And Now For Something Largely the Same: It's My Fifth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview!

In olden times, Memorial Day weekend marked the start of what was known as the Summer Movie Season. It's an obsolete notion, now that would-be blockbuster releases are most heavily concentrated between mid-February (when Black Panther arrived this year) and the first weekend in May, and can come out basically any month of the year other than January. But as a kid who grew up planning my summers based on which hotly anticipated, frequently disappointing tentpole release came out when, I carry the torch for the idea that summertime is the season for escapist genre films that seek to overwhelm the senses.

My pal Alan Scherstuhl, the Village Voice's film editor, indulges me, assigning me each May to single out a dozen due before Labor Day that show promise. These features get shared among the whole New Times media ecosphere; sometimes even before they turn up in the Voice. No matter. Here's the list.

The Career of Tom Cruise, X-Men, Han Solo, and the Wrath of Cannes. I'm on the Voice Film Club podcast this week.

I had a great time sitting in on this week's Voice Film Club podcast with my Village Voice editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson. Alan invited me on to talk about my essay demanding the death of Han Solo, but before we get to that we have a long chat about the perplexing career of Tom Cruise (working off of Amy's marvelous cover story about him) and Amy's review of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I won't get to see until tonight. You can hear the podcast above or here.

Podcast: Young RoboCop, Old RoboCop

RoboCop '14 & RoboCop '87. The original has more gestural flair, and so does the movie he's in.

Thanks to Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson for having me on the Voice Film Club podcast this week to talk RoboCop, and to listen in rapt mostly-silence while they discuss Vampire Academy. I've not seen the latter but I certainly will, based on the impression HAHAHAHAHAHAjokes it made on Amy and Alan.

You can hear the episode here. I can't believe I forgot to plug the good RoboCop remake.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Return of the Machine

“If I am not me, who da hell am I? I mean, who da hell am I now?”

I am delighted to tell you that I am making my Village Voice debut this week with an essay about one Arnold Schwarzenegger, screen icon of my youth, governor of California for part of the time I lived there (I didn't vote for him) and celebrity host of my narrowly acclaimed 2012 Christmas album.

It was a happy, potentially self-improving experience, being edited by the noted crapologist Alan Scherstuhl, whose cover story in last week's Voice about current Spider-Man scribe Dan Slott is well worth your time, if you care at all about Spider-Man or comic books.

There were some outtakes from this one. Writing about subjects that have interested me since childhood is often more time consuming than writing about more recent interests (like, say, theater) because there's so much more "onboard" material -- memories, opinions -- to sift through. There was a whole bit about John Wayne in my first draft that I may resurrect for a different piece someday. And it was hard to lose the factoid that Arnold's sole credit as a film director was a 1992 remake of the Barbara Stanwyck comedy Christmas in Connecticut. Because he and Stanwyck had the same jawline, maybe?

"I think we both realize this will not be your truly epic all-encompassing Schwarzenegger piece, which you should be pitching right now to The Believer," Alan wrote during one of our e-mail exchanges.

Perhaps I shall, Alan, perhaps I shall. In the meantime, thanks for helping me with this one.

Movies I Watched or Rewatched in Their Entirety While Writing This Piece (chronological by year of release): The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Last Action Hero, The 6th Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, I Saw the Devil.

Arnold's new one, The Last Stand, did not screen in DC before my deadline. And his good films are all indelibly lightscribed onto my brain, for better or for worse, so I didn't have to revisit them.