Big-ticket movies of the summer (this list is longer than I thought):

The Longest Yard
Madagascar (gonna be huge)
Batman
Bewitched
Cinderella Man
Land of the Dead
Herbie: Fully Loaded
High Tension (French thriller, may not get wide release)
Honeymooners
Lords of Dogtown
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
The Perfect Man (Hillary Duff vehicle)
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
War of the Cruise
Bad News Bears
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dark Water
The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, again may not get wide release)
Fantastic Four
The Island
Night Watch (Russian thriller, see High Tension)
Sky High (Disney)
Stealth (Jamie Foxx's post-Oscar action movie)
Wedding Crashers
Deuce Bigalow 2
Dukes of Hazzard
Pink Panther
Red Eye
Skeleton Key
Valiant (animated! about pigeons!)

eta: good gravy formatting!

Madagascar has psychotic penguins. It looks like total crap, but...psychotic penguins! I may not have the willpower to stay away.

I thought I was interested in War of the Worlds, but the more previews I see, the more I realize I'm actually not. Minority Report cured me of ever wanting to see another Cruise/Spielberg production, and this one doesn't even have Colin Farrell.

I'm not sure if the untitled Mike Judge movie is coming out this summer; 40 Year Old Virgin is coming in August.

War of the Cruise

Mr. Cruise, I knew Orson Welles (in the sense of never having met him). Orson Welles was a friend of mine. You, Mr. Cruise, are no Orson Welles.

I guess I'd heard about that movie. What do you want to bet that the ending does not involve the saving of the earth by microbes?

Herbie: Fully Loaded

The end of the world has come.

The end of the world has come.

It really has. The trailer was fun.

bon bon, the Mike Judge one is coming out, later in the summer. I just rattled off the "big" movies I could think of (because I work for a movie theater, and am innundated with useless, and sometimes not-so-useless, movie information.

The Dove Foundation (whatever they are) want Burger King to stop their promotional kids tie-ins with Star Wars because the movie is rated PG-13 and not suitable for children. Burger King's stance seems to be that there tie-ins are for all the movies and Sith is the only one rated PG-13

Evidentally they bullied McDonald's into sort of apologizing over the Batman Returns Happy Meals.

[link]

The Dove Foundation (whatever they are) want Burger King to stop their promotional kids tie-ins with Star Wars because the movie is rated PG-13 and not suitable for children.

As opposed to the other creepy king ads which could probably scar children for life. Granted, those aren't suitable for human beings, period. The enourmous breakfast sandwich one alone took a couple years off my life, I think (not as much as the actual sandwich would, though).

It is apparently accepted as Star Wars canon that the Rebel Alliance was in its beginning stages in Episode IV. Lucas reportedly decided against creating the Alliance in Episode III for that reason; my guess is that he wanted to highlight the fact that the Emperor did in fact create the peace he said he was after, even though it was a very despotic sort of peace, and that the rebellion didn't start for a good two decades. The prequel trilogy is, as Lucas has said, about how a democracy turns into a dictatorship, like happened in Rome under Augustus. He abolished the Senate and actually created a pretty peaceful state, though he did some evil, evil crap in the making of it.

I am pro-Miyazaki and looking forward to Howl's Moving Castle, too.

I finished an interesting book the other day that would be a really incredible (albeit more adult-oriented) subject for Miyazaki: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It has that same "spirit world hovering right beneath the surface of the mundane" idea that Miyazaki pursued in Spirited Away and Totoro, although it's somewhat darker and more complex than his usual subject matter. Maybe it's just that my conception of modern Japanese life is completely drawn from Miyazaki's movies.