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Singer Susan Boyle unwittingly set the tone for the following summer movie preview.
The coming movie season is all about makeovers: stodgy TV shows and frumpy franchises getting dye jobs and pectoral implants.
Get ready for the big reveals!
Leading up to the events of the previous “X-Men” movies and away from the events of the 81st annual Academy Awards, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is an enigma. “What is this movie about?” people who live in the most remote and pristine mountain wilderness of Canada’s Yukon Territory have been asking themselves, “and what does the word ‘origins’ have to do with the word ‘wolverine’?”
Well, Wolverine is an angry, muscular superhero with a taste for musical theater. In this film, Wolverine is just about to straighten out his life when he becomes bent on revenge. He demands to be infused with Adamantium, although there is some confusion initially about whether Wolverine is referring to an indestructible metal or to DNA from the singer of “Goody Two Shoes.”
The film ends with the talon-impaled villain regretting that he ever taunted Wolverine with the phrase, “Why don’t you grow a pair?”
Some pop-culture aficionados are already griping that the scene of Wolverine emerging naked and angry from a tank of water was stolen from “The Boy from Oz.” (Opened Friday.)
A few weeks ago, professor Geoffrey K. Pullum hammered away at Strunk and White in his article “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.” You can find it at Chronicle.com.
What does this have to do with “Star Trek”?
Well, Pullum claims that, contrary to what “The Elements of Style” has been telling us for decades, split infinitives are perfectly OK.
This gives the starship Enterprise crew the all-clear “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” although they might want to work on that niggling gender specificity.
Like such blockbuster hits as “The Sting II,” “Butch and Sundance: The Early Days” and “Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd,” this new “Star Trek” takes beloved characters and assigns them to new actors.
The film shows how Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock first hooked up, put the crew together and took to the cosmic road for adventures as groovy as they were reflective of a firm belief in the infallibility of Starfleet Regulations.
Chris Pine, who plays Kirk, can certainly expect to become as big a star as other young actors who have assumed iconic roles, actors such as Brandon Routh, Jake Lloyd, Miles O’Keeffe, Jason Scott Lee and Klinton Spilsbury. (Opens Friday.)
What crisis would make the Vatican seek out the services of Robert Langdon, a man who has devoted his life to a certain field of study, the very name of which is synonymous with evil at its most insidious?
I am speaking, of course, of … symbology!
Well, a physicist has been found murdered with a religious ambigram branded into his chest. An ambigram is a word or phrase that can be read from several directions and should not be confused with what Mongo tried to deliver to Sheriff Bart in “Blazing Saddles.”
The Vatican cannot ignore the fact that Langdon is the most respected symbologist in the States. In fact, he was voted “Sexiest Symbologist Alive” by People magazine. After much deliberation, the College of Cardinals decides to hire Langdon after it determines that the only morally objectionable thing about him is his hairstyle from the first movie.
In this film, Langdon must confront the Illuminati, a powerful organization that operates so far underground and so deep into the shadows that it is perhaps unaware that its name suggests something brightly lit.
To solve the mystery, Langdon must join forces with Vittoria Vetra, an Italian scientist who is as mysterious and alluring as she is insipid and predictable.
Plus, he must get a haircut. (Opens May 15.)
In a highly anticipated installment of the “Terminator” film franchise, which will attempt to build on a success that the “Terminator” TV show failed to achieve, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet, its army of Terminators and directors of photography who keep walking into his shot.
Connor thinks he knows how the future will unfold until he meets Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being a fly in the ointment.
A computer-generated version of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will make an appearance in the film.
It is not known whether a computer-generated version of Jerry Brown will make an appearance in the governor’s office.
Anton Yelchin will play Kyle Reese, a role created in the first “Terminator” film by Michael Biehn.
This performance will come on the heels of Yelchin’s big-screen go-round as Pavel Chekov, a character created in the original “Star Trek” TV series by actor Walter Koenig.
Yelchin has an interesting career strategy. I’m not sure I understand it.
Then again, it seems to be working for Bale. (Opens May 21.)
Ben Stiller returns to the role of nightwatchman Larry Daley in a sequel to the 2006 hit “Night at the Museum.” In this enchanting follow-up, Daley continues to encounter living exhibits, and just as this magical process begins to unfold at the Smithsonian, the museum is closed for lack of funding. Just kidding. That would never happen in a movie. Only in real life. (Opens May 22.)
