How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Part 1)

June 30? My last post was over two months ago?! Apparently I decided to take the summer off from blogging, despite all kinds of "stuff" happening tailor-made for this place. But, once I started missing a few things, it got harder to catch up. And with such a gap, I started to feel a little overwhelmed about everything I "should be" covering, and that kept me away even longer. So finally, I realized/decided by the end of July, well, I’m taking the summer off.

Now, I want to wipe the slate clean and start fresh for the fall, so I’m going to get all of this out of my system with a series of summarizing posts. Then, we can begin again with hopefully a little more regularity.

The biggest miss of course was my review of The Dark Knight. If you scroll down this page, I spent almost a year blogging about my anticipation for this release. Then on July 18, it finally comes out and…nothing, even though I saw it twice (and still hope to catch it in IMAX). I reviewed Iron Man back in May , but skipped reviews of the other big summer movies I saw – Indiana Jones, The Incredible Hulk and … The Dark Knight.

One of the reasons I think I skipped it was because I didn’t know what to write. I LOVED the movie. There are only so many ways I can write "awesome". And I had read so much about the movie before and after its release, it was hard not to be influenced by some of what I had read. Heath Ledger’s Joker was inspired and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent was mostly great, though the resolution seemed a little… rushed, despite the movie’s length. Returning cast Bale, Oldman, Freeman and Caine built on their strong showing from Batman Begins with even meatier performances. Nolan blended drama, action and humor to create a fantastic, very dark sequel. It immediately leaps to the top of the list of the best comic book movie, though it’s followed pretty closely by Iron Man, as I wrote earlier.

The Incredible Hulk was a fun movie too. Casting aside the Ang Lee version from 2003, this Edward Norton-led version owed a lot to the TV show and the comics. It provided what we were looking for the first time – lots of action, with some major fight scenes against the military and the Abomination, and featured the Bixby-like Banner on the run and in hiding doing menial jobs under false names. And like Iron Man before it, the movie made clear its part of a larger Marvel movie universe. Kudos to Marvel for taking control of the movies based on its characters and planting the appropriate amount of seeds.

As for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while it was great to see Harrison Ford back with his fedora and whip on the big screen again, the movie was a bit of a letdown that slightly tarnished the legacy of the character. It has its moments, but overall it was disappointing.

I didn’t see other comic adaptations Hellboy II or Wanted in the theatre, but I’m sure I’ll catch them on cable within the next year. Other summer movies I considered seeing but haven’t were the comedies Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, both still in theatres. I’m on a mini-vacation late this week. Maybe I’ll catch one of them.