"I'm not freaking out — I'm freaking in!"

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Kung Fu Panda 2

FRESHNESS RATING: Mild SPOILERS for Kung Fu Panda 2

Writing a movie review tends to be like sifting through a giant pile of a lot of stuff and things. If a movie stirred me up at all, whether to love or loathing, then I've almost always got plenty to say and not much space to say it in. There's a lot of weeding out that happens, frequently without my giving it much conscious thought. So here's a small handful of items that pertain either to something I did write in my review of Kung Fu Panda 2, or to something I didn't. If you haven't read the review yet, here it is.

Kill me now: Nobody actually wants to die to prove a point, but action/adventure movies almost always try to insist the opposite, on at least one character's behalf. Which is why I enjoyed so much the moment where evil Lord Shen says to Po, "Are you willing to die to find out the truth?" Po's stalwart reply: "I am. Though I'd prefer not to."

Still a fanbear: Po has clearly grown both in stature and in spirit since the events of the first film, but I enjoyed seeing that there's still a sense of wonder, or rather, sense of awesomeness, in his heart. The scene of Po getting a knapsack of travel essentials from his father, Mr. Ping, offers one great flash of the giddy panda within, and there's another good one in a scene in which Po is arrested and restrained using a particular means of capture.

Picking on Pixar: I didn't actually hate WALL*E, although I have very little use for almost all of it that happens after WALL*E hooks up with the spaceship full of Really Fat Humans. I'm semi-convinced that there's a version of the movie somewhere, even if only on old storyboards, where the ship is as desolate as planet Earth, and WALL*E spends the rest of the movie trying to convince EVE to make the same choice that he did and rebel against her programming. (I know, I know, robots can't actually do that. It's a fantasy love story, people, not something by Greg Bear.) Here's what I said in my original review of WALL*E.

That might actually work: One of my favorite random lines of dialogue from the movie is something Tigress says to Po: "I hope this turns out better than your plan to cook rice in your stomach by eating it raw and then drinking boiling water." There are always two or three lines that I write down, intending to provide examples of the movie's humor, that don't end up fitting anywhere, for one reason or another.

Oh, and it's in 3D: I've already made some noise on this blog about what I tend to think of 3D. Many film critics, including myself, are of the opinion that it typically works better for animated films than with live action. (You can use Avatar to argue the point either way since it has plenty of scenes filmed on movie sets, but also quite a lot of George Lucasian CGI-scapes.) Just last year, I was blown away by the immersiveness of watching DreamWorks Animation's How To Train You Dragon in 3D. I've read several reviews of Kung Fu Panda 2 that praise its 3D, but my reaction was more along the lines of, "Darn it, these glasses are pinching the sides of my head." Panda 2 is certainly gorgeously animated, but I'm guessing it will look just as captivating in regular ol' 2D ... and I plan to find out soon.

P.S. — Really? Really?! The Hangover Part II is so. good. that $31.7 million worth of moviegoers had to rush out and see it on freaking Thursday? Awww, man. What a way to begin the weekend.

The temperature is rising in St. George

ONE FOR THE QUEUE: FLDS documentary Sons of Perdition to strike sparks on Oprah Winfrey Network

LINKS: Sons of Perdition official Web site; Daily Herald review of Sons of Perdition

In the early going of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan — and I generally try to bring up The Wrath of Khan, inarguably the best Star Trek anything ever made, whenever possible — Khan vows to go wherever he has to go to have his venegeance against Captain Kirk, including to the very limits of the galaxy. Making a cleverly veiled reference to Melville's Moby Dick — as highly literate and genetically engineered superbeings are wont to do — Khan seethes that, "I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round Perdition's flames before I give him up!" Makes it sound like you'd have to go pretty darn far — I'm thinking at least past the moons of Nibia and through the Antares Maelstrom — to find Perdition's flames, right? Except that, for those of us in Utah, it turns out that Perdition is just a short hop down Interstate 15.

Permit me to explain. St. George, Utah, which is located about as close as you can get to Arizona and still be in Utah, is frequently hotter than blazes. And they did name the town after the guy who slew the dragon, and "dragon" is often used interchangably with "Lucifer" or "Satan." So maybe it shouldn't surprise us to learn that there's a small, but growing population of eternally damned souls in St. George. OK, so the "eternally damned" thing depends on who you ask. If you ask imprisoned polygamist Warren Jeffs and the other men who hold sway in the Hildale/Colorado City polygamous enclave, then, heck (ahem) yes, the kids who run away from H/CC (called The Crick by its inhabitants), typically when they are wildly confused teenagers, are more or less as eternally damned as it's possible to be.

What becomes of the runaways, who wind up trapped between a society that flatly rejects them and a society that scarcely knows what to make of them, is the fascinating subject of Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten's deeply affecting documentary Sons of Perdition. "Perdition" generically means "hell," but in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints theology that kids at The Crick are taught from birth, it refers to something much darker and more desolate than mere hell. The filmmakers devoted a couple of years to capturing the plight of the FLDS runaways/outcasts, and the story they ended up with is riveting. (I wrote a review of the film when it played briefly in Provo.) The MPAA slapped Sons with an R, and the rating really does feel like a bit of slap. Numerically speaking, Sons crosses the established boundary for usage of a certain four-letter word, but not by much and with about as little negative baggage as I've ever seen.

The film played theatrically on a limited basis in Utah and Arizona earlier this year, but the real coup for Merten and Measom was bestowed by Oprah Winfrey herself. The film was chosen to air on OWN, the new (as of earlier this year; Jan. 1, to be precise) all-things-Oprah network, as part of a new Documentary Film Club. Can Her Oprah-ness do for docs what she did for books? Sons of Perdition has an immediate and impactful message that could truly benefit from Oprah's Midas touch. OWN reportedly hasn't gotten off to the greatest of starts, as evidenced by Oprah's recent firing of the network's top executive. If you have one of those cable or satellite plans, however, that includes so many channels you don't even know what all of them are, then this would be an opportune moment to find out whether you have OWN already, or whether your provider carries it. Sons of Perdition premieres June 2 on OWN, at 9 p.m. Eastern. The Documentary Film Club page for Sons has a channel finder that can help you find OWN if you know your provider. So go check already! Sons of Perdition is worth seeking out, even if you have to fly around the moons of Nibia to find it.

There are two of Castle

SOMETIMES I WATCH TV: In which a mystery is not solved and my cool is not found

FRESHNESS RATING: Apocalyptic, soul-withering SPOILERS for Castle — DO NOT READ if you care about the series and have not yet seen the third-season finale

This is primarily a blog about movies, but I hope that readers will forgive the occasional digression into television and books. Or, as with ABC's Castle, the occasional digression into both. Castle stars Nathan Fillion as Rick Castle, a mystery novelist who spends a whole lot of time shadowing New York City homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic). I'd shadow her, too — Beckett is apparently assigned to solve every outlandish homicide in the entire Big Apple. If a mugger shoots somebody in Central Park, bah, any old person could handle that crime. On the other hand, if a former supermodel from Queens who is also the interim ambassador to Lichtenstein is murdered while impersonating a mermaid in a performance art exhibition at the Guggenheim, and the suspected killer is a lapsed Catholic priest who used to be a coffee grower in Ghana and now trains bears for the circus, then all other New York cops must BACK. OFF. Only Beckett gets those cases.

Oh, and if the killing is tied up in some hitherto unexplored backwater of New York City culture and/or history, so much the better. (Oh, come on, Castle writers. I kid because I care.) That sort of thing accounts for about 90 percent of the show, which just completed its third season on ABC. Episodes that occur in the sector of the Castle universe where the characters actually lead lives — presumably where Castle has deadlines, or gets hounded by his publisher; or where Beckett meets hunky guys who never have any dialogue, because then they couldn't be paid as extras — only pop up two or three times a year, usually just before the show's summer hiatus. (By the way, can you imagine if they attempted that sort of shenanigan in Hollywood? So long, people, that's all of the new movies there are right now. Everybody hang out for a few months and we'll have something new in September. Unless we think that you really, really like our stuff, in which case, see you in February.)

At any rate, the 10 percent of the show that's not just doing what my wife calls "freak of the week" is all tied up in the years-ago unsolved murder of Beckett's mother, a mystery that has grown so complex that it now involves more theories and vaster conspiracies than the Kennedy assassination. The show wrapped up Season 3 last week, so of course we got another Beckett's Dead Mom episode. Only, the whole thing has gotten so elaborate that the showrunners apparently decided viewers would not be satisfied with simply getting another break in the case. Instead, they pulled a Sixth Sense-level switcheroo by pretending that Beckett's loved and admired police captain, Roy Montgomery, has been — holy. cow. people. — part of the conspiracy all along! Oh, ol' Monty didn't pull the trigger or anything. He's just one of the corrupt cops whose bad behavior set the whole thing off. (Wait, wait, a police drama pinned everything on the supposedly incorruptible squad captain? It's like nothing that's ever been done before!)

