iron man, primaries, the slip

First, Iron Man. Sweet! I get to be a unabashed fanboy.

The movie focused much more on the construction of a superhero than how awesome Iron Man is once he fully takes shape. I think this is what was also heavily behind the success of the Batman franchise as well as The Incredibles. I think we are highly interested in the mental makeup that either a) creates a superhero (like Batman or Iron Man) or b) results from having to be a superhero (like Spiderman 2 or The Watchmen). I say this despite the fact that the big-time robot fight at the end of Iron Man is bad-ass. It's also fun to see superhero movies with liberal slants (like this or X-Men) rather than semi-conservative slants (like Transformers or Spiderman).

Speaking of movies, here's an amazing article about the dearth of female leads in summer movies. I'm not always a huge fan, but this time you killed it, Dargis.

Big-time primaries today! More NYTimes for you on economic policy. It was reassuring because I was starting to wonder how secure I was in my (not too well-informed) opinions. But now I'm back to being unreasonable! Clinton and McCain, you earn 4/5 condescending shakes of the head from me.

Finally, NIN released an album for FREE (http://theslip.nin.com). I like about half of the stuff and am ok with the other half. I wish they had stuck with the dance-punk stylings of the Discipline single, instead of spending 30% of the album doing vaguely halfhearted instrumental retreads. Still, the good tracks are a lot of fun, and I'm willing to bet they'll play well live.