When Beavis and Butthead debuted on MTV’s Liquid Television in the very early 90s, it was not at all conceivable that its creator, animator and primary voice actor Mike Judge would, over the course of two decades, build a career that eventually conformed to the key points on the Troubled Maverick Timeline. First with those double entendre-happy half-brains to his long-running King of the Hill, Judge has done more to legitimize animation as a commercially viable vehicle for sly social critique than anyone in the post-Simpsons era save Matt Stone and Trey Parker. With Office Space, he cast Jennifer Aniston, then the biggest star on TV, in a sharp satire about 20 something stagnation far away from Central Perk, and audiences didn’t immediately get it. He followed that with Idiocracy, an apocalypse comedy that Fox dumped on the mere assumption that audiences wouldn’t immediately get it. Both films went on to find fervent cult audiences; Office Space looked a lot better on video and cable once its timeless comedy of little guy vengeance could be safely sifted away from the Aniston baggage; Idiocracy looked a lot better when it was actually available to be seen. After all this, it’s no wonder that Judge, who has written and directed each of his features, is treated like an auteur — quite the feat for a guy who makes visually indistinguished comedies mostly about working class guys and their frustrated ids. Who does he think he is — Kevin Smith?

Actually, Extract made me laugh more than any the last few Kevin Smith movies, but where Zach and Miri Make a Porno seemed to bring its maker’s career into sharper focus, Extract seems to derail Mike Judge’s previous progress as a filmmaker with Something to Say About The Way We Live In This United States. The story of Joel (Jason Bateman), a small business owner whose dreams of selling out to General Mills and finding a way to justify cheating on his wife are both thwarted when the insolence of one of his workers causes a chain reaction that results in another worker losing a testicle, Extract first takes too long to get going, and then seems to stumble into three or four conclusions. It’s riotously funny for about an hour in between (much of this thanks to the perfect cast, including Ben Affleck as Joel’s bartender buddy, Mila Kunis as the con bimbo who catches his eye, and Kristen Whig as his bored and boring wife), but those who have come to expect a Mike Judge movie to precisely skewer a contemporary social sphere may be disappointed. I didn’t previously give Office Space or Idiocracy much credit as anything other than very smart comedies, but Extract makes them both look like quasi-libertarian morality plays about the absolute necessity of personal responsibility. Those films were about men manning up to change the status quo; Extract is about a guy briefly taking his balls out of a drawer, juggling them for a bit and then putting them back after coming to the understanding that his status quo is actually great. Take away the ample discussion of testicles, and there’s something almost Capraesque going on here.

• Not that adults can’t already appreciate Muppet movies enough as they are, but The Jim Henson Co. has a new film in the works that will primarily be for grown-ups. Described as being a little Avenue Q mixed with a little L.A. Confidential and Pulp Fiction, the movie will be set in a world where humans and puppets co-exist (umm, like any other Muppet movie, uh huh), in which the latter are considered second-class citizens (still kind of like any other Muppet movie) and become victim to a series of murders (ok, there’s the adult part). Titled The Happyland Murders, this seemingly Muppets version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit will be directed by Brian Henson (The Muppet Christmas Carol).
• This should be the year to debut hot political films, not announce them, but Fox Searchlight has reportedly acquired the rights to Allen Raymond’s memoir How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, which has been adapted and will be directed by Billy Ray (Shattered Glass).
• The boys of Peter Billingsley’s Couples Retreat have now been assigned wives: Jason Bateman gets Kristen Bell; Vince Vaughn gets Malin Ackerman; and Jon Favreau somehow gets Kristin Davis. The plot has all these pairings headed to a tropical island in order to save their marriages. There should really be an official genre called Romantic Fantasy Comedy for this one to be classified as.
• In more typical romantic comedy genre news, Amy Adams will star in Leap Year as an uptight woman who wants to follow Irish tradition and propose to her boyfriend on February 29. The script, from the writers of Made of Honor, is described as being like It Happened One Night. I’m sure.

