programming note: you know what i’ll do this summer

well, it’s that time of the year again. some movie based on picture books just came out and made a lot of money. remember when the summer movie season starts during memorial day weekend? well not anymore. now they have four whole months to bombard you with 3d digital imax experiences and charge you more for it.

it’s also the season when you’re supposed to leave your brain at the door to see shit get blown up real good, and not having to feel guilty about it. cause afterall, it’s not supposed to be shakespeare. though i don’t think people had to keep that in mind when die hard, die hard 2, jaws, terminator 2, and the dark knight, or even the rock and con air came out. and according to the mayans, this may be the last summer ever, of all time.

in short, welcome to michael bay season (all of his movies are released in the summer, except for bad boys i; and all his movies made money, except for the island, which came out in the summer of 2005). though we are not really about the popular movies (unless they suck), we are more than happy to pick on blockbusters (hello iron man 2), and with a tiny bit of schadenfreude, we will be looking at some notorious summer flops. this will be our mission from may til the end of august. the focus will be commercial flops, especially the ones that came out 5-10-15-20 years ago. but there will be the occasional critical flops as well as the non-anniversary flops. there will be more far and away’s than eyes wide shut, more color of night than hudson hawk. there are plenty of jonah hex, i know who killed me, 1941, and jaws 4: the revenge to go around. just pay attention to a smaller version of that picture up there.

so that’s our summer curriculum, from may to august, except for july, when we will die harder-er-ish than last summer.

it’s your fault if you don’t like battleship: the movie

vern has a chapter titled “it’s not supposed to be shakespeare” in his book yippyee ki-yay moviegoer! it doesn’t seem to be online. here’s something related, and the transformers review that inspired the topic.