Movies This Year

One of the things we do at work, at lunch and otherwise, is talk about movies, old, new and forthcoming. We kibitz and argue and I get a lot out of it. I like talking about movies about people who care about them.

The one movie I am excited about that NOBODY else is is Speed Racer. I think it’s incredible looking. I suspect it’s going to massively flop, but I hope not. It reminds me a little bit of Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy–which I find to be awful, but was an interesting experiment. My hope is that Speed Racer will be more than just interesting.

I enjoyed Iron Man very much, despite being very sick when I saw it. I juiced myself up on cold medicine, grabbed a handful of cough drops and we saw it last weekend. I followed the Iron Man comic in the 1980s so I do have longstanding (holy cow, 20 years) interest in the character. I thought the casting was great, and the movie was fun. Good action, believable characterizations: the film worked. I think criticisms like those voiced by Matthew Baldwin are valid, and I think his superhero movie pet peeves are particularly apt.

Interestingly enough, the funniest things I’ve read about Iron Man are not about the movie, but come from the Again With The Comics blog, which dives into the decades of history of Iron Man to find the more wonderfully ridiculous aspects of the character and his rogue’s gallery. For example: Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: The Iron Mullet!, Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: the Iron Nose and lastly: Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: Obadiah Stane’s “Costume”

I think Lebowski might’ve looked pretty good in that! Well, maybe. I’m curious to see how the sequels might do. Oh, and one last AWTC post: Iron Man 2 Villain Suggestions. And though that is a funny post, Black Lama really is a character who is “other-dimensional counterpart of Gerald Ford,” Wikipedia confirms this.

The other two “big” movies I want to see this year are Wall-E and The Dark Knight. I’ve been a fan of Pixar animation for decades, and a Batman fan even longer.

Speaking of animation, I would be remiss if I did not bring to your attention a Bollywood/Disney computer animated film called Roadside Romeo, which I found via Cartoon Brew:

It looks truly bad, though I will admit that I’m not the intended audience. It does include a heaping dose of ‘tude. Though John Kricfalusi does not care for the Simpson’s, when I think of ‘tude, I think of Poochie.