When this movie came out, I didn’t even have my doubts about its merits as a film. It was completely off my radar. Batman, I’m looking forward to. Spiderman or X-Men, someone could talk me into seeing. I never read the Iron Man comic book as a kid, and am not really interested in most of the comics-turned-movies that have been coming out lately. But then everyone started saying how good it was, so I went to see it. I do love going to the movies, and it’s not like Hollywood’s cranking out the must-sees lately. While this isn’t the best comic book movie ever (not by a long shot), it was a lot better than I would have thought a month ago. Robert Downy, Jr. is playing that charming role of his (some combination of wit and goofiness that he’s at his recent best in for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), and there was a fairly simple storyline and plenty of flying around coolness for an afternoon summer flick. Despite Jeff Bridges with a shaved head and a thick gray beard, Iron Man is a solid B action movie, on par, I’d say, with the first Spiderman.

In 1993, Michael Crichton predicted that in ten years, commercial mass media would be replaced by some more intelligent news source aided by artificial intelligence. Slate has an interview with him discussing how some of his predictions are coming true (albeit five years later than he predicted).

The film adaptation of McCarthy’s novel is due out at the end of the year, and I’m very glad to see they at least didn’t screw up the landscape. Story here.

The NY Times has an op-ed piece about $4/gal gas. The columnist, Thomas Friedman, argues that a truthful politician would come out and say gas costs what it needs to cost, and prices ain’t coming down. He says something odd in the middle, that a candidate ought to argue for a price floor to keep gas at $4/gal, which sounds just as foolish as arguments in favor of price caps. Most intro to economics books I’ve read lately all say the same thing, that prices are set by supply and demand, and the market will fix itself without price controls.

Friedman’s comment is this: “Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. ” That’s strange wording, because at first I thought Philip Verleger Jr. was arguing for a price floor. Why would an economist do that? I wondered. But I think the syntax indicates Verleger would call what Friedman is proposing a “price floor,” not necessarily arguing for one himself. I figured this out when I googled Verleger and read some of his articles here.

I couldn’t find anything about Verleger arguing for a price floor, but he did have an analysis of the oil market. In short,we have a growing global economy, which has increased demand. Prices will rise until demand stabilizes. Time for a fuel efficient car.

Tadd pointed me to this a while back. It’s great.

Because I don’t have cable or internet at the house, I bought some movies from Blockbuster’s three for $20 bin, and I had high hopes for this one. Brad Pitt usually does a good job, and I love westerns. 3:10 to Yuma, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, all three of them last year pulled through, but The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford missed. The cinematography is great–cool landscapes, some interesting blurring of the lens, but the story didn’t hook me. It has a narrator, and is presented kind of like a documentary. Jesse James and Robert Ford are both interesting characters, and the acting was well done. I think the problem was that the focus was off–the movie opened by focusing on Jesse James, and somewhere in the middle Robert Ford’s character took over. James was human in places, a shadow of a myth in others, and this inconsistency in presentation robbed the character of his draw, made him kind of flat. Plus the movie was nearly three hours. Had it capped in at 100 minutes, it might have been the best thing ever.

Emily and I went to see this last night, and I had no idea what to expect, only that one of my old roommates said it was pretty good. It’s the same troupe of Knocked Up and Superbad, and this one was my favorite of the set. I like these guys because while they do movies with heart–romantic comedies, I guess–they aren’t Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. They’re a bit more down-to-earth, and a little away from the center. The plot of Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a bit trite–guy gets dumped, goes to Hawaii, and runs into his ex while she’s there with another man–but the characters are interesting enough to carry the story. That the main guy is a musician writing a rock opera based on Dracula says it all, I think.