RottenTomatoes recently came out with a very nice feature on the upcoming feature films for the period of May to August 2008 (referred to as “summer” in other countries, although it’s decidedly a bit more wet than that here). The article linked above is a lot more comprehensive than this one, but I’m a busy guy and I’m assuming that the people that read this blog will not have the time to watch every single summer movie coming out this year. So below is my list of must- and will-probably-see movies over the next four months, compressed to suit my tastes and summarized to fit your available time:

Iron Man, May 2nd.

Not much to say about this one other than it was a high watermark for superhero movies, and kicked off the season with an arc-reactor-powered bang.

Speed Racer, May 9th.

The only reason why I even mention this movie is because I thought I’d give the Wachowskis another chance and saw Speedy on his opening night. This movie is about as bad as it gets — cliche-ridden (or I should say, driven) plot, seriously bizarre production design, camera work that tries to be funky and just ends up clunky … the list goes on. The races themselves are alright, but I can’t say they’re any more or less memorable than your average Fast and the Furious fare.

Prince Caspian, May 16th.

The sequel to Narnia has been thus far getting some pretty good reviews, and although I didn’t love the first picture, I’m willing to give this one a shot. (Note that the Philippines will be getting this movie a few weeks late; possibly after Indy IV.)

Indiana Jones IV, May 22nd.

I have already made up my mind that I will love Indy IV, and I am counting mostly on Steven Spielberg to bring this one home. (George Lucas, you better not screw me again.)

Postal, May 22nd (likely sometime in mid-June over here).

I’ll see this one if I can drag some friends along with me. I played the video game for all of 30 minutes before getting tired of the tongue-in-cheek political-incorrectness but maybe Uwe Boll can come up with something witty and compelling. Or, more likely, something totally insipid and obtuse, and I’ll laugh my ass off watching it.

The Happening, June 13th.

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest twist-fest should be interesting to see. Say what you will about his recent self-indulgences (The Village and Lady in the Water were twisty piles of crap), but all Shyamalan movies consistently have really great acting and really stellar cinematography. Sometimes, it’s enough.

Incredible Hulk, June 13th.

Please, oh please, Edward Norton, don’t let me down.

Wall-E, June 27th.Pixar makes a sci-fi. How can I not love this?

Wanted, June 27th.

Angelina Jolie as an evil Lara Croft. Well, not exactly, but she holds her guns exactly the same way. The comic this was based on was a brilliant piece of nihilist writing, but I don’t really expect any of that to translate to the movie. Mostly you’ll watch this for the stunts and some snarky dialogue between Jolie and James McAvoy.

Hellboy 2, July 11th (probably on the 16th or 23rd here).

Director del Toro has been churning out some real gems since the first Hellboy (he directed Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006 and produced The Orphanage in 2007) so I’m expecting this sequel to top the first. Mignola’s comic books have always been a bit of a strange brew and del Toro shouldn’t find himself bereft of weird story material to throw at us.

The Dark Knight, July 18th.

There are a couple of things I was hoping for with Chris Nolan’s sequel: 1) Better action sequences (you could tell that Nolan had never previously directed fight scenes in Batman Begins), and 2) No more Katie Holmes. I already got the latter.

X-Files 2, July 25th (probably in early August here).

I remember watching the pilot episode of X-Files on RPN 9 back when I was in grade school (this was in 1993), and it scared the living crap out of me. I followed the show for about 4 seasons before it started to really meander, but I dutifully watched the movie like any loyal fan when it came out in 1998. Now it’s 2008, a whole decade later, and Mulder and Scully have returned. I am awed more by the passage of time than anything else, which is why I’ll see this movie no matter what.

Midnight Meat Train, August 1st (probably on the 6th here, if this ever makes it past the MTRCB)

Clive Barker’s serial killer short story is brought to the screen by Ryuhei Kitamura (known to geekboys as the director of Versus). A match made in heaven? We’ll see. Personally, I’m happy to see this as an uncut, extended bittorrent edition if the local movie review board blocks it.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, August 15th.

There are a couple of reasons to watch this movie, and I’m going to completely avoid the obvious “Because It’s Star Wars, Stupid.” The first is that I seriously love Kilian Plunkett’s character design (I first noticed his work on the graphic novel Unknown Soldier back in 98, and again in Superman: Red Son in 2004).  The second reason is that the Clone Wars movie is essentially a 90-minute commercial for the animated TV series starting in October this year, which will be followed by a live-action TV series in 2010. Hey, and we like commercials right?

The International, August 15th (probably on the 20th or 27th here).

Clive Owen as an international secret agent. Naomi Watts as his damsel-in-distress. Seems like a winning combination to me. 

I’ve been listening to so much new music this past year, and I realized recently how much I really miss sharing it with folks. Back during my highfiber days, we’d have a weekly featured download with a short writeup of the artist. I doubt I can pull off a weekly effort, but I think I can at least manage to keep this semi-regular. We’ll call it “Viva Pirateria” because my first choice, “Download Free MP3s at Guttervomit.com,” seemed a little too much like search-whoring. (As always, these tracks will be deleted after 30 days. I can’t really afford the bandwidth costs involved in keeping them up indefinitely.)

Our debut batch of MP3s is all fun-rock; catchy toe-tappers you can play in the car with friends.

Spoon – The Underdog
From one of last year’s best albums. Spoon wrote a good two-thirds of the soundtrack to my favorite Will Ferell movie, Stranger than Fiction, back in 2006, and are the vanguards of indie rock.

Orson – Broken Watch
Orson isn’t the world’s hardest-working indie rock band, but they’re probably in the top ten. “Broken Watch” is from their 2006 debut. The whole album is full of sugary pop confections; perfect for a summer trip to the beach.

Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin – Modern Mystery
SSLYBY (and man, even the acronym is long) is oddly-named, but they’ve got a great jangly-rock guitar sound that’s reminiscent of Rogue Wave and Maritime. Their choice of name pretty much prevents them from ever going mainstream, so if you are a fan, you are 100% assured that these guys will never sell out.

Nada Surf – Weightless
I’ve been listening to Nada Surf since “Popular” back in 1996 (which is pretty much when everybody else started listening to them), but the recent two albums have exhibited a kind of growth to their musicality that has been both fascinating and off-putting for older fans. “Weightless” is very similar in technique to an older song “Killian’s Red,” but it’s got a much more fleshed-out outro.

In case any of the direct links above don’t work, ol’ Apache will hook you up.

Ah, the shopping lists of the young and sleepless.

So by now I guess we’ve all seen Janina San Miguel’s epic soliloquy on the important persons in her life during the recent Binibining Pilipinas 2008, a monologue that was only slightly more impressive in its scope and daring than Miss South Carolina’s treatise on geography last year. I actually have a bit of a rant regarding beauty pageants that I’ve been nursing quietly now for years, and this seems like just the right week to whip it out.

Now before I embark on my own epic soliloquy, I want to first address the feminist argument that beauty pageants should be abolished because they are degrading. I personally find that rather ridiculous, as beauty pageants are no more demeaning towards women than Jeopardy is demeaning towards smart people. Or hotdog-eating contests, towards guys that like a little sausage. I think that it’s important that we celebrate the things that are outstanding and exceptional in this world, and by golly, if we can have World Rock-Paper-Scissors championships, then a competition that judges female beauty is a no-brainer. (Haha, sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

The problem is not that there are beauty pageants, the problem is in the rules. I find it frustrating that there are interview portions at all during these contests, because a contestant’s brains should have no effect on her overall “beauty” score. No Jeopardy player has ever lost because of his/her looks, because obviously, in a contest of wits, appearances are irrelevant. Strange that it doesn’t work the other way around.

Now, some people like to argue that beauty extends beyond just looks, all the way into the mind and soul of a given contestant. That’s all well and good, but if you want to accurately measure a girl’s mind, I think you need to base it on a little bit more than a single 60-second response, you know? Instead of having a single evening’s pageant, you need to have a week-long marathon with IQ tests and moral/ethical dilemmas mixed in with the bikini segments and talent portions. (That’s not a particularly bad idea either; get Mark Burnett on board and you’ve got yourself a real concept.)

I know that sounds like I’m being facetious, but I’m trying to make a point. Why do we even pretend that it matters whether a contestant is smart or not, when no beauty pageant has ever crowned a smarter girl over a prettier one? I personally think it’s this half-assed approach that makes beauty contests feel so farcical. The pageant industry’s desire to satiate critics by adding these silly question-and-answer portions has had the rather more negative effect of highlighting the fact that some of these contestants are real dullards. And it’s a shame because ultimately, they would have won regardless.

Images from Zack Snyder’s upcoming Watchmen adaptation found their way online yesterday, and you can immediately see why Alan Moore has pretty much given up on Hollywood. You can check out the rest of the images here, but the Comedian depicted above says it all. Now, before I embark on this geekboy rant, I want to first say that when I saw Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, I was thoroughly impressed. It was a great start for a young director; it was creepy, funny and thrilling in most of the right places.

I was less impressed by his take on Frank Miller’s 300, because it showed exactly how young this guy really was. 300 was a song played with a single note, and the volume cranked all the way up. Visually it was quite engaging, but then again so is pornography, or a UFC match. Neither of them are what you would ordinarily refer to as a "feature film."

Which brings me to Watchmen and the dark, gritty stills that they just released of its main characters. Now again, these stills have a great visual styling to them. Very "Dark Knight" in its retro/modern, desaturated, shiny-leather look. But sadly, they totally miss the point of the story, which is why it depresses me a little to see them.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen, for those of you who haven’t had the good fortune of reading it, is a story about a team of Golden Age superheroes, after their "golden age" has passed. They’re old and retired, but some of them continue to work behind the scenes, quietly maneuvering global politics and economics towards one unbelievable outcome. I’ve always thought that Watchmen was impossible to adapt to another medium because of its complexity. It’s got about a dozen separate plotlines that come together at the perfect moment towards the end, and the epic nature of the story can’t really be felt if you experience the whole thing in a 2-hour movie session.

Likewise, you couldn’t adapt it into a traditional text-only novel either, because a huge part of what makes Watchmen so special is the cornball "Golden Age" look of the superheroes. The story itself was a commentary on the comic-book medium you see, and how "real life" has finally caught up with our aging lead characters. Snyder’s images above are disappointing because he’s traded the feel of "old cowboys on their last ride" for chrome gear and glossy leather straps. Sure to please the general moviegoing audience, but unlikely to satisfy anyone who’s actually read this book.

A bit of music-related geekery today:

Ubuntu Linux has made something of a tradition of christening each release with an alliterative animal name, perhaps as a both an homage to and parody of Apple’s own feline operating systems. The current release is "Gusty Gibbon," while the upcoming April distribution is referred to as "Hardy Heron."

Last week, a list was published that itemized all of the upcoming release names, thusly:

* 9.04 - Jovial Jackal
* 9.10 - Kissy Kipunji
* 10.04 - Loyal Lemur
* 10.10 - Modest Mouse
* 11.04 - Nifty Nematode
* 11.10 - Open-minded Ostrich
* 12.04 - Petulant Porcupine

"Modest Mouse." Well. Clearly someone on the Ubuntu team is an indie music fan. Now when I first heard the news, I thought it was quaint and all; pop-culture crossovers always are. After a little bit more thought though, I imagine that this particular name would hurt both Ubuntu and the band, at least from a search perspective. It’s already happening right now: typing "ubuntu modest mouse" on Google gives you a weird mishmash of music-related and Linux-related links. What happens when Ubuntu actually releases "Modest Mouse," or when Modest Mouse releases a new album? Absolute chaos, folks, absolute chaos.

