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I freak­ing loved Iron Man. Looooved it. Loved it so much I saw it twice and now own it on Blu-Ray and watch it about once a month. It’s a great film, and John Favreau did a great job of helm­ing a pos­si­bly career-sinking film¹. It’s cool and smart and con­fi­dent and funny and smart and Robert Downey Jr., who a few years ago I would have writ­ten off as Cory Haim-in-the-present mate­r­ial, soars as Tony Stark. And hav­ing any­body else play Stark² would have been weird in hindsight.

And I really love that movie. I truly do.

And now Iron Man 2 is com­ing up this Fri­day. And I couldn’t be more ner­vous about it.

I’m wor­ried it’s just gonna be ter­ri­ble. I think my rea­son­ing is that the first time around there wasn’t so much focus on who the bad guys are, and I think that the peo­ple play­ing the bad guys are bad choices. The Bat­man fran­chise started to die when the films focused more on the bad guys than on Bat­man. Mickey Rourke? Really? He looks ter­ri­ble. And silly. And Scar­lett Johans­son? Man, she’s so one-note actress (like Natalie Port­man) it’s not even funny.

Maybe it’s the prod­uct tie-ins (I’ve seen about 25 in the past cou­ple of days) or the bad guys in the movie. I don’t know. Just have a strange feel­ing about this one. Maybe it’ll be dif­fer­ent once I see it, and I’ll see it, but we’ll see.

UPDATE - The reviews are in and they aren’t that great. Com­pared to the 92% that the first Iron Man film got among the top crit­ics on RT, IM2 has got­ten a rous­ing 66%. One of my favorite authors, Cory Doc­torow tweeted “Iron Man 2: the stu­pid, it burns. Wait for DVD, watch in Ital­ian, pre­tend it’s opera.” I kinda feel bad for John Favreau, who’s a great direc­tor, but I’m sure he’s laugh­ing all the way to the bank since IM2 brought in, in the open­ing week­end, $128,122,480. Typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood. We’ll see, after word of mouth, what the dropoff will be.

1. Just ask Bryan Singer of Super­man Returns fame. [↩]
2. Nicholas Cage and Tom Cruise were inter­ested in play­ing Stark. [↩]

Ever since Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar hit movie the­aters last year peo­ple have been oohing and ahhing at the tech­nol­ogy that was employed to make the very-true-to-life planet of Pan­dora seem real. His use of 3-D tech­nol­ogy and the abil­ity to cre­ate pho­to­re­al­is­tic computer-generated char­ac­ters out of pix­els was cool and ahead of its time and cost a whole lot of money to make…and it shows. The film *looks* great and it’s enjoy­able and all, but I’m glad it didn’t win the Best Pic­ture Oscar. That would have been like giv­ing Star Wars the Best Pic­ture for hav­ing really awe­some spe­cial effects.

And every­one said that Avatar would be a game changer, the meme was com­ing down the pipe even before the movie was released and the whole under­stand­ing of why it would be the game-changer-to-be was because of the pho­to­re­al­is­tic char­ac­ters. But for some rea­son that whole angle of the film has been lost in the cloud that it was in 3-D.

Glo­ri­ous 3-D! Plants and ani­mals and those Huey heli­copter look­ing VTOLs and float­ing moun­tains and all. All of it in 3-D. And like I said ear­lier, the film looks great.

So now other stu­dios have latched onto that break­ing new tech­nol­ogy from the 1950’s also and films all over the place are about to be released in 3-D, whether you want them to be or not. Clash of the Titans was filmed in stan­dard 2-D, but after Avatar splashed big Warner Bros. went back and made Titans into 3-D to sat­isfy this unquench­able desire for Perseus and the Kraken and Medusa’s head to be in 3-D. The remake of Piranha is going to be in 3-D and even more films are com­ing out in that cut­ting edge 20th Cen­tury technology.

But butts in the seats in the­aters have been declin­ing for the past sev­eral years since HD has been intro­duced into the home the­ater mar­ket. The big stu­dios have been ask­ing them­selves what could bring peo­ple back to the the­ater and they think they’ve found it, for now.

