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This weekend, as we come together to celebrate Independence Day, let's do our best to remember what this holiday is all about. It's more than merely dodging DWI checkpoints on your way home from backyard barbecues and trying to decide between the Jon & Kate + 8 or Deadliest Catch marathons on TV; it's also about embarrassingly overwrought displays of jingoism. Here are but a few cinematic examples.

5. Rocky IV (1985) The Cold War saw many proxy battlefields: Jadotville, Congo; the Bay of Pigs; Lubango, Angola...yet perhaps no more decisive skirmish was fought than in Moscow, USSR. There, two mismatched heavyweights (one 5'9", one 6'5"), their punches landing like ICBMs, decided the fate of the globe. Make no mistake about it, Gorbachev wasn't cowed by Reagan's demands to "tear down this wall," but by the very real possibility that Rocky could demolish it with his bare hands.

Farrah Fawcett passed away today at the age of 62. Males of a certain generation (those born between 1900 and 1972) will always hold the former Jill Munroe in special esteem for the role she played in hastening their adolescence.

There was that poster, for starters, and her short-lived but memorable stint on Charlie's Angels. And even though my own heart will always belong to Jaclyn Smith, I'm still grateful to the one-time Mrs. Fawcett-Majors for teaching me that blondes could be fantasized about as well.

Farrah's most critically acclaimed work came in the mid to late-1980s, when she was lauded for her roles in revenge fantasies like Extremities and The Burning Bed, but we at Hair Balls think it tends to cheapen a person's existence by only focusing on the high points of their careers. To get a more complete picture of someone's life, you have to take the bitter with the sweet, the dark with the light, the Raspberry with the Golden Globe. So here's to you Farrah, may your hair dryers forever be Supermax.

5. Myra Breckinridge (1970) When describing Myra Breckinridge's awfulness, it's important to prioritize. Sure, the scene where Myra (Raquel Welch) sodomizes a guy with a rusty dildo might challenege our perceptions of filmic quality, while the gratuitious vulgarity and inept comedy led Time magazine to lead off its review with the line, "Myra Breckenridge is about as funny as a child molester." But as cinematic transgressions go, these pale in comparison to the unforgivable sin of shooting a "lesbian" scene between Welch and a 22-year old Farrah without any...lesbianing.

Farrah Fawcett, the pride of Corpus Christi, has died of cancer at age 62.

We'll have a proper remembrance of her up soon, but for now here's her nude-in-a-shopping-mall scene from Robert Altman's Dr. T & The Women.

The "official" start of summer -- two weeks' worth of upper-90 degree temps notwithstanding -- isn't until this Sunday. For Hollywood however, the summer blockbuster season kicked off in May with the release of Wolverine.

In the ensuing month-and-a-half, we've had some box office successes (Star Trek, Night at the Museum 2, Up), some disappointments (Terminator: Salvation, Angels & Demons, Land of the Lost), and one surprise hit (The Hangover). And there are still over two months and a dozen or so major releases left to go.

In this economy, selecting the right movie to spend your hard-earned nine dollars on is more important than ever. Lucky for you, Hair Balls is here to guide you in the right direction, complete with totally arbitrary guesses as to box office performance. Enjoy.

Year One
Release Date: June 19
Actual Tagline: "Meet your ancestors"
Better Tagline: "From the writer/director of Bedazzled"
Harold Ramis returns to the director's chair to offer a speculative account of what ancient civilization might have been like if populated with braying nincompoops (Jack Black) and otherwise inoffensive man-boys (Michael Cera, whose deadpan shtick is nonetheless getting really old). Also included, the ubiquitous Paul Rudd and David "I Only Make Shitty Movies So I Can Buy Property in Upstate New York And My Artistic Credentials Are Still Spotless, You Ignorant Homunculoids" Cross.
Probable Domestic Gross: $75 million

We've been seeing pregnant bellies all over H-Town. From The Woodlands down to Lake Jackson, it seems every other woman we see is either in the family way or accompanied by a doting father lugging around a car seat right not too far behind. What gives?

One conspiracy theory is that these are all "Ike" babies, borne of the power outages and curfews that were the norm in these parts back in September and October. Another is that babies are awesome and cute and smell good. And another more likely theory is that we all need in-house lawn services from someone who will call us "asshole" under their breath and steal beer from the fridge somewhere down the line.

We scoured the Interweb for the best, well...okay, really the creepiest babies we could get our cursors on for your enjoyment. Think of this as the Houston Press' own free advertisement for safe-sex.

