Iron Man 2 (2010)

I liked it.

What I've been hearing on the Interwebz is that the movie tries to cram too many things in two hours, and that it's as bad as Spider-man 3.

I know I've been neglecting my blog and my reviews, and granted, this post is three-four weeks past opening night, which makes it TOO LATE. And so much for getting back in-game with Prince of Persia; I took my uncles out on Friday, went back to work on Saturday, and grocery-shopped on Sunday.

Hopefully I'll have better luck next weekend.

Anyway, back to Iron Man 2: It's not as bad as everyone says it is. At least, not as bad to warrant a comparison with S-M3, which was messy and unsatisfying in its own right, since S-M2 is like The Empire Strikes Back of all comic book movies.

But IM2 (Iron Man, not Ip Man haha) does suffer from overcrowding in terms of characters and plotline details. Scarlett Johansson is really unnecessary in this, even though she looks superhot in black latex/leather. I'm not a guy, so adding her in the movie didn't really do anything for me.

The only awesome scene in the entire movie is the racetrack scene, which, contrary to my belief that everything journalistic is super-hyped at times, is really, well, pretty awesome. It's a great introduction to the damage that Whiplash/Crimson Dynamo amalgamation Mickey Rourke can do, and in my book, destruction always looks good onscreen.

Which brings me to the downside of the film. The final fight scene.

In Iron Man, the fight between Tony and Warmonger lasted 7-10 minutes. In Iron Man 2, what has the potential to be the biggest, loudest, awesomest battle scene between Tony and Ultra-Whiplash and War Machine, ends in under just one minute.

Yes. One. Friggin'. Minute.

In place, we're given attempts to placate Pepper, his not-really-exciting discovery of a new element (which was not named, and Googling attempts have failed to give me a name for this new element), and a bunch of other unnecessary scenes that could've been cut out and replaced with a longer fight scene, because the way the film was going, Ivan Vanko is clearly more awesome Obadiah Stane.

As can be expected from Iron Man, the movie is absolutely hilarious, and the cast does a stand-up job. We get to see more of Jon Favreau in this, and although I'm not a fan of directors putting themselves in their movies (*cough*M Night*cough*), his scenes are pretty funny. Ditto for Garry Shandling, whose humor I've never been able to appreciate all these years.

Anyway, as with all Marvel films nowadays, there is a short scene after the end-credits, and even though it doesn't make movie history like the after-credits scene in Iron Man, it's a prelude to what Marvel has in store for us in 2011.

All in all, it was pretty good, even with the anti-climactic ending.

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Things to look forward for the rest of the year!

Plenty of stuffs comin' out 2010, aside from the usual barrage of movies I'm always crazy about, like...:


1) Towers Of Midnight
With The Gathering Storm partially completed before Robert Jordan's passing, we couldn't really see how Brandon Sanderson being the new author affected the book, as TGS was totally freaking awesome!! Save a few very obviously not-RJ's writing style in some spots, some parts wrapped up a bit too quick (considering Books 6-10 were all about making more moneyunnecessarily complicating things), overall TGS exceeded my expectations by a million-fold. Towers of Midnight will be the first book in the Wheel of Time series to be fully written by Sanderson, and with TGS being so good, standards will be very, very high. For me, at any rate. Hopefully, it will be released this October.

2) Mystery Case Files: Game 7
MCF: Dire Grove came out last year, and having played through it, I was a bit disappointed that it was a stand-alone game, rather than a direct continuation form MCF: Return to Ravenhearst, which I thought was really really awesome after the headache that was MCF: Madame Fate. The yet-untitled MCF7 is slated for release at the end of this year, and promises to continue on from RtR, where at the end of that game, Victor the (other) villain is seen leaving in a time machine heading for 2008.

3) Post-release reaction to The Last Airbender
I'm a huge fan of the animated series. Though it was a solely Western production (no collaborating with Asian studios here), the series was set in a predominantly Asian world, with a rich history and loads of backstories based on real-life Asian and Inuit culture. Unfortunately, the movie has decided to cast the leads and those who have lines, with white actors, and no, the Dev Patel card doesn't work here, because he wasn't first choice, Jesse McCartney was. Props to McCartney for backing down. Serious deviation of the source material aside, the fact that the trailer looks pretty cool (a fact that I begrudgingly admit), doesn't really help. I'm interested to see what casual fans and non-fans alike think after watching the movie.

4) My Chemical Romance's next album.
Emo or no, The Black Parade was pretty awesome. My Chem's follow-up is slated for release some time this year, and I'm pretty excited, even though they're notorious for pushing back release dates, and cancelling things (*cough*Mama*cough*). Just sayin', is all.

5) Second half of the year
I've been really crazy-busy with work the past four months (up to the point I did 7-day weeks), and though I'll still be busy, I'm starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, knowing my track record, that light is most probably from the bullet train that's barreling down my way, but eh, I'm in the mood for a bit of positive-thinking, which doesn't happen often.

And that's it. Five things to look forward to this year doesn't seem much, but it's still good enough for now. Oh, and Iron Man 2, which I will be watching later on today (since it's like, 1am in the morning).

And Human Target, which airs at 10.30pm on TV3 every Sunday, which I totally forgot to watch last week 'cuz I was watching CSI: Miami.

[What made it worse was that it was a repeat, and not of a very good episode, either.]

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I can has Perfume!

I really can has xD

Last weekend marked my first weekend off in months, because I've been doing seven days since Chinese New Year's.

So I went to the bookstore, and got myself Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Yes, as in THE BOOK. It was only 24 dollars and not 32.95.

I'd link to a previous post that has me raving about how totally freaking awesome the movie was, but looking through the archive, there doesn't seem to be any. Huh.

So, here's a summary (or a recap, if there really was an earlier post):

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with an extremely keen sense of smell, able to distinguish even the minutest of scent, one from the other. He becomes obsessed with capturing scent and preserving it, or rather, its beauty, and through the course of the book, he goes on a killing spree, combining his victims' scent to make the ultimate perfume.

The book is much darker than the movie, although it's close. Maybe Alan Rickman didn't like how his character ended up in the book.

Anyway (if it hasn't been typed yet), I first saw the trailer when I got my laptop and was still crazy about iTunes. Even though it caught my attention, I conveniently forgot about the movie until my mom was telling me how Alan Rickman was in this creepy movie on TV once (she was trying to figure out the title so long I suggested Die Hard for the heck of it), and mentioned the word 'perfume'.

AND THEN I REMEMBERED !~!ONEleven

I was back for winter hols then, and luckily, they had a rerun that same month (of July of '08, if you were wondering). The rest, they say, is history.

I haven't had the time to properly sit down and enjoy the book again. Hopefully I can do that this weekend :)

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