Ayala Avenue, Makati City. 29 February 2008.

People perched atop the statue of Ninoy on the corner of Ayala and Paseo had one of the best views of the whole event (not counting the offices that were directly facing the intersection, of course). I wanted to get a better vantage point but unfortunately, street-level was all I was able to manage.

Pretty much every TV station had an elevated platform setup before the festivities kicked off; several camera jibs hovered over the crowds, and streets were crowded with OB vans and uplink trucks.

And of course, where there are crowds, there are street vendors. Rallying really gives one the munchies, after all.

I personally dislike how they have to pander to the religious leanings of the masses in order to get them to participate (they referred to this event as an "Inter-faith Rally"). I’ve said this many times before, but I’ll say it here again for emphasis. People need to stop using religion as a compass for morality and common decency, because religion is far from moral, or decent. But that’s a subject for a different rant, I suppose.

Come to the light, you mindless zombies, and leave all your garbage behind.

It turns out that I am extraordinarily apolitical. It was fun to blow an hour’s time at the rally, although I think that the frequency of these events have reduced their impact to pretty much nothing. People are about as responsive to these things as they are to advertising on the web; the vast majority simply ignore them.

The Academy Awards are kicking off in a matter of hours, and I thought I’d write out some thoughts about the various nominations. 2007 was a a really great year for movies, not just because the general quality was good, but because so many of the high-quality movies were also really fun to watch. My favorites this year, in reverse order:

5. 3:10 To Yuma

This is more of a sentimental pick than anything else. There’s a kind of magic in well-executed Westerns that I find really irresistible and 3:10 just really kicks butt all the way through. Christian Bale and Russel Crowe are powerhouses here, and young Ben Foster is ridiculously intimidating. I had two other movies that were pushing for the #5 spot — American Gangster and Gone Baby Gone. All three of these were about the same level in my opinion, although 3:10’s subject matter managed to give it a slight edge. (And interestingly, none of them were nominated for Best Picture, which is a testament to just how tight the race is this year.)

4. There Will Be Blood

I thought this movie was trademark P.T. Anderson in that you can’t really expect to understand and appreciate it fully the first time you see it. It’s a complex film about a ruthless oil tycoon at the turn of the century, and Daniel Day-Lewis gives a Godfather-level performance in it. The range of this guy is truly incredible — watch him in The Last of the Mohicans before you see this film; he’s almost unrecognizable. If Blood doesn’t win Best Picture, Day-Lewis should at least win the "Best Actor Ever" award.

3. Juno

Director Jason Reitman performs a precarious balancing act with this quirky story about teen pregnancy: Juno is funny without being ludicrious, familiar without being cliche, and sentimental without being cheesy. Best comedy of the year, easily, and some critics have actually predicted that this might take home the Best Picture Oscar simply because it’s the odd man out.

2. Ratatouille

I’ve never liked how the Oscars marginalized animated movies by creating a separate "Best Animated Picture" category for them in 2001 (only Beauty and the Beast has ever received a Best Picture nomination). Ratatouille is not only the best movie out of Pixar — a studio reknowned for making extremely impressive films — but it’s also one of the finest films of this year, and should have been nominated in the regular "Best Picture" category.

1. No Country for Old Men

This one will win the Oscar for sure, unless Juno pulls off the biggest upset in Academy history. It’s probably the most pitch-perfect movie I’ve seen in the past 5 years; brilliant performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem (creepiest mofo since Hannibal Lecter), deliberate and methodical cinematography by Roger Deakins, and dialogue that’s so sharp you could poke your eye out with it. (The Coen Brothers will probably take home the Direction and Screenplay awards for this movie as well. It’s just that good.)