NYT. Summer preview.

"At its most reductive the negative spin on blockbusters is that they signal the death of cinema art and mark the triumph of the corporate bottom line, of marketing strategies, product placements and opening-weekend returns," writes Manohla Dargis. "But just because a movie blows stuff up doesn't mean it automatically stinks. A good blockbuster, like the recent Bond flick Casino Royale, takes you places you might never otherwise go and shows you things you could never do." Hear more defense of the good ones in the accompanying audio slide show.

So having glanced at the "Summer Movies" package in the Los Angeles Times, we pick up here where that entry leaves off now that the New York Times batch of previews and profiles is out.

Updated through 5/11.

Bug, a "finely calibrated chamber piece," will finally see a release on May 25, and a restored print of Cruising will screen at Cannes before a re-release this fall. Dennis Lim meets William Friedkin: "He has not had a box office hit in decades and remains best known for The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), but he has recently worked on some of the opera world's most prestigious stages, mounting productions at the Kennedy Center and the Bavarian State Opera." Earlier: "Cannes. Bug."

"Chances are you have never heard of Scott Spiegel," supposes Juan Morales. "But once you start asking around, it seems as if half of Hollywood grew up with him, roomed with him, appeared in one of his movies or got a major career break thanks to his vast and varied connections." Bruce Campbell calls him "the Forrest Gump of Hollywood."

"[W]hat is most amazing about [Judd] Apatow's sensibility is just how deeply it resonates with an entire generation of young American men, and perhaps of women too," writes Sharon Waxman.

More profiles:

• David Carr meets Parker Posey (Fay Grim, Broken English).

• Karen Durbin, James McAvoy (Becoming Jane, Penelope.

• And then there's Durbin's traditional collection of five mini-profiles: Alicja Bachleda-Curus (Trade), Dane Cook (Mr Brooks, Good Luck Chuck, Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray), Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) and Nathan Fillion (Waitress). And there's a slide show, too.

AO Scott considers that "particularly unfortunate subgenre in the none-too-distinguished category of movies based on old television shows, animated or not."

"[E]ven at this late stage, the writers are reluctant to discuss what, exactly, The Simpsons Movie story is about," notes Dave Itzkoff. But he does get a lot of background info on how the movie came about in the first place.

In her piece on Nancy Drew, Polly Shulman focuses on the young detective's "totemic automobile": "Nancy Drew was a feminist character before feminism existed," director Andrew Fleming tells her. "She didn't care about what the boys were doing, she didn't worry about being popular, she didn't worry about what anybody thought of her."

Dave Kehr presents the annotated release schedule: May, June, July and August.

Stephanie Zacharek and Charles Taylor scan the list of the summer's DVD releases and open with the big one, Criterion's La Jetee / Sans Soleil double whammy: "It almost seems dangerous to put these two pictures by the elusive French filmmaker Chris Marker on a single disc: this is an exploding world in one compact package."

Updates, 5/7: Sharon Waxman reports that Spider-Man 3 has "set an exuberant tone for Hollywood's summer season, beating box-office records for its opening day and the weekend that followed, domestically and internationally."

More from Josh Friedman and Kimi Yoshino in the Los Angeles Times, where Carina Chocano asks, "What does it say about the ultimate everyman superhero that his problems now stem from overexposure?"

Tim Lucas on why, for him, Spider-Man 3 is "an unmitigated disaster. Not because it's a cluttered mess that thinks bigger is better and action scenes are best when they fire past the retina rather than actually lodge in the brain. As a reader of the original Marvel comics since the [Steve] Ditko days, I'm disturbed by the filmmakers' irreverent disregard for the content and chronology of what might be called the canon."

"Shrek the Third is shorter by an hour than Spider-Man 3, and is twice as entertaining, witty, and playful," writes Emanuel Levy. "Scene by scene, minute by minute, Shrek 3 is just as sophisticated, campy and self-reflexive as the first segment, which launched the commercial franchise for DreamWorks back in 2001." Related: Michael Ordoña talks with practically the entire vocal cast for the LAT.

A few more of the LAT summer preview pieces I missed here:

• Mark Olsen: "After seeing many of the short films they have created for Saturday Night Live become viral sensations on the Internet, the comedy team of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer find themselves accidental poster boys for the latest iteration of online success. Yet this summer, the trio - known collectively as the Lonely Island - make an old media career move with their feature film debut Hot Rod."

• Robert W Welkos talks with producer Jerry Weintraub about Ocean's Thirteen.

• Susan King has a quick chat with Taika Waititi about Eagle vs Shark.

• And with Michael Winterbottom about A Mighty Heart.

• And with Mamie Gummer about Evening, in which she and her mother, Meryl Streep, play the same character at different ages; the character's friend is played by Claire Danes and Vanessa Redgrave.

• Sheigh Crabtree has more on Nancy Drew.

• Rachel Abramovitz: "In the next year, Hollywood is betting literally a billion dollars on a raft of relative unknowns in the hopes of creating a star to appeal to the Millennial Generation, those born between 1978 and 2000, for whom Tom Cruise could be their father."

The annotated list of releases.

Dennis Cozzalio explains why he's looking forward to the summer movies he's looking forward to.

More on Spider-Man 3: Matt Zoller Seitz finds that the main characters "seem less like living, breathing, realistic people than emblems of various moral and psychological states; as the film's jumbled plot unfolds, they slide along the good-to-evil scale depending on what successes and failures they've suffered." Chuck Tryon: "Next time, Mr Raimi, don't hire your brother as a screenwriter. That being said, pretty much everyone seemed bored this time around."

Update, 5/8: "[L]ook at the great talent who's on the sequel beat," rages Patrick Goldstein in the LAT as he lays into Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, Bryan Singer, Christopher Nolan, Robert Rodriguez and of course, Sam Raimi, who "seemed poised to be our generation's dark prince of meaty thrillers but has turned himself into an impersonal Spider-Man ringmaster instead.... [M]ass appeal has become synonymous with cozy and reassuring. Maybe I'm missing a nostalgia gene, but coziness gets old pretty fast."

Updates, 5/10: "While still mirthful and eccentric enough to amuse his hordes of admirers, the irascible green ogre begins to show signs of encroaching middle age in Shrek the Third," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "After a buoyantly funny first half-hour, stylish animated comedy takes a breather before ramping it up again for a rambunctious, girrrl-power finale that provides a convenient springboard for further adventures to come."

"Much of the bite and a good deal of the wit of the first two films are missing here," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. "The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains - somewhat - but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better."

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw on the blockbuster mindset: "The DVD choice will be rich, but the big-screen menu might be very dull indeed."

Updates, 5/11: In the Independent, Ian Nathan files a report from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Once again, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein: "Unimpressed by the industry prognosticators who echo the conventional wisdom of the moment, I go to the core audience, a group of six teenagers who form our seventh annual Summer Movie Posse.... [T]hey spent several hours dissecting 16 trailers from a variety of mass-appeal or youth-oriented films." And he gathers their verdicts.

Kelly Nestruck, blogging for the Guardian, explains what Bush might learn from Spider-Man 3.

"Shrek didn't remake fairy tales single-handed; it captured, and monetized, a long-simmering cultural trend," writes Time's James Poniewozik, noting that the "strange side effect of today's meta-stories is that kids get exposed to the parodies before, or instead of, the originals."

Posted by dwhudson at May 6, 2007 6:14 AM