Summertime is all about blockbusters and counter-programming, as the smaller distributors clear out their backlog of festival acquisitions under the pretense of firing everything they’ve got at the big, bad studio pictures. Either way, it means stuff’s coming out.

“Empties”: Festival favorite Jan Sverak’s comedy about a bored retiree (screenwriter Zdenek Sverak, who’s also the director’s father) looking for something to do finally gets a theatrical run nearly two years after its bow at TIFF 2007. Glenn liked it; Adam did not.

“The English Surgeon”: Glenn was raving about Geoffrey Smith’s profile of neurosurgeon Henry Marsh at last year’s Hot Docs; he’s just as high on it now. So, clearly, we should see it.

“The Hangover“: No, Todd Phillips’ ultimate Vegas nightmare breaks no new ground, but it’s appropriately entertaining and absurd, and almost perfectly cast. I even enjoyed Justin Bartha, which is saying something.

“Land of the Lost”: In which Will Ferrell shouts non-sequiturs at dinosaurs for an hour and a half, apparently.

“O’Horten”: The week’s other movie about a retired guy seeking purpose, this one from the deadpan Bent Hamer. Jason and Paul both enjoyed it; I’ve been trying to see it since Cannes, with no bloody luck.

“My Life in Ruins”: After the disaster of “Connie and Carla”, Nia Vardalos goes back to humping the Greek thing. Susan didn’t mind it; I suspect Adam‘s response is closer to my own.

“Tokyo!“: Three directors, one city, one more metropolitan omnibus film. But it’s worth seeing for the Leos Carax episode alone.

“Waterlife“: Kevin McMahon’s look at humanity’s destruction of the Great Lakes is somewhere between a conventional documentary and a thumb-sucking visual essay; I found the visual-essay stuff so twee that I turned against the documentary portions. Also, it’s at least half an hour longer than it needs to be.

Also: David Carradine, dead at 72 … and, um, apparently not a suicide. Damn.

As we’re leaving the land of mini Jaffa cakes and chocolate ginger biscuits this afternoon, there’s not much time for the net … so here are a couple of new movie galleries over on Sympatico/MSN’s “Pelham 1 2 3” site, focusing on inventive hostage thrillers and souped-up remakes, respectively.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take one last whip around the video shops in search of abandoned HD DVDs …

If the Guardian allows users from outside the UK to access its video files, you should really check out Nick Broomfield’s new documentary “A Time Comes“.

It’s the story of the Kingsnorth Six, a group of Greenpeace activists who climbed a coal plant tower in 2007 to protest Gordon Brown’s plans to build new ones … and wound up charting a new course for environmental protest law.

It’s not even twenty minutes long. But here’s the trailer, if you’re wary.

… here’s your Friday movie roundup. Shall we?

“Drag Me to Hell”: Sam Raimi returns to horror. Andrew and Jason both enjoyed it; therefore, it’s at the top of my catch-up list when I get back, even though I kind of can’t stand Alison Lohman.

“Easy Virtue”: Fun fact: Stephan Elliott’s Noel Coward adaptation (starring Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas and Jessica Biel) has been available for viewing all this month on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment system. Given Deirdre‘s response, that may be the best it can expect.

“Every Little Step”: The making of “A Chorus Line” is chronicled and celebrated in a new documentary from “Year of the Yao” and “So Goes the Nation” directors Adam Del Dio and James D. Stern. Glenn goes for it in a big way; Jason, a little less so.

“40 Is the New 20“: I am, and it isn’t. Also, Joey Jeremiah grew up to be a douchebag. Don’t bother.

“Goodbye Solo”: “Chop Shop” director Rahmin Bahrani returns with a drama about a cab driver trying to give his suicidal passenger a reason to live. It’s a clever reversal of Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry” … though Rad found it easier to admire than enjoy, and Adam has his own reservations.

“Let Him Be”: Did John Lennon fake his death to live in peaceful retirement in a small Ontario town? No, but wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? Susan thinks so, at least for a little while. (But Paul was the walrus, surely.)

“Mothers & Daughters”: Carl Bessai’s new film. Won’t see it, can’t make me. Janis suffers for my abstention; Jason bravely takes the bullet himself.

“Up“: Pixar’s latest. One of the year’s best films. Go and see.

Also, there’s a great new Otto Preminger series starting tonight at Cinematheque Ontario. Go see that, too.

After Cannes wrapped up last year, Kate and I spent a few days in London decompressing and getting some other stuff done; this year, we’d planned to come home via her old stomping grounds in the north of England. Cannes didn’t happen, but we figured we might as well burn off our Aeroplan points before Air Canada decides to change the redemption rates … so here we are.

Posting may be sporadic over the next few days, is what I’m saying. I don’t know how much internet they can spare out on the Welsh coast.

In other news, the “Night at the Museum” sequel beat the “Terminator” sequel over the weekend, and Michael Haneke’s latest exercise in icy European cruelty took the Palme d’Or — no surprise, really, what with Haneke’s muse Isabelle Huppert chairing the jury.

I kid, I kid. If there was a Blu-ray disc of “Time of the Wolf” available over here, I’d have bought it already …

“One possible future … I don’t know tech stuff!”

