The 2005 Summer Movie Season Begins!

The summer movie season is almost upon us! Traditionally summer kicks off Memorial Day weekend, but this year it's going to start considerably earlier for me, about a month earlier in fact, on April 29th! So, in chronological order of release, here are the flicks that I'm looking forward to seeing during the Summer of 2005:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (April 29)
House of Wax (May 6)
Monster-in-Law (May 13)
Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (May 19)
The Longest Yard (May 27)
The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D (June 10)
Batman Begins (June 17)
Bewitched (June 24)
George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (June 24)
War of the Worlds (June 29)
Dark Water (July 8)
Fantastic Four (July 8)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (July 15)
The Devil's Rejects (July 22)
The Island (July 22)
Sky High (July 29)
The Dukes of Hazzard (August 5)
The Pink Panther (August 5)
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (August 12)
The Skeleton Key (August 12)
Red Eye (August 19)

That's one hell of a list. I'm already buying my popcorn and you can be assured that I will be right here pontificating about most of the movies after the opening weekend!

Check out Entertainment Weekly #817/818's Summer Movie Preview for the full run-down on these and other new films!

The Amityville Horror: Not Horrible

The remake of The Amityville Horror arrived on Friday. I was there for the original film in 1979, with all of its "GETTTT OUUUUUTTTTT"'s and black tar liquid in the basement. Well, a couple Get Out's remain, but I missed the black tar liquid. The script is by Scott Kosar, whose writing I enjoyed more in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake last year. Still in all, the new Amityville Horror was OK. Ryan Reyolds, fresh off his cool co-starring gig in Blade: Trinity, is here as the dad who takes family discipline to the chopping block. There are some makeup effects to enjoy but there is no new horror film ground broken here. Also shown before the movie were the trailers for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (April 29th) and another new remake, House of Wax (May 6th). I enjoyed them as much as the film.

Check out The Amityville Horror film website: http://www.amityvillehorrormovie.com/

Land of the Dead: June 24th?

I am a big fan of George A. Romero and his "Dead" film trilogy (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead). BloodyDisgusting.com reports that Romero's final Dead film, Land of the Dead, will be arriving at theatres June 24th, months earlier than expected. Very good news indeed. Now taking Dead's original October 21st release date is Doom, another adaptation that I have been looking forward to.

Check out the news here:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/comments/?entryid=184473

Sin City: My Reaction?

As you all know, I was really looking forward to the release of the film version of Frank Miller's Sin City. Had been for months. I went to see it upon release, on Friday April 1st. With the rest of the faithful, I was one of the first to see the film. It blew me away. I was so impressed with the fact that Robert Rodriquez took great pains to stay true to Miller's original material. And, yes, the film does stick very close to the makeup of most of the panels of the Sin City graphic novels.

The use of black and white and carefully controled colors as originally presented in the graphic novels was astounding. I can surely say that I have never seen a film quite as original as this.

So, is it revolutionary? Yes! Will Sin City shake up the way that comics are adapted to film? I certainly hope so. Nearly everyone was happy with the final version of the film. It had a great opening weekend. I heard no complaints from any comics or film fans that I spoke with.

At NJLA, several of you asked me what I thought of the film. Thanks for asking! A number of you had the same reaction as I did and I was happy to see that. I plan to take in a second viewing soon.

Did you spot which scene belonged to guest director Quentin Tarantino? I knew which one it was right away. It was hilarious.

So, next up on my viewing list is the remake of The Amityville Horror, opening tomorrow.

RSS Feed Is Now Live!

Hi again folks. As promised, you can now subscribe to an RSS feed for my blog. Simply go to

http://feeds.feedburner.com/davidlisa

and subscribe through your favorite RSS reader!

Thanks to Steve Garwood who suggested this RSS method to me at the NJLA conference.

Blogger.com

Hi all! After contemplating how to recreate my website blog in order to add RSS abilities, I have decided to move it over to Blogger.com. I'll make an announcement that will coincide with when you will be able to get an RSS feed and add it to your RSS reader. What's that? I'll explain later!

I have moved over all of the 2005 entries. You can still get to the 2002, 2003 and 2004 blog entries at http://www.davidlisa.com.

Hope that you like this and that this is convenient to you. Please post your feedback!