Bull. That's what I have to say about that. Show me the series bible or story notes that prove Montgomery was keeping that secret from the very beginning. Oh, and did I mention that Beckett got shot dead at Monty's funeral? That she breathed her last while Castle desperately attempted to confess that he loves her? Alas, poor Beckett! A fellow(-ette) of infinite jest. I knew her, Horatio. ... What's that you say, Castle writers? She didn't die?! She'll be back next season? You people! It's like we don't even speak the same language. These crazy ideas! Where are they all coming from? I say it's In It To Win It time. No more magazine articles or crossword puzzles behind that locked door, Castle braintrust. It's time to you-know-what or get off the pot. If Beckett's dead mom's murder is still unsolved at the end of next season, then we are done. Find something else to carry your show between ex-Catholic coffee grower/circus bear trainer episodes. The clock is officially ticking. Don't let it tick me off again.

Heavy, heavy hangs over my poor ... face

BREAKING NEWS: The Hangover Part II really is coming to a theater near you, in spite of legal wranglings

LINKS: Official Victor Whitmill Web site; The Hangover Part II official Web site

What's in a weird-looking facial tattoo? Could be several million dollars, if you're tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill. S-Vic is the guy who put that enormous inkstain on the face of boxer Mike Tyson several years ago, and he's apparently not thrilled that makeup artists for The Hangover Part II have replicated his handiwork on the mug of franchise star Ed Helms (who plays the meek dentist who lost a tooth in the first film). Helms's Stu discovers the facial mega-blemish when he wakes up after one night in Bangkok — which can make a hard man humble, as the song goes — that he and buddies Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Phil (Bradley Cooper) will no doubt need an entire movie to recover from.

Whitmill attempted to give the new movie a hangover of its own earlier this year when he filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and seeking to delay the big Memorial Day weekend release of Part II. I didn't actually know any of this until the Warner Bros. issued an e-mail alert yesterday afternoon with a statement expressing gratitude to Judge Catherine D. Perry of Federal District Court in St. Louis for ruling that no injunction against Part II would be granted. Frankly, I think it's entirely commendable that somebody tried to prevent the release of a sequel to The Hangover, but that's just me. Actually, given the early reviews for Part II, I'd assumed that the plaintiffs in any lawsuit would be screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, whose original screenplay for The Hangover was apparently more or less carbon-copied by Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, the credited writers (with director Todd Phillips) of Part II.

Poor Whitmill. Or perhaps not, in fact, "poor" at all. The wronged tattooist may have lost a battle, but he could still win the war, or at least a fat settlement check from Warner Bros. Judge Perry declined to block the release of the movie, but allowed Whitmill's lawsuit to proceed, expressing the opinion, as reported in The New York Times, that S-Vic had a "strong likelihood of prevailing on the merits for copyright infringement." The Hangover Part II stumbles into theaters tomorrow, getting a one-day head start on the historically lucrative Memorial Day moviegoing weekend, but the part two that I'd recommend you see this weekend is the sublime Kung Fu Panda 2. Tangentially speaking, after last week's spate of stories about famous "fourquels" — inspired by the release of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film — I'm just lying in wait for the first waggish writer to slip up and write something about "twoquels." Believe it or not, we already have a word for that.

"Are there (something) in this movie?"

PREVIEW REVIEW: New romantic comedy just going through the motions — until it isn't!

LINKS: Green with Envy official trailer at iTunes

If someone hasn't already told you about this one, then read no further until after you've hit the above-listed link and watched the trailer for the new Amy Adams-Jason Segel romantic comedy Green with Envy. No, really, STOP READING and go watch the trailer. I promise to still be here after you're done.

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Waiting ... waiting ... aaaand, we're back! Pretty clever, huh? Clearly someone at the Walt Disney Company has a sense of humor, and obviously that person is Kermit the Frog. Not the actual Kermit, of course. The mildly anarchic spirit of Kermit creator Jim Henson, however, is alive and well in what is easily the best gimmick trailer of 2011. I happened to spot the trailer link while making a routine sweep of the iTunes trailer site and watched it cold with all of the same expectations that any seasoned filmgoer might have of a soft-lit, sappy trailer for something called Green with Envy. I even read the short film synopsis, which keeps the gag under wraps, preserving your sneering disdain right up to the moment that the voiceover guy just barely stumbles over reading the words "Kermit the Frog."

