> April 15 - The Amityville Horror

I have never seen the original (or for that matter the new one, which opens today), but I have to say that the guy in the commercials for it, the one from that Wesley Snipes movie from a few months ago, looks like Jason Lee but with weird facial hair. I don't know who he is. The commercials seem to be excited about him, but I've never heard of him.


> April 22 - The Interpreter

I am really looking forward to this one. Nicole Kidman is one of my favorite actresses, and Sean Penn's always interesting, and a story of political intrigue is what I need after Boogeyman and The Ring 2.

> April 22 - The Sandlot 2

I think pretty much everyone who was a kid during the time The Sandlot came out is furious that a sequel is being made, and I am no exception.


> April 29 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>
> The early word on the trailers is pretty
> poor. The only reason to hope for this at all
> is that Douglas Adams worked on the script
> before he died, so depending on how much the
> script may have been altered after the fact,
> there is at least a creative anchor in the
> production. The director is untried: odd that
> a studio would entrust beloved franchise
> material to someone without more credentials.

I'm really looking forward to it. I have faith in it. I like the cast (at least from what I've seen of them), and it's bound to be better than the BBC miniseries. I just hope that, after Douglas Adams died, they didn't take out the story and put in a bunch of action sequences with big CG effects.


> May 13 - Unleashed (previously Danny the Dog)

This looks really cool. I hope to see it.


> May 19 - Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

I'm going to skip this one and go watch some real Star Wars movies.


> May 27 - The Longest Yard

In one of my cinema classes last semester, they announced that they needed extras for a stadium scene and that they'd be busing them up from the school, and anyone who wanted could show up. After people signed up and plans were made, they canceled the shoot because of a birthday party, and rescheduled it for a weekday. THANKS A LOT SANDLER!


> May 27 - Madagascar
>
> And do we need this?

No.


> June 17 - The Perfect Man

Hilary Duff is my favorite actress!!!!!


> June 17 - Batman Begins
>
> I think before I see this I need to see the other Batman movies. So far the only ones I've seen have been the one from the sixties, and then Batman & Robin. :,( :,( :,(


> June 24 - Bewitched
>
> Remaking Bewitched? Bad. Casting Nicole Kidman
> in the lead? Good. Casting Will Ferrell as
> Darrin? Bad. Casting Shirley MacLaine as
> Endora? Good. Making the premise of the movie
> not a straight adaptation of the show but a
> movie about a down-and-out actor who conceives
> of remaking Bewitched to revive his career,
> only to find out that the actress hired to
> play Samantha is a witch in real life?
> Weird. I mean...weird.

. . .


> June 24 - Land of the Dead
>
> George Romero apparently gets to make another
> entry in his "Night of the Living Dead" series
> only about every 15 years, while imitations
> are greenlighted every other week. Well
> here's episode four in a series begun in
> 1968. Time will tell if Romero's still got
> it, or if the age of zombies has progressed
> beyond his vision.
>
> Hey, did I say *pro*gressed?

An interesting fact: Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain, due to laws that at the time required copyright notices for copyright protection.

> June 29 - War of the Worlds

I don't understand people who are irate because the action is moved to the present, or because it's been moved to America. Why are these problems? The story wasn't about England, and it wasn't about the late nineteenth century. It was about Martians attacking Earth. I don't see why the setting is that big a deal.


> July 8 - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
>
> Tim Burton is great at the visual side of
> movies like this, but he rarely (if ever?)
> achieves any kind of stable emotional tone.
> Big Fish was brilliant but curiously
> uninvolving (contrast with the much better
> Secondhand Lions to see what I mean). The
> Batman movies were so dark, it had
> considerably weaker impact than it would have
> if there had been some brightness to contrast
> with. Even one of his best films, Edward
> Scissorhands, suffered from an unwelcome
> sadism infused into the wrong side of a
> morality fable.

Sadism??

> That's a lot of what I'm afraid of with
> Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm sure
> Tim Burton will be really good at humiliating
> the four snotty kids, but will he know what to
> do with Charlie?

That's a good question. But I think that hiring Tim Burton was, ultimately, a good idea: Roald Dahl's books are all pretty dark, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory especially. It's hard to resist the temptation to remove the dark parts so that the whole movie is nice, but the stories really need that tragedy and black comedy, or else when the characters' upturn comes it doesn't really mean anything. I think Tim Burton will rise to the challenge.


> July 20 - Kronk's New Groove
>
> Occasionally, one of Disney's cash-in sequels
> to their animated films makes its way to
> theaters. Historically, this has not been an
> indicator of greater quality than the direct-
> to-video fare.

I like how Disney is completely ignoring the policy of Walt Disney himself, who said, after the failure of the Three Little Pigs sequels, "You can't top pigs with pigs." After that, he never let the studio make a sequel again.


> August 19 - Red-Eye
>
> Wes Craven's thriller about a woman pulled
> into a plot of intrigue while on a red-eye
> flight. I'm always hopeful for movies like
> this, and even if Craven's track record is
> spotty (to say the least), I think he'd be
> good at handling the small genre diversion
> from horror to thriller. Still, when movies
> like this fail, they fail awfully, and late
> August is a time-honored dumping ground for
> bad thrillers.

I've never heard of this before, but your summary reminds me of The Lady Vanishes. How's that for a comparison the movie has no chance of living up to!


> August 19 - Romance & Cigarettes
>
> August is also that place where intriguing
> little quirky things live. It's a "savage"
> musical, described as a cross between Pennies
> From Heaven and The Honeymooners. It is
> directed by none other than John Turturro, and
> get a load of the cast: James Gandolfini,
> Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi,
> Christopher Walken, Mandy Moore, and Eddie
> Izzard. Is that not the strangest casting
> cataclysm, or what?

I have never heard of this either, but with that cast, and the word "musical", I am intrigued.


-Eric "I wish I had more to say" Sleator