I watched Iron Man yesterday and it rocks! I particularly liked that the writers took their time in developing Stark’s character and back story — like the Yinsen story arc — before jumping into the action, which was also nicely done. In fact, what made the movie special was that it was much more of an action-drama (the birth of a superhero) than just a pure action movie (a superhero goes around kicking ass). The dialogue, acting, and smatterings of humour were all really good too.

Of course it was interesting to hear Raza, one of the main bad buys, speaking Urdu. The last time we had a cool but seriously evil bald bad guy that spoke a language from this region was when Amrish Puri played Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — though, of course, he spoke Hindi and not Urdu.

Faran Tahir (who is of Pakistani origin, by the way) also played Raza a little less one-dimensionally than I was expecting, which was nice. That said, Raza was very much a mix between Puri’s Mola Ram and Crispin Glover’s Creepy Thin Man from the Charlie’s Angels franchise: “menacing” to the point of being almost funny, but still reasonably believable (like the bad guys from xXx, for example). [See update below]

Oh, and all US patriotism aside — this is an American superhero movie about a military weapons manufacturer, after all — it was interesting how they made the main bunch of over-the-top bad guys a reasonably international group of weapons traders who spoke Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian, and a whole bunch of other languages. All the cool terrorists are either Middle Eastern, Central European, or Scandinavian these days. Gone are the days of the evil Japanese, Vietnamese, Germans, and Russians…though the ultimate bad guy is still, of course, British.

Also, to keep up with the times, they moved the entire Iron Man story from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Even Yinsen (originally Ho Yinsen) had his back-story moved from “communist Vietnam” to “terrorist Afghanistan”. I guess that means the Bond franchise now has dibs on European bad guys; the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman franchises have dibs on American bad guys; the Transformers and Superman franchises have dibs on outer-space bad guys; and the Bourne franchise has dibs on the CIA and other intelligence agencies as bad guys. Have I missed any?

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say about the movie itself — a lot of others have already said pretty much everything I wanted to say (and have probably said it better) — so I’ll just link to some good reviews, instead:

• The Bad Astronomer recommends you go watch it.
• Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek loves what Downey Jr. brought to the role and appreciated the fact that the writers kept the focus on the characters and not the action.
• A.O. Scott from the New York Times says that this is “a superhero movie that’s good in unusual ways”.

All in all, it’s an excellent movie that I would highly recommend.

UPDATE: Trekker alerted me to this excellent PULSE News article on Faran Tahir and his role in Iron Man. In it, Tahir is quoted as saying:

“The thing I loved about playing Raza was the approach. It’s so easy in today’s reality, when you have a movie set somewhere in the Middle East or Afghanistan, to have everything become about the current terrorism in those nations. However, it wasn’t about that. It was about a different ideology. My group of people, my minions and I, are the real soldiers of fortune. We use whatever we can to get the power. It wasn’t about religion, but we’d use religion, corporate espionage — whatever we needed to get ahead. We have no alliance to anyone. We have our own ideology: profit, power, prestige — it brings everything to an honest level. People do a lot of things under the guise of ideologies, but it’s all about power in the end.”

Awesome. Now I’m really looking forward to seeing Tahir in the upcoming Star Trek movie.

Want a deeper and most awesome analysis of the recent WGA strike? Read Matt Prager’s essay on Lawrence Lessig’s blog.

I watched The Spiderwick Chronicles today. And while the movie was pretty good, I was most impressed by actor Freddie Highmore who played the twins Jared and Simon. (Sarah Bolger, who played their sister Mallory was also pretty good).

Highmore’s done a lot of other cool stuff as well. For example, he played Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was the voice of Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass. He’ll also be doing the voice for Astro Boy (slated for a 2009 release).

Chalk up one more young actor whose career I am looking forward to following (the other one being Dakota Fanning). Hmmm…I must now watch August Rush.

During my undergrad I became president of Alpha Hour — LUMS’ extracurricular club that showed movies, invited guest speakers to campus, and arranged discussion groups on interesting topics.

While I was president, though, it ended up being more of a film club than anything else. Every Friday evening, then, I’d borrow the video projector, book the school’s largest auditorium, and screen a couple of films. We’d show all kinds of stuff and, by the time I handed the club over to my juniors, it had become pretty popular.

The movie screening formula that I used also worked nicely: I’d show a popular movie or cartoon first (usually a comedy, romantic comedy, or action movie), take a half hour break, and then show a more serious movie (usually a drama, artsy movie, or cult classic). The first session usually filled the 370-seat auditorium, especially when we showed films like Titanic or Star Wars: Episode I. The second session, meanwhile, was targeted mostly to film buffs and/or hostel residents (I was both). I remember in particular our second-show screening of Apocalypse Now because, by the end of the movie, there were only eight people in the room :)

Coming to the point of this blog post: Having run a film club in the past, it made me really happy, then, when a friend e-mailed to tell me about the Punjnad Film Club that has recently started in Lahore (”alpha hour - all jumped up on volunteer adrenaline”, he wrote). We have a number of cinemas in Lahore but all of them focus on mainstream movies (mostly blockbusters) and PFC is a breath of fresh air for people who want to watch other kinds of movies as well. Here’s hoping they’re wildly successful.

Inspired by the hard-core science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke that eventually became real science, awesome article in Popular Mechanics on The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever.

As of today, you can search for local movie sessions and times through Google Australia. Awesome.

And it’s really simple to do, too. For example, type in “sweeney todd in melbourne” and off you go.

Deputy Dog has a list of 10 Stunning Ultra-Geeky Home Cinemas. Being a geek myself, I fully intend to build me one of those as soon as I can afford it — though I probably won’t go as far as these people have. Mine will based on the bridge of the Enterprise D, of course — a bit like #5 on the list — but it’ll be a lot simpler and a lot more practical. Something like this, maybe:

Check back with me in about five years and I’ll let you know how it turned out :)

Woo hoo! Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh are set to produce two live action films based on Tolkien’s the Hobbit :)  [\Film, Reuters]

I read two fun articles (via Digg) today.

The first is a list from the Onion’s A.V. Club called ‘Let It Die: 23 Songs That Should Never Be Covered Again‘. Excellent article. Very spot on.

The second is The Deadbolt’s interview with Will Smith which is, among other things, about his upcoming movie, ‘I Am Legend‘. I’m really looking forward to watching that movie and will write about it as soon as I do. Smith is one of my favourite actors and is also one of my favourite people-I’ve-never-met. I like him particularly because, despite all his success, he’s still an honest to goodness, real down to Earth guy.

Ah, the science fiction "babe". An elusive creature, if there ever was one — though that trend finally seems to be changing in film and on TV (thanks, Joss!).

Still, Flixster recently posted an article called ‘Science Fiction Film Babes Through Time‘ that lists five decades worth "babes" in order of "babe-itude". It’s a fun read. And though I don’t know a couple of the women listed there, in my opinion, their list is pretty accurate.