How 'bout this heat? Spring has officially finished her fleeting annual jaunt through SE Texas and abandoned us to Summer, which is set to squat uncomfortably upon us for the next five months like that hippo ballerina in Fantasia.

Not that you were caught unawares, of course. After all, humidity is as much a part of Houston as road rage and disappointing pro sports franchises, and every year it sends the majority of the population into the sub-tropical equivalent of hibernation until early November. While you're cowering in your homes until October and nervously refreshing the Weather Channel's Tropical Update website, here are some movies to remind you what life would be like around here without sweet, sweet refrigerated air.

5. Airplane! (1980)
As a rule, airplanes aren't supposed to cause a great deal of perspiration. This has become more of a guideline in the modern era, however, where it's not unheard of to be sitting on the tarmac for three hours waiting for clearance. And trying to land the plane after losing your whole squadron over Macho Grande? Bring a mop bucket (3:12 mark):

Blockbuster has put out an interactive "Road Trip" map for the summer, listing locations where great movies have been shot.

Sixteen of the listed films are in Texas. The number of those shot in Houston? Zero.

Included are Bonnie & Clyde (Dallas) and Dazed and Confused (Austin), but even the TV show Dallas is listed, so quality is obviously no criterion.

We have, in the past, listed five movies where Houston has stood in for cities such as Detriot and Washington, so it's not like they don't make movies here.

But what movies could Blockbuster have listed?
 

That thud you heard last weekend was Will Ferrell's career settling noisily back to earth. With a budget estimated at over $100 million, Land of the Lost was supposed to propagate the 2009 summer blockbuster season (handily inaugurated by the new Star Trek) and continue Ferrell's successful box-office run. Surprisingly, American audiences seem to have tired of well-meaning doofuses who run into things and holler a lot, even when you throw in a T-rex. Ferrell, however, can assuage his hurt feelings with the millions of dollars already stuffing his California king mattress, and the knowledge that plenty of other would-be summer blockbusters didn't quite meet financial expectations either.

5. Stealth (2005)
Budget: $138,000,000
Domestic Gross: $31,704,416
Stealth proves the old adage that there's no movie so bad that it can't be made worse by an expensive explosion sequence and nu-metal sountrack. Jamie Foxx, who won the Academy Award for Ray a year earlier, can at least commiserate with Renée Zellweger and Halle Berry about their post-Oscar career choices.

I have this vague memory of being a kid and watching Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood on Saturday Night Live. There was Eddie Murphy, making serious fun of my childhood idol Mr. Rogers by creating a freaky, parallel universe where Mr. Robinson could joke freely about his wife leaving him ("I'm so glad the bitch is gone!") and avoid his landlord, that white man just tryin' to get Mr. Robinson's cash.

I didn't get all of the jokes, but I knew enough to get that this guy was weird, twisted, and someone I wanted to be just like someday.

Flash forward a few decades and the same man who once created Mr. Robinsons' Neighborhood is now in some film called Imagine That.

Imagine that man used to be funny.

Indian film Rang de Basanti

The art exhibit "Casual Encounters" closes at Domy Books this Sunday. A group show featuring work by Dirty Jeff, Will Boone, Patrick Griffen, Derek Albeck, French, and curator Give Up, "Casual Encounters" includes photos, drawings, portraits and collages. The international group of the artists share an outsider sensibility. Wheat-paste artist Give Up, who took home our Best of Houston award for Best Graffiti Artist in 2008, told the Houston Press's Dusti Rhodes, "The artists involved are people I've come to know and respect both artistically and personally. [There's] no restrictions as far as theme or content or medium, hence the name." See "Casual Encounters" until 8 p.m. today, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. tomorrow, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Domy Books, 1709 Westheimer. For information, call 713-523-3669 or visit www.domystore.com. Free.

This is also the last weekend for the Hooray for Bollywood film series at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This weekend's film is Rang de Basanti (The Color of Sacrifice). Directed by Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, the 2006 film follows a group of young men who are roped into acting in a film about India's struggle for independence. Initially more interested in partying than being a movie about India's history, the group slowly becomes caught up in feelings of patriotism as they realize that their modern day struggles mirror those their grandfathers faced -- same problems, different oppressor. Rang de Basanti was India's 2007 entry for the Oscars. 6 p.m. today, 5 p.m. Sunday. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7515 or visit www.mfah.org. $6 to $7.