How psyched are you to see Shortcut to Happiness? I know I’m pretty riled up.

You may not have heard of the movie, which is finally leaking out into theater(s) this weekend, even though it stars Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Or maybe you heard about it by its former title “The Devil and Daniel Webster” Or maybe, you heard about it a few years ago, and just forgot. It was filmed back in 2001. It’s no Ishtar or Heaven’s Gate or Town & Country, but in its own way, Shortcut to Happiness is a perfect little distillation of failure.

Once upon a time, this was a high-profile project. Adapted from Archibald Macleish’s play Scratch, The Devil and Daniel Webster was a remake of the 1941 film of the same name and was to be Baldwin’s directorial debut. He would star with the venerable Hopkins and the hot Jennifer Love Hewitt. They began filming in early 2001 and then . . . disappeared. Investors went bankrupt and the film was in such terrible shape that it was put in the vault.

Eventually, a company called the Yari Film Group ambled up and bought the rights to distribution. Yari edited the cut so drastically that Baldwin took his name off of the project–you’ll see the director credit listed as “Harry Kirkpatrick.” And now, after almost seven years, the movie is being released into six markets in a handful of theaters.

If you see it showing in your town, don’t miss it.

Galley Friend S.B. is nuts for this: A special DVD version of Return to House on a Haunted Hill, where you choose the outcomes as you watch.

Color me skeptical. I’m still scarred by the Clue movie and its three alternate ending gimmick–pay full price to watch the same movie again, but with 10 minutes of different footage at the end!

I was such a sucker. Damn you Professor Plumb!

Galley Reader A.K. sends us this link to a new-ish blog The Future of News. Its written by Steve Boriss and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

I often hear, particularly from my conservative friends, that the housing bubble is just a symptom of the market, that there’s nothing intrinsically evil about it, that realtors are just doing their jobs, ditto mortgage houses, that all a bubble does is separate fools from their money, etc. There is a certain free-market comfort to these sentiments. Nonetheless, they’re bosh.

The current bubble was built by realtors and mortgage operations giving loans to people who had no (financial) business buying property. These people have begun to default at an alarming rate, but the point is that this spending spree doesn’t just wreck the individual who gets foreclosed, it hurts everyone in the market, because those soon-to-be-foreclosures drove up the price for everybody else.

Still, my conservative friends argue, it wasn’t like the realtors and mortgage people were committing malpractice or anything. Maybe, maybe not. However they seem to have acted at least close enough to ambulance-chasing trial lawyers to have earned public scorn.

To wit, we have this fantastic story about a woman in the D.C. suburbs finding a lost wallet and using it to two mortgages (two!) to buy a $419K townhouse with no money down.

Yup, that’s some darn fine due diligence there. And make no mistake, this sort of thing hurts everybody. Except, of course, the realtor! Bet they didn’t have to give back their commission.

Galley Friend B.W. sends us this eye-poppping footage of an F-22 doing what looks like coming to a complete stop in mid-air, then somersaulting around. Seriously, you can’t believe this.

Click on the “Daily Videos” link, then on the little tab on the right with what looks like a page on it until you can select “Visitor Submitted.” Then choose the “F-22 Raptor Pilot Coming to Oshkosh.” It’s a pain in the neck, but totally worth it.

Oh, and unless I’m mistaken, B.W. was frackin’ there!

The Times has a list of the 50 greatest movie/TV robots of all-time. And I’d like to have an interesting spirited discussion about it. But a list that clocks C-3P0 in at #45–only five slots ahead of Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man–can only be mocked. Mercilessly.

Yet again, no reputable media organization was willing to send me to Comic-Con to provide important coverage. Their loss. They missed out on important news like this: Spock is coming back to the big screen!

The best quarterback in the league now has his own blog. He has comments enabled.

Raise your hand if you think there’s a chance this ends well.