The thinking among Hollywood executives is if it worked before, it should work again

Welcome to Hollywood's summer of sequels: Not the movies. The release dates.

Steven Spielberg's “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” comes out Memorial Day weekend, just like the previous sequels to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." That follows the customary launch of the summer popcorn movie season on the first weekend in May with a movie adapted from one of Marvel's comic book superheroes. Pixar has grabbed the same weekend in late June. Will Smith is back on the Fourth of July weekend. And prolific comedy producer Judd Apatow is opening an offbeat offering in August.

One of the films I looked forward to seeing this summer was The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I enjoyed the first film so much I assumed the sequel would be just as good if not better. Caspian was more like Teen Wolf II than Terminator 2.
(Why was my matinee movie $9.75? I love how they just raise the prices. Who regulates this stuff? I guess the theaters can just blame it on rising gas prices too. )

Prince Caspian begins as, you guessed it, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) flees into the forest where he finds Narnians who were thought to have been extinct.

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 It's well past the kids' bedtime, but no one is nagging the preschoolers and kindergartners to brush their teeth and go to sleep.

Instead, they're dressed to the nines (the girls, anyway) in full princess regalia before heading to a poolside pirate party, complete with fireworks, to get up close and personal with Goofy and all of his pirate friends aboard the Disney Wonder. Others are busy in the shipboard Oceaneer Club playing the latest video games, watching movies in seats designed to look like clam shells and climbing on the pirate ship play structure.

All of this is after they've seen a brand-new Broadway-style show "Toy Story: The Musical," featuring all of their favorite characters from the popular film and dined like royalty at dinner where the waiters not only knew their names but also performed magic tricks and were happy to get them anything they liked at no extra charge (a side of salmon with your chicken fingers ... no problem!)

When my 5-year-old cousin Ethan Sitzman and his 3-year-old sister Hannah finally got back to their stateroom, they were thrilled that the steward, Pacifer Ticao, himself a young father from the Philippines, had fashioned a PJ Party with the kids' stuffed animals and a monkey he had made out of towels. The kids truly thought they'd arrived in vacation heaven.

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While manga have been known to spawn anime, novels, live-action movies, videogames and porn, Death Note has taken knockoffs to a whole new level by triggering international crimes and controversy.

Death Note is a live-action sci-fi movie about a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written inside it. In the past year, the original manga upon which the movie is based which was previously adapted as an anime, a novel and a two-part TV series has been linked to bullying cases in China and Virginia, and an unsolved murder in Belgium in which the killer claimed to be a character from the franchise.

"It's not the kind of movie that parents would encourage their kids to watch," says Shusuke Kaneko, Death Note's director.

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By GLENN WHIPP Los Angeles Daily News

Would you rather slice-and-dice an 870-page book beloved by millions or pump up a slim fantasy novel that's part of a series revered for its Christian allegories?

Your answer might well depend on your preference for the last Harry Potter film (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) or the newest Narnia movie (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian).

On the picket line during the recent writers strike, the writers of those movies, Stephen McFeely and Michael Goldenberg, compared notes.

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“Speed Racer” is a candy-coated acid trip, a string of surreal, hard-to-follow visuals wrapped up in a palette of bright, blinding colors with a storyline so sweet that your teeth may start to hurt. Anyone over the age of 16 will probably have a hard time making sense of “Speed Racer” and might wind up with cinematic diabetes and a bad seizure after watching. But “Speed Racer” is a kids’ movie through and through, and any sort of concern for adult viewers is lost among the car races (which are exciting, although a bit too much like Mario Kart), kung fu fights and monkey-related antics.

Written, directed and produced by “The Matrix” creators Andy and Larry Wachowski, “Speed Racer” is not your average summer movie vehicle, but the quality of the ride depends highly upon your age and, more importantly, love of the original cartoon.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) loves racing more than anything, save perhaps his family but they all love racing, too, so it’s about equal. His dad, Pops Racer (John Goodman), founded the family’s racing company and built Speed’s ultra-slick set of wheels, the Mach 5. As Speed continues to break records and attract notice in the World Racing League, he still finds himself in the shadow of his older brother, Rex (Scott Porter), a legendary racer disgraced by scandal and seemingly killed in a fiery crash.

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 In a case of striking while the iron is hot, Columbia Pictures is planning on making a movie based on the “Goosebumps” series of books. Come to think of it, that is actually the opposite of hot iron striking. The children’s horror books, written by R.L. Stine, were the most popular books in America, of any genre, in the mid 1990’s and have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Unfortunately, as our caldendar’s note, we left the 1990’s some time ago.

