It's difficult (and a little silly) to try and judge an entire quarter-year's movies in one lump sum -- but that's what we seem to do at the end of every Summer Movie Season. That's when all our excitement, expectations, and final reactions come colliding together and we find ourselves thinking: "Was I actually looking forward to that piece of crap for four months?" But to me, each summer is like a walk through a carnival: Some of the attractions dazzle me, others simply don't interest me, and a few are just a waste of tickets. But once early May rolls around, I'm always ready for another trip to the Hollywood Movie Carnival. (It's where you find all the tentpoles!)

So while I'm elated to greet the upcoming season of "prestige movies," there's little denying that we've had one hell of a good summer, cinematical-ly speaking. I'm not talking about box office grosses, because frankly that stuff is so unimportant. What matters is that we got some good flicks, a few pieces of mindless (yet well-made) popcorn adventures, and even a few great films that will enjoy a very long shelf life. So while I'm not exactly sure that 2008 represents the finest Summer Movie Season of all time, I'd definitely say it was more good than bad. But if you can think of a summer that was better than this one, you know where to throw your comments. (In the comments section.)

The first giganto film of the summer has been given a DVD release date, according to Video Business, and if all goes accordingly it looks like you'll be able to enjoy Iron Man in the comforts of your own living room (legally) on September 30. There's no word on special features yet, however Amazon now allows you to pre-order three different versions, including your standard single-disc ($34.99), a two-disc special edition ($39.99) and a Blu-ray Special Collector's Edition ($39.99). (Note: Those are the list prices and each DVD is cheaper through Amazon.) The article also says to expect Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to hit DVD in October with Kung Fu Panda in November. One imagines (and hopes) Hancock, WALL-E and The Dark Knight will all hit DVD by Christmas as well.

But back to that Iron Man DVD. Those of you attending San Diego Comic Con might want to listen up because Marvel will be hyping up the DVD at their Comic-Con booth by passing out a flash drive containing a sneak peek at the Iron Man DVD. Of course, should we get our hands on one, you'll be the first to know what's on it.

So, who's buying this DVD?

Update: Thanks to Cinematical reader Jeffrey for pointing us toward a look at the limited edition Crystal Skull packaging for the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DVD over at Amazon. Check it out below ...

And you thought Wall-E was political. JibJib, the interactive e-card site founded by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, have returned to the scene that originally brought them fame. The duo first received national notice during the 2004 presidential campaign, when their riotous spoof This Land presented the two candidates (and a variety of secondary players) as rotund heads on animated bodies spouting rhetoric in rhythmic harmony. Since then, the JibJab site has placed more focus on the e-card business, but now it's back to the good old days with Time for Some Campaignin', a jolly tune to set the stage for the Obama/McCain face-off in the weeks to come.

The new video is similar to This Land in that it opts not to spoof either candidate more than the other, instead focusing on the larger campaigning process. It's hard not to laugh at the goofy visuals and smartly composed lyrics (especially those involving the Clintons), but it seems to me that the Spiridellis' work will never attain the degree of insight offered by the satire on The Daily Show (or The New Yorker, for that matter) because of this resolutely non-partisan approach. What do you think?

I guess Eddie Murphy knew something we didn't. I don't know how much the star showing up for the premiere of his own movie would have helped matters, but it couldn't have hurt. The poorly (though not abysmally) reviewed Meet Dave somehow turned out to be Murphy's worst debut weekend grosser since 2002's legendarily bad The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and before that 1998's Holy Man. Actually, Meet Dave's $5.3 million take just barely edged out Holy Man's opening. And that's pretty impressive. I probably shouldn't be too surprised, since even I didn't bother watching the thing, and I see just about everything. Bigger and better-looking films have at the moment cornered every demographic that Dave could have aimed for.

Better news for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, whose $35.9 million bow won't set any records this summer, but is a solid improvement on Hellboy's $23 million opening (it would go on to gross $60 million) and good enough for first. On the other hand, Journey to the Center of the Earth's $20.6 million, 3rd place finish has to be considered a mixed success. $11.7 million of that came from the film's 857 3-D locations (significantly less than a third of its total sites). That's not surprising, considering how much the movie was marketed as a 3-D affair; I wonder how many people went in thinking they were going to watch it in 3-D and went home disappointed. (Not receiving a pair of 3-D glasses would have tipped them off, I suppose.)

Nothing remarkable going on among the holdovers this week. Hancock dropped 47% in its second weekend and is sitting pretty with a $165 million cume (though recall that it was released two Tuesdays ago). Wall-E lost another 42% and, at $162.7 million after three weeks, it's tracking behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo, but ahead of every other Pixar offering.

The full top 10 after the jump!

From an outer space future to the modern Broadway stage? No, Pixar's animated hit WALL-E isn't becoming a musical -- yet -- but it may be responsible for the revival of a venerable stage production. Jerry Herman, who wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway smash Hello, Dolly, told Variety that the release of the widely-acclaimed film about a lovestruck robot has "unexpectedly amplified the buzz" that Dolly would be revived for Broadway.

In the film, WALL-E discovers Hello, Dolly on an ancient videocassette in a trash heap and becomes enthralled by the songs "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment." The songs play a key role in the narrative. Director Andrew Stanton told The A.V. Club that he "always loved the idea of the future against the past juxtaposed ... it just fit musically."

There's been talk of a Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly for several years, according to Herman, who was "stunned and moved" by the movie's first moments, in which "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" is heard. He thinks the movie "will only make it more vital, more of an event, and I think a lot of kids would come and see where those songs came from."

