Widescreen

We are 75 minutes away from "Follow the Leader," tonight's new episode of "Lost" and the penultimate installment of Season 5. I won't get to see it until sometime around 1 a.m., and until then I have the show's increasingly awesome mysteries eating away at my brain. Consider the following while watching tonight:

The summer of 2009 is jam-packed with big franchsie movies, three or four of which have a chance to cross that magical $300 million barrier. (Put your money on "Transformers" and "Harry Potter" for sure.) But how does it stack up to other summers in the blockbuster era?

Let's go back a quarter of a century ... check out these three summers from the '80s. If this year's crop can be as fun as these, we're in for a treat:

"Star Trek" relaunches in theaters Thursday night at 7 p.m., and Paramount Pictures has a whole lot of money riding on it -- its budget is rumored to be higher than the domestic gross of any of the ten previous "Trek" films. Moviehole reported the pricetag may have topped out at $160 million. Add marketing costs, and you have a huge gamble on a largely alienating (pun totally intended) franchise that lost its luster long ago. (Anyone familiar with the franchise and its core fanbase can understand why the commercials need to make the new "Trek" look like an oversexed Michael Bay extravanganza if they have any hope of recouping their costs by bringing the uninitiated into the fold.)

Great reviews are going to help, too, and the early buzz suggests "Star Trek" is going to get them.

Attention, my nerdy brethren: /film reports that Lucasfilm is currently shooting a new version of the Disney Parks attraction Star Tours. This is a project I've heard about (and hoped for) since the release of "The Phantom Menace" in 1999, when rumblings suggested the original flight simulator ride that opened at Disneyland in 1987 would be ditched for a podracer theme. But /film says George is keepin' it old-school on this one, and the new plot will have the riders' spaceship fleeing from Boba Fett. (I'm guessing an asteroid field will be involved ...) Click on that link above for all the specifics.

So why is this so exciting for a 30-year-old man? Because I remember waiting in line for two-and-a-half hours to ride the original Star Tours at Disneyland in 1988, and I remember thinking it was just about the coolest thing in the whole world.

One of the most popular theories about how "Lost" will end says the last scene will be Jack Shephard waking up in the jungle, staring into the face of Vincent the Dog. The time-loop comes full circle, and we end up right back where we started.

But until tonight, it never occurred to me that the plane crash could be avoided completely.

Earlier today, while watching Sen. Arlen Specter (D—PA) trying to convince America that his abandonment of the Republican party isn't a case of putting personal advancement ahead of principles and party loyalty, this came across the crawl at the bottom of my TV screen:

"GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN CALIFORNIA BECAUSE OF SWINE FLU, SAYS 'THERE'S NO REASON FOR ALARM'"

Are you reading this, Jon Stewart? If so, you're welcome.

WARNING: Spoilers after the jump.

"Lost" actor Henry Ian Cusick, along with ABC, is being sued and accused of sexual harassment by a woman who says she was fired from her unspecified job with ABC Entertainment 12 days after reporting Cusick had fondled her. The improprieties are said to have occurred in October of 2007, during filming for the show's fourth season.

Whether this is true or not, I can't help but think we've been down this road before -- remember what happened to Libby and Ana Lucia after Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros got busted for DUI?

Kim Voynar over at Movie City News wrote this intriguing column about the casting of M. Night Shyamalan's movie version of "Avatar: The Last Airbender," which will smartly drop the first part of its name so as to not be confused with James Cameron's forthcoming sci-fi epic. For the uninitiated, which includes me, "Airbender" is a highly popular animated series with, as Voynar puts it, "interesting and complex Asian and Inuit mythology woven through it."

Yet it seems Shyamalan has cast white kids in all the lead roles. So one of the biggest "name" directors in the business, who was born in India, apparently cannot convince a studio to populate a big tentpole action picture with Asian actors. One has to wonder if that wouldn't be the case if "Lady in the Water" and "The Happening" hadn't flopped commerically and critically, but it's not like we shouldn't expect this from an American movie studio -- Voynar mentions last year's "21," one of the worst movies I've ever seen, in which two Asians from the real-life story are replaced by Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth.

(The most ridiculous example of Hollywood white-washing in a long while is coming next summer. In what world is it a good idea to cast Jake Gyllenhaal as the "Prince of Persia"?)

ABC is spoiling all our fun with a "Lost" clip show tonight about the Oceanic Six, so I figured I would give you a better one. Here are some clips of the "Lost" cast members away from the island:

My writing has been so infrequent that I wouldn't be surprised if some of you forgot I was even here -- unless, of course, you're interested in "Lost," Metallica or "Guitar Hero." Lately I've been finding just enough time in my hours away from work to stick to what I know and love. (So ... "Lost," Metallica and "Guitar Hero.") But I have taken departures from my personal pop culture routine lately for a weekend trip to Minnesota and lots and lots of Chicago sports. Oh, and there was also "Hannah Montana: The Movie." (Yes, really.)

Here's what I've been watching and hearing. Don't hesitate to chime in and trade notes: