Summer of Sequels

Note: this article is a little dated, considering I started it a couple of weeks ago and only am recording it now. It is also a work in progress and I may update it.

With three days in a row of triple digit temperatures (though it has been recently replaced by an early June Gloom), it is time for the coolest place on earth, where you can get $5.99/hour air conditioning and a small popcorn for roughly the same price. I am, of course, referring to the sizzling summer movie season. I believe this to be the biggest movie season in decades; three to be exact. 30 years ago today, on May 25, 1977, moviegoers were given A New Hope as the original Star Wars movie was released. Then George Lucas decided to revive his trilogy with a prequel trilogy and screwed everything up. But this is the summer of good sequels...

I have to admit that I am a pretty positive reviewer and my grades skew toward the light side. There was only one movie I actually hated this summer, a movie with Chris Rock, something like "I Love My Wife" or something like that. Don't ask...

The summer started with Spiderman 3. I enjoyed it, maybe not as much as the first two, but I liked it. I fully expected it to beat the $150 million box office open. However, I am confident that it will be shattered, once again by...

Pirates of the Carribean. I predict $162 million opening this weekend, up $1 million from my estimate before I saw the movie last night, in an unending tug-of-war between the webswinger and the swashbuckler in box office openers. This has been, thusfar, the best movie I've seen this year. It leaves room for a sequel though they've closed most of the holes in the previous movie

And then we arrive at the third in my series of third movies of trilogies (3-3-3, which is three numbers, which makes four in a series of three): Shrek the Third. I have to say I was disappointed. It wasn't as fun as the previous two. Of the Part 3 movies I've reviewed, this has to rank with the third Godfather (ie: a decent movie but far far behind the significance of the previous two movies). SKG, Please don't release a fourth Shrek... That's as scary as the proposal to make THREE more Terminator movies, the original trilogy which also suffers from Godfather Syndrome.

I saw a sneak preview a month or so back of Knocked Up. This was one of the funniest and one of the sickest movies I've seen in a long time. This is from the creators of 40-Year-Old Virgin and is even better and raunchier than its predecessor.

I also took my cousins to see Aqua Teen Hunger Force. That was hilarious in a demented way, to the extreme. You will remember the advertisement campaign that got the city of Boston on high alert for terrorism? That was for this movie! If you don't watch the show then you probably shouldn't see the film. And if you pirate the film, well, then your child-making possibilities are going to be limited according to the film, so be careful.

Alright those are some of the movies I've seen so far. Now for the previews. The other movies I really am looking forward to, obviously are

The Simpsons Movie. I've waited almost my entire life for something like this. This will probably surpass the "Never Jumped" vote on JumpTheShark.com, but you never know. Remember that the South Park movie was very beneficial for the show and remains a cult classic. Speaking of which, I fear the plot of the Simpsons movie runs close to the South Park movie's plot. Nukes being launched due to something that has to do with the main characters? Sounds familiar. However, I do not want to know the plot because I'm sure whatever it is, I will laugh. I really like their "posters" in movie theater lobbies, which consist of a simpsons couch gag with a space for you to sit (though the Galleria has recently put up a sign asking you not to sit and why would anyone be carrying a camera in a movie theater. Instant trouble...)

I already know the plot, however, for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I will not get too far into this because I will, sometime in the next 7 weeks, post an entry about my theories on the final Potter book. I feel something will come out of this movie, something we have read but never visualized, that will give us an important clue for the seventh book. A picture is worth a thousand words. According to Wikipedia, HP5 is 255,000 words long. That means the movie is worth 255 million words. That is before the director makes cuts left and right, leaving it worth around 100 million words. I realize they have to cut things, and having listened to PotterCast and MuggleCast podcasts for the past year I know that they cut things that I would have loved to see, like "Weasley is Our King". Plus they are assigning more roles to Cho Chang. Enough spoiler. Go see it and then read the final book.

That's it for now. Shabbat Shalom.