Going back to the game changer — I don’t see why the stu­dios haven’t fig­ured out yet why Avatar is really such a big deal, because it’s fairly obvi­ous. Maybe it’s because of legal issues that would be involved in the mak­ing of film, but the log­i­cal end to what Avatar has brought us is film­mak­ers being able to have any actor or actress, liv­ing or dead, in their film. George C. Scott as Robert E. Lee in a Rid­ley Scott pic­ture? Done. Jimmy Stew­art and Jim Car­rey finally together in a com­edy after all this time? Doable. Grace Kelly back to play Julia Roberts’ mother? Not impos­si­ble. All it takes is a bunch of LEDs on a stand-in actor’s head and we can paint Char­lie Chap­lin in a new com­edy from the Far­relly broth­ers. He could eat poop or some­thing and then do a funny dance.

Voice tal­ent could be big then and actors that never got work before could (secretly) put block­busters on their resumes. Like I said, legal issues abound, since the fam­i­lies of these peo­ple might dis­agree with allow­ing their loved ones to return from the grave to be res­ur­rected again on the big screen, but every­one in Hol­ly­wood has a price, right?

So 3-D? It’s a fad again. Hol­ly­wood should look to the real future — har­vest­ing dead actors for profit.

When I was a kid my fam­ily and I would rent a condo in Puerto Val­larta and go to the beach for a cou­ple of weeks every other year or so. It was great, and we’d just hang out and go to the beach and explore around. We did a booze cruise too, but since I was 7 at the time it didn’t mean very much to me, but at least we got to go on a big boat.

And the peo­ple of the area were very nice and we always had a great time there. It was fun.

So fast-forward many years later. To a month or so ago.

I had seen the pre­view for Amores Per­ros at the Inwood The­ater many years ago and remem­bered at the time that it had been said that it was a sort-of Mex­i­can Pulp Fic­tion, so when I saw it was going to be on IFC a cou­ple of weeks ago I set up the Tivo to tape it. It sat there for awhile, wait­ing for us, and we finally watched it.

Oh boy.

If you don’t know about the movie, Amores Per­ros fol­lows sev­eral groups of peo­ple in Mex­ico City in a non-linear story. There is Octavio, who is in love with his brother’s wife and wants to help her leave him, so he starts putting his pet Rot­tweiler into dog fights. There’s also a guy who is cheat­ing on his wife with a soap opera star and her dog falls down in this hole in the floor and then she falls into the hole and requires some sort of surgery and she can’t walk any­more. And there’s a home­less guy who’s a gun for hire, killing peo­ple for money, but all he really wants is to see his daugh­ter again and tell her that he loves her, so he double-crosses two busi­ness part­ners and steals their money and then.…

But that would give away the end­ing, which, like mostly every­thing in Amores Per­ros, is heart-wrenching and sad.

And what you see of Mex­ico City is hor­ri­fy­ing. It’s actu­ally worse than Man on Fire, which was also a film about a guy who’s seek­ing revenge for a kid­napped lit­tle girl in Mex­ico City. The only thing that Man on Fire has that Amores Per­ros doesn’t have is a guy gets his fin­gers chopped off. Or Den­zel Wash­ing­ton. He’s in Man on Fire, which makes the cool quo­tient of Man on Fire rise dra­mat­i­cally.

But still, Amores Per­ros is ter­ri­fy­ing. And I’m also glad I never paid to see it, unlike Trainspot­ting. I will never go to Mex­ico City after see­ing this film. Do I want to fear for my life, or that I might be kid­napped, or a fam­ily mem­ber might be kid­napped and then held for ran­som? What if I paid and that fam­ily mem­ber was killed by the kid­nap­pers? Or caught in a car chase where some­one is rac­ing an injured dog to the hos­pi­tal? Then again, the dog is a Rot­tweiler, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it dying, but still, what if I was hit by those guys while dri­ving? And then a crazy home­less hit­man stole my wal­let while he was pre­tend­ing to help me? And what if a crazy home­less hit­man killed me while I was there? How much would some­one in Mex­ico City pay to have me killed if the Peso is so low to the dollar?

It bog­gles the mind. Give me a fake dreamy Mex­ico where the peo­ple are friendly and won­der­ful and no one will kill me if I decided to travel there. I’ll take Mex­ico in the late 1970’s for $1000, Alex.

What were some of Glenn Vance’s hap­pi­est mem­o­ries of trav­el­ing as a child?

You know the answer.