• “Some believe that with the country reeling from the economic breakdown on Wall Street, moviegoers will go for comedy,” says Variety, which predicts My Best Friend’s Girl to top the weekend over Lakeview Terrace. Of course, there’s also Ricky Gervais yukking it up in Ghost Town, but The Hollywood Reporter notes that film has tracked so poorly that Paramount cut back its screen count. I guess moviegoers won’t go for just any comedy in depressing times.
• Forget all the rumors about Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell playing Watson to Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes in Guy Ritchie’s adaptation. Jude Law is now reportedly in talks to play the detective’s associate. And so I must elementarily deduce that Sherlock Holmes will surprisingly not be a hit.
• The kid from A Christmas Story will make his directorial debut with Couples Retreat, which will star his usual collaborators Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, as well as Jason Bateman.
• Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi have been cast in a film about the beginnings of the Internet porn industry. But will any of its target audience leave the computer long enough to go see it?
• Finally, though this isn’t big news, the 3-D animated adaptation of my favorite kid’s book of all time, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, has rounded out its voice cast with James Caan, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Tracy Morgan and Mr.T!. I can not wait.

I never went to a normal college, never lived in a proper dorm or experienced fraternity hazing or even rush week from an inside viewpoint. I went to an urban art school and then a commuter school. And though I grew up in a college town and later worked on the campus of another college I didn’t attend, I feel like I don’t have the proper perspective with which to judge most college movies and college kid characters as being true to life. This probably explains why I enjoy so many bad movies set in colleges and/or involving college students. I bet I could even check out a double feature of The House Bunny and College and have a good time at the movies.

Of course, I do have some semblance of good taste, and I also recognize that none of the following movies are anywhere near the quality of my favorite college movies (including Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman, the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers and the Frat Pack’s Old School), or even the beloved Animal House, which I regrettably find to be highly overrated (no, that doesn’t mean I dislike it or think it’s bad or unfunny). The ten movies on today’s list are merely guilty pleasures that I can’t stop appreciating no matter how hard I try or how old I get.

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It’s been almost two weeks and Hancock has grossed almost $350 million, so it’s time to start the academic discussions — with spoilers, of course (anyone who wants to avoid knowing the “twists” should discontinue reading now). Maybe it’s just the film scholar in me, but I have been desiring a good analysis of the film’s allegorical meaning since viewing the less-than-perfect superhero movie last week. While others may feel that the movie is hardly worth reading into (especially over-reading, as I’ve always felt my M.O. to be) or that it’s too obvious that the first half is really about the role of the U.S. as a superpower, I’m nevertheless eager to figure it out.

Basically, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to understand where the allegory goes, or was meant to go, once Charlize Theron’s character is introduced as Hancock’s super-powered wife. Does she somehow fit in with or in response to Hancock’s representation of America (the patriotic name, the eagle emblem on his uniform, etc.)? I’m still at a loss, but I’ve come up with 5 possibilities (some a lot less likely than others) for what screenwriters Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan intended for her character to be.

1. The United Kingdom - So sue me if part of my reasoning is inspired by Theron’s role on Arrested Development, in which she also seemed to be harboring a secret from beau Jason Bateman (if only Hancock had stolen Jeffrey Tambor from Hellboy II, it could have been considered a reunion), but if Hancock represents America, then Mary (Theron) is some other superpower, right? I don’t recall any hints that she signifies the Soviet Union, so she must be a stand-in for the British. Is her desire to be a housewife representative of a desire by the British to no longer be a world-stomping empire? Is Mary’s defending of the French boy a nod to Britain-France relations in contrast to U.S.-France? But then is the movie also saying that the UK and the U.S. are less powerful when united together? History would say otherwise.
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Our friends at The Playlist are expressing skepticism over Jason Bateman’s latest claim that the Arrested Development movie is “in the works,” but at the very least, Bateman’s insistence on talking the thing up in spite of a total lack of hard evidence that the movie exists is a fascinating example of how not-quite major stars can use the press to their advantage.

When Bateman first mentioned the thing, on the Juno press tour, the press went nuts––probably primarily because 90% of Arrested Development’s devoted fan bas consists of bloggers and journalists. Juno had an unusually long press cycle for a studio film, beginning at Telluride and continuing straight through Oscar night, and for about a week, its fourth billed star was able to temporarily hijack the attention and steer it towards his dream project. He’s essentially doing the same thing with Hancock: he again has a supporting role, but any little crumbs he has to offer about an AD movie (and the couple of sentences dropped here are less than substantial) are far more interesting than anything he could say about the joys of working with Will Smith.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard that former ’80s teen-movie star John Cusack will star in Roland Emmerich’s apocalypse spectacular 2012. Considering the blockbuster filmmaker has previously directed the likes of James Spader (in Stargate) and Matthew Broderick (in Godzilla), I figure it’s only a matter of time before he’s worked with all our favorite ’80s teen-movie actors. So, here’s a list of the next ten actors most appropriate for Emmerich to cast:

1. Kirk Cameron - The former star of TV’s Growing Pains and the ’80s flick Like Father, Like Son has more recently starred in the Christian-targeted Left Behind movies, which, in dealing with the Rapture, fit in with Emmerich’s usual penchant for end-of-the-world scenarios. Considering his pro-creationist stance, he probably wasn’t a fan of Emmerich’s recent caveman epic and his Evangelical status means he probably disagrees with the climate change message of The Day After Tomorrow. Too bad, because seeing Mike Seaver in a big-budget action extravaganza would be awesome.
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I’ve been on the fence about Hancock from the beginning. Sure, it’s a Will Smith blockbuster and it co-stars Jason Bateman, both typically prime selling points for me, but it also seems a bit one-note and silly. Upon first hearing about the concept of a drunken has-been superhero, I immediately thought about drunken Superman in Superman III. After seeing the teaser trailer, I felt the exaggerated special effects (including the rather funny whale toss) were a little too over the top.

Now comes a full trailer (Quicktime version here) that reveals a lot more action and a lot more plot points. The former seems to have everyone on the Internet suddenly more excited about the movie. But what about those new story reveals? Aside from the usual problem of giving too much away, the trailer exposes the overdone concept of a world without its under-appreciated hero(es) — think Ghostbusters, any one of a thousand comic book titles (the hero is in jail, or half-defeated, or in an alternate state such as in Superman III) — and makes it seem as though screenwriters Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan based the rest of the movie around that single, simple recycled idea.

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Another bit of exciting news from Jason Bateman [again via MTV Movies Blog] regarding the Arrested Development movie: “the ball has started rolling down the hill again.” Okay, so it’s not too exciting, nor is it revelatory in the least, but at least he says all the creatives are on board. Meanwhile, the actor also commented on his role in the American movie adaptation of the British TV mini-series State of Play, which, combined with MTV’s other post about the American TV series remake/adaptation of the British TV series Spaced, has me putting a little thought into the subject of theatrical spin-offs versus movie adaptations.

Certainly those of us who are fans of a series would rather see it continued with all original talent on board (even if we are cynically fearing the result) than see it adapted into a movie version many years down the line, whether the approach be faithful or parody or an attempt at both. Try to imagine another cast playing the Arrested Development and Sex and the City characters. Imagine the pointlessness a future X-Files remake/adaptation compared with the immediate cinematic extension we received. Or live-action versions of The Simpsons or South Park somewhere down the line rather than the big-screen supplements.

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• Studios are refusing to greenlight pictures that can’t be completed by June 30, the deadline for the Screen Actors Guild to settle on a new contract. But Michael Bay, for one, is not afraid of a silly little actor’s strike. Says the Transformers 2 director, who claims he currently has three screenwriters “in Michael Bay jail” hammering out a script: “If there is a strike, we shut down, but shutting down isn’t that big a deal.” Expect the AMPTP to use this as a bargaining tool––after all, why would they care about meeting the demands of human actors, when they can make a billion dollars off a self-professed captor of screenwriters and his imaginary robots?
• Peter Debruge goes out of his way to defend The Last Emperor on the occasion of its Criterion release, but still longs for the Criterion treatment of “better” Bertolucci: “Witnessing the care and respect they pay The Last Emperor (going so far as to indulge Storaro’s controversial reframing of the film’s aspect ratio from 2.35:1 to 2:1), it’s a shame Criterion didn’t handle restorations of either The Conformist or 1900 two of the director’s earlier epics that Paramount released from their vaults with minimal attention just over a year ago.”
• Disney is launching its own version of Rock Band, called Ultimate Band. We’re told it’ll feature “more family friendly gameplay and song selection,” but the examples offered of songs sure to be involved are by The White Stripes and The Who. So by “family friendly”, they mean it’s a game for Jason Bateman-in-Juno style reluctant hipster parents, and embittered ex-hipie grandparents? That actually sounds really great.

I apologize for linking to a misrepresenting, jokey MTV Movies Blog post for the second day in a row, but I figured, despite the teasing headline, that I could use it to bring up an important point. The Arrested Development movie, which is all but definitely greenlit at this point (hopefully Keith Olbermann is convincing enough), may not be able to involve all our favorite actors, characters or inanimate objects from the series. And that needs to be … okay. Maybe Franklin, the ventriloquist dummy, really has been lost since the show was canceled, and won’t make it to the big screen. But even if the production is able to make a new Franklin puppet, it could choose not to. This doesn’t need to be like the final episode of Seinfeld (or even of Arrested Development, when you think about it) and feature every beloved part of every season.

