In Hollywood, the summer movie season is a lot like final exams for college students. It's that make or break time of year where, if you can come through in the clutch, you can save face after nine straight months of unmitigated incompetence. Did you lose $50 million on a movie where Jimmy Fallon plays a foster dad to a group of multi-racial superhero children? That's okay. One quick strike from one of your tent poles and you can say, "See, it wasn't all that bad."

But, in the words of De Niro in "Heat," "there's a flipside to that coin." See, even a good summer doesn't guarantee things are going to do well. Case in point: just a few days after the sequel to "Pirates of the Caribbean" raked in three times the GDP of Ecuador on its opening weekend, Disney exec and M. Night Shyamalan nemesis Nina Jacobsen got canned while in the delivery room waiting for her child to be born. Ouch.

Now that the dust has settled somewhat on this summer — with the exception of everyone over at New Line banging their heads against the wall overestimating the size of the "losers who live with their parents" demographic for "Snakes on a Plane" — let's take a look back at the good, the bad and the ugly of summer 2006.

Sumner Redstone puts a gun in the bathroom of The Ivy, shoots Tom Cruise.

The thing about Tom Cruise's ever-escalating craziness is that there was never anybody powerful enough to put a stop to it. He was like the killer from some awful slasher movie — none of us could put him down. That all ended last week when Viacom CEO and badass septuagenarian Sumner Redstone stepped in and decided to play Sam Loomis to Cruise's Michael Myers and not re-up Paramount's production deal with Cruise, effectively putting to rest any hopes of a "Vanilla Sky" sequel.

To make things better — or worse, if you're one of the three people who still like Tom Cruise — Redstone delivered a few well-timed parting shots, claiming, "We don't think someone who effects creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot."

Keep in mind, Sherry Lansing was gainfully employed on the Paramount lot for many years, so everybody over at Viacom has a lot of tolerance for decisions that cost the company revenue. The lesson: if you screw with Sumner Redstone, he will put you down like the dog you are. The thing is, I guarantee you Cruise won't leave — he'll show up at the Paramount lot on Monday, leading to Redstone screaming, "I shot him six times!" before collapsing in a heap.

"Superman" Tanks, putting future of all gay-themed superhero films in doubt.

This is what I love about Hollywood: the city goes nuts when a movie like "Superman" tanks and acts like the world has been turned on its head. Here are some reasons — beside the fact that it was a bad movie — why "Superman" did poorly: it's based on a comic book that people haven't cared about since Ike was in office; it was directed by Bryan Singer, who, at this point, is one step above Brett Ratner; it featured zero likeable actors (with the possible exception of Kevin "Yup, I'm the guy who ruined the Old Vic" Spacey); and, most of all, it was 154 freaking minutes long! People don't like to sit still for more than two hours. This is why America now hates baseball.

You think your summer was bad? Well, you can thank whatever higher power you believe in that you're not Warner Bros. president Alan Horn, whose performance this summer was about as bad as it could have been. According to the L.A. Times, the combination of "ATL, " "Poseidon," "Lady in the Water" and "The Ant Bully" may have lost the company $150 million. Not even the decent overseas performance of "Superman" and "Poseidon" could stop the bleeding.

See, the crazy thing is Horn is a top-notch executive. Last year he had "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and the fourth Harry Potter movie. Now, people on the Warner lot are looking at him like he doesn't even work there anymore. On the plus side, this all could lead to some sort of real-life version of "Elizabethtown," where a dejected Horn goes to his hometown and falls in love with a mysterious flight attendant who teaches him that it's not worth dwelling over his dubious decision to cast Richard Dreyfus as an action hero, all the while listening to some great Tom Petty music.

Really, if you produced a well adjusted, classy young lady like Lindsay "Double Shot" Lohan, you really should have your own television show. At least that is the thinking of Dina Lohan, the thoughtful, loving parent who stood by as her husband was imprisoned and her daughter went from nice young girl to slightly wild teen to atrocious mess. Oh yeah, and her husband is also doing hard time. Yeah, this woman seems really qualified to be giving advice. To her credit, Dina does claim that all of her friends call her "the white Oprah," although I think "the female Kit Culkin" would be more accurate.

Mel Gibson goes from alleged anti-Semite to confirmed anti-Semite.

By now, the details of "The Passion of the Mel" are well-known, but still, one has to hand it to the guy. If there was one Hollywood personality who absolutely, positively should not have given in to his Bacardi-chugging, Hebrew-hating inner voice, it's Mel Gibson. I mean, didn't we just go through this discussion with Mel a few years ago? See, this is the difference between celebrities and common folk. When people I know get drunk, they steal things from bars or argue about whether to go to Ian's or Qdoba. When Mel Gibson gets drunk, he claims to own large parcels of land in a prestigious beachfront community and comes up with far-reaching theories about the true nature of international conflict. The rich really are different from you and me.

LA Weekly and LA Times writers will kick your ass and steal your woman.

Is it just me, or does LA Weekly sound like the most exciting/dangerous place to work in America? Nikki Finke is a kick-ass journalist in the best sense of the word, from her work on the Pellicano case to her ballsy decision to call out golden-child slacker Kevin Smith. At the Times, props should be given to Claire Hoffman — who co-wrote a scathing essay about Tom Cruise's scientology connections last year — for laying a beatdown (literally and figuratively) on "Girls Gone Wild" mastermind Joe Francis after he tried to fight her during an interview. It certainly was a good summer for two of the toughest writers in Tinseltown. One wonders, however, what would have had happened had Vanity Fair reporter John Connolly been there when Francis tried to get rough. Old Joey might have been pulling back a stump.

Ricky Bobby to the South: "You guys suck."

To me, the craziest thing about the reaction to "Ricky Bobby" has been how people in the South actually think it is a celebration of their way of life. It's not. It's a raging blue state, "Fuck you," to all things southern. I mean, how can you consider yourself to be portrayed in a positive light when all the southern characters keep getting thrown out of Applebee's? Full disclosure: my favorite performance in the movie didn't come from Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Gary Cole or Ricky's red-headed son; it was Greg Germann as the team's owner. That man always makes me laugh. What has he been doing since "Ally McBeal?" The little exchange where he desperately tries to make conversation with the Halliburton marketing exec probably made me laugh harder than anything else in that movie.

Brad Grey lines his pockets using our nation's darkest day.

The whole World Trade Center debacle has been very upsetting to me. As someone from Washington, D.C., who experienced the attacks of Sept. 11 first-hand, I count myself among the people who think that a movie about 9/11 is totally unnecessary. I know what 9/11 was like. The people who lived in New York know what 9/11 was like. The people from major cities who feel a twinge of fear every time they get on a subway know what 9/11 was like. "World Trade Center" is a movie for people in the flyover states, with no personal connection to the tragedy — people who are desperate to feel some sort of link to what went on that day. I understand this, I suppose, but Paramount's marketing tactics have been downright despicable. From creating a MySpace group to promote the film to moving up the release date of the film in order to take advantage of a soft weekend — these are just a collection of classless, despicable moves designed to make a buck.