Ever since the last episode of Arrested Development aired in 2006, we’ve heard rumors galore about a movie based on the hilarious poorly marketed Fox series. The speculation became increasingly frustrating over the last two years, as some cast members claimed it was happening while others (*cough* Michael Cera *cough*) reportedly wanted nothing to do with reviving the Bluth family.

Then in October, our nerd boners became fully engorged when the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, told people at the New Yorker Festival that there would be another season of 10 episodes, finally culminating in the Arrested Development film. And we believed him because he was sitting with the entire cast when he said it.

But because we’ve grown weary of these rumors and letdowns, we need constant reassurance. Thankfully, writer Dean Lorey understands that and updated his blog accordingly over the weekend.

We’re really doing this thing. Mitch Hurwitz, Jim Vallely and I are off writing the new season of ARRESTED to premiere on Netflix in 2013. The original cast is back. There are offices and parking spaces. We’re shooting this year. I wish I could give more specifics but, for the moment, even the schedule is being kept under wraps. But it’s happening and it’s great to be back with my pals from the show.

This is the main reason why I didn’t cancel my Netflix account when all that new billing nonsense went down last year. Oh I wanted to raise a hell storm to voice my disapproval, but then I thought that maybe it was all a trick, and as soon as I went to close the mailbox on my last DVD return, J. Walter Weatherman would reach his arm in and it would be sliced off.

And only then would I learn that’s why you don’t cancel a DVD mailing subscription service.

Here’s a picture that popped up on Reddit, showing the resemblance between Hitler’s mom, Klara Polzl, and Michael Cera. Frankly, I think she looks more like Chris O’Donnell.

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When the New Yorker’s Twitter account announced that the cast of Arrested Development would be reuniting for 9 to 10 new episodes followed by a movie, I thought it was either the movie blogging equivalent of “MAN LANDS ON MOON” or the most epic troll job in New Yorker history†. After all the times they’ve already convinced us to kick the football, I’m still not sure I believe it, but all signs point to it being real. The short version is that they’re planning nine to ten “where are they now”-style episodes, with Showtime and Netflix negotiating to air them next fall, as a precursor to a film (which still doesn’t have studio backing, as of yet).

Here’s the long version, from Entertainment Weekly:

EW has confirmed that the producers of Arrested Development is in talks [sic] with Showtime and Netflix about airing a limited number of original episodes that will update fans on the Bluth clan.

Hurwitz told attendees at the New Yorker Festival Sunday in New York that he wanted to shoot nine to 10 episodes that would air next fall and catch audiences up on the characters’ lives since the series ended in 2006 on Fox. The episodes would be produced by 20th Century Fox TV, which was responsible for the original single camera series.

Hurwitz’ hope is that the limited series would serve as a walk-up to his long-gestating movie. “I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by there was so much more to the story,” he said at the festival, which was also attended by Development stars Bateman, De Rossi, and Cera, as well as David Cross, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, Tony Hale, and Alia Shawkat. Ron Howard, one of the comedy’s producers, even participated via speakerphone. “In fact, where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story. So, in working on the screenplay I found that even if I just gave five minutes per character to that backstory, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together. And that kinda gave birth to this thing we’ve not been pursuing for a while and we’re kinda going public with it a little bit. We’re trying to do kind of limited run series into the movie.”

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Call it misplaced solidarity with my fellow be-Jewfro’d Italian brother, but I still like Michael Cera.  You can complain about him being in everything, and always doing hipster movies, or playing similar characters in everything, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but his comedic timing is spot-on.  And if you’ve ever seen him do a candid interview, you know it usually comes from him, not the screenplay. So that’s my two cents.  That said, LandlineTV’s latest video, The Michael Cera School of Acting, is for all you Cera haters out there, and I know there are lots of you.

“Since 2007, we’ve been teaching actors to tone down their charisma and embrace the awkward.

“Who says that Michael Cera plays the same character in every movie?  That’s absurd!  In Superbad, he played a mild-mannered teenager looking for love.  In Juno, he played, uh… Okay, well, in Scott Pilgrim, he… But in Youth in Revolt he– hmmm… Oh!  Year One, in Year One he played a mild-mannered caveman looking for love.  See?  Totally different.”

The guitar part is gold.  Doing retarded imitations of someone’s voice will never stop being funny to me, and setting it to music makes it that much better.  That said, I think I’m going to attend the Paul Walker School of Acting.  The program is much shorter.  Though I do hear that it’s much more… invasive.

Also, you want awkward?  Try Daniel Radcliffe.  That bug-eyed goon makes Clint Howard look like Paul Rudd.

I Hate Camp and Bells and Whistles and Comic Books and Video Games, but I Loved Scott Pilgrim, So F*ck You.

Of all the tricks Scott Pilgrim ever pulled, his greatest was making me love a movie I should hate.  It’s campy.  It’s cutesy.  It’s made to look like a video game.  It has a linear, predictable plot. It uses fistfights to resolve conflicts that can’t be resolved with a fistfight.  It has that visually-dazzling-but-simplistic-plot that nerds love so much.  The pander-y glorification of the slacker/nerd/hipster.  Stupid haircuts.  The fighting for a girl we don’t like that much.  Scott Pilgrim is just a giant pile of all these things that I hate, and yet… it works.

Me and other film critics, people who type words for a living, we tend to focus on the storytelling aspect of movies more than anything else. That’s not all there is, that’s just what we know.  And it’s much easier to point out problems with the logic of a story than it is to explain why a certain edit or visual doesn’t work.  What makes Scott Pilgrim so impressive is that it’s not really the storytelling that makes it so great.  It’s all those other little things that are much harder to explain that come together just so and make it watchable from start to finish.  Perhaps the best compliment is the simplest one: it’s just competent filmmaking.

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