Of all the 90s-indie-kids-made-good filmmakers, the one I’d NEVER have expected to flame-out in a spectacular, slow-motion, ego-drive career collapse would’ve been Kevin Smith. But it’s been happening, and now it appears to be reaching a crescendo: Slashfilm reports that Smith’s much-ballyhooed “final film” before self-imposed retirement from directing, a comedy/drama about a hockey player called “Hit Somebody,” has a script so long that Smith can’t (or won’t) find a way to compress it into one movie… so instead he’s making two.

For those who’d stopped caring enough to follow the production of Kevin Smith movies (so, pretty-much everyone I imagine) “Hit Somebody” is about a lovable-bruiser of a “goon” hockey player whose employed by his team (and celebrated by the crowds) for his ability to bust heads for the cause of protecting the star players who score the big goals… but he’s actually a nice guy, and has always dreamed of scoring one big goal himself. In case you’re wondering – no, Smith didn’t swipe the screenplay for an unproduced Adam Sandler vehicle; this is actually an adaptation of a Warren Zevon song written by Mitch Albom. You cannot make this shit up.

The song starts out in the character’s childhood and follows him into the NHL, and that’s more-or-less the way Smith says he’ll split it – Part I being about the character growing up, the Pro-Hockey stuff in the Part II. Again, this is a comedy about a guy who starts hockey fights for a living.

Sean William Scott was originally supposed to play to lead, but bailed in favor of another hockey comedy called “Goon.”

Hardworking (seriously, click through – dude WORKS for his traffic) film blogger Jeffrey Wells of “Hollywood Elsewhere” has done the digging and come upon what the supernatural/fantasy angle was that made Disney’s Bruckheimer-produced, Johnny-Depp-As-Tonto “Lone Ranger” project so expensive that the Mouse House pulled the plug yesterday: Whereas “Pirates of The Carribbean” (which this was being nakedly modeled after) featured Depp and company as pirates fighting ghosts and/or sea-monsters; “Ranger” would’ve featured it’s Cowboy/Indian buddy-heroes battling Old West WEREWOLVES – thus adding a new explanation to the Ranger’s signature Silver Bullets.

I’ll give those who had previously felt like this project could not possibly sound any MORE like an “Onion” parody of everything tired, bad and wrong about the present-day blockbuster scene to compose themselves…

You should really go to Wells’ site and read the whole thing, but it’s pretty incredible sounding: Tonto would’ve been the main character, a sort of Qui-Gon Jin to the Ranger’s Young Obi-Wan; showing him how to deal with native-mythology Lycans with shamanistic magic – hillariously, it was apparently a big deal to Depp that the Native American spirituality surrounding said werewolves be taken “very seriously.”

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?