By Jason Adams, MyNewPlaidPants

Just let this one sink in: in the Summer of 2012, the big movie release of June 30^th, prime Summer Movie territory, is about male strippers. Nothing is blowing up… except perhaps the sexual organs of straight women and gay men sitting in the theater watching Magic Mike. Three Summers ago Channing Tatum was fighting ninjas with laser guns in GI Joe – now he’s spreading his butt cheeks for Steven Soderbergh. And the world! This, my friends, is what we call progress. In its most awesome form. Magic Mike tells a fictionalized account of Channing’s time spent dropping trou for singles and five. This was several years before he began dropping trou for millions of singles and fives, of course. It co-stars (deep breath for extensive list of beefcake) Alex Pettyfer, Joe Manganiello, Matthew Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, and Matthew McConaughey, as his partners in thong. I guess there are a couple of chicks in it too or something but literally not one person, not even their parents, are going to see it for them.

I suppose as far as counter-programming to the male stripper movie goes, the vulgar teddy bear comedy Ted from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will do. All the insecure straight guys can go laugh at manly man Mark Wahlberg and his adolescence writ plushie. Plus I hear that there’s an air of “girls are hot, but weird!” to the proceedings in Mila Kunis’ apparently thankless role, so they can all slap each other’s buttocks and feel better, together, in one big sweaty group, about girls, being weird. But hot! Unlike those male strippers, whose junk they’re not at all fixated on.

Speaking of junk, hey there Tyler Perry in a wig. His thirteen thousandth Madea movie is out, and it will probably make a heap of money like all the previous twelve thousand nine hundred and ninety nine ones did, and everyone will act surprised that black people go to the movies again. This one’s called Madea’s Witness Protection, and it has the inimitable Southern grande dame of sassy Stepin Fetchit matriarchs taking in an evil Bernie Madoff type, wherein one assumes he will learn lessons of “realness” from a parade of feel good stereotypes.

In limited release there’s the critically beloved Beasts of the Southern Wild, which sight unseen appears to me to have some much more interesting – like, by several thousand leaps and bounds – things to say with southern African-Americans than any Madea movie. A little girl named Hushpuppy heads off on a road trip into a world of magical creatures to find her mother once her father goes ill, and judging from the images I’ve seen some sort of transcendental beauty surrounds. Looks great.

Sarah Polley, herself a terrific actress, has her second directorial effort out after the much loved Alzehimer’s drama Away From Her nearly won Julie Christie an Oscar a couple of years ago – it’s called Take This Waltz and it stars Michelle Williams (always great) and Seth Rogen as a married couple whose relationship is threatened by the attractive hipster across the street. I don’t know, hinging a lot of drama on whether somebody will cheat on Seth Rogen or not seems kind of anti-climactic to me. Of course she will! God.

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