The summer movie season kicks off Thursaday night at 8 o’clock as the comic book adaptation Iron Man takes to the screens. Interestingly, the buzz on the film has crescendoed over the last few weeks to a state where not just comic fans are anxious to see the movie.

But once the credits start rolling, do not jump out of your seat and head to the lobby to talk about it with your friends. Kick back and relax, because there is a special scene after the credits that you’re going to want to see.

What is it?

I’m afraid I can’t tell because the surprise is just too good to ruin. (And it is not in Peter David’s Iron Man novelization, either.) Sure, there are a few sites that have spoiled it already, but my advice is to avoid the spoiler if at all possible. (I wish I had.) This is the thing comic fans will be obsessing on for weeks. Trust me.

Paramount Studios, the last of the major studios to announce their support of the BluRay high-definition DVD format, have finally announced their first titles to debut on the new format. Surprisingly enough, the first of those titles will be on store shelves in less than three weeks. The first five BluRay titles from Paramount have already been released on DVD, with it’s fifth planned release, The Spiderwick Chronicles on June 24, being the studio’s first simultaneous DVD and BluRay release.

Leading off the studio’s BluRay line on May 20th are two films starring Nicolas Cage- Face/Off and Next, and one film that doesn’t star him, the animated film Bee Movie. The Face/Off disc will feature multiple commentaries, deleted scenes, an alternate ending and a “Making Of Face/Off” featurette while Next will sport a “Making Of” featurette, “Visualizing the Next Move,” “The Next Grand Idea” and “Two Minutes in the Future with Jessica Biel.”

January’s monster film Cloverfield and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Academy Award winner There Will Be Blood will make their BluRay debuts on June 3. Cloverfield looks as if it contains the same special features as the standard DVD release, with the addition of a feature-length “Special Investigation Mode” with added details about the film. Special features for There Will Be Blood include a slideshow of vintage photos selected by the director and set to the film’s score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, deleted scenes, a featurette on dailies and more.

Unfortunately, there is no news on some of the titles that folks are most interested like the recently remastered Star Trek: The Original Series or the original Indiana Jones trilogy. Still, Paramount is just dipping their toes in the water, so hopefully they’ll take the big plunge and start digging out the gems in their vaults soon.

I was never a big fan of the Sid and Marty Kroft-produced TV series Land Of The Lost as a kid. I thought that Marshall, Will and Holly – the three whitewater rafters stranded in a strange world full of dinosaurs – were boring and more than a bit stupid at times. And don’t even start me on the Neanderthal boy Chaka.

However, I would still tune in every Saturday morning, just to see if that week’s episode would have an appearance by the evil and creepy Sleestaks.

Of course, looking back now, its easy to see that they were just some guys in rather tatty costumes, but as a kid, the way they awkwardly shuffled along with their hissing breath made them the coolest villains on TV.

Fortunately, for his big screen adaptation of the 1970s series, director Brad Silberling has kept the Sleestaks’ iconic look, while updating the costuming to add a bit more realism. Don’t believe me? Check out this photo, which appeared in today’s USA Today.

The sleestaks will menace Will Farrell, Danny McBride and Anna Friel next summer.

One of the best movies of the 1990s, genre or not genre, was Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998). (This not even considering in the “Jennifer Connolly Factor,” which states that any movie in which Jennifer Connolly appears is automatically 20-30% better than it would have been without her.) Proyas created a world which not only held a noir-ish mystery, but which posed some existential mysteries as well.

Now Warner Home Video has announced that a new director’s cut of the film will be released on DVD and BluRay on July 29. The new edition will feature approximately 15 minutes of footage edited back into the film, as well as some improved special effects and a new sound mix. Although the studio has announced all the special features for the release, it did state that there will be three new audio commentaries for the film. Hopefully, they will also be including the commentary track that critic Roger Ebert did for the first DVD release, as it is one of the best and most knowledgable commentaries ever recorded.

I have to admit that I am greeting this news with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. I’m excited to see what new things Proyas is bringing back into the film in terms of story and thematic elements. I am apprehensive, as the film is about as near a perfect bit of filmmaking as one can get. Of course, I had the same misgivings about the expanded version of Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do! that was released last year, but the new material blended in seamlessly, without detriment to the film. Here’s hoping that Proyas can pull off the same trick.

Via SlashFilm.

With only just a few days having passed since it was officially announced the Guillermo del Toro would direct the adaptation of J R R Tolkein’s The Hobbit, with Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson producing, casting news is already starting to break on the film. In an interview with Tolkein fan site TheOneRing, del Toro has confirmed that “all bureaucracy pending,” Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis will be back to reprise their Lord Of The Rings roles of Gandalf the wizard and the tortured and twisted Gollum.

Both McKellen and Serkis are already listing the film on their websites, so it is probably safe to assume that any pending bureaucracy will be quickly cleared away, Del Toro also stated that several key creative people who worked on Lord Of The Rings should be back as well including composer Howard Shore, special effects supervisor Andy Taylor and conceptual artists John Howe and Alan Lee.

In the interview, del Toro stressed that he will be keeping The Hobbit very much in line with what Jackson had already established in his films, but extrapolating how things were in Middle Earth fifty years before the tumultuous events of Rings. Not surprisingly, del Toro also stated that he wants to use more animatronics to create many of Middle Earth’s beasties.

The only thing I will be pushing for more in these films that the other three are full animatronics and animatronic creatures enhanced with CGI, as opposed to CGI creatures themselves. We really want to take the state-of-the-art animatronics and take a leap ten years into the future with the technology we will develop for the creatures in the movie. We have every intention to do for animatronics and special effects what the other films did for virtual reality.

One name that does not appear in the interview is Christopher Lee’s, who played Gandalf’s fellow wizard Sauruman, who became slowly corrupted by the influence of the evil Sauron. Del Toro states that the as yet untitled film to follow The Hobbit will help to fill in what transpired in the 50 years between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, and anyone who is familiar with the background that Tolkein developed for his books can tell you, Sauruman is an important figure during that time. Lee is a self-professed fanatic for Tolkein’s Middle Earth, so I doubt he would turn down this last chance to contribute to a cinematic recreation of that world.

But while the continuing flow of new about The Hobbit film has been greeted warmly and enthusiastically through most sectors of the geek press, Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has risen as the loudest, and most rational, voice of dissent. Where some have dismissed the news with the usual Internet bile, O’Hehir has outlined some interesting arguments as to why del Toro is not the ideal choice for the films. (That said, I’d point out that del Toro didn’t set aside his other projects like his adaptation of Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness to make The Hobbit as O’Hehir suggests so much as they were set aside for him by dint of not being able to secure the studio financing they would need.)

O’Hehir argues that since Jackson’s busy schedule finishing off The Lovely Bones and plunging into his collaboration with Steven Spielberg to adapt the European Tintin comic strip into a trilogy of films, del Toro was hired simply to serve as a “Jackson surrogate” on the set and that he would not have any degree of creative control. To hammer the point home, he invokes the name of George Lucas, perhaps in a hope to recall in movie fans’ minds the accusations that Lucas worked director Richard Marquand like a puppet on the set of Return Of The Jedi. An interesting analogy, but one that ignores one crucial fact- The Empire Strikes Back. If Lucas was in the habit of hiring directors who would simply do his bidding, why did Irv Kershner’s work on the middle film of the original Star Wars trilogy stand out so strongly compared to the two other films?

I think with only the merest bit of pre-production work having been done, it might be a little too early to say that del Toro is going to be Jackson’s sock puppet on these films. While there approaches to fantasy films may be different, I think that del Toro and Jackson have a lot more in common than just being two hefty guys with beards. If the time comes where it may be obvious that del Toro took the gig just for the money and to get some juice to get his other projects greenlit, and I admit that may be a remote possibility, than I’ll be one to stand up and say so. Until then, let’s enjoy the anticipation of the best of what these films can be.

Mike Judge, whose debut film Office Space has become a cult comedy classic, is heading back to the workplace with his new film, Extract. According to Variety, the film will look at “what it’s like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you.” In this case, the boss will be Jason Bateman.

This is welcome news for fans of Judge’s work as both a film director and as creator of the cartoon series Beavis And Butthead and King Of The Hill. After Judge’s second film Idiocracy (2006), got unceremoniously dumped in just a few theaters by some boneheads at Twentieth Century Fox, Judge sounded as if he didn’t want to direct another film. (Idiocracy is now quietly building its own cult audience on DVD.) Fortunately, he has had a change of mind. Let’s hope that the folks at Miramax, who are set to distribute Extract, treat Judge and the film with a bit more of the respect he deserves.

I have to hand it to the folks at Warner brothers, who seem to be tirelessly pumping out the promotion for the upcoming The Dark Knight. Over at the Why So Serious site, there’s a new page which seems to be promising some new game in four days. (In the meantime, if you can’t identify at least half the subjects of the vandalized portraits than turn off your computer and head back to school.)

If you click on the knife pinning the joker playing card to the wall, you get the new poster below. For a much bigger, high resolution version, just click.

Stoners Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are back in a second comic mis-adventure that takes some seriously funny shots at the War on Terror and the veiled racism that underlies much of the administration’s policies concerning it. Don’t worry though, if you don’t like outrageous political satire, the movie also has some highly silly moments and some nudity to keep you entertained.

You can read our full reveiw here.

1. Baby Mama (2,543 Theaters, 96 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Movies are all about demographics. The more successful a movie is, the more demographics it covers.

This movie seems to have the female demographic locked up. It is about a woman in her thirties (Tina Fey) who is unable to have children on her own. She needs to go through a surrogate to house her eggs. That surrogate is the white trash Angie (Amy Poehler). Hilarity ensues in the resulting culture clash.

See, that right there is a parody on about 50% of the movies on Lifetime any given month. But I’d imagine that the powers that be are hoping that Tina Fey’s cache as the dream queen of the geek crowd will bring some men in. Or at the very least help the women drag their husbands/boyfriends into the theater.

But for me, the main selling point for Fey is her writing. Don’t get me wrong, she has strong comedic skills in front of the camera. But it’s her writing that I’d pay to see. If she was writing this movie, then it would be a “must see”. I’d love to watch her take on this subject matter. But, instead, it is written and directed by SNL alum Michael McCullers. That takes it from a “must see” to a “well, what do you think” kind of movie, at least in my eyes.

2. Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2,510 Theaters, 102 Minutes, Rated R): I’m sure that there will be many of you out there that are kind of shocked to find that the stoner movie sequel appears to be taking American politics head on, but the last movie, in addition to reviving Neil Patrick Harris’ career, did touch a bit on race relations in the United States. So, this one taking on post-9/11 paranoia isn’t too far off.

This movie directly follows the last one, as Harold and Kumar try to get to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, they try to sneak a bong on the flight. Since one of them looks Korean and the other Middle Eastern, Harold and Kumar are confused for terrorists and the bong is mistakenly considered a bomb and. The pair easily gets away, because, obviously, the authorities are morons, and cross-country escape hi-jinx ensues.

So, on the one hand, you have a modern day Cheech and Chong, on the other you have a satire of sorts on American policy. Now, you don’t have to feel guilty about going to see a pot infused caper movie because you can argue that it’s making a statement. And, besides, there might be a scene with Neil Patrick Harris riding a unicorn. How can you miss that?

3. Deception (2,001 Theaters, 102 Minutes, Rated R): It is a match up that I’m sure will warm the cockles of many a fan fiction writer’s heart. Ladies and gentlemen, this week, hitting movie screens, Wolverine vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Okay, it’s really Hugh Jackman going up against Ewan McGregor. But that’s darn close. Close enough to wish for the “Snikt” of claws be unsheathed and the “Vrrrrunnn” of a lightsaber coming on.

The story revolves around a pair of friends who inadvertently swap cell phones. One of the men gets a phone call from a sexy woman wanting a sexual encounter. After a night of passion, he finds himself embroiled in a web of murder and intrigue.

I don’t know about you, but if I had a friend’s cell phone, I wouldn’t even answer it, let alone sleep with a woman on the other end. I mean, that is just asking for trouble. I guess we’re supposed to feel sympathy for Ewan, but I say he deserves what he has coming to him.

A few new photos from the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan eco-thriller The Happening have turned up. (Click to make bigger.)

In them you can see stars John Leguizamo, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel all starring off-camera at something. Want to what? You can check out our script review for more details.

Via SlashFilm.