The Place: Sky­walker Ranch.
The Sit­u­a­tion: A cre­ative meet­ing is tak­ing place to cre­ate a new Star Wars char­ac­ter who will be the focus of a new live action tele­vi­sion series that takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.Major brain­storm­ing is going on.
The Peo­ple: Present are George Lucas and the Lucas­Film data­bank keeper.

Data­bank Keeper — “Okay, so what have we got so far?“
George Lucas — “Noth­ing. We have noth­ing.“
DK — “Alright…what is it? Human, crea­ture of some sort.…something…“
GL — “Not human. We have enough humans. Make it a crea­ture.“
DK — “Sen­tient or not?“
GL — “Def­i­nitely sen­tient.“
DK — “Wise or not?“
GL — “Wise? Like Yoda?“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL -  “Hmm…not so wise. Just nor­mal.“
DK — “Okay, a nor­mal crea­ture. What does it look like?“
GL — “Furry. Tall and furry.“
DK — “Like a Wook­iee?“
GL — “Okay…no, make it short.“
DK — “Like an Ewok?“
GL — *Sigh* “Scratch furry. Make it scaly. And green.“
DK — “Like Greedo?“
GL — “…Okay. Scaly, green, big beaver teeth.“
DK — “Like Wal­rus Man?“
GL — “Why is this so hard?“
DK — “I don’t know. You thought this stuff up.“
GL — “Short. Pigish…creature.“
DK — “Like an Ugnaught?“
*George hits his fist on the desk — repeat­edly*
GL — “Okay, not scaly and green. Scaly and…orange.“
DK — “…Orange is good.“
GL — “Yes, orange is good. Don’t have many orange crea­tures.“
DK — “What do we call the orange creature’s species?“
GL — “How about a…Rith.“
DK — “No can do. Too close to ‘Bith’. And ‘Sith’.“
GL — “Toy­nar­ian! Vim­ban­ite! Morax! Any­thing!“
DK — “Toy­dar­ian, Mim­ban­ite, Gorax. Already done.“
GL — “Okay…Flangian.“
DK — “Flan­gian?“
GL — “Yes. A Flan­gian. He will be a Flan­gian.“
DK — “Where did you come up with that?“
GL — “I just…cre­ated…it.“
DK — “Fine. What’s the Flangian’s back­story?“
*Silence for 5 min­utes*
GL — “The Flan­gian was recruited by crim­i­nal ele­ments on his home world, Flan­gia, and even­tu­ally grew up on a crime boss’ ship, the Bardo’s Luck. He even­tu­ally bought his free­dom from the crime boss and joined went to the Impe­r­ial Acad­emy. He was a good pilot but he got kicked out for…some reason…so he got back into crime and smuggled…things…around the galaxy. And then for…some reason…he got caught up in the Rebel­lion.“
DK — “…That’s Han Solo.“
GL — “YYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!“
He breaks a tech­ni­cal Oscar against the wall.
DK — “You know this isn’t easy, George! Remem­ber how long it took you to come up with Yoda?“
GL — “Jar Jar was so much sim­pler.“
DK — “Yeah, but the whole ‘race’ thing with him…“
GL — “Yeah, that sucked.“
DK — “Yeah.“
GL — “Okay…he grew up privledged, but then was sent to a farm when his par­ents died. He moved to a swamp planet and then after being hunted down by Dark Jedi he fled there to go live with…Ewoks or some­thing. And his best friend, he’s a Jedi too, and so his friend and he love the same girl but finally have a duel on a space plat­form -“
DK — “…You’re kidding…right?“
GL — “…What?“
DK — “That’s like every­body you’ve ever cre­ated in the whole saga, main-character-wise.“
GL — “Hey, who came up with this? Me? Yes, me! I’m detect­ing a more crit­i­cal tone than usual, so don’t screw with me! Mak­ing this stuff up is hard!“
DK — “Well exsqueeze me.“
GL — “Shut up, Jar Jar.“
DK — “Okay, easy one. What’s his name?“
GL — “How about…Fluke Bolo?“
DK — “Or Gorge Mucus? Come on, man! Are you kid­ding? Are you really out of ideas? Come on, man!“
*George hangs his head*
DK — “What should we call our scaly orange Flan­gian? I don’t know. Just say what­ever pops into your head. That’ll be his name.“
GL — “Bill.“
DK — “Bill?“
GL — “That’s the first thing that popped into my head.“
*George twid­dles his thumbs*
GL — “Okay, we can work with…Bill.”