Variety reports that book publisher, Scholastic, and the filmmakers view “Goosebumps” as a potential franchise. With more than 50 books to choose from, the series could go on forever. Most likely it will go on for one movie and then never be heard from again. This is what is called “Series of Unfortunate Events Syndrome;” where a super popular book tries to make the jump to the big screen and turns out kinda eh.

There is no reason a popular book series from the past can’t be made into a good movie (see Narnia, Chronicles of), but this just seems like really odd timing. This was a huge phenomenon last decade, but you don’t hear anything about the series these days, although Stine is writing a sequel series right now, which is probably why Scholastic is looking to make the movie now. A good scary movie for kids would be a nice change from the torture porn we usually get. So keep one eye open for this.

Alright comic book geeks  another major franchise is headed to the movies. This time not only do you get to compare the film with the source material, but also with the television series of the same time, as Top Cow’s Witchblade gets optioned for a big screen release.

Variety reported today on plans to bring the comic book into the movies, courtesy of Platinum Studios, Top Cow Productions, and Arclight Films, making Witchblade the latest comic book adaptation on a pretty full slate for Platinum Studios, including Atlantis Rising and Cowboys and Aliens. Obviously Witchblade is immediately more recognizable than the others Platinum has planned, with a world of potential for the movie.

The comic book story centers around a magical gauntlet which endows the user special powers. One female is “chosen” in each generation to don the jewel-encrusted glove. In 2000, that “chosen” woman was played by Yancy Butler, who I would be more than happy see return to the role, especially if the movie version takes the character down the… um, less attired motif of the comic (in the two year series Butler was pretty covered up, especially considering how the character has frequently been rendered in comic book form). Even if Butler isn’t used as the main character, it would be cool to see her in a cameo of some sort as a previous wielder of the blade.

A release date hasn’t been disclosed yet, but apparently Australia is already being looked at for potential shooting locations, with an eye towards September to start production on the project.

Finding a box of promotional swag in one's mailbox is a common event here at EW, kinda like writing about American Idol, or playing with dolls. Last month, however, I received three boxes stuffed with tie-in toys for three prospective May blockbusters, each more elaborately packaged than the last: Iron Man, then Speed Racer, then Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With 20 separate items of swag inside my office, I realized I had to do something other than pick out my favorites and give the rest to the office-mates who, um, have kids.

So last week I began reviewing each box as its respective movie is released, rating them in categories of packaging, bounty, the coolest toy, the lamest toy, and the general feeling of swag overkill. Last week, of course, was Iron Man. So let's all hit the gas over the jump for a rundown of this week's toy box: Speed Racer.

A sleek, white case with a helpful carrying handle decorated with the iconic Speed Racer "M" calls to mind the old Hot Wheels cases of yore, and, whaddaya know, there be Hot Wheels inside! But I'm zooming ahead of myself here. Upon opening said case, you're greeted with a diorama of sorts of an Emile Hirsch cut-out next to a Mach 6 cut-out, and, magically, a voice plays as if over a raceway loudspeaker: "All drivers to your cars, please! All drivers to your cars!" Then engines rev, tires squeal, and with a Vrrrrrrrroooooommm! Screeeeeee! Zzvvvrrooooo! we're off to the swaggy races.

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Speed Racer

More people remember the 1960s Japanese import cartoon "Speed Racer" for its catchy theme song than its stories or characters. The movie adaptation, helmed by "Matrix" superstars the Wachowski brothers, follows the same track with little character development and not much story story.

Instead, the Wachowskis set out to create a eye candy with over-the-top races and a hybrid of "Matrix" martial arts and "Three Stooges" slapstick. This amounts to an exhilarating 30 minutes, James Sanford says, but the movie wears out its welcome as it stretches longer than two hours.

As the long race unfolds, the all-star cast doesn't get to do much. Emile Hirsch ("Into the Wild"), Christina Ricci ("Black Snake Moan") and Matthew Fox ("Lost") are merely stick figures that look good driving cars or piloting helicopters.
What Happens in Vegas

Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz play down-on-their-luck New Yorkers who get hitch during an alcohol-fueled evening in Las Vegas. Before they can get the marriage annulled, they win a $3 million jackpot. They take the problem to a judge, who sentences them to six months of living together.

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