When you rewatch the "fake romantic comedy" part of the trailer after finding out what the game is, the spoofery is pretty sublime. I don't quite know whether it's a compliment to Adams and Segel that I completely bought Green with Envy as a real romantic comedy. I believed them entirely capable of having signed on to star in this movie, even despite the exceedingly weak sauce moment where She has to leave the hotel suite after He doesn't have dinner plans already in the works. That almost tipped me off, but then the faux-preview makes a brilliant recovery: The song cue with the New Radicals's "You Get What You Give," particularly on top of Segel's admittedly amusing "You know when you've been trying to figure something out" speech, is sheer genius. Sorry, Amy, but you did do that Ireland thing with Matthew Goode and Adam Scott, and that is exactly what Green with Envy is pretending to be.

On the other hand, once I realized what was really happening, I found the casting inspired. Adams, especially, could not be more right for the material (and frankly, yeah, fine, she seemed like a good fit for Green with Envy, too, even in those fleeting moments when I assumed it was some random paycheck gig). Segel also seems right at home surrounded by Muppets, and I fully expect the two of them to be delightful. Muppet movies aren't always a sure thing, but they've gotten off to an ideal start with this one. I'll be interested, come November, to find out whether they can carry this sense of humor through an entire film. The Muppets opens Nov. 23, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Savoring the absurd

VIDEO VAULT: Catching up with Angelina Jolie's assault on the limits of credulity

FRESHNESS RATING: Cataclysmic, earthshaking SPOILERS for Salt

I didn't see the Angelina Jolie spy thriller Salt when it played in theaters last year, but I read enough reviews praising the "realism" of its "gritty" action scenes that I stuck a placeholder on it in my ever-expanding mental file of Movies I Ought to Watch Someday. My wife and I are currently enjoying an accidental one-month revival of our long-dormant Netflix account, so we streamed Salt over the weekend. I guess movie critics have become so numbed to rapid-fire action editing that when someone films a scene that your average viewer can actually track at normal speed, with the naked eye, it seems "realistic." Hey, I could see everything that just happened there. Bam! Just like real life. I think it also helps if a character occasionally grimaces, limps, or otherwise appears to experience actual pain.

I admit to enjoying action that feels like it was meant to be visually processed, and not just blasted into my retinas with a firehose. Where Salt plays by the same rules as almost every other film in the genre, is when it goes into that realm where the screenwriter and director half look each other in the eye and say, "Is it even remotely plausible that a human being could take this action and live through it?" One of them nods, the other one shrugs, and then the character miraculously does five or six of those borderline impossible things in a row. After she's accused of being a deep cover Russian spy, CIA operative Evelyn Salt gets pinned down on a freeway overpass and escapes by rolling sideways over a concrete abutment onto the top of a speeding tractor-trailer. A few moments later she leaps to the top a speeding tanker truck, and a few moments after that, she leaps down an entire level of freeway to the roof of a moving van.

Not only all of that, but she gets shot through the hip seconds after landing on the first truck, and gets pitched over the cab of the third one when it brakes abruptly for a major traffic snarl. The punchline to all of this is that she spots a motorcyclist zooming between the stopped cars, and somehow tackles him off his bike and gets aboard it herself without slamming into anything or smearing herself all over the asphalt. Not only all in a day's work, but all in the same scene. Uh-huh. I don't care if Salt is the best trained agent in the CIA, having the world's luckiest day — part of me just checked out. Sure, it's nice that they did some actual stunts, and, OK, fine, some of that could probably actually happen, but ... come on.

All of that is small potatoes, compared to the battering of believability that ensues once Salt starts to play one of the most comically elaborate double games in the history of spy cinema. It turns out that she really is a Russian sleeper agent trained in childhood, and then the question becomes, Whose harebrained scheme is she following? Her own, or her ex-Soviet spymaster's? The machinations involved are on the level of Salt's infiltrating the White House and attacking the president — but only to uncover the final stage in her mentor's master plan! She's not really trying to kill anybody! Also, I'm baffled by the movie's going through the motions of flushing out the actual presidential assassin, who dutifully explains the whole evil plan to Salt, and then — wait, surely she was taping his overconfident confession to prove her own innocence?!

Kudos, I guess, to the filmmakers for sidestepping an obvious gimmick. Or delaying it, anyway. They'll need that tape eventually, since the ultimate ending to Salt is about as naked a sequel launch pad as can be. The film's worldwide take was nearly triple its reported production costs, so Salt II: The Movie, Not the Armistice Agreement could probably get the greenlight whenever Jolie wants it. I'd say she's got about two years before being replaced by Anne Hathaway (if the sequel goes to theaters), Amber Heard (DVD only), or Laura Prepon (USA Network).

"Get ready to feel the thunder"

EARLY EDITION: Martial arts mastery is back in (Jack) Black with Kung Fu Panda 2

FRESHNESS RATING: Mild SPOILERS for Kung Fu Panda 2

Once upon a time, legend told of a legendary panda. And the first time that he rattled the cage of animation cinema, Po really did have to write his own press releases. Much as I cherish the first Shrek film, I expressed surprise in my long-forgotten review of Kung Fu Panda that DreamWorks could even make an animated movie that didn't depend heavily on up-to-the-second knowledge of pop culture. Yet that was, and still is, a big part of the magic of Kung Fu Panda. Despite the Snakes on a Plane resonance of its title, it's far more a movie about kung fu than a movie about the comic contrast between our expectations of kung fu and our expectations of panda bears.

The biggest challenge for DreamWorks with this Friday's Kung Fu Panda 2 is that now people have a different kind of expectations: high ones. Viewers actually have seen "bear style" now, and they have a pretty good idea what to do about the crazy feet. I saw the new film Saturday morning and my Daily Herald review will be in this week's Ticket, our weekend entertainment section. Since I'm embargo-bound to not reveal what that review will say, I can't really give you a complete picture of my professional opinion. On the other hand, here's an example of something I will not be writing about Kung Fu Panda 2: "The new Kung Fu Panda movie is an artistic U-turn that, having no new story to tell, merely rehashes the thrills and humor of its predecessor." Here's another line that won't be in the review: "Anyone who goes to see Kung Fu Panda 2 will likely wish they'd saved their money and waited for Netflix."

The new film, as some of you may have read elsewhere, finds Po, now the Dragon Warrior, and the Furious Five facing off against a vain, ambitious ... peacock (fitting touch). Lord Shen is determined to replace the sway of kung fu in China with something decidedly nastier. He's not merely Po's new foe, however — the latest James-Bond-style villain to answer the franchise roll call. Like the first film's Tai Lung, Shen is directly involved in the personal history of one of the film's characters, making the quest to defeat him more compelling, and more urgent.

Most of the major characters from the first film are back, though some have stepped to the rear of the stage, while others come in for a bigger share of the spotlight. The new film is in 3D, but otherwise sticks to the same look as its predecessor and employs another rousing period score, this time without even a hint of the Carl Douglas song that played over the first film's closing credits (and was its biggest concession to DreamWorks's trademark urge to scratch the pop culture itch). It's also got nice timing: Father's Day is coming up, and Kung Fu Panda 2 delivers a sweet and movie tribute to dads and fatherhood. (Although it does sorta have that whole Disney thing about single-parent families going on: How come there's not a Mrs. Ping at the noodle shop?)

Did we leave anything out?

PREVIEW REVIEW: New trailer for Disney's Fright Night leaves no bean unspilled

LINKS / FRESHNESS RATING: Official Fright Night web site; official trailer at iTunes / This post contains major SPOILERS for both Fright Night films (1985 and 2011)

No, it's pretty much all there. Anything that you might have wondered about Fright Night, that is, the forthcoming remake of the second-best known film to feature Chris Sarandon in a starring role. (The first is, um, duh — Sarandon is the smooth weasel [Prince-somebody-or-other] who attempts to make Buttercup his princess bride in that one movie whose title I suddenly can't think of.) In the original Night, Sarandon is a vampire who moves in next door to a teenage kid. The kid figures out that the new guy is up to something creepy and eventually enlists the aid of Peter Vincent (played by Roddy McDowall), a former horror actor/TV host, to help him evict his unwelcome neighbor.

The new Night has Colin Farrell as suave bloodsucker Jerry and Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the recent Star Trek reboot) as not-so-terrified teen Charley. The trailer is about as matter-of-fact about Jerry as a gallon of whole milk. It says "whole milk" on the sticker, and that's exactly what's inside. Look, this guy is pretending to be the new neighbor, but he's really a vampire. No, seriously, check out this scene of him biting someone's neck, and this one, and this one and — wait do we have any more of the neck-biting scenes? Lest you wonder about Charley's response to all of this, the trailer shows him pooh-poohing a buddy's wild theories about Jerry, then developing suspicions of his own and breaking into Jerry's home, then having a couple of mano-a-mano confrontations with Jerry, then buying weapons to destroy Jerry and then — come on people! Do you want us to actually go see this thing or not?

