funnyordie.com/embed/15a73b7e06

My only nagging concern about this is that we still haven’t seen any indication that Christina Applegate is back. To my mind, she was pretty key to how well the first one worked; and it’d be a mistake (not to mention darkly ironic given the story of the first one) for the original’s lone female lead not to return.