A couple friends and I kicked off the summer movie season a day early last night, catching a 9:00 showing of Iron Man.

Iron Man completely overpowered my expectations. I've always been more of a DC than a Marvel guy, so I haven't read that many Iron Man comics, but I'm familiar with Tony Stark, the origin story, and what role he's been playing in the Marvelverse recently. So when I heard that an Iron Man movie was in production, I was skeptical that a good superhero movie could be made about a guy with a heart condition.

Boy was I wrong. This is one hell of a movie. It happily forgoes being too heavy handed (though the first 20 minutes, setting up Tony Stark's playboy image is a little much at points) and revels in being a comic book movie.

There isn't a great ton of action, but this is a comic book movie with character development (gasp!). The choice of villain was superb, and the performances are top-notch all around, including the usually-annoying Gwyneth Paltrow.

This is a the best superhero movie since Batman Begins, and I want to see the sequel right now.

Also, make sure you stay through the whole credits for an interesting surprise.

Labels: Comic Books, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:33 AM | Permalink | |

Those of you who know me know that I love movies. I love the movie-going experience, and there is no better season for movies than summer. My love affair with summer movies began in June of 1993 with Jurassic Park and has continued ever since. Last summer was kicked off by the disappointing Spider-Man 3, but the summer wasn't a total loss between Ratatouille and Stardust. This summer, there are very few sequels on the docket, and a lot of variation out there. Here are my highlights:

May
Iron Man - May 3 (trailer)
I'm seeing this tomorrow at midnight, and I'm eager to see this movie. Iron Man never really topped my list of favorite superheroes, but this movie looks surprisingly good. And Robert Downey, Jr. is pitch-perfect casting. As long as the villain's good, this looks like a surefire hit.

Speed Racer - May 9 (trailer)
The season seems fairly top-heavy, but Speed could be a surprise hit. The racing scenes in the trailer remind me of the podracing in that unmentionable Star Wars movie (which isn't a bad thing). We'll see how weird the Wachowskis end up making it.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - May 16 (trailer)
While the first Narnia movie wasn't perfect, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm glad the same actors are back playing the kids, and the new cast looks solid, and the action (the only thing really lacking in TLTW&TW) seems upped.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - May 22 (trailer)
I get mild goosebumps from just typing that. I've been waiting to see an Indiana Jones film in theaters since...well forever (I was 3 when Last Crusade was released). I'll be seeing this as soon as I can, and more than once.

I'll cover June, July, and August in a forthcoming post.

Labels: Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:16 PM | Permalink | |

Smoot-Hawley Tarrif?

WSJ:

The Democratic Party's protectionist make-over was completed yesterday, when Nancy Pelosi decided to kill the Colombia free trade agreement. Her objections had nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with politics, but this was an act of particular bad faith. It will damage the economic and security interests of the U.S. while trashing our best ally in Latin America.

The Colombia trade pact was signed in 2006 and renegotiated last year to accommodate Democratic demands for tougher labor and environmental standards. Even after more than 250 consultations with Democrats, and further concessions, including promises to spend more on domestic unemployment insurance, the deal remained stalled in Congress. Apparently the problem was that Democrats kept getting their way.

Maybe Pelosi should take some high school economics.

Labels: Economics, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:42 AM | Permalink | |

I should have put up an Oscar post yesterday with my predictions, and I certainly meant to, but an excellent afternoon nap snuck up on me. So you probably won't believe me, but all but two of my predictions was accurate (I didn't bother making predictions about the minor awards). I got everything right but the two actresshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif awards (I thought Ellen Page and Cate Blanchett were shoe-ins). Here's a link to the list of winners.

I thought Jon Stewart did a much better job hosting this year than last year, but overall it was a bland awards ceremony. The only cool part was Marketa Irglova getting the time due to her.

Labels: Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:00 AM | Permalink | |

My hero this week is former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who endorsed rival John McCain yesterday:

In his campaign, Romney used TV ads and personal appearances to question whether McCain was truly a conservative and to criticize the senator as a longtime Washington insider who had accomplished little change. But Thursday, the two stood together in Boston.

"I think you're very well aware of the issues where we disagreed," Romney said. "Right now, the Democrats are fighting. Let us come together and make progress while they are fighting."

I wonder if all factions of the GOP will share his sentiment...

My hack this week is a U.S. woman who wants to clone her dog:

A woman from the United States wants her dead pitbull terrier - called Booger - re-created.

RNL Bio is charging the woman, from California, $150,000 (£76,000) to clone the pitbull using tissue extracted from its ear before it died.

