... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND THE SORRY STATE OF ADS ON TV"

It's an unwritten rule in the Lundberg home that, when the TV's on and it's time for a station break, the sound on the television must be automatically turned off. We do this for a number of reasons: One, the commercials tend to be 60% louder than the actual program we're watching (why is this?); two, with four kids running the house, the added silence isn't just welcome, but necessary to maintain our sanity; and three, 19 out of every 20 commercials tend to raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels. It's unhealthy, I suppose, to get so infuriated by your average TV commercial that I wind up yelling back at the screen like an idiot, so until we can afford some much-needed psychotherapy, that all-important "mute" button on the remote will have to do.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 38 - 'FANTASIA/2000' EDITION)"

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: Fantasia/2000 (1999)

The Plot: A series of animated segments set to classical music, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conducted by James Levine.

The Segments: Symphony No. 5 in C minor-I, Allegro con brio (Ludwig van Beethoven), Pines Of Rome (Ottorino Respighi), Rhapsody In Blue (George Gershwin), Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major-I, Allegro (Dmitri Shostakovich, based on The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen), The Carnival Of The Animals, Finale (Camille Saint-Saëns), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Paul Dukas), Pomp And Circumstance - Marches 1, 2, 3 and 4 (Edward Elgar), Firebird Suite - 1919 Version (Igor Stravinsky)

... FOR "'THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN' AND THE ART OF THE CYNICAL CASH GRAB"

Because there's no better way to ring in the release of The Dark Knight Rises than by talking about a competing superhero franchise from a competing motion picture studio...

I was just about to publish some thoughts on Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man last week, starring Andrew Garfield as everyone's favorite web-slinging superhero, when I happened across my friend Drew McWeeny's (second) write-up over at HitFix.com, which pretty much rendered anything I had to say on the subject moot. If you don't mind a spoiler-filled discussion on the plot's more "intricate" twists and turns, then you should really give that a shot, or at least check out Drew's initial review of the movie itself, as it sums up basically everything diehard fans find so frustrating about Spidey's big-screen reboot. (What follows is a slightly modified version of my original piece.)

... FOR "TRAILER ROUNDUP, JUNE 2012"

So here we are, not even two months into the summer movie season, and already studios are busy plugging their latest blockbusters scheduled for release after the summer's ended. Leave it to Hollywood, and its Lazy Susan manner of thinking, for keeping this particular gravy train rolling.

Last week, moviegoers welcomed the release of no less than three high-profile trailers - for a reboot, a prequel, and a sequel. Two of these, naturally, trade on your nostalgia for beloved returning characters, while the third assumes you've never even heard of its characters at all. Together, they give us an all-encompassing view of how to approach a potential franchise.

... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND THE ART OF THE MONEY SHOT"

I happened to catch Independence Day on AMC last week (well, most of it anyway), and was shocked to re-discover how simplistic the movie plays, and how that simple-mindedness works largely in its favor. It's deliberately designed as a callback to those big-budget, star-studded disaster flicks of the 70's, only this time with aliens, and like Earthquake or The Towering Inferno, it appeals to our most basic desire to watch stuff blow up. Each individual character motivation can be summed up in six words or less (Wants His Ex-Wife Back, Wants To Be An Astronaut, Wants To Be A Better President), the special effects (mostly model work, minimal CGI) are impressive in an old-fashioned Irwin Allen sort of way, and its big emotional crescendos ("Today we celebrate... our Independence Day!") are painted in the biggest, broadest strokes. Lump them all together, and it's no wonder audiences went absolutely ape for it.