Nature And Summer Time

It's not yet one for the ages, but 2013 has had a fairly decent start to the year, cinematically speaking; there's been a lot of crap, but also a lot to recommend, in the shape of films like "Side Effects," "No," "Beyond The Hills," "Ginger & Rosa," "Spring Breakers," "The Place Beyond The Pines," "Upstream Color," "To The Wonder," "Sightseers," "In The House," "Mud," "What Richard Did" and "Frances Ha," among others. And next week, one of our very favorite films of the early part of 2013 arrives in theaters, in the shape of "The Kings Of Summer." We'd had our eye on director Jordan Vogt-Roberts for a while after his excellent short "Successful Alcoholics," so were almost nervous to see how his feature debut, a coming-of-age comedy about three kids who build a house in the woods to escape their overbearing parents one summer. But we shouldn't have worried; when the film premiered at Sundance, we said it marked "the arrival of a fresh new comic voice." And now, the best glimpse...

Now "Star Trek Into Darkness" is in theaters (to somewhat underwhelming grosses), JJ Abrams attention will now move exclusively (well, excluding the dozens of projects in the works at his company Bad Robot -- read about those here) toward "Star Wars Episode VII," his much-anticipated renewal of the OTHER geek-beloved space franchise. And with the film due for release in the summer of 2015, we should start to hear about new casting for the series, beyond what we already know -- e.g. that original central trio of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are returning in some degree. And while it's not official yet, word is coming in that the first new cast member might be an old collaborator of Abrams, as the normally-on-the-money Latino Review report that "The Tudors" star Jonathan Rhys Meyers is in talks to play a role in "Episode VII." Probably best-known for Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine," Woody Allen's "Match Point" and for playing Henry VIII in "The Tudors," Rhys-Meyers...