AUGUST 2008 MOVIE PREVIEW

And here it is, the February of summer. Anything exciting enough to be Teh Awesome came out already, anything good enough to be, um, good isn't coming out for a few more weeks (actually, that's not fair, the first official Oscarbait of the year is due in August). Let's dig into it:

1.8.2008
Good God, what a treasure trove of Brendan Fraser this summer has been! Now, it's the long-awaited follow-up to The Mummy and The Mummy Returns: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. No way this "threequel" is going to miss!

Actually, everything I just wrote was a lie. Well, except for the part that it's the third Mummy film. And that we've had to deal with a shocking amount of Brendan Fraser this summer.

The competition (other than The Dark Knight, of course) is a warm and fuzzy Kevin Costner movie about how weird our electoral system is, Swing Vote, where he has the deciding ballot to cast in a swing state to decide the next president; any chance that this story might have succeeded died with Frank Capra.

Also, vaguely noteworthy Japanese horror director Kitamura Ryuhei is behind a film adapted from a Clive Barker short story, and the trailer actually looked pretty moody and creepy, and I was all excited until I learned its howlingly bad title: The Midnight Meat Train.

6.8.2008
Wednesday releases: for giant blockbusters, and now, apparently, low-key indie comedies like the true-life story of how California wine first gained international respect, Bottle Shock.

8.8.2008
Dude, David Gordon Green is making a pot comedy-thriller. Written by the guys who did Superbad. I have no idea how, exactly, Pineapple Express is going to work, but I somehow have it in my head that it's going to.

Something like 176 degrees away from that film is The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which I expect is going to be uplifting and empowering, and whose existence drove me to drop the first one in my Netflix queue so I could review it properly, and now you know a little bit more about my process than you did a few moments ago.

Lastly, the tremendous box-office failure of Grindhouse wasn't enough to keep Tarantino and the Weinsteins from executive-producing another neo-exploitation action flick with Larry Bishop's Hell Ride.

13.8.2008
Wednesdays: also for high-concept action comedies like Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder.

15.8.2008
Here's that Oscarbait I was talking about: the newest film by the notoriously inconsistent Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which to judge from the Cannes buzz is going to make all of us Woodman apologists who declared back in '05, "Huzzah for the masterful return to form that is Match Point!" to now declare, "Ye gods! What a tedious mess Match Point is compared to this masterwork!" Personally, I find the trailer a bit unexciting, and I don't know that I want to see an Allen erotic thriller, but hey - Woody and ScarJo. And the first post-Oscar role for Javier Bardem.

Its piffling competition includes a dreary looking CGI cartoon about flies hopping aboard Apollo 11 called Fly Me to the Moon, notable primarily for being the first CG film designed from the ground up for 3-D. Also, Mirrors, a paranormal horror film with a positively bone-chilling trailer that got me really excited until I found out it was directed by Alexandre Aja, of the overwhelmingly mediocre Hills Have Eyes remake.

Also, the prequel to a sequel to a prequel is invented, finally, with Star Wars: Clone Wars, George Lucas's boldest attempt yet to make everybody hate everything even tangentially related to Jedis and the Force.

20.8.2008
Wednesdays are also good for abysmal-looking Rainn Wilson vehicles like The Rocker.

22.8.2008
You remake Death Race 2000, you gotta take the number out of the title. I understand. But taking out that film's most notable plot element - kill a civilian, get points - that I cannot quite understand. And give the whole thing over to Paul W.S. Anderson, and you pretty much guarantee that Death Race will be the worst film of the summer, Ian McShane + Joan Allen or no.

It's competition is a Happy Madison film about a Playboy Bunny who teaches smart girls how to be slutty to attract boys, though, so maybe I overspeak. The House Bunny, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank God for the indies: Hamlet 2 may have a better concept (Steve Coogan directs a high school production of his own sequel to Hamlet) than a trailer, but at least it looks to be good for more than a few giggles.

29.8.2008
And thus does summer go out with a mewling fizzle, with four movies that all look like they're counterprogramming for something bigger: I guess the major release is Babylon A.D., Vin Diesel's return to science fiction as directed by the actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz, whose last project behind the camera was the dismal Gothika. The other films on deck are a Don Cheadle conspiracy thriller called Traitor, a teensploitation comedy about College, and, saints preserve us, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's second film of the calendar year, Disaster Movie.