I have this weird feeling that we’ve done time-travel stuff before — or maybe it was killer robots, I don’t even know anymore — but with “Terminator Salvation” opening this week, it seemed logical to do a Sympatico/MSN movie gallery about unpleasant alternate futures we’ve seen on film.

(Adam, “Reign of Fire” was for you.)

After a string of unchallenged tentpoles, this week brings us a good old-fashioned throwdown, as two studio sequels go up against each other for your box-office dollar. (Did I manage to keep all my metaphors separate? I do believe I did.) Of course, there’s plenty of counterprogramming to be had, too, as you’ll see below …

“The Brothers Bloom”: Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody set out to fleece Rachel Weisz in Rian Johnson’s con-artist picture, which has been getting some pretty mixed reviews since its TIFF bow last fall. Adam sort of liked it; Susan, not so much.

“Dance Flick”: The Wayans family, having accidentally ceded the scattershot-parody franchise to a couple of their “Scary Movie” writers a few years back, regroups for an assault on teen dance movies. So, you know, good for them.

“Little Ashes”: In which “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson threatens to alienate millions of screaming teenage girls by playing Salvador Dali and kissing a dude. But he’s apparently using a different facial expression, so that might throw them off. Susan liked it, anyway.

“The Limits of Control“: Jim Jarmusch’s intriguing, frustrating art-house thriller works a lot better if you imagine that Issach de Bankole’s character is a Terminator. I’m just saying.

“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian“: Second verse, same as the first — only now Ben Stiller is frantically running away from reanimated historical personages in Washington rather than New York. Amy Adams shows up and goofs around most appealingly as a slang-slinging Amelia Earhart. But the whole thing’s awfully pat.

“Rudo y Cursi“: “Y Tu Mama Tambien” co-stars Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal reunite as squabbling pals in Carlos Cuaron’s wretched sports picture, which teaches us that (a) professional soccer in Mexico is fairly corrupt, and (b) humble banana-plantation workers are not necessarily equipped to handle meteoric success. There, I just saved you twelve bucks.

“Serbis“: Brillante Mendoza is currently scandalizing the Croisette with a grim tale of remorseless murder called “Kinatay”; this film, which he brought to Cannes last year, is much lighter in tone. It has a goat!

“Terminator Salvation“: Okay, technically it opened yesterday, and that’ll probably give McG’s empty action sequel the edge over Stiller and his pals in the final box-office tally.

And if you’re in the Toronto area, Tony Stone’s fascinating “Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America” is screening this evening in the Over the Top festival’s film component, which I covered in yesterday’s paper. About half of the audience will love it; the other half will probably try to beat them up when they applaud. Seriously, you should check it out. But bring a helmet.

Look, I’m not a dope. I know “Terminator Salvation” is going to make all the money in the world this weekend; Warner’s marketed the crap out of it, and judging from the response of my preview audience the other night, it delivers all the crashing, banging and exploding that people think they want from these huge action tentpoles. So, yeah, it’ll be huge.

But is it any good? Is it even necessary? Check out the review linked above, and you’ll see.

(Spoiler alerts: No, and no.)

As expected, “Angels & Demons” claimed the top spot on the box-office chart over the weekend with a $48 million opening … but it was a much closer race than I would have figured, with “Star Trek” right on its heels with a second-weekend take of $43 million.

By way of comparison, “The DaVinci Code” enjoyed a $77.1 million opening weekend three years ago, and of course “Star Trek” pulled in nearly that much — $76.5 million — just last week. It looks like a couple million American moviegoers decided to hang back on this one and get a sense of the opening-weekend buzz, or they went to see “Star Trek” instead.

The AP’s regular box-office commentator/cheerleader, Paul Dergarabedian, spun it thusly:

“Sony positioned it well,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. “They didn’t try to say, `This is going to be “The Da Vinci Code.”‘ It was actually quite the contrary. They tried to say this was not `Da Vinci Code,’ that it was a different kind of movie.”

Well, “different” in that it’s actually a considerable improvement on the previous film in virtually every way. Of course, if they’d been able to get that message across, you’d think the numbers would have been higher — maybe not “Wolverine” or “Star Trek” higher, since “Angels & Demons” runs two hours and twenty minutes and therefore can’t screen as often as either of those — but something in the neighborhood of $60 million, maybe?

Good for “Star Trek”, though. Can’t think of a more deserving movie. I mean, sure, “Hunger” or “Two Lovers” or even “Adventureland”, but that just wasn’t gonna happen.

The good news: Fox ordered another thirteen episodes of Joss Whedon’s problematic yet frequently awesome “Dollhouse”. Maybe this time they’ll actually air all thirteen of them, instead of saving one for the DVD set.

The weird news: It seems Kevin Smith has announced plans to make a feature-film adaptation of Warren Zevon’s “Hit Somebody! The Hockey Song”, with “Tuesdays with Morrie” author Mitch Albom writing the screenplay.

I am having trouble getting my head around this, because it sounds like the combination of elements would either nullify one another, or react like a helicopter full of antimatter and destroy everything in a five-mile radius.

Still, neither Nicolas Cage nor Werner Herzog is involved, so maybe we’re still on the safe side of the threshold …