McCain, the Senatorial daughter who managed to become a media sensation by bucking conservative idiocy, used her ever-important Twitter today to raise hell against director Breck Eisner's remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon:

Is there a remake of "Creature From The Black Lagoon" coming out?!? Tell me hollywood isn't ruining my all time favorite movie...

Sorry to break it to you, Ms. McCain, but Hollywood has indeed honed its sights on your favorite movie. And it's coming out in 2011. Our condolences.

But, while McCain's all revved up and looking for celluloid blood, can we please direct her to Day of the Day of the Triffids? If there's one movie that should remain untouched, it's that. Oh, Triffids and The Tingler. Unless someone can exhume and reanimate Vincent Price, we're not interested.

Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times offers three reasons why remakes are all the rage. First, despite some duds, many remakes do make scads of money, as exhibited by Star Trek. Second, the audience likes them. Finally, after years of rejecting the remake, directors are now keen on the idea.

There was once a time when filmmakers used their craft to elevate their ingenuity, vision and originality. Sadly, those traits are few and far between these days and, rather than stretch their own lazy imagination, filmmakers claim they're "reinventing" previous big screen forays. Bullshit.

While people like Rob Zombie may want to call themselves "auteurs," no self-respecting artist would take someone else's work, shoot it from a different angle — or, heaven forbid, in 3D — and display it as an example of their bottomless creative well. But, like any business, Hollywood's ruled by a little thing called supply-and-demand and can't be held entirely accountable for this developing trend.

The public's only endorsing this sort of behavior: by going to remakes, we are tacitly telling Hollywood, "Hey, it's okay: we crave nothing new. We can't stretch our tiny minds to understand — or even demand — an entirely innovative film going experience." No, we're all telling upcoming filmmakers that we'll happily consume any well-trod, familiar story.

We can blame Hollywood all we like, but it's really the public who's encouraging laziness on the part of our entertainers. It's we who are helping erode the foundations of America's collective imagination, thus giving rise to remakes like Fame, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 and, why?!, Footloose. This isn't nostalgia. This is a sad indictment of our insatiable love for all things safe, secure and ultimately conventional. And it's for that reason that we don't deserve entertainment at all. Not until we can prove we need more than flashing lights and shiny objects to get us off.

The New York Observer reports that co-founder Thomas Frank is relaunching the sporadically published journal, which was last seen in 2007, as a reliably bi-annual publication starting this October. The publisher will be Conor O'Neil, a Northwestern University alum, former intern for Barack Obama's Senate campaign, and founder of the Clio Society, a nonprofit forum that hosts speakers and "cross-polinates" things.

The Baffler served as a springboard for Frank's career as a writer and political thinker—"pundit" would be too crass a word—that included the publication of his book What's the Matter With Kansas? and culminated in a column at, of all places, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. The Baffler's whole editorial stance was all piss-and-vinegar and disenfranchised rage filtered through an intellectual prism, so we wonder how it will play now that the kids have all grown up and joined the establishment. But we're eager to find out.

Where will the money come from (it should go without saying that it won't make any)? Who knows, but according to an old New City Chicago story, this O'Neil fellow is "a member of the wealthy McCormick family," which is cosmically ironic given that the family's chief patron, Col. Robert McCormick, was an insane old man who used his newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, to advance the aims of his pals in the John Birch Society.

Boomp3.com

A reunion of TV teen icons took place at the conclusion of the star-filled Nautica Malibu Triathlon when Saved by The Bell stars Tiffani Thiessen (AKA Kelly Kapowski) ran into Mark-Paul Gosselaar (AKA Zack Morris). As the two caught up on all of each other's exploits, it quickly became apparent that the two looked as if they were transported right back to those magical days at The Max. That is, until Thiessen turned the conversation towards the potential of a Saved By The Bell spin-off. Gosselaar seemed unsure about the idea of a spin off, considering the misfires that were Saved By The Bell: The College Years and Saved By The Bell: The New Class. Thiessen was unrelenting, though, going as far as to use the recent 90210 spin-off as an example of an old show that got a big boost by incorporating some of today's cooler and edgier positions on teen life. Thiessen said, “It would be so much fun. Just imagine the theoretical child of Zack and Kelly raising heck all over Bayside. Meanwhile, Zack would be raising heck in the corporate world or maybe real estate and Kelly is running for vice president or something.”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

The original asshole writers, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, will return for another round of well-paid douchebaggery, which Weinstein's Dimension Films will foist on the American public as a "worthy addition to its family film slate" at a dark date to be determined. Self-loathing producer David Foster is coming back as well, pledging to "factor in advances in technology" and maximize soul-destroying audience pandering. No word yet on whether the shrill Indian scientist so expertly stereotyped by Fisher Stevens will make his own comeback, but whether it's Stevens or Guttenberg or fake-ass CGI or anything else you can conjure to make this anti-idea worse, that's what Weinstein will deliver. God is dead, goodbye cruel world. Seriously, fuck this movie.

• 'Short Circuit's' Johnny 5 still alive [Variety]

I know that's an extremely sacrilegious thought and a part of me morally objects to it, but how awesome would a remake of Rosemary's Baby starring Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes be? Obviously, it'd be played for laughs, but it'd one of those movies that Hollywood couples make to explain their love affair. Like Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn in Overboard.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

The film won over Wired, Vanity Fair, the Age, and the London Times. The creation story was optioned a while back, but it's been beaten to release by the upcoming cute but too-hip Son of Rambow, which is the same story in England with two Cockney kids. Here's the trailer for that:

In contrast, this BBC segment on Raiders shows some footage from the homemade remake:

In short, Raiders: Adaptation sounds less exhaustingly twee than Rambow or Rewind, and maybe even more fun than the new actual Indiana Jones. I'm still downloading it, but this is apparently a working Bittorrent file of the remake. (While the movie's been screened in several cities, it's never been officially released or even authorized by Spielberg and Lucas.) If you feel bad about stealing it, remember that the whole movie technically is stealing!

No offense to Eva, Kim or The Animal, but we're not sure any of the three can even come close to filling out Tura Santana's impressive brassiere. But then again, Quentin Tarantino has never been a breast man. Homeboy's got a foot fetish that makes Troy McClure's fish fetish look postively tame in comparison. Which is exactly why we cast extreme aspersion on the Britney casting note. After all, how could he possibly dig those dogs after all of the restroom germs they have picked up over the years? To save the movie, Defamer is advocating the casting of Lindsay Lohan (she's suitably trashy and available on the cheap ... and Liz Smith approved!), Sydney Tamiia Poiter (we loved her turn as Jungle Julia in "Death Proof") and Attack Of The Show's shiny-haired Olivia Munn. Now THERE'S a multi-culti cast and a movie that we can see ourselves getting excited to download off BitTorrent! Okay?