Charley has a hot girlfriend, Amy (British actress Imogen Poots), so the trailer shows a) where Jerry stashes hot girls, b) what he does to them later on and c) a scene of Jerry capturing Amy to ostensibly egg Charley into coming after him. The fate of Charlie's jumpy buddy is revealed, Jerry's counterattack destruction of Charley's home is shown, and there's even a fake-out "Yes, that took care of Jerry!" moment both shown and revealed to be a fake-out. Suspense, atmosphere, intrigue — this trailer more or less shrugs and says, "Whatever." It would be one thing if Fright Night were a less plot-driven sort of film. A romantic comedy, say, like Anna Faris's What's Your Number, which also recently revealed itself on iTunes. Almost every romantic comedy has the same basic formula, so it's no surprise to watch that trailer and feel like you know everything about the movie already.

A horror film, even one with an arch, raised-eyebrow tone, is a different animal. People want a suggestion of what's to come — a hint, a taste — not a freaking scene-by-scene checklist. The Farrell/Yelchin Fright Night won't begin to screen, if at all, for several weeks, so it's possible I'm not being entirely fair taking the filmmakers to task for revealing all of their secrets in a trailer. For one thing, the trailer doesn't even hint at the Peter Vincent character, purportedly played in the new film by David Tennant, who's actually a bit of a name at the moment after five seasons of starring work in Doctor Who. Because Peter Vincent is less of a presence this time around? Because the new version is more about a one-on-one Jerry-Charlie showdown? That may be the only thing to remain a mystery about Fright Night until it opens.

P.S. — Come again? Here's a funny excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of the original Fright Night: "The best line in Fright Night belongs to Roddy McDowall, who plays a broken-down old hambone actor who used to star in vampire movies. 'The kids today,' he complains, 'don't have the patience for vampires. They want to see some mad slasher running around and chopping off heads.' He's right. Vampires, who are doomed to live forever, have outlived their fashion. They've been replaced by guys in ski masks, who hack their way through Dead Teenager Movies." Yeah, the culture sure got over its fascination with immortal blood-drinkers, didn't it? We never heard from that musty monster cliche again.

But what about all of the posters we already printed?

BREAKING NEWS: Get thee behind me, lesser mortals — Transformers: Dark of the Moon jumps to the head of the line on pre-July 4 weekend

LINKS: Transformers: Dark of the Moon official Web site (Incidentally, want to know what your million-dollar movie Web site looks like if viewed from a slightly outdated browser? [Screen grab at the end of this post] If you head to www.transformersmovie.com from something like the new Firefox 4, it looks fine. Suppose, on the other hand, that the browser on your office Mac is two or three generations out of date, only nobody but the network admin is permitted to download upgrades. Now www.transformersmovie.com looks like it's either been hilariously neglected, was recently hacked, or never belonged to Paramount in the first place.)

Michael Bay is cutting in line again. Plainly spooked by his July 1 competition, the chick flicky Tom Hanks vehicle Larry Crowne and the teenage girl Prince and the Pauper knockoff Monte Carlo, the Transformers godfather and his Paramount overlords have bumped up the release of Dark of the Moon to Tues., June 29. That's two whole days, people. The world is officially two days closer to beholding the awesomeness of the third Transformers movie and Larry Whatshisface and the teeny-weeny Selena Gomez thing have been turned into nothing more than pitiable a July 1 AFTERTHOUGHT.

On some level, I get it. There's a Nathan Bedford Forrest mentality about weekends — especially holiday weekends, and especially especially the July 4 holiday weekend — in Hollywood. Get there first with the most men, or don't even bother showing up. What makes less sense is the pseudo-last-minute-ness of it. Hollywood release schedules are known months in advance. Why did it take until T-minus 6 weeks(-ish) before release to suddenly assess the competition and decide, We gotta move this thing up. It's not like the calendar suddenly changed. Wait, wait. July 1 is a Friday? When did that happen? We're supposed to be on the Wednesday before the holiday weekend.

Yeah, OK, it's free publicity. But does Transformers: Get the Heck Outta My Way, Fool! really need that? Maybe there are one or two people out there who will read something about the changed opening date and say, "Dadgum, Myrtle, there's a new Transformers movie coming out!" Surely that level of payoff could scarcely warrant the not inconsiderable amount of rigamarole at stake, beginning with the tsunami of promotional materials that now have the wrong opening date stamped all over them.

I think it's all about ego massage. To a certain class of the Hollywood elite, it sends the following thinly coded message: Our movie is so awesome that we can barely hold ourselves back from unleashing it on the world. In fact, we're just going to CHANGE THE RELEASE DATE by TWO MEASLY DAYS and HANG THE EXPENSE. Ready or not, HERE. WE. COME. These are the kinds of games you can play when the last movie in the franchise before this one took in $836 million worldwide.

 T3 official site on May 20, 6:14 p.m. Click to embiggen.

"The iconically picaresque picaroon"

HERE'S HOW I SEE IT: Where did you go, Captain Jack DiMaggio? A cinematic nation turns its lonely eyes to you

LINKS: Daily Herald review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I miss that guy. The arrival in 2003 of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the most indelible moments of movie alchemy in my filmgoing lifetime. Watching him do that thing he do for the first time was like watching a present-day wizard turn a solid concept into cinematic gold. I was writing a bi-weekly column for Movies.com at the time and, a few months later, I issued a "memo to the Academy"-style demand that Depp's daring, hugely entertaining performance be recognized with an Oscar nomination. What do you know, it happened. (Because of me! OK, fine, of course not because of me.) He'd been quietly respected for years, but the Best Actor nomination for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl finally blew the lid off of the "Johnny Depp is the Real Deal" jar.

I disagree about most of the shortcomings attributed to The Curse of the Black Pearl, especially the bit where critics whine about how it's "too long." As though movie length were a quantifiable measure of greatness. Just say what you really mean: This movie bored me silly. Sure thing. I don't agree, but whatever. Different strokes. It's not like Black Pearl is merely a grand showcase for a brilliant performance, either, though it is that. It's the kind of all-out, all-aboard, all-cylinders-firing adventure movie that Hollywood manages to concoct correctly only a couple of times each year. The contact high from Black Pearl buoyed me for almost all of the lesser-but-still-entertaining Dead Man's Chest. The good vibes dissipated to such an extent while slogging through At World's End that I actually accused it in print (I'm not proud) of being too long. With On Stranger Tides, in theaters today, the movie had the challenge of winning me back on its own merits, and it's frankly not quite good enough for that.

There are numerous problems with what the franchise has gotten up to since Black Pearl, but the biggest of them is the reason that we all sat down to watch the sequels in the first place. Captain Jack never came back. Not really. Depp showed up in the same costume, but the creative team had gotten the wrong idea from all the hubbub about his performance, and all the talk about Keith Richards. If you watch Black Pearl again — and if you've been pining for the old Pirates magic, it's the only real fix — you'll notice a funny thing about Jack. He's not a buffoon. In his review of On Stranger Tides, Roger Ebert writes of Jack that "whether he is a competent swashbuckler is hard to say." It's a problem that developed in Dead Man's Chest and has gotten worse ever since. Because Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and whoever else thought that what made everyone giddy about Jack was what I call his "foppish nutter" aspect. The mincing walk. The fluttery hands. The cock-eyed proclamations.

Fine. It was all part of the game from the start. What Black Pearl got right, however, is that it's the smaller part of what's appealing about the character. Remember when women initially thought Captain Jack was hot? That was all because of the cool customer part of his character, the guy who steals the Interceptor from under Norrington's nose, or genially forces Will Turner to reckon with piratey heritage, or dives into the bay at Port Royal to rescue Elizabeth Swann. It's lines like, "Do we have an accord?" as opposed to, "Where is the rum?" The rum bit is funny when that's 30 percent of the character, with the other 70 percent being reckless-but-capable rogue who bides his time ("the opportune moment," remember?) and always lands on his feet — more often by dint of his own wits and skill than by accident. That's my Captain Jack. That's the guy I wish I still knew. Yo-ho, yo-ho, wake me up if he ever shows his face again.

One more ring to rule them all

BREAKING NEWS: Peter Jackson sends Frodo on another quest — The Lord of the Rings trilogy gets one-day theatrical rerelease in June to pump up new Blu-ray release

Another noxious element of the ongoing 3D hornswoggle (see previous post) is that it creates an additional avenue for filmmakers and studios to endlessly repackage/rerelease old movies instead of making new ones. Before James Cameron even gets to theaters with Titanic next April, George Lucas will already have been there in February asking loyal viewers to kiss the ring of The Phantom Menace in 3D.