The work will be carried out by a team from Seoul National University, where the first dog was cloned in 2005.

There are enough animals out there who need good homes to worry about cloning.

Hero/Hack Bonus Content:
The new Indiana Jones trailer is out, and it's good. I've only been waiting for this movie since...Desert Storm? While I remain somewhat skeptical, it still looks like it's going to be better than Temple of Doom. Enjoy:

Labels: 2008 Watch, Cloning, Hero/Hack, Indiana Jones, Movies, Pets

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:45 AM | Permalink | |

This is how my professor for "Economics of the Great Depression" started our first class yesterday:

Labels: Economics, Media, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:42 PM | Permalink | |

So last night I watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's a great film (probably the best film ever in terms of demonstrating single-timeline time travel), and one of those which I forget just how good it is between viewings.


Anyway, on to the meme portion of this post. In the movie, Bill and Ted bring back eight historical figures for their history report. They are, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Ludwig von Beethoven.
Which eight other historical figures would you bring back? Then tag five people, because it's the typical number for these things.

My List:
1. Plato
2. Julius Caesar
3. St. Augustine of Hippo
4. Charlemagne
5. Isaac Newton
6. Winston Churchill
7. Ben Franklin
8. Andrew Jackson

Because they seem likely to answer, I'm going to tag Anna Venger, Hube, Paul, Miss AO, and Jeff.

For those of you without blogs, feel free to answer in the comments. Or, answer on your own log and link back here.

Labels: Meme, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:22 AM | Permalink | |

My 2007 Hero of the Year is General David Petraeus. He is one of the driving forces behind the recent move forward that seems to have been made in Iraq this year. The military architect of the surge, Petraeus has led the New War Forward, a long overdue policy change by the Bush Administration, brilliantly.

I was skeptical of the surge in the beginning, as I didn't think we needed more troops. What convinced me was taking a closer look at the strategic shifts being made in conjunction with the troop increase and the leadership Petraeus showed.

See here, here, here, here, and here for related posts from this year.







My 2007 Hack of the Year is Hollywood. While the big studios turned out a lot of crap this year (thinking about Spider-Man 3 still makes my blood boil a little bit), they also released a tremendous number of films directly opposing the Iraq War. Nominally, I don't care. Both Across the Universe and The Bourne Ultimatum had some sort of anti-government/anti-war/CIA themes to them, but I still found them enjoyable despite this because those themes were appropriate for the characters, etc.

Now, making a watchable film with a political bent, but the box office suggests that the highest profile 7 anti-war films to be released in the past 6 months are not great films to begin with, or that the public is just not interested in anti-war propaganda masquerading as entertainment. Charlie Wilson's War, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone, Southland Tales, A Mighty Heart, and Lions for Lambs have currently a box office total of $50.956 million. For comparison, the patriotic and family fun film National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets made more than those 7 films during its first week of release!

You're telling me that Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep (twice), Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, The Rock, Justin Timberlake, Seann William Scott, and Sarah Michelle Gellar, with upteen Oscars and billions in past box office performance couldn't make a film that can even match box office performance of a film about the guy from Con-Air and Ghost Rider peaceably kidnapping the President while looking for a City of Gold? Pitiful. That's why Hollywood is the 2007 Hack of the Year.

By the way, go see National Treasure 2 if you get the time. Almost as good as the first one, and a ton of fun.

Labels: Hero/Hack, Iraq, Movies, Petraeus

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:00 PM | Permalink | |

This post isn't to give a rundown of the overall Hollywood picture for 2007, but for me to talk about what my favorite films were.

This year I saw 7 of the top 10 grossing films of the year (same number as last year). Spider-Man 3 was easily the most disappointing film of the year for me, as Spider-Man 2 is just so good.

I'd give it a three-way toss up between 300, Live Free or Die Hard, and The Bourne Ultimatum for best action film, and give Ratatouille best animated film.

The two most interesting films I saw: Grindhouse and Across the Universe, the latter of which would be runner-up for my favorite film of the year.

Movie I wish I had seen but didn't: The Darjeeling Limited.

Another movie that will hopefully not be overlooked come Oscar-time (there were a lot of clunkers between this film's release and now): 3:10 To Yuma. Fantastic film, stellar performances from both Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, two of the best (only?) leading men we have.

My favorite film of the year: Stardust. Hands down. A fun film with great performances all around, especially by Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro. Can't wait to snag the DVD on the 18th.

Labels: Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:55 PM | Permalink | |

In lieu of Hero/Hack, and in honor of the World Series, I'm posting an essay I wrote over the summer about the Boston Red Sox (slightly edited):

I’m not a Yankees fan, but I think I might hate the Boston Red Sox. I didn’t always hate the Boston Red Sox, as neither the teams I usually root for are in rivalries with them (the Phillies and the A’s). I didn’t hate the Red Sox until they won the World Series.

You may say, but Ryan, didn’t the Red Sox and their fans deserve that World Series in 2004? Sure. I sympathize. After all, no major Philadelphia team has won a championship in my lifetime as of this writing. But there is something that happened to Red Sox fans after they won the Series. They became obnoxious.

Before, Red Sox fans were kind of like that friend that is a really great guy, super nice, but always manages to royally screw up any relationship he’s in. Now, they’re like someone who has one accomplishment to their name and manages to bring it up in every conversation he has.

The fans are not entirely to blame, however. I partially hate the Red Sox because I see Red Sox merchandise everywhere. I walk into a Lids in any mall in America and they will have as many Sox hats as they have of the local MLB team. Sox fans used to be like a club that was kind of exclusive. It used to be romantic. Now it’s just pedestrian.

I recently watched two films about the Red Sox phenomena: Fever Pitch, based on the Nick Hornby book of the same name and starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, and Game 6, written by Don DeLillo (a New Yorker) and starring Michael Keaton (Batman).

Game 6 is a drama, and Fever Pitch is a romantic comedy. Released a year apart, they are extremely different films, although both male leads are hopeless Red Sox fan. Michael Keaton’s Nicky Rogan is a writer struggling to balance everything in his life including the opening night of his new play and Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Baseball fans know that the 1986 World Series was especially tragic for Sox fans because it was one of the more spectacular ways to lose, something the Red Sox seem to excel at pre-2004 (both films touch on this phenomenon).

Nicky Rogan ultimately skips opening night of his play to watch the Red Sox. That’s dedication if you ask me. Nicky knows deep in his heart that the Red Sox will lose. It is as certain as the sun rise. Some things just seem doomed for failure. Even though he is urged on to believe, and he does begin to believe, his hopes of a Red Sox victory are ultimately crushed when the ball passes between Bill Buckner’s legs.

Nicky sums up the pre-2004 Red Sox fan when he says, “the Red Sox are always winning, until they lose.” This was the epitome of every Red Sox fan, hoping for the win, expecting the loss. It was romantically tragic.

Fever Pitch may mark the turning point of Sox lore. It’s a good romantic comedy, and Jimmy Fallon isn’t annoying, which is saying a lot on both counts. It’s a charming film. Girl falls for boy who is already in love. With the Red Sox. It has some great moments, and would have been a great film, except that the most unfortunate thing happened while making the movie: the Red Sox won the World Series.

Fever Pitch captures the essence of what it meant to be a Sox fan. Barrymore’s Lindsey Meeks sums it up when she says to Ben, “you're a romantic. You have a lyrical soul. You can love under the best and worst conditions.” This is why being a Sox fan was about romance. It was hopeless, but you held out no matter what, even though they always disappointed you. It makes the Red Sox seem more tragically romantic in end. But winning changes everything.

Suddenly, by the end of the movie, Lindsey and Ben live happily ever after, and the Red Sox win the World Series, something that hadn’t happened since 1918. It just isn’t realistic. The one year the Red Sox win big, and so does he? Only the stuff of fiction. Again, I don’t fault the Farrely brothers, as they couldn’t help the Sox won as they made the movie, but things like that don’t usually happen in real life. For a movie about the most notorious losing team in baseball, it is just too happy.

And so now, almost three years after the Red Sox winning, they are again in the World Series, and their merchandise and their fans are seemingly ubiquitous. The Sox don’t represent anything about our culture anymore. They used to be the ultimate underdog. Now they’re just winners who tease the Luxury Tax. They have become the thing they have despised for so long: the Yankees.

Labels: Movies, Pop Culture, Sports

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:08 PM | Permalink | |

Alright. I admit it. I like Harry Potter. A lot. I started reading them in 1999 when the paperback of the first book came out. Being an avid reader, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I was immediately hooked.

Since then, I've read every book, though only once (I think). I've also seen three of the five movies. I saw the Sorceror's Stone in the theaters and hated it. I skipped the second one entirely, saw The Prisoner of Azkaban on DVD purely because the trailer for the Goblet of Fire movie looked so good. I have yet to see Order of the Pheonix movie, but I'll get around to it.

