The Iceberg

I saw Iron Man last Friday afternoon. It wasn’t bad - and this is coming from someone who is not a fan of the comic book superhero movie genre.

Here were my impressions:

1. Our students had just finished their final mid-term exam, so the theater was crawling with adolescents decked out in their school uniforms. Which was fine except that they ate about half of my popcorn while I was waiting to enter the theater. Little cretins.

Just kidding, our students are (mostly) great.

2. Dug Robert Downey Jr.

3. Appreciated the attempt to build a storyline and decent dialogue.

4. Was that really Jeff Bridges? Didn’t realize it until about 15 minutes in.

5. Cool Iron Man suit.

6. Would have liked to have seen a little more Iron Man action (attempts at storyline notwithstanding).

7. Gwyneth Paltrow. Mmehh.

8. Osama - You payin’ attention?

9. Black Sabbath rocks!

On a scale of 1 to 5 (1: avoid at all costs; 2: see it if you want, but don’t say i recommended it; 3: not bad if you’ve got time to spare; 4: if you’re like me you’re gonna like it; 5: must see), I give Iron Man a solid “3″.

Since I’m on the subject, I decided to put together a list of some superhero comic book movies with The Iceberg’s personal ratings.

Flash Gordon (5) - “Flash….aaaahhhh!”…’Nuff said.

Batman (5) - Jack Nicholson’s Joker is still the coolest villain yet. Interested to see Heath Ledger’s Joker.

X2 (X-Men 2) (5) - A little biased because this was the first dvd I bought for my home theater system. Cool on surround sound.

Superman (5) - What can I say? Good popcorn-eating movie.

Batman Begins (4) - Christian Bale is the coolest Batman. Good cast. Might have given it a “5″ except that I originally bought the dvd in Thailand and it kept stopping midway through. As a result I didn’t see the end of the movie for about three months.

Superman II (4) - Not quite sure why I like this movie. Perhaps because, when I first saw it, there was a preview of the war movie “The Big Red One”, which was cause for a lot of snickers at the time.

Iron Man (3) - Read impressions above.

X-Men (3) - Liked X2 much more.

Hulk (3) - Saw this movie with my nephew. Liked it much more than I expected. I usually hate movies that overemphasize computer graphics, but for some reason this one didn’t bother me.

X-Men: The Last Stand (3) - The X-Men series is the strongest, in my opinion.

Ghost Rider (2) - Didn’t have high expectations for this movie, so wasn’t disappointed. Motorcycles were cool.

Batman & Robin (2) - Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Not good. Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. Good.

Batman Forever (2) - Tommy Lee Jones’ character pissed me off.

Superman Returns (2) - I remember seeing a clip of the airplane falling from the sky and thought it was really cool. Later, when I saw the movie, I found it didn’t keep my attention.

Spider-Man 2 (2) - The best of the worst comic book superhero series.

Superman III (1) - Richard Pryor. Nice try.

Batman Returns (1) - Danny DeVito’s character REALLY pissed me off.

Hellboy (1) - Like Ghost Rider, my expectations were low…and they were met.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1) - I saw this movie. I’m sure of it. But I don’t remember anything about it.

Spider-Man 3 (1) - After watching Spider-Man 2, I thought that perhaps “3″ would be alright. Nope.

Spider-Man (1) - Positively inane. Story: stupid. Dialogue: forced. Graphics: lacking. The only redeeming feature from this movie was watching twenty-something Korean guys pretending to shoot webs out of their wrists after the lights in the theater came on.

Catwoman (1) - Horrible. Though Haley Barry was, well, you know.

Daredevil (n/a) - Haven’t seen it.

Fantastic Four (n/a) - Haven’t seen it, though I don’t know why. Because Jessica Alba is, well, you know.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (n/a) - Haven’t seen it.

Today is Children’s Day, the day when parents take time off of work to nurse hangovers share quality time with their young ones. Keeping with the spirit of the holiday, here is Offspring’s “The Kids Aren’t Alright”.

offspring-the-kids-arent-alright

Happy Children’s Day everyone. Avoid those amusement parks.

…presented on Wednesday.

Oops. Sorry about that. “Why so late?” you ask? Let me tell you.

I arrived back in Korea at about 5:45 Monday morning. I was originally scheduled to arrive at 5 a.m., but the flight from Hanoi was delayed due to some kind of medical emergency onboard the plane. Not sure what the issue was, because the person who had it sat about twenty rows behind me. All I know is that a member of the cabin crew led a man holding a first aid kit down the aisle and about five minutes later he left the plane.

Anyway, I had to be at work at 7:30, so what would have been an inexpensive and casual limousine bus ride back to Anyang turned into an expensive and rushed taxi ride. I arrived home in time to take a quick shower and showed up at work with a minute to spare.

Making matters worse, in the middle of the flight I dreamt that the pilot announced that we were preparing for the approach to Incheon. It was a very vivid dream, so I took off my eye mask, raised my seat and waited. And waited.

And waited.

For about two hours.

After thirty minutes or so of waiting I realized something was amiss, but at that point I was wide awake.

The point of all this is that after work I was dead tired. Fortunately, this is mid-term exam week at our school, so I only have to work half days. I slept all afternoon on Monday, woke up for a couple of hours in the evening, and then went right back to sleep.

Yesterday we had our teachers’ “Sports Day” in the afternoon and then a 회식 (after-work dinner) in the evening. We ate eel. It was the second time I had tried it. The first time I actually thought it was pretty good, but last night…not so much.

They say that eel - like about a hundred other foods in Korea - is “good for stamina”. I wasn’t able to test that last night, but I can say that I woke up with no hangover this morning, so maybe there’s something to it.

Now…on to the music. Here is The Kooks’ “Always Where I Need to Be”

always-where-i-need-to-be

of the country again for a bit.  Be back soon.

Just as our man-in-the-field Niels reported yesterday, the official 2008 Pentaport website is now open for business.

And - as it turns out - Niels was actually 2-for-2 (when was the last time that ever happened?) because Hard-Fi, Scottish British band Travis, and others are part of the first line-up.

To celebrate, I give you Hard-Fi’s “Suburban Knights”

suburban-knights

and Travis’ “Selfish Jean”

selfish-jean

“Whistle for the Choir”, by The Fratellis

04-the-fratellis-whistle-for-the-choir

Searcy, Arkansas, Olympia, Washington, Portland, Oregon-based rock band Gossip has been added to the 2008 Pentaport line-up.

The lead singer’s got a nice Mama Cass thing going on. Mama Gossip?

Here is the band’s song “Standing in the Way of Control” from the album of the same name.

Gossip

You can officially scratch Metallica off the list of potential performers at Pentaport. I just visited their official website and - unless they plan on squeezing a show in Korea between their July 25 date in Sofia, Bulgaria and July 27 date in Istanbul, Turkey - they’re not coming.

“My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”, by Spoon

My Little Japanese Cigarette Case

Spoon is booked for the Fuji Rock Festival…could they hop over the water to play in Korea?

According to their official websites, British band The Go! Team and American rapper Princess Superstar have signed on to perform at the 2008 Pentaport Rock Festival.

Here is The Go! Team’s “Grip Like a Vice”

01-grip-like-a-vice

And here is Princess Superstar’s “Coochie Coo”

track-14