The Culture Beat

A few months ago Hollywood was fishing for artistic glory as their fall season films vied for Oscar glory and once again a host of prestige films that few people saw insured continued low ratings for the Oscar telecast.
It’s time once again for Hollywood to roll out the hit films that pay the studio mortgage and sends the producers’ kids to nice private schools when their films hit paydirt. This is in effect Christmas for Tinseltown, and for moviegoers, like me, who wait for the next big Blockbuster to immerse us in strange new worlds and exciting plots—and nifty special effects.

Let’s get going—This looks like the busiest May on record with one of the earliest premieres—X-Men Origins: Wolverine revives the X-Men franchise for 20-Century Fox by bringing back only one, now highly paid actor, Hugh Jackman, in the title role of the feral mutant that made him a star. As the title says, we finally get a look back at the very early—say 19th century– days and beyond and before he got those adamantium claws.

Wolverine better get in shape because just one week later, the highly anticipated fanboy event of the year, Star Trek transports itself to a theater near you. This revival of the highly lucrative Paramount franchise could create new stars and perpetuate the property deep into the 21st century.

The wannabe hits just keep coming—the following week, the Prequel Sequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, with Tom Hanks, arrives without the help of the Vatican, where director Ron Howard sought to film parts of the story. I predict less controversy this time around.

Hang on and take a deep breath, one of the biggest summer films arrives just seven days later: Terminator: Salvation, with Christian Bale as grown-up cyborg fighter John Connor plunged deep into his resistance war against mean machines. Like Star Trek, this is another test of whether a venerable franchise can be renewed without its iconic stars, in this case of course, that being Governoator Ah-nold Schwarzenegger.

But what’s this? Another big sequel opens the same weekend—Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, with Ben Stiller is set as family counterprogramming to the brutal battle of the cyborgs—in a crowded field, this is pretty risky.

And, finally, on June 29th, there’s nowhere to go but Up, the latest Pixar film to carry the banner of the worlds most hit-heavy studio.

By comparison, June is a pretty light month—the 5th brings funnyman Will Ferrell’s parodic version of the 70′s Saturday morning adventure series, Land of the Lost—could be great, but, really, how many people really remember that show?

It’s still that 70s decade when June 12 brings Denzel Washington and John Travolta in a remake of the 1974 crime film The Taking of Pelham 123.

We jump way back in time the following week with Jack Black’s caveman farce, Year One, another comedy out of producer Judd Apatow’s laugh factory.

The explosive Michael Bay is back with the sequel to 2007’s biggest hit with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen—this time, I’m hoping to be able to tell the rockin’ sockin’ robots apart.f

Let’s start the next month with the 2 big July 4th releases. The Great Depression saw the first cycle of classic gangster films—will our current recession pique similar interest in a bank-battling criminal John Dillinger, as played by Johnny Depp in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies? With FBI agent Christian Bale on the case, this could be a sleeper hit.

The same week sees the second Ice Age sequel: Dawn of the Dinosaurs as our mammalian heroes are plunged into a lost world of giant reptiles.

For the first time in the summer season, we have a two-week break between new debuts, so you’ll be able to either recuperate or catch up with films you haven’t seen yet.

But then on July 17th: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The teenage wizard’s latest adaptation was pushed back from fall to ensure Warner Brothers got a maximum bang for the buck when more kids were out of school, so it’ll be two years since the last hit sequel of the most lucrative film series in history.

We get another two-week respite to watch non-blockbusters films in release—and they’re out there. I’m mentioning Funny People opening July 31st because it’s the latest comedy directed by Judd Apatow of The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and sure to be R-rated. But Apatow’s self-directed films have shown his interest in getting his foul-mouthed boy-men to grow up and accept responsibility and I’m curious about where he’s going with this Adam Sandler—Seth Rogan comedy.

What’s left in the dog days of summer? Sometimes sleeper hits come out of the left-overs-laden, sweltering month of August, but one film aims to reward the audience of guys who in the 1980s played with dolls, er action figures. On the 7th, the arrival of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, will, as the title indicates, possibly launch a new franchise. As Michael Bay proved in the first Transformers film, successfully adapting 80s toy franchises for the 21st century is all in the execution.

As individual films approach, I will be previewing some as well as reviewing most if not all mentioned here. I hope your summer is fun, safe and full of movie memories and ends with you anticipating the DVD releases by November of all the films I’ve discussed so you won’t need memories after all. Merry Blockbuster Season!