Kryptonite Bites

Opening-night jitters
At MTV.com, Superman devotee Karl Heitmueller picks up where he left off with his series, "Superman Fanboy Dilemma." In the latest installment, he wonders where, and with whom, true fans should watch Superman Returns:

My memory of seeing the first Superman is vivid: Friday, December 15, 1978, the Wonderland Cinema in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with my Dad and my best friend Nathan. The show was packed. And when Christopher Reeve first appeared onscreen, clad in the costume, taking off from the Fortress of Solitude and swooping past the screen in the film's first majestic flying shot, Nathan and I both exclaimed, "That was so cool!"

There's a shot in the Superman Returns trailer of the superhero flying high over the Earth that looks an awful lot like that penultimate shot in all four of Christopher Reeve's Superman films. If, as many have surmised, "Superman Returns" ends with Brandon Routh recreating Reeve's final fourth-wall-breaking smile at the audience as he flies off-screen, there are gonna be a lot of fanboy tears flowing during the end credits. Including mine.

For the fourth installment, Heitmueller promises "more on collecting and its pathologies."

For movie tie-ins, it's more than just fast food
Movie studios are looking beyond McDonald's and Pepsi to help promote their big summer releases, Reuters reports. Hot-button issues like childhood obesity are part of the reason for the move away from fast-food restaurants. But more important, the article notes, is the need to read as many potential movie-goers as possible.

For instance, Superman Returns is teaming with traditional outlets like Burger King and PepsiCo., but Warner Bros. also has struck promotional deals with Duracell, the Got Milk? campaign, Perfectmatch.com and even Quaker State Oil.

Pepsi and Yahoo, meanwhile, have launched a Daily Planet website for a "catch Lex Luthor" contest.