Twilight: Eclipse And Other Promising Summer Soundtracks

Summer isn't just the time to look forward to astronomically budgeted, noisy, overproduced blockbuster films, it's also the time to look forward to astronomically budgeted, noisy, overproduced blockbuster soundtracks. Is Graeme Revell still dicking around with ProTools? He is? Oh, super! Anyway, among all the bombast, there are usually a few soundtracks worth looking forward to, so here are our picks for the most anticipated soundtracks of the upcoming summer.

Twilight: Eclipse: We're not sure how or why this keeps happening, but the pre-teen Mormon stalker-porn that is the Twilight series keeps attracting knockout lineups for its soundtracks, and the upcoming installment is no exception. Just revealed yesterday on the film's MySpace page - yeah, when movies started having their own MySpace pages, that's when Rocks Off left - the soundtrack will feature Metric, Muse, The Black Keys, The Dead Weather and a collaboration between Beck and fucking Bat For Lashes.

We don't know why all these musical geniuses keep allowing their output to be the score for a pair of glowering fashion models unhappily competing for a needy, uninteresting Stephenie Meyer stand-in who wears the same magical underwear as Glenn Beck, but whatever you think of the films, that roster cannot be argued with. It's like Bonnaroo for glitter-suckers.

Jonah Hex: An obscure comic-book cowboy badass who alternates between shooting the shit out of those who would prey upon the weak and getting knee-walking drunk, Jonah Hex seems like he'd go over well with modern-day audiences. This probably explains why the studio has monkeyed around with the film extensively, changing directors more often than Rush Limbaugh changes pain-pill prescriptions.

By now Hex basically looks like the final chapter in the "Flintlock Vigilante Shitstorm" trilogy that began with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and continued with Van Helsing. However, back when the film still had a tiny bit of potential, Mastodon were hired to do the soundtrack. And we're always up for new Mastodon material, even if it isn't the original soundtrack they were going to hand in before they changed the tone of the film and brought in a director who thought he should be the one who tells goddamn Mastodon what to do musically.

Seriously, avoid the studio-mutilated clusterfuck of a film and just stick to the soundtrack.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: This indie flick based on an indie comic and directed by the same guy who did Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz looks like it's going to be the greatest thing ever. Michael Cera resumes the role of Michael Cera, who must battle a series of ex-boyfriends for the affections of his dream girl - except it's less like a schoolyard fight and more like the trials of Hercules, because everyone involved has superpowers.

Nigel Godrich (Radiohead's OK Computer) is producing the soundtrack, which, like Twilight: Eclipse, will feature Beck and Metric, as well as Broken Social Scene, Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and will even feature a bass guitar vs. synthesizer fight between Beck and avant-garde musician Cornelius. Seems like the only thing bad about this movie will be the inevitable overuse of the word "hipster" in its upcoming reviews.