Chachi!

Bob Loblaw is the best TV character ever created.  Period.

“You don’t need double talk; you need Bob Loblaw“

Hulu, the illegitimate offspring of Sulu and Ohura

I’m a little late to the boat on this one as Hulu isn’t all that new, but it’s only because I prefer watching my movies and TV on…well…on my TV…that I haven’t really paid it any mind.  However, thanks to the wonders of magic and my Xbox (which is part magic and part addictive chemical), I am finally able to enjoy all the heady goodness that the internets have to offer from the comfort of the ass groove in my couch.

The aforementioned magic I was referring too is actually called PlayOn.  PlayOn is basically a media server you setup on a PC on your network that will allow you to browse and play video content from Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CNN, and ESPN on your Xbox, PS3, or other DLNA compliant device.  It’s still in beta and it’s a bit buggy with a few annoyances, e.g. you can’t fast forward since it works by doing real-time transcoding to convert the video’s into something your device is capable of viewing, but outside of that, I’m just happy it lets me do something Microsoft needs to let me do as a built in Xbox feature.

Right now, I’m using it to finally watch Arrested Development and when I’m done with that, they have all the Mr. T and Michael Knight I could possibly want!

Stan the Man

During the drive down to Florida, I was able to catch up on a paperback book a friend of mine had lent me, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor.  The book is more or less a history of the Iron Man comic, but aside from that, it also includes a bit of the history of Marvel Comics itself.

One of the non Iron Man things I found most interesting was Stan Lee’s secret to his naming convention for hero alter ego’s.  Apparently, if Stan had actually been the one to come up with Tony Stark’s name, he would have ended up with a name like Sam Stark.

Stan revealed that he has a thing about the first and last names starting with the same letter.  With names like Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Stephen Strange, Matt Murdock, and Bruce Banner how were we to catch on?  His thinking was that he was less likely to forget a characters name this way.

Well, I found it interesting at least.  Now whenever I see a name like that, I’ll be thinking it’s a Stan Lee name.

On an Iron Man related note.  Having read the history of Iron Man and what has happened to him in the comics since I stopped reading them, I miss Bob Layton and David Michelinie even more now.  They were the ones working on the comic when I first got into Iron Man and those truely were the glory days.  Some of the story lines have just gone plain stupid.  However, I do like what Adi Granov has done with the armor in recent years (his designs were the basis of the movie armor).

Batman vs Iron Man

Having now seen The Dark Knight a second time, I guess I won’t have to turn in my Iron Man fan-club card just yet.

The Dark Knight is still a great movie, but it loses quite a bit of it’s intensity when you see it a second time and know what happens next.  With the highs and lows of the roller coaster gone, it becomes just another ride.  The Joker alone nearly makes up for it, but the-Joker-to-long-ass-movie ratio just isn’t good enough.

Overall, I give Iron Man the nod over Batman because it’s just more fun to watch and stays that way every time you see it.  Robert Downey’s performance nearly matches Ledger’s and there are barely any scenes where he isn’t in Iron Man.

For the record, my top comic book movies:

1. Iron Man
2. The Dark Knight
3. X2
4. Spider-Man 2
5. Batman Begins

Cesar Romero, Joker

It only took 40 some odd years, but Cesar has finally been dethroned.  It’s just a shame we’ll never see this new Joker again.

I actually went into the Dark Knight flick thinking there was no way it could live up to the hype that’s been building up over both the movie itself and Ledger’s performance.  Stuff like “on par with the Godfather”, “as good a sequel as Empire Strikes Back”, and “Oscar worthy performance”.  After seeing it however, all those statements don’t seem quite so far fetched.

It really is an awesome movie and Ledger’s Joker almost single handedly makes it so.  Ledger was to the Joker what Daniel Day-Lewis was to Daniel Plainview.

I’m not yet ready to say I liked it better than Iron Man, but I’m having a hard time saying I didn’t.