Aliens

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

While promoting the movie"Battleship"in Tokyo last month,U.S. ArmyCol. Greg Gadson found himself face-to-face with a stunned reporter. "He thought I was computer-generated," said Gadson, a burly former West Point football player who walks with the aid of futuristic-looking titanium prosthetics. "He thought my legs were movie magic. " There was no CGI needed for Gadson's performance as a wounded combat veteran in "Battleship" - both of his legs were amputated above the knee after he was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2007.

With the number of green card renewal applicants expected to reach 750,000 this year, the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service this week expanded its services at the Van Nuys office, officials said Wednesday. Beginning this week, Valley residents can renew green cards, which allow noncitizens to live and work in the United States, at the application and support center, 14515 Hamlin St., said Marybel Loeches, INS acting public information officer.

The box-office debut of"Battleship" - an attempt to transform the kids' strategy pastime into a summer blockbuster - looked like a very different board game over the weekend: Trouble. Universal Pictures' $209-million alien invasion spectacle fizzled badly in its domestic premiere, grossing just $25.3 million and finishing a distant second to the third weekend of Disney's "The Avengers," according to Sunday estimates. The debut of "Battleship" - whose ticket sales were about 40% lower than some predictions - was even worse than the $30.2-million March opening of"John Carter,"one of the biggest fiascoes in Hollywood history, and the film's audience was surprisingly old. "I'm hugely disappointed in this opening," said Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of domestic distribution, who added that the film's respectable international numbers will soften the domestic blow.

While promoting the movie"Battleship"in Tokyo last month,U.S. ArmyCol. Greg Gadson found himself face-to-face with a stunned reporter. "He thought I was computer-generated," said Gadson, a burly former West Point football player who walks with the aid of futuristic-looking titanium prosthetics. "He thought my legs were movie magic. " There was no CGI needed for Gadson's performance as a wounded combat veteran in "Battleship" - both of his legs were amputated above the knee after he was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2007.

The extraterrestrial advance team in the kid-friendly adventure romp "Aliens in the Attic" qualifies as the most unthreatening bunch of cinematic space invaders since the waterlogged aliens in M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs." But then that's precisely the point, since adults have as much place in the movie's world as the grown-ups in the "Peanuts" comic strips.

EVENTS Giving new meaning to the phrase "creature comforts," the all-inclusive Aliens to Zombies Convention celebrates extraterrestrials, the undead and otherterrifying critters. Participants include special-effects artist Todd Masters, "The Walking Dead" actor Michael Rooker, "Dark Skies" producer Bryce Zabel, and monster makers Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 7 p.m. Fri., 11 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Sat. $50-$75. (323) 665-8080. http://www.alienstozombies.com

The Obama administration's position on the existence of aliens, and whether the people of Earth have had contact with them, can be summed up this way: "Searching for ET, but no evidence yet. " That's the title of the official White House response to an online petition signed by 12,078 people that asks the government to acknowledge an "extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. " "Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence," the writers of the petition contend.

'Anti-immigrant' is the wrong term Re "Putting a human face on the immigrant," Opinion, Jan. 19 Most fair-minded individuals are open to developing a reasonable work permit process for hardworking, legal immigrants, and a path to citizenship. However, the continued use of the term "immigrant" provides a disingenuous way for the left to claim that anyone who wants strict border enforcement and respect for our laws is "anti-immigrant. " The fact is that many who are here illegally are drug cartel killers and others who are most definitely not "immigrants.

Pathfinder landed on Mars and NASA didn't release any photographs of little green aliens. Hmmmmm! Must be a government cover-up. CAROLINE SWEITZ Woodland Hills

"Battleship"is not the first major motion picture to be based on a board game - who could forget 1985's benighted "Clue"? - but it is surely the most expensive. With every superhero more celebrated than Amazing-Man or the Chameleon already spoken for (ditto for hot toys like Transformers), Hollywood has fallen back on popular games as likely fodder for action epics. If "Scrabble: The Movie" or "Qwirkle or Death" appears on a future marquee, don't say you weren't warned. As its north-of-$200-million budget indicates, "Battleship" has been expanded considerably from its origins as a pre-World War I pencil and paper game to include a major alien invasion that puts the very fate of the human race at stake.

