Adult Swim Resurrects Saved By The Bell?
Are you freakin kidding me?? As if this week couldn’t get any weirder, but now we have an announcement that the irreverant late night TV block Adult Swim has brought back from the dead the classic 80’s high school sitcom Saved By The Bell! You heard me right, they have ordered 30 brand new episodes of the show, and the entire original cast will be returning with the exception of Elizabeth Berkley (because you know, she’s way too big for Saved By The Bell now). The new series will take place after Saved By the Bell: The New Class, with Screech finding himself as the new principal of Bayside, and Mr. Belding now retired and running The Max (the diner that they always hung out at). I guess the whole thing started when they ran 2 weeks of Saved By The Bell re-runs on Adult Swim this month and apparently received great ratings. (I still don’t quite understand what a live action show is doing on the Cartoon Network.) I have to admit, I’m having a hard time taking this seriously, but Adult Swim has the official announcement over at their website now (linked below). I suppose it’s possible that this is part of some elaborate hoax… but man, that would be one cruel joke indeed.
Update: Okay, just as I posted this I found another article. Yes it is a hoax. Boo.
» Related Link: Adult Swim: Saved By The Bell is Back!
Okay, I think I can now officially say that this trailer mash-up thing has gone too far. Seriously… Sesame Street mashed with V For Vendetta? I’m speechless. What’s next, Teletubbies and Blade Runner? Barney and Jurassic Park? (Wait… mental note: that one might actually be good.) Prepare for some of the worst editing and “special effects” ever. Seriously, I thought the 
Well it’s hard not to bring up Paul Greengrass’ 9/11 movie United 93 as a point of discussion this weekend, as it seems to be garnering a lot of praise, in addition to generating dialogue among people (which is always good, in my opinion). But United 93 isn’t actually the first movie to be made about 9/11, as there was already a made-for-TV movie on A&E last year called Flight 93. So my main question is this: when is it okay to make a movie based on a real-life tragedy, and how long is a respectful period of time to wait? Is it ever okay? Can a movie actually help people cope with the pain, or is it always nothing more than an exploitative cash grab? Surely it must be possible to cross the line when it comes to fictionalizing sensitive events, and making entertainment out of other people’s misery. At the same time, however, the most powerful stories seem to be based in reality. Also, do filmmakers have a responsibility to the truth in these situations? I’m not just talking about 9/11 movies, but also serial killer movies, disaster movies, and anything based on actual human drama. Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
Hitting theatres this weekend we have the new Robin Williams comedy R.V., the spelling bee drama Akeelah and The Bee, and a teen movie targetted to all the rebellious young gymnasts in the world, Stick It. The most notable release however is United 93, the first major movie to retell the events of 9/11. Will it cause a stir or will it go by unnoticed at the box office? I’m interested to find out.
Man, some of the movie news I’ve been reading lately is getting progressively more outlandish, to the point where I keep checking if someone’s set the clock back to April 1st on me. Today Marvel dropped another huge bomb on us: Jon Favreau has been hired to direct the Iron Man movie! The last person who was attached to this project was Nick Cassavetes, and of course, Tom Cruise had long been rumoured to star as Tony Stark. No word on a cast as of yet, but it looks like the Smallville writing team of Miles Millar and Alfred Gough have also been replaced with Arthur Marcum and Matt Holloway (Convoy). Man, after Favreau turned his career towards more family-friendly films like Elf and Zathura, I never thought I’d see him directing a huge blockbuster like this. Can Favreau actually handle an action movie? There’s going to be a ton of pressure on him but personally I’m pulling for the guy. At the very least he’s got more balls than someone else we know, who turned down a comic book movie to retreat to his previous hit franchise (cough cough… Kevin Smith… cough cough).
A trailer has appeared online for Brad Pitt’s latest movie in which he plays infamous American outlaw Jesse James, in a historical retelling of his life and death. The movie’s full title is real mouthful: The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. It is being directed by Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik, who previously did the 2000 film Chopper about Australian criminal Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read. Although the trailer doesn’t show much at all, I am kind of intrigued by this. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a decent western (well… except for HBO’s Deadwood series) and this could be killer in more ways than one. The Assassination of Jesse James also co-stars Sam Rockwell and Casey Affleck, and hits theatres sometime in September. Watch the trailer now at the link below.
We’ve talked before about how a lot of big movie directors got their start doing music videos and TV commercials. Lately, there seems to be an interesting trend where companies hire well-established directors to direct a commercial, in the hopes of getting something rather unique and attention-grabbing. The latest filmmaker to “sell his soul” and direct one of these epic TV commercials is none other than Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), hocking good ol’ American Express plastic. I had read about this a few days ago but for some reason was under the impression it was an old commercial. However, I can confirm that a shortened version has been airing on TV quite frequently this week. Interestingly, the commercial is like a short Wes Anderson film starring himself as well as Jason Schwartzman and (I believe) the guy with the turban who was in The Life Aquatic. It’s filled with all kinds of Wes Anderson touches and his patented dry sense of humour. You can watch the full version of the video at the link below in Quicktime (or if that’s too slow, catch it on 
As Film Junk continues to focus in on movies as much as possible, I thought I’d let everyone know that I have decided to pick up some of the slack for the other miscellany we used to cover here back when it was called Space Junk (more for my sake than for yours). I’ve started up a new blog called simply “Media Bytes” that can be found at my own recently relaunched personal site at 
I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Wordplay as it makes the festival rounds, and now finally we get a sneak peek via the official trailer, which has arrived online over at Yahoo!. It looks to be a fascinating and humourous documentary about the New York Times crossword puzzle and its editor Will Shortz, as well as the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (yes, there is a tournament). The movie examines the process of creating a crossword puzzle, the popularity of crosswords, and their significance in pop culture, although the main story seems to center on the tournament itself. Just looking at some of the photos from the film, there look to be some pretty wacky characters competing in tense matches with one another. Wordplay definitely seems very reminiscent of the 2004 Scrabble documentary 
Only last week I posted something about the upcoming movie Pathfinder, starring Karl Urban, which looks to be a modern return to the barbarian movies of the 80’s. (Incidentally, we also talked about this on 
