The rumor that Will Smith’s 10-year-old son Jaden would star in a remake/sequel of The Karate Kid has been around for a while now and always seemed too ridiculous to be true.  But this is Hollywood, so just think of the stupidest thing you can imagine multiplied by 100 and of course someone will produce it.

The script is being written by Chris Murphy, and the film will shoot next year in Beijing and other cities. While the new film will be set in that exotic locale, it will borrow elements of the original plot, wherein a bullied youth learns to stand up for himself with the help of an eccentric mentor. China Film Group Corp. will co-produce in China. [Lending credence to earlier, still unconfirmed rumors that it would be renamed Kung Fu Kid and that they wanted Stephen Chow to direct -Ed.]

The younger Smith, who next stars in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” is a martial arts practitioner. [Variety]

No, he’s not.  He’s a little kid.  A little kid whose parents make him act.  And between fame as a child actor and parents that are borderline scientologists, you know he’s going to end up just like that Power Ranger who drowned people and cut his dick off.  Or worse, Danny Masterson.

At this point, I feel I need no further evidence that child actors are the scourge of this nation and should be outlawed.  Nonetheless, it is my duty to direct your attention to the recent Boosh Magazine feature The Sandlot: Where are they now?

It would be hard for anyone to think Sandlot without reminiscing over the hot-tempered, crude, redheaded Ham Porter. He was the comic relief. But whatever happened to Patrick Renna? He has had bit parts in recent years on TV (Boston Legal, CSI, Judging Amy) as well as several small film roles on the likes of National Lampoon: Dorm Daze and Poor White Trash. Don’t worry, we haven’t seen them either. But most recently, Renna has taken the Tom Cruise route and opened a Scientology center in his community of Los Feliz.

Said Renna at of the event:

“Actors and musicians can create trends and be responsible for acts of kindness. On the other hand they can make people think that it is cool to be promiscuous and can glamorize heroin.”

If my only two options in life are believing people are possessed by the spirits of aliens expelled by a volcano or shooting heroin… saddle up that horse while daddy finds a vein.

As much as I like to make fun of Tom Cruise for being the leader of a retard cult who’s been “acting” for almost 30 years yet can’t even do a British accent, Valkyrie does still come from Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie, and they’re two of the best at what they do.

After about a billion delays, Valkyrie is finally opening December 26th, and UA has just released the final trailer.  Cruise plays Klaus Von Stauffenberg, a guy who tried to kill Hitler.  He’s a hero in Germany because he lets Germans say, “See?  We weren’t all bad, there was that one guy!”  Then you ask what happened to him and they get all quiet, “Well, uh, well you see, um, what happened was…”  Sorry?  You trailed off a little there.  “Yeah.  We, uh, executed him by firing squad.  …Oh, and uh, after we buried him? Hehe, this is a funny story… We, um, well, we dug up his body, took off his medals, and had him cremated.  …That dude was f-ckin cool though.”

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UNSEXY UPDATE: Without confirming or denying its connection to the film, the studio asked us to pull the image, but you can still see it here or damned near anywhere else.

According to Italian site BadTaste via /Film, this is a scan of the first official artwork from James Cameron’s upcoming 3-D epic Avatar.

In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture. [IMDB]

Jake apparently goes on to lead a band of humans in battle against the Na’vi. 

Considering Avatar has a $200 million budget and is the first mainstream feature Cameron’s directed since Titanic (in 1997), I’m calling bullshit on this.  If this is the concept art, I’m pretty sure the concept artist has just been slapping “AVATAR” on rejected stock photos for L. Ron Hubbard paperbacks.  Seriously, you can’t tell me that’s any better than this.  But I guess it makes sense, in that both works portray the struggles of living with aliens.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution documentary financed by a creationist think tank, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (see the ridiculously long trailer above), has hired a big marketing firm in preparation for its April release (around the same time as Bill Maher’s Religulous comes out).

They’ve hired Motive Entertainment, the marketing brains behind "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe," to spread the intelligent design gospel and tapped powerhouse PR firm Rogers & Cowan to handle the film’s media campaign. [Variety] 

Stein himself has been doing lots of PR, and if his recent appearance on The O’Reilly Factor is any indication, his film will ground the debate firmly in the Israeli/Palistinian-patented Who’s More Persecuted? context.

There are many scientists we interviewed who have been expelled from their jobs, who have had their websites shut down, who have been denied grants, who have been denied tenure, because they want to question the boundaries of Darwinism.

Gosh, I can’t imagine either of these flicks will be preaching to the choir!  Still, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Scientologists are mentally retarded.