Nat’s TV or Not TV

Look, the moment I heard that they cast Robert Downey Jr. in the role, I knew that there was someone thinking clearly behind the Iron Man film, and had good expectations for it. I felt it was one of those exactly-right casting choices, and the film itself, and the critical response, proved me right. And it’s a very good, very watchable film, doing a good job of keeping strongly to the source material without being an awkward kludge. Visually lovely, witty, and fun.

But having said that, there were a few things that seemed to me to be missed opportunities or going more to an overused trope than need be. Consider the Spoiler Alert about Iron Man flag to be flying.

• This is not a superhero film, in that Iron Man does not act as a superhero during it. His actions are all either self-defense, correcting mistakes he himself wrought, or revenge (even though it may benefit someone else along the way.) This isn’t Spidey swinging through the city looking for crime. Sadly, this is a common element of a number of supposedly-superhero films… and comic books as well. And I’m not saying that there isn’t room for things like X-Men and Hulk that run on this self-defense motif, I just think that we could use a bit more real superhero out there, folks who are intentionally improving the world through their actions. (Having said that, there is some legitimacy to doing the movie like this, in that in the comic book, Iron Man is often working in his bodyguard/protector of Stark Industries form.)
• The big confrontation is Iron Man versus the bigger, eviler version of himself created in reaction to his existence. Didja see the trailer for the Hulk film? Looks like the big battle is Hulk versus the bigger, eviler version of himself created in reaction to his existence. Me, I don’t agree with the villain-must-be-tied-to-the-hero’s-origin assumption that runs through almost all superpower movies… and the pairing of Iron Man and Hulk storylines just seems to hammer it in.
• The use of “Jarvis” as the name for the computer interface is a cute little reference, but would seem to take Jarvis the Butler himself off of the table as a character for any upcoming Avengers film. Which is a shame, because that’s the character in The Avengers with the most interesting point of view.
• When the cell phone rang, I didn’t recognize the tune (I’ve never watched those old Marvel cartoons), but just because of the way it was featured, I thought “I bet that’s the theme for some old Iron Man cartoon”. Which means it maybe should’ve been more subtle.
• But I liked the Stan Lee cameo much better than other folks seem to have. Confusing Stan Lee with Hugh Hefner is actually legit; they are really parallel people, these two magazine-creators with strong comics interest who go on to serve as visible figureheads. Yes, the man who named Bruce Banner has a lot in common with the man who named Barbi Benton.

It ain’t perfect, but it’s a pretty darned good film. If you think you might wanna see it, you probably do.

Yes, I admit it. Having 25 cents worth of leftover rice from takeout Chinese food a couple nights back means that I go out and spend several bucks on ingredients for a meatloaf. So this one has:

• 20 ounces of ground sirloin (a first), bought for about $3.50 in the meat-on-sale-but-you-gotta-use-it-tonight pile. I like sirloin, and it’s leaner than most ground beef — 10% fat.
• 14 ounces of tofu, firm. And that’s the end of the special purchases. This makes a rather high ratio of tofu to meat, and I didn’t mix it all as vigorously as I sometimes do, so this may be a rather heterogeneous loaf. We’ll see how that serves.
• Shredded green beans, or whatever the right term is.
• The rice (mostly white, a little brown)
• Taco sauce
• Chinese crunchy noodles
• raisins (I’ve decided that’s my signature meatloaf ingredient)
• Spaghetti sauce on top.

Cooking now. Will update with the results.

(time passes)

Pretty much a failure. The tofu and sirloin didn’t mix, the thing had no structural integrity, and it was quite bland (I’m trying to avoid adding forms of sodium, but, well, you gotta.) Not inedible, but not recommended.

Partway through the first season, and Back To You has already jettisoned two of their three females cast members (eliminating the weatherwoman, and recasting the daughter), while retaining all of the men. Threatens to be another Spin City.

I just discovered that if you do a Google Image search for “Nat Gertler” nude, you get 230 results. Very few of these have anyone nude in them, and none of them have a picture of me at all.

I think we’re all relieved by that.

(Why yes, I was awoken by my daughter before 4 AM and have not been back to sleep since. Why do you ask?)

(Wrote this about a week ago, but it went unposted due to blog problems, now fixed.)

My Network TV, the grouping of stations formed by the leftovers from the WB/UPN merger, has been flailing about for a reason to exist. Last week, they secretly snuck into the sitcom business, launching Under One Roof. If you want to keep people from realizing that you’re entering the field, a good way to do it is to use a title that will seem familiar because it’s been used for multiple failed series in the past.

Then, for content, you can do something that just seems like some past sitcom - let’s say a streetwise African American (get a rapper to play that) goes to live with his upper-class, tight-ass, sweater-wearing and bow-tie wearing relatives with the sexy, stupid daughter. But if you’re thinking that this boils down the being The Fresh Flavor Flav of Bel-Air, then you’re expecting a show with more subtlety and class than this has. This show is played broader than that, less grounded in any sort of reality, and more grounded in, well, pretending every type of ugly stereotype that one can yank up is funny. In fact, if you think prison rape is funny, then you’re going to love this series, because the entire first episode (streamable over the web, which is how I watched it) is one long prison rape gag! Because nothing is funnier than violence and sexual degradation.

There’s a lot of racial stereotype humor here; the lead characters are either the ugliest vision of black folk (Flavor Flav is a bling-laden ex-con with a string of babies left in his wake from one-night encounters) or a vision of being divorced from your black roots. But the most insulting aspect of this show is that it presumes that this sort of crap is what an African-American audience wants. Lucky for the world, this is My Network TV, and they’ve been amazingly efficient at finding things that viewers do not want.

I’ve been predicting for months that the first War On Terror-themed fiction film to make a real profit at the box office would be Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. All these serious and well-intentioned (and in some cases even good) takes on it aren’t things that people are ready to see… but they’re ready to admit the ridiculousness of it all.

Opening weekend estimates have H&K2 bringing in $14.5 mill, which is more than its production budget, and is less than half a million shy of what Lions For Lambs, with its killer Redford/Streep/Cruise cast, brought in during its entire domestic run. It’s more than the lauded Stop-Loss did during its entire run. It’s a little shy of what the $70 million budgeted, $47.5 million grossing The Kingdom did during its first weekend, but 50% more than Charlie Wilson’s War’s opening (so I guess NPH is a bigger box office draw than Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts combined.)

Still haven’t seen the film myself, but they’ll get my money likely before the week is through. (It looks to be a heavy movie period for me, as I saw the enjoyable Forgetting Sarah Marshall on Friday, and will definitely be seeing Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and Speed Racer on the big screen, with the likely additions of Baby Mama and Young @ Heart.

Pope Benedict XVI turns 81 today.

What didja get him?

Me, I got him a coffee mug that says “World’s Greatest Pope” on it.