MEXICO CITY - They areMexico's "democracy babies" - a generation that grew up just as the nation broke free of decades of all-encompassing one-party rule. Only 12 years ago, young people flocked to the polls with high hopes as part of what would be a historic ouster of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Now, as the country prepares to pick a new president in July,Mexico's young sound mostly disillusioned by the choices before them, and by joblessness and skyrocketing drug violence that have hit them especially hard.

Rain Dragon A Novel Jon Raymond Bloomsbury: 272 pp., $16 paper FADE IN: A car idles in the foggy pre-dawn, pointed at the end of a cul-de-sac. Inside, an attractive 30-ish couple, DAMON and AMY, are worn from travel. She is dark-haired, pale-skinned and tense, and she leans against the passenger window. Behind the wheel, he carefully watches her mood as they evaluate the appearance of an owl in front of them. Good omen or bad? They can't decide, and continue on, lost.

BEIRUT - More than a year after the uprising began, only 50 people were still around to protest in a Syrian town of burned buildings and pockmarked storefronts. But for the residents of Anadan who came together to call for freedom and dignity on the morningSyria'scease-fire began last month, it was as though the revolution had begun again. "We were willing to come out like it was our first day," said Abu Ghaith, an activist in the town near Aleppo that rebels seized and lost again to government forces.

WASHINGTON - Ten months into his term as Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney was abruptly confronted with an emotionally charged issue: The state's highest court ruled that gays had the legal right to marry, thrusting the state into the forefront of the same-sex marriage debate. Romney, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faced one of the biggest challenges of his four years in office. His response would alienate constituencies on both sides and contribute to criticisms that he shifted positions for political gain, a charge renewed in his two bids for the White House.

Hate speech is a form of vandalism. It defaces the environment, and like a broken window, if left untended, signals to other hoodlums that the coast is clear to do more damage. But unlike the proverbial broken window, which urban police departments and criminologists urge us to repair to maintain the aura of social order, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to nip hate speech in the bud. That's because since the ill-fated attempt by several universities to regulate hate speech in the 1980s and '90s, any discussion of reining in racist taunts inevitably degrades into charges of political correctness and ends abruptly with the invocation of the 1st Amendment.

As the director of the Office of Social Concerns of the Mission San Luis Rey Parish in North County, I deal on a daily basis with aliens from many countries, both legal and illegal. I had expected an unbiased article from The Times. However, I feel that the (recent) series has shown only some negative aspects of one small segment of the Hispanic presence in North County. The uninformed public must not be left with only the information printed in this series. There must be a follow-up showing the positive aspects of the same segment of our society.

The visual effects team at Canada's Image Engine had a challenge in making the "prawns" of director Neill Blomkamp's "District 9" look alien yet sympathetic. No easy trick for creatures modeled closely after the not-so-cute Goliath beetle. Actor Jason Cope, who played most of the alien roles, provided the movements on set to be digitally tracked and replaced by an animated alien body. But the creatures' faces needed to emote more effectively than that process allows. "The . . . eyes were too insect-like," visual effects executive producer Shawn Walsh said.

Jean Giraud, an enduring figure in European comics whose fantasy and sci-fi work — which he signed with his alias, Moebius — deeply influenced alien-world imagery throughout pop culture, has died. He was 73. Giraud died Friday night or Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, according to a statement from his publishing house, Dargaud, which went on to say the comics world had lost "one of its greatest masters. " In his native France, where for decades comics have attracted an older readership, Giraud is considered his country's most important figure in cartooning.

  At a previous high-profile summit between a U.S. president and an Israeli prime minister, an exasperated Bill Clinton marveled at what he viewed as his counterpart's arrogance in schooling him about the Mideast conflict. According to one aide, Clinton asked after the meeting: Just who is the superpower? The Israeli leader at the time was - and again is - Benjamin Netanyahu. At home, Netanyahu is seen as politically cautious, risk-averse and "squeezable" when it comes to his positions.