With bootleg copies ripped on the Internet or not and with an $87 million opening weekend for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” it looks like the nerdiest summer movie season ever is off the races.

Hollywood, caught in the digital maelstrom, certainly is fine and dandy making bank by co-opting all the techie themes, gadgets and special effects, with a slate of movies over the next months that are like catnip to geeks of all kinds.

Including BoomTown, for example, which plans to fork over a lot of dough to pay for all the techtastic entertainment that those old media moguls can dish out before they collapse.

Here’s the roster and video trailers of key movies this summer:

Star Trek, May 8

It looks sassy enough with a hot, young cast in what is, like “Wolverine,” a prequel from when the crew of the Starship Enterprise were mere pups.

But one funny quibble comes from a post on the Mania.com blog called “10 Reasons to be Worried About ‘Star Trek’”:

“The New Bridge Looks Like an Apple Store: I love my iPod, but all the Apple Stores I’ve visited are located in the 21st century, not the 23rd. Made of frosted plastic shades and lawn furniture borrowed from the local Pinkberry, the bridge looks built to handle scenes of Kirk negotiating a kegger with the Vulcans more than the sparking explosions and flying bodies of the original.

One can imagine Kirk, trying to sweet-talk his latest alien conquest, and the bridge’s iTunes shuffle mode kicks in.”

Angels & Demons, May 15

Mathematical formulas, hidden puzzles to figure out the path of light through Rome, antimatter, Galileo?

Oh, I am there, except for Tom Hanks’s (playing Robert Langdon) shorter but nonetheless unfortunate haircut from “The Da Vinci Code.”

That and all the glaring but entertaining inaccuracies about science, religion and art from author Dan Brown. As if, I care.

Terminator Salvation, May 21

I am still in mourning over life without Summer Glau, given that the television show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” might be canceled after lackluster ratings in its second season.

I will have to trade that superb show for the grumpy grumbles of Christan Bale as John Connor in this fourth outing of the killer-cyborgs-from-the-future series of movies.

This one is set in the post-Judgment Day time, so it will have a lot of dusty, oily fighting with machines and grim grimaces about the dire situation (which, to be fair, bites).

Still, as always with my beloved “Terminator” movies, I’ll be baaaaaack.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, June 24

More machines noisily battling it out while humans get stomped. Sometimes, I think these movies have been thought up by people who hate their cellphones.

Still, the first “Transformers” was funny about all the tech, and this one looks like it could be amusing too.

Also, given that I have two young boys, I have played with a lot of Transformer toys since the last movie came out and they really are cool.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, July 15

I. Love. Harry. Potter.

I cannot control this fact and I am a wee bit perturbed by it.

But it is so, especially with all the creepy special effects that seem to get super-creepy in this sixth outing.

These movies just have gotten better and better, as have the young actors who play the main parts, so it’s hard to imagine it not being completely excellent.

Also, the whole pensieve thing rocks. The whole Dumbledore thing, not so much.

[PhotoShopped "Star Trek" publicity still courtesy of Mania.com]

Yesterday, BoomTown opined that Microsoft was nearing a decision on who would become the head of its digital efforts.

And, according to several sources and some puzzling by me–if an agreement can be reached–I think that Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer’s top choice is former Yahoo tech star Qi Lu.

While this is by no means a done deal, Lu is just the kind of top tech exec that Ballmer and Microsoft would warm to over a more media-centric choice like former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig or former AOL head Jon Miller.

Lu was EVP of engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo (YHOO), where he ran all development initiatives for its search and monetization platforms. He was at Yahoo for a decade.

If Ballmer manages to pull off the hire of Lu–on the heels of already grabbing another top Yahoo search exec, Sean Suchter, which I reported on yesterday–the aggressive exec could almost be bypassing a Yahoo search partnership he has long sought by sucking the talent right out of the place instead.

Ballmer is like Edward in “Twilight,” attracting top-notch search execs to Microsoft’s Redmond HQ, as if they were geek versions of Bella.

Lu would be a different choice for the post than many had expected, with a much more technical background than one in online media or advertising sales.

But since all of Microsoft’s future rests on winning in the search and search advertising space and trying to catch up with its archrival Google (GOOG) from way back in the race, Lu is also well suited for the position.

If Lu takes the job, he will be the boss of three strong digital execs at Microsoft: Satya Nadella, the SVP who heads engineering for Microsoft’s search, portal and advertising platform group; Yusuf Mehdi, whose online services portfolio includes marketing, online audience business development and product management for MSN and the search properties; and Brian McAndrews, the SVP for the advertiser and publisher solutions group.

Lu is known as as solid manager, but he is also called a very nice man and unusually humble for a tech star by many, which could be a good influence on Microsoft.

Before Yahoo, Lu was on the staff of the IBM Almaden Research Center, and worked at both Carnegie Mellon University and Fudan University in China (he also got degrees from both places).

And, in the kind of cred Microsoft likes, Lu holds 20 U.S. patents.

He left Yahoo after becoming dissatisfied with all the turmoil there, quitting in June, without another job lined up.

Since he left Yahoo, there have been rumors that he might be headed to Microsoft, but not in such a prominent job.

There has also been speculation that Lu would take a position at Facebook or even return to China for a tech job.

The well-respected Lu certainly has a multitude of choices, but the chance to lead money-laden Microsoft’s digital efforts–as it suits up for battle with Google–is compelling.

BoomTown has been poking around to try to figure out who Ballmer would choose for the digital head, ever since the man who used to be in charge, Kevin Johnson, quit in July, after the software giant’s takeover bid to buy Yahoo failed.

Several people close to the situation say Microsoft’s Ballmer has been keeping the deliberations close to the vest–perhaps because so many of those he has targeted have declined to consider the job.

But this week, many sources both inside and outside the company have told me that Ballmer is close to announcing his choice.

Annoyingly, one source has decided to play a digital version of “The Da Vinci Code” with me, dribbling out clues–more technical than media, very well liked in Silicon Valley, humble–about the candidate, which he wanted me to solve as if I were Robert Langdon and on the hunt for the progeny of Jesus.

Well, my solution is in: Microsoft’s most promising digital Holy Grail is Lu.

On a related note, bizarrely, the day after this column broke the story about Lu’s leaving Yahoo, I caught him by accident in the background of a video I was doing at a Harvard Business School event honoring Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

You can see him at 4:14 minutes in the video, laughing at me, as I bother Greylock Partners VC David Sze and make a bad pun related to former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner’s departure from Yahoo.

Here’s that video:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.