Review: Iron Man 2

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Iron Man may be the only movie superhero franchise based on the fact that the hero is a lovably obnoxious twerp. Other superheroes battle mutants, bald supergeniuses or guys in makeup, but Iron Man, also known as Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) seems to be battling himself and his own past almost as often as he faces down bad guys.

In Iron Man 2, Tony’s problems pile up remarkably quickly, starting with Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a scary Russian physicist out to avenge his family for what Tony’s family did to them decades ago. Meanwhile, the device Tony made to power his suit and keep him alive is also killing him, and on top of everything else, the government doesn’t trust Tony with the Iron Man suit, and wants to take it away.

As a superhero action movie, Iron Man 2 holds up well, offering plenty of explosions and action, a great villain and, more unusually, an equally interesting hero, whose dark side does not involve angst or a tragic backstory, but instead manifests itself as arrogance and disregard for other people, even, sometimes, the ones he cares most about.

Downey plays the fast-talking, self-involved billionaire playboy genius perfectly, and even though the character saw the error of his warmongering ways in the first movie, he still has a long way to go before his road to redemption is over.

And Downey’s portrayal of Tony Stark would dominate the movie if it weren’t for Rourke, whose focused, vicious Vanko provides a counterpoint to Tony, who sometimes doesn’t seem to be able to focus on a single idea long enough to complete a sentence.

At more than 2 hours long, the movie does drag at times, especially during the parts involving James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Tony’s friend and military contact, who tries to mediate between Tony and the people who want to take his Iron Man suit away.

It’s not Cheadle’s fault. Rhodes just isn’t as interesting as Tony or Vanko, or even the other villain, sleazy weapons dealer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). Even the other supporting characters, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) have more personality. When Rhodes inevitably gets his hands on an Iron Man suit and dukes it out with Tony, it’s hard to care.

Overall, though, Iron Man 2 was an entertaining movie. Someone in Hollywood seems to have learned that good characters are the key to great movies, even if they’re just fun, fluffy action films.

Joining the 21st Century

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Although I consider myself slightly tech-savvy, if only on a user basis (as opposed to the programmer or sysadmin behind the curtain), there are a couple things I’m weirdly old-fashioned about.

For example, although I love my check card and never write out an actual check unless I have no choice, I do not use ATMs. For the longest time, it was because I couldn’t remember my PIN number. Then when I finally did remember my PIN number, I just didn’t want to pay to bank, especially not if I could get my money for free by actually going to the bank. And now it’s because I worry about skimmers.

When I need cash, I go to the bank. Fortunately, most places take check cards, so my aversion to ATMs doesn’t hurt me too much.

Until this week, I was also reluctant to subscribe to an online movie service. Finally, based on the recommendation of Daily Globe sports guy Aaron Hagen, I joined Netflix. I’ve already watched at least 10 hours of streaming video, and my very first actual disk came in the mail yesterday. I hope it works. If it doesn’t, I guess I’ll need to stop at the post office on the way to work and mail it back.

Even if I don’t watch a single movie on a disc, I’ll have gotten my money’s worth from the service just by watching the movies you can stream directly from the site, with no waiting.

Regatta Fever

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Images from the Windsurfing Regatta and Unvarnished Music Festival 2009. (Brian Korthals/Daily Globe) After months and months of anticipation, planning and fundraising, the Honor Flight is over. I have done all the galleries, all the video and audio and gathered all the articles together in a single place, and Julie has probably filed her Honor Flight lists and documents away.

And we look at the calendar and realize: Holy crud, it’s almost the end of May! The Regatta is just around the corner!

I love the Regatta. What’s not to love? There’s food, music and days by the lake. Even when it rains it’s kind of fun, because then the rain matters. It’s significant rain. And then there was the time the tornado missed us by what, a couple of miles? Something like that. I wouldn’t call that fun, but it was definitely exciting.

And now the Regatta is coming up again. I have a story to work on for the Regatta special section, about one of the awesome musical groups that’s coming to the Unvarnished Music Festival stage. And this year things will be moved around a bit at Sailboard Beach, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new arrangement, too.

As my dad loves to say: You gotta Regatta!

And on a side-note, Worthington Community Education is offering windsurfing lessons. I’ve always wanted to try it out, but have been hesitant because if I really like it, I’d have to somehow come up with the money for the equipment. Do you think I should give it a shot anyway, or skip it in the name of fiscal sanity?

Remembering Hardy Rickbeil

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Like many others in Worthington, I was saddened to hear about Hardy Rickbeil’s passing on Sunday.

I will not pretend to have known him very well; I only met him once, although I saw him around the community in all sorts of capacities. Hardy seems to have been one of those hyper-involved people that had something to do with the YMCA, something to do with the Crailsheim program, something to do with Turkey Day, something to do with the historical society, something to do with… well, just about everything in Worthington, really.

And if he was like that in his late 90s and early 100s, I can only imagine how much he was involved in when he was younger.

I met Hardy at a Crailsheim banquet, when he was the main speaker of the day.

I would not have guessed his age at more than 80, but he was already 99. For reference, Hardy graduated from the Worthington High School class of 1926. He was already a business leader in 1934, as you can see from this article.

Our website’s online archive goes back less than a decade, but there are quite a few references to Hardy even in that short period of time.

I have met a lot of older people over the past few years, working at the Daily Globe, and many of them could be described as fun, funky, and spunky people.

Contrary to some people’s perceptions, not all senior citizens are fuddy duddies. Just like young people, a large number of them are forward thinking, enterprising, and tech-savvy. Research indicates that 40% of the 65+ crowd uses the internet, for example, and though that’s not a majority it is a very substantial minority. My grandfather, a semi-retired lawyer in his 80s, checks his stocks online daily. My grandmother, a semi-retired secretary, uses email to communicate with the family. And I would be proud to hang out with any of my three surviving grandparents any time, and would even if they weren’t related to me. They’re just fun people.

I don’t know if Hardy was tech-savvy, but even though I only met him once, I could tell he had a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and saw opportunities for people and the community in all sorts of endeavors. I’m not saying he was one of those irritating people who seem to have manic smiles glued their faces all the time, but he was very positive, upbeat and interested in all sorts of issues. He wasn’t just "with-it." He never outgrew his intellectual curiosity.

It is true, I think, that associating with young people helps keep you young, but the kind of young people you need to associate with are the people who are young in spirit, not those who are simply chronologically-impaired. At the age of 99, and I have no doubt, the remainder of his life, Hardy was quite young.

I wish I had known Hardy better.

Happy Holidays!

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Yesterday I belatedly discovered it was my ethnic group’s national holiday, Norwegian Constitution Day, and it was far too late to celebrate with any of our traditional food, music, or parades. In at least one of these cases, that may have been a good thing, because I consider lutefisk slightly less edible than dirt.

Dirt doesn’t usually smell that bad.

This is un-Norwegian of me, I know, and when you consider all the other tasty goods Norway has to offer, such as lefse, rosettes and krumkake, it also seems particularly unfair. I have been given to understand that more lutefisk is consumed by Norwegian-Americans than by actual Norwegians, however, so maybe I’m just a throwback to previous generations from the other side of the pond who believe lye is meant to be used in soap products rather than fish. Or maybe half-Norwegian just isn’t enough.

Syttende mai, meaning "May 17," is another name for Norwegian Constitution Day, and commemorates the date Norway became an independent nation in 1814. At that point Norway was still under Swedish control, which probably explains the occasional Swedish joke I hear from heritage-savvy family members.

To an American raised on Independence Day, Norwegian Constitution Day seems a bit odd, because while it is patriotic and celebrates Norway, independence and cultural traditions, its emphasis is on children. For America’s July 4, we have parades with lots of marching high school or adult marching bands and often, we thank our military on that day. In Norway, emphasis is placed on the children’s parades, though older students and adults also participate in them. Constitution Day and Independence Day both feature a lot of red, white and blue (also the colors of Norway’s flag) but on syttende mai, the children also dress up in traditional costumes and sing multiple verses of the Norwegian national anthem.

I was in high school before I found out "The Star-Spangled Banner" even had more than one verse.

But to all those of Norwegian heritage, and to all the rest, happy belated Norwegian Constitution Day!

No Paint for You

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Alas, we did no painting whatsoever over the weekend.

Why? Well, the paint we got turned out to be a smidgeon too dark for the room, especially when compared to the medium brown couches. Instead of a light camel color, it was kind of a light milk chocolate color.

Unfortunately, my mom had already painted an entire wall by the time we (by which I mean "she") decided the color was just not working. Thing is, the paint looked a lot lighter when there wasn’t as much of it–like on the little sample card, for example.