Personally, although I loved Karina’s post about the five suggested plots for the movie, I am one of the huge Arrested fans who would rather not have a movie. The show had its run, it more or less tied everything up in the final episode and it is done. I imagine there is something interesting (and hilarious, of course) that the ensemble can do together in a feature-length film, but no matter what the result, it is likely to be a disappointment, whether it lacks Franklin or Judy Greer or anything/anyone else, because in the end it’s just some people trying to exploit another product with a built-in audience. By now it’s the same thing as making a movie based on G.I. Joe. But with less work for the casting department.

I’d like to still say that I’ll watch Will Smith in anything, but as I still haven’t gotten around to seeing I Am Legend (and because of friends’ responses, I may not anytime soon), such a statement would be erroneous. Besides, after watching the new tweaked trailer for Hancock (courtesy of Chris at Movie Marketing Madness, who points out that it’s pretty much the same as the first Hancock trailer), Smith’s summer blockbuster for 2008 , I don’t know if I’m going to see that one either.

As if there aren’t enough worthy comic books to adapt, Hollywood has been giving us way too many gimmicky superhero movies — superheroes in a high school! superhero who’s your ex-girlfriend! superhero who has fallen out of favor and drinks his life away! — and the superhero concept has become the easiest pitch since that whole Die Hard in a ____ thing. The thing is, the idea behind Hancock, that of a public that’s pissed off about heroes that are more destructive than helpful, has already been alluded to enough in Watchmen (the graphic novel, which is also on its way to the big screen) and The Incredibles, which will never be equalled as far as non-adaptation superhero movies go. I guess Hancock is kind of like evil, drunk Superman in Superman III. But it’s Will Smith, so it’s … funnier?

Unless Amy Ryan prevails, Cate Blanchett is expected to scratch away the significance of Linda Hunt’s 1982 Oscar win. But wait: even if Blanchett fails to be the second person to win an Academy Award for playing a character of the opposite sex, John Travolta could also be up for that honor. On the eve of the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations, Travolta is expected to fill one of the five slots in the best supporting actor category for his performance as a big-boned mama in Hairspray.

The predictions come from two awards-season blogs, Scott Feinberg’s And the Winner Is … (via The Carpetbagger), and Tom O’Neil’s Gold Derby, with the latter claiming his to be “100% accurate” and based on information received from both “industry insiders” and “sources close to members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.” Feinberg, meanwhile, points out that with a Globe nomination, Travolta will be a “major threat” contender for the supporting actor Oscar.

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A number of stories from Juno press confabs fueled rumors last week that Jason Bateman is trying to jump-start a movie based on his much-missed FOX comedy Arrested Development. Keith Olbermann, who admits to being friends with at least three ex-AD cast members, passed along a statement from the actor and series creator Mitchell Hurwitz, confirming that the movie is “something [they're] very interested in doing, but only after the writers’ strike, and only if the powers that be approve.”

For those not in the know, AD starred Bateman as Michael Bluth, the one sort-of together member of a high-profile Southern California family, whose real estate tycoon patriarch (Jeffrey Tambor) has been thrown in jail whilst awaiting trial on charges of (among other things) building mansions for Sadaam Hussein. Michael Cera, Bateman’s so-hot-right-now Juno costar, played his son on the show; Will Arnet, Portia DiRossi and David Cross rounded out the cast.

I was a huge Arrested Development fan (I wrote this much-misread post about the show in spring 2005), but I was also fairly satisfied with the series’ conclusion. I sat down to try to imagine/divine possible plotlines for a movie, but because there was very little that I was dying to see resolved, I decided to call in some reinforcements. I sent out emails to some bloggy friends, I trolled Facebook looking for fans. Then, weirdness: for every AD fan who happily offered up an idea for The Bluth family’s big screen debut, another essentially refused to comment. It looks like there’s a decent contingent of AD fans who really don’t want to see the show they love ruined by a false, cinematic extension–and really, having seen the careless cash-in that is the Sex and the City trailer, can you blame them?

In any case, between my own fixations and those of three blogger friends, after the jump I manage to cobble together a list of five pretty promising potential plotlines for this not-yet-even-greenlit Arrested Development movie. These aren’t prognostications, just narrative directions that actual AD fans would like to see explored. Toss out your own thoughts in the comments.

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