Which brings me (sort of; it will all make sense, I promise) to Frodo and Blu-ring — er, -ray. At least until it becomes the preferred format for all home viewing (assuming it gets there before streaming and/or digital download wipes out the disc market altogether), Blu-ray is to home video consumers as 3D is to theatrical. Check it out, all these movies you already own on DVD are even cooler in Blu-ray! All you have to do is, um, buy them from us again. Please?

At any rate, it's no surprise that Warner Home Video is exerting a positively Sauronic pull on the wallets of hobbit lovers with a new mammoth 15-disc version of Peter Jackson's signature trilogy. The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy: Extended Edition on Blu-ray (there are almost as many words in the title as discs in the set) streets on June 28. (It has a mammoth price tag, too. Yours for just, er, $119.98)

Now, Peter Jackson isn't doing the 3D thing (yet; dude's busy with Guillermo Del Toro's his own two-part version of The Hobbit, with Part I due on Dec. 19, 2012). You can, however, see all three of his Rings movies at a limited number of theaters next month, one night only, as a sort of 10- or 12-hour commercial for the gargantuan Rings Blu-ray release. There's even the potential for a (greatly limited) sneak peek at The Hobbit: Jackson will "present" each of the films (on June 14, 21 and 28) via a filmed introduction shot on location in New Zealand. And we all remember what he's working on there right now, right?

Since theatrical rereleases are a dicey proposition at best and home viewers seem to be the ultimate market for tricked-out, rejiggered versions of old stuff, an interesting question arises (and probably a semi-moot one, at least until home 3D becomes a going concern): Is it better to risk an all-out theatrical rerelease, with all of associated marketing and distribution costs, to drum up interest in your old wine with its shiny new bottle? Or will Warner Home Video's cheaper, more narrow approach — the studio's Rings Party partner, Fathom Events, is an old hand at the specialty theatrical release market — become the preferred model?

Also, how long until studios deliberately withhold the 3D experience on the first go-round so that they can strategically rerelease the same movie a couple of years down the road? Hey, Hollywood, did you get that? Back off on the 3D thing just a hair, and you can release every big blockbuster twice. And none of us will go see it the second time. Whoops. Did I type that, or just think it?

It's dead, Jim!

BREAKING NEWS: Captain Cameron goes down with the ship again — Titanic to get 3D rerelease on April 6, 2012

I get it. Everybody wants to live forever. If you create art, then you want your creation to live forever. The estate of George Lucas will be releasing new home video editions of Star Wars after I'm not even around to tell my grandkids that the prequels never happened. (What prequels? Who Who Binks? I have no idea what you're talking about.) Also, money makes the world go 'round, especially in Hollywood. So of course James Cameron wants to shove that gigantic ship of dreams into the ocean, float it for a couple of hours and then watch it go down one. more. time.

And of course 20th Century Fox, Paramount and everyone else with a finger in the pie wants to get one more taste of the public's money. Are you kidding? The movie's already been made. We barely have to crack the checkbook. We can do this for less than Charlie Sheen Ashton Kutcher gets for a single episode of 'Two and a Half Men'. For nothing, practically!

So fine, if you gotta do, do it. Just don't do it in 3D. Please. Not just please, actually. For the love of Jack Dawson, man, don't do it in 3D! I know, I know. It's cheap and easy. These days there might as well be a corporation called Fifty Guys in India that does nothing but slap a little 3D on your sure-to-be-epic blockbuster. And yeah, 3D tickets are more expensive, ergo more money for everyone.

On the other hand, have a little artistic dignity, J.C. Deep down in that king-of-the-world heart, even you know that 3D is just a gimmick. Not only that, it's a bad gimmick. It works OK with animated movies. With live action, the most you can hope for is seamlessness — 3D that adds a little depth of field, makes the picture slightly more immersive and doesn't call attention to itself. And if 3D wasn't part of the original production process ... forget it. 3D retrofitting does. not. work. I mean, sure it "works." Once every five or six minutes something pops out at you, sort of, and for the rest of the time the audience gets a headache from the reduction in light levels caused by watching the film through those ear-mounted torture devices they pass out when they rip your ticket.

Look, go dig up 20 minutes of lost footage, slap it in there, and call it the Director's Cut. Or use the George Lucas Digital Editing Suite (TM) to add a lot of pointless clutter in the background of every wide shot. Everyone who would have gone to see the 3D rerelease will still show up anyway. I promise.