By Staff
Nobody was more surprised than me three years ago when a movie based on a Disney theme park ride starring Johnny Depp as a pirate inspired by swashbuckling Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards made more than $650 million worldwide.
Of course, the success of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” guarantees a sequel, but did you know that a third chapter for summer 2007 release was shot along with the second, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest,” opening July 7?
Aside from Tom Hanks in Ron Howard's adaptation of the Dan Brown bestseller, “The DaVinci Code,” Hollywood gives us a decided deja view this summer.
Tom Cruise interrupted his infatuation with fatherhood to promote “Mission: Impossible III.”
I happened to see the second one pretty much because it was all that was showing at South Padre Island, Texas.
There's also a third X-Men installment, but I got along fine without the other two, as well as the Marvel comic books.
Three other big releases made me do doubletakes.
I outgrew Clark Kent once I was exposed to Batman and Spider-Man.
The premise of this fifth outing is that Superman has been gone for five years, returning to find Lois Lane with another guy and a kid.
They reached back 34 years for a disaster movie with a catchy theme song to inspire “Poseidon.”
It better have very special effects to impress those who in the meantime saw “Titanic” and “The Perfect Storm,” which was in fact directed by Wolfgang Petersen, the remaker of “The Poseidon Adventure” with Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss and Josh Lucas.
By the way, whatever happened to Pamela Sue Martin?
Coming July 28 with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell is “Miami Vice,” as in the 1984-89 pastel cop drama.
Michael Mann directs, with an R rating that will allow him to show the sex and violence the TV show only implied.
Or, there's always “Snakes on a Plane,” scheduled for Aug. 18 release.
Next year more of the same: John Travolta and Jennifer Lopez will play J.R. and Sue Ellen Ewing in a big-screen version of “Dallas,” the prime-time soap opera which aired from 1978-91. Filming is set to begin in October for a late 2007 release.
British filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (“Bend it Like Beckham,” 2002) will direct. She is also adapting another old Larry Hagman TV show, “I Dream of Jeannie.”
I was never a big fan of “The Blair Witch Project,” but it was wholly original.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: “This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims. The director, Paul Greengrass, makes a deliberate effort to stay away from recognizable actors, and there is no attempt to portray the passengers or terrorists as people with histories … ‘United 93' is incomparably more powerful because it depicts all of its characters as people trapped in an inexorable progress toward tragedy … No patriotic speeches. We never see the big picture … (The trailer tries) to make it seem more conventional, more like a thriller.”
Ground Zero: Construction began April 27 on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower that will rise from the World Trade Center site in New York. All five towers could be built by 2012. Like the Twin Towers, Freedom Tower will reach 1,362 feet into the sky, stretched to the symbolic 1,776 feet by an illuminated spire and taller than any building in existence.
18.4 cents: Federal gas tax per gallon. If the goal is to break our fuelish addiction, why are Republicans linking relief to oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
Great timing: With the 2006 hurricane season bearing down June 1, a Senate committee April 27 called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be dismantled and reconstituted as the National Preparedness and Response Authority.
73 percent: Or, 147 million U.S. adults, use the Internet, an increase from 66 percent, or 133 million adults in January 2005, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Only 53 percent of adults in households earning less than $30,000 a year use the Internet, compared with 91 percent in households with annual income exceeding $75,000.
Julio Franco, 47-year-old Mets first baseman, became the oldest big leaguer to homer.
Tony Snow: The former Detroit News writer became White House press secretary April 26, replacing Scott McClellan.
As a Fox conservative commentator, Snow has called President Bush “something of an embarrassment,” a leader who has “lost control of the federal budget” and the architect of a “listless domestic policy.”
Snow served George H.W. Bush as speechwriting director.
He is a father of three and plays saxophone.
He had his colon removed last year after he was found to have cancer.