FIFTY WAYS TO MAKE THIS YEAR SUPER, MAN

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jan 1, 2006 | by Stephen Phelan

What do the next 12 months hold? Find out with our cultural calendar for 2006.

1SUPERMAN RETURNS: High school friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster originally created The Superman as a Nietzschean villain, given phenomenal powers by a mad scientist in the January 1933 edition of their own private sciencefiction fanzine. Siegel quickly saw the character's potential as a good guy in a bad world, and over one summer night in 1934 wrote a comic book legend around this "man of steel" - an alien with the hopes of mankind on his shoulders - while Shuster supplied the artwork, in what he called "the brightest colours that we could think of".

Siegel and Shuster went on to spend decades in litigation over ownership of the character, even as Superman himself became a figure of enduring pop-cultural myth. Stocky actors Kirk Alik and George Reeves played him with their hands on their hips in the early film and TV serials, Dean Cain put a lot of gel in his hair as the pretty 1990s version on The New Adventures Of Superman, and most recently Tom Welling has portrayed his human alter-ego Clark Kent as an extraordinarily boring middle-American naif in the popular teen drama Smallville. But there hasn't been a big-screen Superman since the late Christopher Reeve last sported the iconic red panties in 1987's excerable anti-nuclear adventure Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

This summer, after years of false starts, there will finally be a new superblockbuster, and a new man of steel (embodied by strapping young fellow Brandon Routh). Former X-Men director Bryan Singer promises a cosmic adventure movie that will fly from the floor of the ocean to the edge of the universe, but also an awkward modern romance, as Superman returns to Earth after a mysterious absence to find that his human dream-girl Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on with her life. Kevin Spacey will play supervillain Lex Luthor, hopefully with enough pizazz to offset the traditional problem of all Superman movies - the do-gooding, indestructable tediousness of the hero himself.

Released July 14

2THE SOPRANOS: The best television programme ever made returns for a sixth and penultimate series of psychological drama, subtle character comedy, sudden violence and unexpected poetry.

Channel 4, April

3KELVINGROVE MUSEUM REOPENS: Since June 2003, there have been JCB diggers trundling along the halls of Glasgow's favorite building (as voted by the public in 1998). Floors have been ripped up to create new spaces, and the glistening refurbished museum will feature modernised galleries and study centres amid the polished and unimprovable Victorian interiors.

Reopens summer

4RADIOHEAD: While Coldplay have conquered the world with a weak echo of their sound, Radiohead have increasingly refused to express themselves clearly. The musical results have been abstract but satisfying, cerebral yet visceral, and their forthcoming seventh album should see them attack both Western foreign policy and complex neo-classical time signatures with sonic and academic passion.

Released March on Parlophone

5THE WORLD CUP: As befits a competition staged in Germany, everything is already in order. The stadiums have been prepared. The draw has taken place (some countries have taken this in better spirit than others - when supermodel Heidi Klum pulled the fixtures for Group C, pitting Serbia & Montenegro against the Netherlands and Argentina, one Belgrade newspaper reported that she had "sent us to hell"). More importantly, the official mascots have been selected - Goleo the Lion and his sidekick Pille the talking football. The scene is set, then, for all the spectacular displays of sporting prowess, millionaire petulance and ugly nationalism that we may expect of a modern World Cup Final.

June 9-July 9

6THE CULTURAL COMMISSION: The Scottish Executive has taken its sweet time in responding to the Cultural Commission's report on the place of the arts in the future of the nation - and no wonder.

The damn thing is 540 pages long, replete with diagrams, appendices, indices and language such as this: "This option meets the criterion insofar as the status quo goes."

Nonetheless, we will soon know exactly how the government plans to act under advisement in sucking the creativity from our brains and putting it to vibrant and lucrative cultural use.

The Culture Minister's formal response is due in January

7THE SMOKING BAN: The last cigarette will be stubbed out around club closing time in the early hours of Sunday March 26 - from 6am that morning, there will be no more smoking in Scotland's enclosed public spaces. Some will cheer in a bold new age of public health, others will decry the victory of illiberal legislation, but if Scotland is like every other country where similar bans have been introduced, cigarette sales will soon fall by up to 20per cent, which should at least stick it to the big tobacco companies.

March 26

8THE DA VINCI CODE: If star Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard can reproduce the captivating stupidity of Dan Brown's dubiously researched and semiliterate megaselling novel on screen, then this may well be the biggest movie blockbuster of all time. Brown's new book The Solomon Key, which speculates wildly on America's masonic origins, will also be published this year.