In the buildup to the last book, I had largely become ambivalent to the series as a whole. Though I was delighted by the GOF movie, the Half-Blood Prince had left me cold. I can't pin down why exactly, but it did. So the run up to this book felt almost like an obligation (I had the same feeling for Revenge of the Sith, but was pleasently surprised). I was going to read it because I owed it to the series to finish it. Fine.

Now however, I am just excited. I think one of the reasons that these books have enchanted readers is because they are told unpretentiously, and without an obvious moral lesson to the whole series. There are moral lessons throughout, but they aren't the end.

It captures the imagination because well, it is like Star Wars. Think about it! Young kid finds out he has mysterious powers and goes under the instruction of an accomplished old British actor to wage a battle between Good and Evil.

Even Barack Obama gets in on the act:

"The challenge will be scheduling Harry Potter reading time in between Iowa and New Hampshire and fundraising, but I guarantee you they will figure out a way to do it," Michelle Obama told the AP. "Harry Potter is huge in our house."

Anyway, it is good to read for enjoyment, and I shall do just that once I get my pre-ordered copy from Borders.

In case you were wondering:
Favorite Book/Movie: Prisoner of Azkaban
Favorite Characters: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Snape

Labels: Books, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:36 AM | Permalink | |

Last night, the American Film Institute did their 10th Anniversary Special of their 100 Years 100 Movies List, with a new list taking into account the films made in that 10 year period. Or so they told us.

I missed the special itself, but looking at the list this morning, I find myself pretty disappointed. I'm not going to really talk about the rankings themselves (except for noting that Jaws should be much higher on the list), because they're pretty subjective, but I want to look at the new additions and the films that got bumped.

Now, I will admit I don't generally watch movies made before World War II. It isn't that I don't like them, I just tend to not be able to relate as well. I'm not particularly fond of Citizen Kane (the #1 movie) either. I find it odd that 4 films from that era are 'New Additions" to the list.

Only three movies from the last 10 years were added to the list: Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Sixth Sense, and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Those I've seen, and I think that they should have just added The Lord of the Rings. It really is just one film, released in three parts, like the books. Not sure Titanic or The Sixth Sense really belong on this list.

To me, the tragedy is some of the films that got bumped for other movies I've never heard of. Those include: Amadeus, An American in Paris, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Doctor Zhivago, Fantasia, The Manchurian Candidate, and Patton. (The Third Man is on its way from Nexflix, incidentally)

So what do you think about the list? Also, a Schrutebuck to anyone who has actually seen Sullivan's Travels.

The List.

Labels: Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:03 AM | Permalink | |

My hero this week is the yet-to-be-named Circuit City employee who helped thwart the Fort Dix terror plot earlier this week:

A male employee who works at Circuit City behind the Moorestown Mall is the unsung hero that first enabled authorities to foil the Fort Dix terror plot.

Circuit City corporate spokesman Jim Babb confirmed this morning that a current employee was asked by one of the alleged terrorists to dub a Jihadist training VHS cassette into a DVD.

The clerk alerted Mount Laurel police about the video in January 2006, who then contacted the FBI, which launched the investigation.

Glad some people are still paying attention to this kind of thing.

My hack this week is the Movie Picture Association of America (MPAA) board for ratings:

The MPAA said Thursday that its rating board will consider film depictions of smoking among the criteria for assigning movie ratings...when a film's rating is affected by the depiction of smoking, the rating will include such phrases as "glamorized smoking" or "pervasive smoking."

I don't smoke, but this just seems really stupid.

Labels: Hero/Hack, Movies, Terrorism

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:24 AM | Permalink | |

Note: I've tried to keep as many spoilers as possible out of this review. Anything in the trailers or previous two films is fair game, natch.

I really like comic books, and comic book movies, when they're done right. I usually call Superman II my favorite (even more so after seeing the Richard Donner Cut), though the previous Spider-Man movie, Batman Begins, X-Men 2, and The Incredibles round out the top 5.

That being said, Spider-Man 3 isn't the worst superhero movie I've ever sat through (that title goes to the God-awful Punisher movie from the '80s). It is however, the least heroic. Peter Parker does not act like a hero anywhere in the movie. Sure he saves some people, maybe thwarts some criminals, but it doesn't ever seem like he's acting from the motivation that makes a hero.

In this movie, Spider-Man is an egotistical jerk. And that's before he gets the angry suit. When it's all said and done, I don't want him to get the girl, he's the anti-hero that cries.

The main problem, however is that there is simply too much plot and too many characters. It gets very convoluted, and we don't spend as much time with each character as we should. They should have dropped a villain entirely and picked one story line to follow.

