While most TV shows are on summer break, viewers now get a chance to catch up with the episodes that everyone has been talking about and rekindle the romance with off-beat summer season premieres.

The Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce invites the public to share their input and hear others ideas on the potential revitalization of the historic Strand theater in downtown Dover. The meeting is open to all, on Thursday, June 20 at 7 p.m., at the McConnell Center Cafeteria, 61 Locust St., Dover.

Rated PG-13

“Man of Steel” is not only a great Superman movie, but a great Superman story in exactly this way; it tells us one of our classic tales and helps us see one of our most-beloved characters with fresh eyes while changing almost nothing of note, and does so with a deft and perceptive emotional touch even as a stunning amount of destruction is wrought across two planets.

Tele-Cine/Spain and Germany, 1970: On a remote Turkish island, beautiful vampire Countess Nadine Carody (Miranda) lures unwary girls with her seductive lesbian supper club act. She sets her sights on zaftig blonde Linda (Stromberg), initiating her into the covenant of love and sex beyond the grave. After their first carnal encounter, Linda wanders the beach in a daze and falls under the care of Dr. Seward (Price), who’s intent on using Nadine to become one of the Undead himself.

Paramount Pictures, 1976: Trelkovsky (Polanski), a wimpy clerk, is searching for a flat in Paris. He stumbles upon a good deal, but the Concierge (Winters) tells him the previous tenant, Simone Choule, is near death after hurling herself out of the apartment window and crashing through glass panels below. But it's a really great apartment.

a cult comedy finds a new future in its rich past

It’s no accident that the first episode of the season is titled “Flight of the Phoenix.” Good comedy works on two levels. Great comedy works on as many levels as possible. “Arrested Development” always has so many plates spinning at once that many of those levels aren’t even discovered until after multiple viewings. The first episode title alone refers to the mythological bird of rebirth, the Arizona city, the online college, air transportation, and familial abandonment.

The Random Shopper’s Darius Kazemi comes to Portsmouth to talk about the art and aesthetics of creative coding

The Next Big Thing in the literary world may not be the next Great American Novel, but a piece of randomly-generated e-literature. And if you’re waiting for the next genre-defining album to drop, you might look to a remix instead, a mash-up created from an algorithm that tracks MP3 streams online. This is creative coding, an avant-garde aesthetic movement that uses aspects of open source computing code in service to purely abstract or artistic ends, instead of being confined to solving business-based practical problems. Pixel Media will host a creative coding conversation with Darius Kazemi on May 30, an event that speaks directly to the creative minds of the Seacoast tech community but is free and open to all.

Serena Films, 1964: This film belongs to the genre of cheap period horror films that were churned out in Europe throughout the 1960s. They were taken somewhat seriously by audiences there, but largely ended up in drive-ins over here. The film has a creepy and cozy Gothic feel, from the gypsy caravan wagon used by the troupe, to the requisite rowdy tavern (“Wench! More wine!”) to the Count’s ghastly castle.

At first it seemed like 2009’s J.J. Abrams-directed “Star Trek” was a reboot of this sort, like “Battlestar Galactica” or “Batman Begins,” as it recast all the characters, radically upgraded the visuals, and even changed a few key pieces of story. It was fresh and fast and dazzlingly bright, something which still felt like Star Trek and yet looked nothing like the past. With “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” though, it’s clear that there is something even stranger afoot.

rated PG-13

Unfortunately, Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” falls so far outside these boxes, it’s not even on the playing field of adaptation. Imagine an amusement park rollercoaster named “Richard III” or a sport-utility-vehicle called the “Oedipus Rex” and you have a rough idea to what extent this movie can be considered an adaptation of the slender 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

excitement about this year's season finales has us remembering the best

The year “Dallas” debuted, “The White Shadow” season finale of 1978 featured the basketball team deciding to form a singing group; in the “Mork & Mindy” season finale, Mork befriends a caterpillar. But by the time the curtain closed on the Ewing’s Southfork Ranch in May of 1991, “L.A. Law” was throwing people down elevator shafts and “St. Elsewhere” was smashing wrecking balls through its own hospital walls.

Sequels are the cruelest of all film phenomena. Held in contempt by their creators, by the industry at large and by audiences, we nonetheless live in desperate hope exactly because our expectations are so low. And then, BAM! Sucker-punched again, sucker! No matter how low your expectations, Hollywood can always go lower.

J. Arthur Rank, 1967: The sets, cars and costumes look expensive, the effects and direction are excellent, and it’s never boring, traveling from swinging London to sun-bleached Liguria. It’s astonishing that the two hit-girl lovelies are allowed to be as viciously sadistic as they are, gleefully dispatching male victims with spear-guns.