The composer has thought of Queen Latifah for the lead role, while expressing reservations about other possibilities, such as Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Patti LuPone, Reba McEntire, Bernadette Peters, and Barbra Streisand, who played the part in the movie version.

Quick! Who played the title role in WALL-E? If you answered "Ben Burtt," chances are you're either a hard-core geek or someone who stayed for the credits and thought, "Who the heck is Ben Burtt?" Burtt, well known to Star Wars and Spielberg fans for his superb work as a sound designer -- he's won two Oscars and received two Special Achievement Awards from the Academy -- picked up his first credit as an actor for providing WALL-E with a voice. And he drives home the point that cartoons, or "animated films" if you prefer, don't need celebrity voices anymore.

Once upon a time, Robin Williams agreed to voice the part of Genie in Disney's Aladdin. Disney decided to capitalize on his stardom and advertised his supporting role heavily, probably the first time a celebrity voice was used to sell an animated film. Aladdin became the biggest hit of the year. This was the tipping point. Millions of adults, notably those without children who hadn't been convinced by the previous year's Beauty and the Beast, decided that cartoons were not just for kids anymore.

The rest is history. Celebrity voices became the norm, and if one celebrity helped bring in the box office bucks, three or five or seven must be even better, and voice casts soon became filled with celebs both major and minor. Celebs had another advantage: they could give interviews and go on talk shows to promote the movie. Inevitably they'd say, "I wanted to do something my kids could see."

The biggest movie star in the world has another July 4th notch in his belt. His fourth huge Independence Day release (fifth if you count Wild Wild West, which came out June 30th) is also his biggest: the outrageously underappreciated Hancock had a $66 million 3-day weekend, and $107 million over the five-and-a-half days from Tuesday night through Sunday. It's the third-best 3-day of the year, behind only Iron Man and Indiana Jones. The figure is skewed since the movie came out on Tuesday and Friday was a national holiday, but that's the stat.

The wide release of the critically acclaimed Kit Kittredge: An American Girl didn't go over too well: the movie took in $3.6 million on over 1800 screens. Not too surprising given its extremely narrow target demographic, but I was expecting it to expand a little bit stronger.

Wall-E took a pretty harsh 47% hit in its second weekend -- 30-40% has been more standard for recent Pixar releases -- but its $128 million cume is nothing to cry about. Wanted had it even worse after last week's surprisingly robust debut, dropping 60% to $20.6 million for the weekend and $91 million total. And no one wants to see The Love Guru, which dropped out of the top 10 in its third week and won't make it to $40 million.

The full 3-day top 10 after the jump.

Can you make a summertime movie that gives audiences excitement, adventure and real drama -- and still have it flop? Are Hancock's reviews missing the big picture? And does the success of Sex and the City mean that the niches of movie marketing are going to get even more narrow? Joining us this week to talk about all these topics and more is David Poland, editor-in-chief of Movie City News and author of The Hot Blog. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

This one's a little heartwarming, folks, especially if you're predisposed (as I am) to admiring pretty much everything about the Pixar company.

Last fall, a young woman named Courtney saw the WALL-E teaser -- the one where Andrew Stanton talks about the meeting in 1994 where the story was first conceived -- and was reduced to a puddle of tears by its adorableness. Seems she has a soft spot for robots, and in particular for lonely, child-like, wide-eyed robots. So she videoed herself watching the trailer on her computer, knowing it would have the same effect on her again, and then she posted the video on her blog and on YouTube. (We've got it here after the jump.)

The video made its way around the Internets, as these things do, and Courtney began to get e-mails from people within the Pixar family who had seen it and appreciated her enthusiasm. Then one of the film's producers sent her a Pixar jacket as a Christmas gift, along with a note thanking her for the video.

And then they invited her to the film's wrap party in San Francisco.

The media is playing two pointless games of "gotcha" with Pixar's wonderful Wall-E at the moment. Eric Kohn addressed the first -- conservative critics griping about the film's "left-wing" message -- over here. The other, best articulated in this post by CHUD's Devin Faraci and this mind-boggling missive from the New York Post's Kyle Smith, but also showing up in Todd McCarthy's Variety review, is that Wall-E's supposed anti-consumerist bent is "hypocrisy" on account of it's released by Disney. I think that's a stupid and dishonest argument, and here's why.

In its latter half, Wall-E presents a vision of the future in which humanity is fat, lazy, basically immobile but for their hoverchairs, and in thrall to a mega-corporation called Buy 'N Large that tells everyone what to do, what to think, and what to buy. The rest of the film is dedicated to Wall-E, EVE, and the spaceship Axiom's human population defying the corporation and returning back to Earth to recolonize. This is disingenuous, the thinking goes, because the Disney empire bears more than a few similarities to Buy 'N Large and, in fact, cynically counts on unthinking, overweight masses, to see its movies, buy its merchandise, and ride the rides at Disney World.

What you'll notice from the folks making this argument is a coy ambiguity about who exactly is being hypocritical here. If the claim is that Disney is being hypocritical by releasing Wall-E, then that may well be right -- but it's also not surprising, newsworthy, or even worth mentioning. Is anyone really shocked that a large, profit-seeking corporation is being opportunistic and ideologically inconsistent? Where is all the outrage about Disney flicks that push the individuality and non-conformism message, when the Walt Disney Company is dependent on a herd mentality among its consumers?