{"id":1207,"date":"2008-05-13T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T04:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/05\/13\/iron-and-weed\/"},"modified":"2008-05-13T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T04:45:00","slug":"iron-and-weed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/05\/13\/iron-and-weed\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron and Weed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last two movies D and I saw in theatres were Iron Man<\/span> (two weeks ago) and Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay<\/span> (last night). We had low expectations for both films, for different reasons, but ended up enjoying both of them quite a bit.<\/p>\n

To its credit, Iron Man<\/span> is much more grounded in reality than many other comic book adaptations. If you didn’t know it was a Marvel property, you might actually think it was a pretty good science fiction movie–more RoboCop<\/span> than Back to the Future<\/span>, but with elements of both.<\/p>\n

If you stay through the end credits, you’ll see a somewhat gratuitous clip that sets up a sequel. Actually (spoiler alert)<\/span>, I have it on good authority that there is an actual Iron Man<\/span> cameo in the upcoming Incredible Hulk<\/span> movie. There have been in-jokes or name-checks in other live-action superhero movies, but this would be the first time that one character has actually appeared in another’s movie. Call me a fanboy, but I love it when fictional worlds actually intersect.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay<\/span> has virtually no basis in reality. It’s quite entertaining for what it is, even if they repeated a few redneck gags from the first film and went way overboard with the political satire. If the first movie was Harold’s show, this one was all about Kumar. A sequel seems inevitable, and while I have a hard time imagining where they go from here, I’m sure it will involve Neil Patrick Harris.<\/p>\n

Coming up next: Indiana Jones<\/span>, obviously. I have very little desire to see Speed Racer<\/span>, which the Flick Filosopher<\/a> describes thusly:<\/p>\n

Imagine if the pod race in Star Wars Episode I<\/span> was as bad as everyone said it was, and took itself twice as seriously, and went on for more than two hours. And then add a wiseass monkey and his sidekick, an obnoxious kid, on top. Stir, and scream. The Wachowski Brothers have taken the genius of their Matrix<\/span> series, its ability to defy physics and make it work, and turned it into something it would be an insult to cartoons to call cartoonish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess I already knew that from the awful trailers, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.<\/p>\n

~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last two movies D and I saw in theatres were Iron Man (two weeks ago) and Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (last night). We had low expectations for both films, for different reasons, but ended up enjoying…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}