Tuesday movie doings

Let’s have some reel fun.

• The new Indiana Jones movie has a release date: May 22, 2008. (This will be the second time that Indiana Jones and Batman have had new movies in the same year.) Though I’ve lost most (and probably all) of my faith in George Lucas, Spielberg is a master of shooting big action and shooting it fast. No CGI, please. Let’s do this one the old-fashioned way, one more time.

• I don’t know much about the Iron Man comics, but man oh man is the movie shaping up nicely. Robert Downey, Jr. plays the title role of gazillionaire industrialist Tony Stark, who ends up wearing one of his own creations to battle international evils of every variety. Terrence Howard is his buddy Jim Rhodes, and Gwyneth Paltrow plays his spectacularly named secretary, Pepper Potts. Jeff Bridges was also just announced in a very vague role, which probably means he’s got something important to do with the plot. Jon Favreau directs, and I expect this one to defy lots of expectations.

• For as long as I’ve been reading movie rumors online, I’ve been reading about a Ben Stiller concept for a Hardy Boys movie where the Hardy Boys have grown into men who hate each other but have to come back together to solve one last case. More than a decade later there’s finally movement on the project, with a director and a co-star attached. The director? Shawn Levy, who just did Night at the Museum and who’d better not mess up The Flash. The co-star? Tom Cruise. Yeah. You read that right. I think Cruise is a spectacular actor and I’d love to see him do something silly with Stiller. Bring it on.

As always, more to come.