Isn’t it funny how Oscar races can evolve over the span of just a few weeks? Since awards season first began in late December, we’ve seen several key races completely change course, sometimes more than once.

This week’s review of “The Dark Knight Rises” comes a little later than I had initially hoped, but oh well — it’s never too late to spread good news. And I advise you to enjoy the good times while they last, because the rest of the summer looks pretty dicey.

Summer is winding down, and I find myself unburdened by the bitter cynicism that typically plagues me this time of year. It’s a pretty good time to be a moviegoer, relatively speaking, as it’s rare thing indeed to look at a multiplex marquee and actually find a handful of films that are worth seeing (“The Smurfs,” of course, notwithstanding).

Time just keeps slipping away. It seems like just last week we were looking ahead to the promising pre-summer releases, and now in about a month’s time the summer movie season is set to kick into high-gear with the new “Pirates” movie. I suppose it’s just as well that these past couple months have passed in a blur, because frankly there wasn’t too much worth getting excited about. Save for “Rango,” I never encountered anything truly worthwhile — and last week’s “Sucker Punch” provided one of the most physically painful and soul-crushing movie experiences I’m ever likely to have. So yeah, I’m ready to look ahead to greener pastures. In that spirit, here are 15 upcoming movies (compared to the usual 10) that I’m counting on to alleviate the cinematic doldrums for the foreseeable future. Gotta look on the sunny side.

We’re back to new movies this week with a quick look at “Hall Pass,” the latest raunchy comedy from Farrelly brothers (it was a close call between that and the Nic Cage exploitation vehicle “Drive Angry” — they both got terrible reviews, so I literally flipped a coin). Next week we’ll take a peek at “Rango,” followed by “Battle: Los Angeles.” Not the best lineup, but not the worst, either. 

"The Wolfman"

Growing up, there was meat on Halei Warren's family dinner table every night. She'd stare at it and push it away.

Here are News-Sentinel film critic Jason Wallis' picks for the Oscars, which will be announced Sunday:

Of all the comedy sub-genres, the television adaptation has one of the worst track records. Yeah, there's the occasional "Brady Bunch" or "Scooby-Doo," in which the filmmakers managed to pay homage to the source material while at the same time giving their movie its own delightfully modern spin, but most of the time the end product is more in line with "The Flintstones" or "Bewitched" or any number of other catastrophic misfires that not only failed as films, but also cheapened the work they were attempting to cash in on. Studios keep trying (reportedly, reworkings of both "The A-Team" and "I Dream of Jeanie" are currently being filmed), but for every step forward they seem to take five steps back.

Thousands of friends, family and educators packed the Lodi Grape Bowl on Friday evening to watch the culmination of a 13-year-long journey for hundreds of Lodi High School seniors.

A Superior Court judge heard two days of testimony Thursday and Friday on whether the North San Joaquin Water Conservation District acted properly in approving a landowner charge for groundwater last year.

Thank you, John Slaughterback, for proving what others have been saying for years: Galt needs educational reform.

"The Devil Wears Prada" attempts to tell a timeless tale with a thoroughly post-modern spin. A sort of hybrid of "The Sweet Smell of Success" and "Sex and the City," the film is, at its heart, the story of how success corrupts - and how the insatiable thirst for money and power can own your soul if you're not careful.

Just like every other "Star Wars" geek, I was stoked when George Lucas recently announced that the original trilogy was being released on DVD in its unaltered form on September 12. And, just like every other DVD aficionado, that initial elation was deflated by feelings of disappointment and disgust when I learned that the original versions will not be made available in anamorphic (that is, HDTV-friendly) widescreen transfers - meaning the films that revolutionized the world of visual effects will not be seen with the same crystal clarity most DVDs offer.

Anne H. Meyers, 75, of Lodi, died March 31 in a local hospital following a short illness. She was born Anne Hathaway on Jan. 20, 1927, in Oakland.