It usually takes about a week after the kids get out of school for summer to kick in, and if there was ever an official starting line, it's Fourth of July weekend. Maybe you're hitting up a barbecue with some friends this weekend, relaxing by the pool or shooting off some fireworks -- and that's cool. Enjoy yourself. Me? I'll be doing a little of the BBQ, but I'll also enjoy a screening of at least one of the following seven films. See, what's summer without a memorable summertime flick ... or several?

This year's best summertime film (according to me), The Wackness, hits theaters in limited release tomorrow before rolling out to other cities. That film caters a bit more toward a specific time period (1994) and a specific location (NYC), but those summer-in-the-city flicks are rare, especially a good one. Instead of following all those kids who left town, went to camp, traveled abroad, what have you, The Wackness remains with the one dude who didn't leave town. The kid who was stuck spending his summer on hot pavement, dealing pot to his therapist while chasing the girl of his dreams.

But perhaps that's how you remember summer growing up. Or maybe you spent most of your summers in camp, or on the baseball field, or with a few of your best pals on another bizarre adventure. Those summer months hold a lot of memories for you, I'm sure, as they do for me. And what's up with summertime movies and awesome soundtracks? Ever notice that? Anyway, here are some of my favorites ... feel free to tell me yours.

Though baseball season officially began last night, the season really gets underway today (and my Yanks are already in a rain delay!). So in honor of watching baseball for the next seven months, we're going to do something a little different here. Usually, these Stars in Rewind posts center on a particular actor in an old role or what have you. Today, we're celebrating an entire film. Here's where you probably expect a scene from a legendary baseball film like Eight Men Out, Bull Durham, The Natural, The Pride of the Yankees or The Benchwarmers. Oh no. Not this time. Instead, I've decided to go with a baseball flick I've seen over 30 times. One of the greatest films in the history of cinema. A classic. A gem.

The Sandlot. Oh yes. A ragtag group of neighborhood kids band together to try to save a baseball that was signed by Babe Ruth from a hidden monster behind a fence. But that's just the logline; there's so much more to love about this film -- like the friendships, the jokes, the characters and the way it brings back our own memories of what it was like to be a kid looking for some summertime trouble. Enjoy. Go Yanks!

This video is a little absurd; most of the re-dubbed dialogue makes little sense; and I can't help but feeling there could be more done with the idea, but isn't it the funniest Star Wars mash-up you've ever seen? A-ha! It's scenes from Star Wars with Darth Vader's lines replaced with those of King Jaffe Joffer from Coming to America. It works because James Earl Jones, who plays Joffer, was also the voice of Vader. But wouldn't it have been more logical to have the whole looking for his son thing to pertain to Luke Skywalker? Well, all mash-ups can't be perfect. Fortunately all the repetition of "A-ha!" and "and ... " makes Star Wars come across as a Monty Python movie, so it is at least hilarious. The only thing better would be if the "Yakkety Sax"-scored clips of Star Wars were combined with this video. That would be even sillier than this other favorite (and official) Star Wars video.

So, I guess there could be more of these mash-ups employing the dialogue of other James Earl Jones roles. Some that I would like to see would feature the lines of The Lion King's King Mufasa, The Sandlot's Mr. Mertle, Field of Dreams' Terrence Mann, Soul Man's Professor Banks and of course Conan the Barbarian's Thulsa Doom. Here's one that would be perfect for Leia's prison scene: "Next time you get arrested, use it to call me. I'll bring you your books. You can study in jail." And this would be appropriate for any old scene dealing with Vader and his minions: "I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy." OK, I've got the ball rolling; now someone get me those mash-ups. "I'm prepared to compensate you ... Shall we say one ... A-ha!"

I like to have background noise while I am working. I don't know if it is because I am a product of the age of multi-tasking or simply because I have concentration issues, but my mind tends to get bored when it only has one thing going on. It is not particularly unusual to find me seated at my computer desk typing an article while simultaneously watching television, throwing down some Nintendo action, and chatting with my fiancee (I like to call this "living the dream"). After years of functioning in this manner -- as a college student, it is now nearly impossible for me to be working at my computer without at least one other function happening simultaneously -- I feel like I'm wasting good time if I'm only working. Ergo when I sit down with my laptop to blog, it is almost a guarantee that I'll be either listening to a Pirates game online or watching a film. Sometimes, I'll substitute Gamecast instead of audio for the Pirates; then I can keep track of the Pirates game while watching a movie.

Now as you'd expect from a guy who gets paid to write about movies, I own a lot of movies. However, It'd bankrupt me to own enough movies to have a new one for every time I blog or do other work on my computer. I've written before about my love of commentary tracks, as a good one can double the watchable length of a film. Every now and then you get a great DVD with two or more commentary tracks, and you've got that many more good viewings of the DVD in store. Bonus documentaries, featurettes, and making ofs can also extend the life of a DVD. But what do you do when you've got nothing new on the shelf and are jonesing for a good flick? You go to one of your standbys. We've all got them -- that handful of films you could watch on seemingly endless repeat for eternity and never get bored. It is a quality that video games refer to as "replay value," and although some films (like The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail) have almost universal rewatchability, some are highly dependent on the individual viewer. Here are a select few from the very top of my list, the movies I am most likely to grab off the shelf when I'm in need of something to watch: