Risselada Blog

Under discussion:

Iron Man  (2008)

Iron Man

I'm not a big comic book or comic book movie fan in general.  I certainly don't altogether dislike them.  In fact, I think in general I am more curious about them than not.  I can appreciate a lot of the entertainment value in them.  But I think sometimes when I talk about them I can come off as sounding like I altogether despise them.

In about the last ten years there has been an explosion in comic book / superhero movies, and in fantasy movies altogether (or at least it seems like it to me).  I'm not sure if it can be attributed to advancements in special effects or some other cultural phenomenon, but comic book / superhero are now the staple of every summer blockbuster season.  These are the types of movie that break box office records.  And thus I'm wary of them, and often tired of hearing about them.

Tired of seeing the ads.  Tired of everyone you know obsessing over them.  Tired of seeing the characters faces all over products, and tired of seeing product placement all over the movies.  Tired of films that have probably had a million producers with their fingers all over it with money on their mind.  Tired of films that have probably gone through the ringer of test groups.  Tired of films that purport to give some kind of important message but are actually just giving you the same old shit and dumbing you down.

And besides all that, I'm kind of sick of the fakeness.  No one would deny that most comic book superhero stories are fantasy, but it's usually the kind of fantasy that I wouldn't really want to live in, and I get sick of seeing so many people getting so obsessed with.  Wishing this world had some magical force that could enforce justice.  Wishing for super powers that would make their life more interesting.

I guess it's just my preference to watch more ambiguous or humble characters, seeing beauty in the strange everyday things we do.

Maybe I'm generalizing a complex situation on all sides, but this is often how I feel while watching these types of movies.  And I probably would not even be seeking out to see most of them, but again they are often huge blockbusters that everyone else wants to see.  And ever time I've seen these movies it's usually because someone else asked me to go see it with them.  Again, it's not that I don't have fun, but I'm just trying to explain why I sound so picky when I eventually do describe them.

So that was an awfully big intro into my blog about Iron Man.  This is another movie people went nuts about.  I rarely heard anything bad about it.  Now everything was executed as you'd expect, but there were no real surprises.

Now that I think about it, I already talked this thing to death in one of the groups here at Spout.  So you might as well just go look there if you want to see some of my stronger reactions.

http://www.spout.com/groups/The_Film_Library/Iron_Man/512/30114/ShowPost.aspx

Rating: 7/10

Under discussion:

This Film Is Not Yet Rated  (2005)

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

I think anyone who really loves film as an art form an a form of discovery that has so much more to be explored would find most acts of censorship as unfortunate.  In the United States we have no official, government regulated legal censorship.  But we do have a industry self regulated entity that essentially censors movies with the illusion that it doesn't.  It's the ratings board that was created by the MPAA.  The members of this board are anonymous.  There are no official rules on how they even place one film into one rating or another.  The people who are on the board don't even have any official training in child psychology or anything related to it.  They are just supposed to be average parents of young children (it's later revealed most aren't).  You may argue that even official government censorship would be better than this since at least then you have transparency and the ability to reform.  Many people who speak in this documentary make such an argument.

This film takes a great look at the MPAA ratings board.  How was it created.  What processes does a filmmaker go through.  How do they pander to big studios while leaving actual artists out of luck when it comes to making real art readily available to the public.

There is a lot of unmasking here of not only the practices, but of the actual identities of the people who are passing moral judgment on the films that you see in almost any movie theatre.  And in a wonderful bit of meta-film the movie you are watching itself goes through the MPAA process.  I can't imagine what the board members who thought of themselves as anonymous thought having to watch the movie to give it a rating and seeing their names and faces up on the screen for everyone to see.  Of course they themselves had the power to regulate whether the film would be seen by a mass audience or not, but at least now the information is out there to anyone who really wants to seek it.

The way these people are used and bullied by the MPAA and studios is astounding.  Although they let themselves be put in these positions.  It's such a place of control and fear that the MPAA and movie studios take.  They are not protecting our children as they claim, but protecting the studios from protest and bad press.  But in the meanwhile they have conditioned the American people to which types of things are actually offensive or not.  And it has created a society where the natural reaction of many people is to feel like violence is wonderful and sex is offensive.

I highly recommend this film.  Show it to as many people as you can!

Rating: 9/10