Topher Grace did a decent turn as Eddie Brock, and Thomas Hayden Church was good as Sandman, though one of those characters felt ancillary to the plot as a whole. From this Wikipedia section, you can see how the development, adding so many components to the movie, really hindered its ability to tell a good story.

The action sequences are spectacular, and there's a decent amount of good stuff in the movie to make it a decently enjoyable experience, but the plain fact is that it could have been so much better.

Recommendation: If you're like me and need to see it for yourself, see it. If you think you can, wait for the DVD.

Labels: Comic Books, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:59 AM | Permalink | |

Neal Stephenson, this blogger's favorite author, has a piece in the NYT today on 300:

A WEEK ago Friday, moments before an opening-day showing of the movie “300” at Seattle’s Cinerama, a 20-something moviegoer rushed to the front of the theater, dropped his shoulders, curled his arms into a mock-Schwarzenegger pose and bellowed out a timeless remark of King Leonidas of Sparta that has in the last week become the catchphrase of the year: “Spartans! Tonight we dine in hell!”

Groans, roars, macho hooting noises and sardonic applause rained down on him. The audience had been standing in line for an hour. Only a few of them were dressed as Greek hoplites. They were much better balanced between men and women than I’d expected and, racially, looked like a fair cross section of Seattle’s populace. Over the next couple of hours, they enjoyed “300” with roughly the same level of energy and audience participation as one would expect in an N.C.A.A. Final Four game.

Read the whole thing.

I think this might lend more credence to the opinion that Stephenson is a libertarian, but I find that this is a much more well reasoned review than mos, because he does a much better job explaining the success of 300 than most.

Labels: Movies, Stephenson

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:37 AM | Permalink | |

Saw 300 last night. In a word, surreal. And of course, the Battle of Thermopylae is extremely important to Western Civ. This sums up my thoughts about the political "messages" in the movie:

To which Kid Various can only reply – maybe it’s not such a bad idea for America’s teens to understand, in the phrase of J.S. Mill, that war is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. Maybe it’s not such a terrible tragedy for young men and women in our country to get the message that there are things that are worth going to war for. There are things worth dying for.

It might even be a good idea for young American men and women to understand why Thermopylae was important for the survival of Western civilization and that, yes, there is indeed something distinct called Western civilization. That this civilization is characterized by pluralism, individualism, democracy, rationalism and reason.** And that more so, the rest of the world does not necessarily share these values. That most of the population of the world has, from time immemorial, suffered under the constraints of tribal/traditional culture that has led them only to despotism, penury, superstition… and defeat.

Labels: History, Movies, Western Civ

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:12 PM | Permalink | |

Being born in the 1980s, I was completely unaware that there was any controversy surrounding Superman II until I heard about this DVD release. The first Superman movie is viewed favorably by causal fans and fans alike (The only problem I have with it is the spinning-the-Earth-backwards thing at the end). Superman II doesn't have the mass recognition of its predecessor, but no where near the laughing stock that III and IV are, neither which I have seen due to their reputation.

Wikipedia has a good article dealing with the background of this release, and I'll merely summarize by saying that in the middle of production, Warner Bros. fired Donner and hired a replacement director, and following that, the script was semi-retooled, and some scenes were reshot. So what we have here is a completely different version of Superman II, with about half comprising new material. Some of the scenes from the theatrical release remain, mostly those directed by Donner before his departure, but also some by Lester, the replacement director, which were necessary to make up for the halt in production.

The DVD of The Richard Donner Cut was released in November, and I had the chance to watch it recently, and to my surprise, I think this is a far superior version of the film. Gone is the light humor that punctuated the theatrical release, and this leaves General Zod and his cohorts seeming much more sinister. Hackman's Lex Luthor is unchanged, largely because all of Hackman's scenes were filmed before Donner departed production. This version begins exactly where the first film left off, making more Superman, Part II then a true sequel, preempting Pirates of the Carribbean by several decades. The Donner Cut also restores the how Superman got his powers back, a scene excised from production due to Marlon Brando's large pay demands, filing a -wimilede plot hole in the original cut.

The only downside is that the intended original ending to Superman II is restored, and I won't spoil it, but t involves my least favorite aspect of the first film, though it was always intended to be the end of II, and the first would have ended differently.

What amazes me is how well this version of the movie fits in with Superman Returns. It now makes a cohesive trilogy, especially with some of Jor-El's dialogue now common to both II and Returns. While the Donner/Reeve Singer/Routh Superman films are not as true to the comic history as I would like, they are now at least coherent within themselves.

Labels: Comic Books, Movies

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:04 PM | Permalink | |