So I’ll have another chance to paint, and will have more time to practice my technique before I start on the real thing.

Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned from Karate Kid

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Kari Lucin

I’ll be helping my mother with painting the house this weekend, and I have never painted before. I mean, I’ve painted pictures and stained quite small cabinets, but I’ve never painted a room.

I’m going to need to find some old clothes somewhere, but I’m kind of wondering about technique. The Karate Kid "paint the fence," "paint the house" thing doesn’t seem to really apply to a paint roller, and I’m wondering if there’s some sort of advanced technique I’m supposed to use.

I’m not sure I’ll actually be helpful, to tell you the truth, but if I can’t get along well enough by just doing what mom says, I’ll just watch her and make sarcastic comments. I’m sure she’ll appreciate that, right?

Right?

Learning to Love Twitter, Sort of

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Lately I’ve been blogging less and tweeting more.

Maybe it’s just that I haven’t had a lot of ideas that are more than 140 characters long lately, or just that I haven’t done much interesting lately, apart from seeing Iron Man II.

However, I am learning to love Twitter, partly because I finally figured out that it’s not really social media of the same type as Facebook, which is what I thought it was.

No, I use Twitter as a news service and a business-to-business communication tool.

I can find out what other people in online news are doing that way, and have conversations with them about industry issues (like how our business can use Facebook, or what other news organizations are doing about controversies).

I can also use it as a direct news service–whenever the legislature is in session I usually know what’s going on before the AP stories come out, just because the AP stories are longer than 140 characters and thus take a little while to make. Meanwhile, a twitter user can post Pawlenty’s quote in seconds, provided it’s less than 140 characters.

That said, for people like me who take a while to get used to new tools, Twitter wasn’t easy to learn to love. It’s not extremely intuitive, and the # and @ symbols are kinda freaky to people who don’t know the lingo. But the best way to get into it is to just start using it, and look for good people to follow, whether it’s Roger Ebert (entertainment and some politics), the Minnesota Twins, social media wonks or journalists. Just watch them for a while, a pattern begins to emerge, and eventually you’ll probably get the urge to stop lurking and participate in the conversation.

It’s surprisingly fun.

The Daily Globe has a twitter feed here. You don’t have to join Twitter to see it.

I have a twitter feed myself here. You don’t have to join Twitter to see that either; this is the feed on which I reply to other journalists and web/social media enthusiasts. While it’s still not personal, it is not formal, either, and tends to be journo/news/online/social media oriented. And be warned: I’m still a Twitter novice myself.

If you like trying out new things, and especially if you like news, give Twitter a try. It’s not a "I had waffles for breakfast, LOL!" service, like I expected it to be.

A remake too soon?

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Kari Lucin

Recycling is all the rage in Hollywood, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before they kicked up the recycled-movies trend to a whole new level.

I’m not talking about the remake of “Karate Kid,” which will not feature any karate because they used kung fu instead, or the “Tron” sequel due in December.

I’m not even talking about Russell Crowe’s new Robin Hood movie, though the last one of those we had was the 1991 Kevin Costner “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Waiting 19 years to make a new movie starring a popular and legendary folk hero sounds pretty reasonable.

No, I’m referring to the Superman and Spider-Man franchise reboots which have apparently been scheduled to come out in 2012. Note that the last Superman movie, “Superman Returns,” came out in 2006, and the last Spider-Man series started in 2002 and ended in 2007. And don’t forget “Hulk” in 2003, followed by “The Incredible Hulk” in 2008.

We are now looking at a period of five years in between franchise reboots, a period of time which seems ridiculously short even for my fruit-fly-like attention span.

In the case of Superman and the Hulk, I can at least understand. Neither movie was considered a smash success, so remaking them so soon could have been a move to set the record straight and show the characters were still relevant, marketable and beloved.

But Spider-Man? The Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies were quite decent and also did very well at the box office. Though not everyone liked the final installment, I’m fairly sure it wasn’t considered a complete failure. So why wait only five years?

I suppose it depends on how different this Peter Parker will be from the last. Robin Hood, Batman and even Sherlock Holmes sure do change a lot depending on which movie adaptation of their exploits you watch, so their reboots and remakes and retries usually seem fresh.

Then again, there’s usually more than five years between them.

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Monthly Archives: May 2010