Everyone loves a good summer blockbuster. Who but the most soul dead can avoid getting caught up in the swollen hype, sprawling billboards and ceaseless action of summer’s biggest films? Even if you’re not a fan of such gloriously guilty pleasure cinema, it’s tough not to get dragged into following the make-or-break nature of the summer blockbuster season. These are films into which a lot of money is invested. A huge commercial success can keep a studio solvent and launch top dollar careers (do you think Peter Jackson could have made the wildly expensive King Kong were it not for the smash hit Lord of the Rings films?), creating names that become legend. By contrast, a big commercial flop can dash reputations to pieces, and in some cases even put a studio under. When a blockbuster fails, it can only fail BIG.

Blockbusters, most especially that special breed of them, the summer blockbuster, are a big, big deal.

They are also big, big fun. Sometimes big dumb fun, sometimes big smart fun, but always BIG. Tiny shoestring indies these ain’t.

Memorial Day weekend fast approaches, and with it the start of the Summer Blockbuster Season, the unofficial beginning of a time for big successes and even bigger failures. What better time for to celebrate the summer blockbuster? All this week you’ll get nothing but big, huge films filled with big huge explosions, creatures, action and actors. BIG! You just know names like Tom Cruise, Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford and George Lucas are inevitable this week. Francis Truffaut? Only if we’re talking about Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, my friend. We’ve got dinosaurs, star destroyers, Scientologists, and a trip down summer blockbuster memory lane with DIMP’s own Lex M.

But we’re not going to do it alone. We all have fond (or not so fond) memories of a huge summer blockbuster, a trip to the theater, or how a certain film defined a summer. That’s where you come into play. Log into our forum at the HOLLA! Link below and post your comments on your favorite summer smashes; your biggest disappointments; that time you saw Star Wars six times in the same day; or how you swore The 13th Warrior was going to be the biggest thing ever. God, bag or ugly, it doesn’t matter. Whatever your thoughts, we’d like to hear them. We have only one rule: Talk summer blockbusters. Next week we’ll bring together the best of your posts for a special look at what DIMPers love and hate in a summer blockbuster.

And you never know, there just might be some free loot in it for you if you participate.

So grab your lightsabers and join us this week as we celebrate the mega-majesty that is the summer blockbuster. It’s bound to be huge … in a DIMP sort of way.