Sure, it’s cornier than pig feed, but that worked for me. I think that the movie has been a critical/box office failure for a few main reasons:
1. Critics haven’t forgiven them for the Matrix Sequels… Which were deeply flawed but I still kinda liked.
2. The film is squarely aimed at kids, and should be viewed in that context. Most reviews have missed this point.
3. Most parents must have seen the frantic, colorful trailer and thought: “There is no effing way I am sitting through two hours of THAT!”
The flick has a charming, almost Willie Wonka (70s version) vibe to it, and I’ll never complain about being allowed to gawk at Susan Sarandon (is it fucked up that I think she is WAYYYY hotter than Christina Ricci, who is 33 years younger than Sarandon?). Here she is on Craig Ferguson… YOUCH.
Anyway, the movie is visually arresting (even though I can see how others wouldn’t be able to take it)… I was probably better prepared for it after FIVE HUNDRED Mario Kart Wii races.. :-] Seriously, there’s no need to make that Mario Kart movie now, y’all. I just saw it.
Matthew Fox was also awesome as Racer X, and any flick with this bit of banter can’t be all bad:
Trixie: Oh my god, was that a ninja?
Pops Racer: More like a “non”-ja. Terrible what passes for a ninja these days.
I gotta think this finds a much bigger audience on DVD… It’s no masterpiece, but it’s a freaking fun ride if you are up for it.
I’d love to see a Vice President Edwards, but that seems unlikely. How about Attorney General Edwards? Or Secretary of Labor Edwards?
I wish he had done this months ago, but it’s still great news. I tip my bonnet to the North Carolina Senator, and cackle heartily over how devestating this is to the Clinton zombie campaign… :-]
In one week, Barack Obama will clinch a majority of the pledged delegates and declare himself the “Presumptive Democratic Nominee.” There is no plausible scenario where the superdelegates would overrule primary and caucus voters, so this ends in a week.
Yes, Clinton will flail about for a spell beyond 5/20, but she’s reached the point of irrelevance. Electorally, she’s like those Japanese soldiers deep in the jungle who didn’t find out WWII ended for years.
Before we turn to the general election contest (which I fully expect to end in an relatively easy Obama victory), it’s worth reflecting on Obama’s already amazing feats: Toppling one of the most powerful political families in American history, bringing millions of new voters into the electoral process, succeeding with a grass-roots fundraising strategy, and becoming the first non-white Presidential nominee for a major political party.
To paraphrase that 2004 Kerry bumper sticker: I dated Edwards, but I married Obama… It’s been a kick-ass honeymoon thus far. :-]
West Virgina has the 5th oldest population in the US, so don’t be shocked when Clinton destroys Obama tonight. As Chuck Todd pointed out over on MSNBC’s First Read, this is the political equivalent of an NFL team playing a meaningless regular season game (against a team headed home for the holidays) before it goes into the playoffs. The players put on the pads, there’s some hitting, some scoring, but it doesn’t change things for either team.
So get ready for Oregon next week. The great pacific northwest will be where our next President declares victory in the Democratic nomination contest… It should be pretty fucking awesome, don’t you think? :-]
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
Who does this bitch think she is? George Wallace? Archie Bunker? David Duke? Fuck. However, she’s right about an emerging pattern: The stupidity and arrogance of her own campaign.
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game.
That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state’s 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.
Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. “How can it possibly be,” Ickes asked, “that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn’t understand proportional allocation?”
And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don’t get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she’d be the nominee.
Very soon, we won’t have her to kick around anymore. THANK GOD.
With Jack entering the terrible twos, it’s harder than ever to get out to the movies. On top of that, it’s also more expensive than ever, if you factor in the $20 we paid our next door neighbor to babysit. Thus, if I bother to drag my ass out to the theater for a flick, it BETTER NOT SUCK. Thankfully, Iron Man avoided suckage in all respects, even if it was a far-from-perfect film.
Don’t get me wrong… This is a solid, entertaining film, but it doesn’t completely avoid the common pitfalls of superhero “origin” movies. This shortcoming is largely covered up by the winning performances of Jeff Bridges, Gwenyth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and, most overwhelmingly, Robert Downey Jr. His Tony Stark is Xander Crews with a brain, and a conscience that develops over the course of the film. His charisma and sense of humor help separate Iron Man from the growing legions of superheroic movie protagonists.
Apparently things will get darker in future films in the series, which Downey Jr. certainly has the acting skills to handle. Hopefully we’ll see the same jump in quality from the Iron Man flicks and we saw from X-Men to X2…