The apparent artsiness of this Disney-Pixar movie about a curmudgeon who ties thousands of helium-filled balloons to his home so he can take flight is making a lot of bottom-line-oriented curmudgeons on Wall Street nervous. Perhaps they don’t have any balloons. Lots of golden parachutes, but no balloons. (Opens May 29.)
In this spoofish remake of a ’70s children’s show, a discredited paleontologist named Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell) is sucked into a space-time vortex and spends much of the rest of the movie trying to avoid things that suck. When Marshall finds himself in a world inhabited by dinosaurs, sentient primates and conniving reptiles, the question is not whether he will get the last laugh on his mocking colleagues but whether he will get the first laugh out of the audience. (Opens June 5.)
In this sequel, the villainous giant robots known as the Decepticons kidnap human Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) because he knows too much. While Witwicky is being held captive, the Decepticons wryly note that in a movie packed with such unlikely names as Cybertron, Starscream and Skorpinox, Witwicky may be the most preposterous of all. (Opens June 24.)
Fans who gasped when Warner Bros. postponed this film last November will breathe a sigh of relief (and make any other appreciative respiratory noises in their repertoire) when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is finally released this summer.
In this installment, the villain Voldemort – also known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” – tightens his grip on the Muggle and wizarding worlds, makes life difficult for Harry and gets henpecked by “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed” from the “Rumpole” books.
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, the students are also struggling with their hormones.
Hermione Granger’s burgeoning romance with Ron Weasley is threatened when a new girl shows in no uncertain terms that she has designs on the red-headed boy. Her brazen overtures make for one steamed Hermione.
Incidentally, Steamed Hermione is also the name of a grayish Welsh pub food consisting mostly of parboiled organ meats. (Opens July 15.)
Thanks, Paramount Pictures, for that subtitle. It really clears everything up.
In this film, G.I. Joe is not a nickname for a private in the U.S. Army. In this film, it stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity.
This sounds about as exciting as Grapes in Jam Overjoy Everyone or Glandular Itching Just Overwhelms Egrets.
“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” is loosely based, of course, on a series of fully articulated action figures, although producers have hastened to remind viewers that they can’t guarantee all the actors will be fully articulated. (Opens Aug. 7.)
“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” starring Matthew McConaughey, is a remake of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” that answers a question literary scholars have been asking for centuries: “Would Scrooge have been happier if he’d had washboard abs, tooth bleach, bronzer and access to bitchin’ surf?” (Opened Friday.)
In “The Proposal,” a high-powered Canadian book editor (Sandra Bullock) facing deportation commandeers a forced betrothal to a lowly assistant played by Ryan Reynolds, an actor who – incidentally – once broke off an engagement to high-powered Canadian pop star Alanis Morissette. (Opens June 12.)
Denzel Washington and John Travolta assume roles created by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw in the remake of “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.”
(Opens June 12.)
Two lazy cavemen (Jack Black and Michael Cera) are banished from their primitive village and embark on an epic journey in “Year One,” a comedy from writer/director Harold “Hitch-A-Wagon-To-Judd’s-Star” Ramis and producer Judd “I-Used-To-Love-Ramis-When-I-Was-A-Kid” Apatow. “Year One” was co-written by Gene “I-Obviously-Never-Had-To-Suffer-Through-That-Ringo-Starr-Caveman-Movie” Stupnitsky. (Opens June 19.)
In “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” Scrat finally catches that acorn only to discover he has a nut allergy. (Opens July 1.)
It’s John Dillinger versus the FBI in “Public Enemies,” a film directed by Michael Mann that stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The film was adapted from Bryan Burrough’s book “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34.” The subtitle was dropped when Mann took an inventory of all the other subtitles on this summer’s movies and realized that his made far too much sense. (Opens July 1.)
Morning-show producer Katherine Heigl is surprised to find herself falling for rude TV personality Gerard Butler in “The Ugly Truth.” The film is being described as a “rom-com,” which is a cute nickname for romantic comedies that Hollywood came up with as soon as it forgot how to make them. (Opens July 24.)
A magical rock grants wishes in “Shorts,” a family film from Robert Rodriguez, one of the few directors who can move effortlessly from wholesome fare to pornographic violence and back again. (Opens Aug. 7.)
In “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” a couple tries to hold their relationship together despite the fact that the husband can’t stop shifting through time and the wife can’t drive stick. (Opens Aug. 14.)
Ashton Kutcher plays a boy toy and Anne Heche plays a well-kept but unhinged middle-aged woman in “Spread,” a movie that has no basis in reality whatsoever. (Opens Aug. 14.)
