IRONY

1. Iron Man/Paramount Wknd/$100.8 Total/$ 104.3
2. Made of Honor/Sony Wknd/$ 15.5 Total/$ 15.5
3. Baby Mama/Universal Wknd/$ 10.3 Total/$ 32.3
4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall/Univer Wknd/$ 6.1 Total/$ 44.8
5. Harold & Kumar Escape Wknd/$ 6.0 Total/$ 25.3
6. The Forbidden Kingdom/LGF Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 45.1
7. Nim’s Island/Fox Wknd/$ 2.8 Total/$ 42.5
8. Prom Night/SGem Wknd/$ 2.5 Total/$ 41.4
9. 21/Sony Wknd/$ 2.1 Total/$ 79.1
10. 88 Minutes/Sony Wknd/$ 1.6 Total/$ 15.4

I GUESS WE CALL THIS “IRONY”? GET IT?
Iron Man opens spectacularly at number one and the only real surprise is how well this all turned out given what was initially the miscasting of Robert Downey Jr. as any kind of superhero. Let me put it this way: in the comics Tony Stark was supposed to be a take on , Errol Flynn. Then there’s Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts (in the sad tradition of Spider-Man a blonde was hired and her hair dyed red rather than just give some albino freak a job). It’s ironic that the unconventional casting is what makes Iron Man work. I personally would have cast 6’3” pretty boy Billy Campbell---and he would have been stiff as a board and awful. Though he claims to have based this interpretation on Howard Hughes, Downey pretty much plays the same character he always plays, mercurial and quick-witted and there’s the rub. That’s the secret to every successful superhero movie ever made: humor. Superman The Movie had a sense of humor about itself, though taking its story about a flying man from another planet in primary colors deadly seriously. The X-Men, while making an analogy between superpowers and homosexuality knew when to crack a joke. Batman Begins wisely used Alfred to get a jibe or two in. The Hulk, however never managed so much as a grin over its circumstances. Also, like Batman Begins (another movie about a billionaire whose fortune and misfortune comes from weapons as the Waynes made their money in munitions) this movie is mostly about the alter ego and when you actually hire a talented actor and get some decent writers (their last movie was Children of Men) the brightly covered suit is just icing on the cake. Continuing the Batman Begins comparison, this doesn’t flinch on the A-list cast. Between Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrance Howard and Jeff Bridges (not to mention one uncredited super geek out cameo that comes after the credits SO STAY IN YOUR SEATS), there are no less than 8 Oscar nominations between them and they take their roles seriously which is why it all works. But Jon Favreau deserves a great deal of the credit because he comes through, even better than Christopher Nolan did on Batman Begins, because unlike Nolan, Favreau can do a half-decent action sequence---even if it is all just CGI and the climatic battle is stupidly set at night.

MADE IN HELL
Made of Honor opens at number and I love romantic comedies. I also love Michelle Monaghan. So you’d think Michele Monaghan in a romantic comedy would be perfect for me, right? Wrong. Like The Heartbreak Kid before it, I’d rather die than see Made of Honor. Maybe because I’ve unfortunately lived it, but the guy-in-love-with-his-best-friend premise just annoys me now. Mainly because saying you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you is like saying you played tennis by hitting a ball against a wall. If you’re not interacting with the person, it’s not really love, just narcissism. It’s a fantasy that only exists in your mind, because if you’re not smelling their bad breath in the morning or their weird sex noises, it’s just not real. Also, it’s utterly selfish. It’s different if the guy is an ass, but when he’s great and she loves him, well then you’re just a dick. And he’s just a dick here. Finally, I’ just don’t dig Patrick Dempsey as a leading man. I so don’t dig him, I don’t want him to get back together with Meredith on Grey’s Anatomy. Hell, I even think the nurse he’s with is too hot for him. Not to mention it would be more interesting to see her dating. After all, it’s not called “McDreamy’s Anatomy.” And once again they’re supposed to be the same age when he’s clearly got a decade on her. But it really comes down to the premise, which makes it a “switch” that goes off in his mind that he loves her. To make this work, it’s got to be the unrequited love of years. And to make it more than just a crap movie cliché, he should sincerely try to be the best maid of honor possible and let her discover her feelings for him, instead of this bordering-on-sociopath “I’m gonna ruin the wedding because it makes me happy” bullshit. They openly admit this is pretty much a male version of My Best Friend’s Wedding. Well, you know what? That sucked too. I mean really, really sucked. But at least that had the novel ending of not forcing the characters together. I sincerely doubt this shit will be so daring.

NOT SO WILD, NOT SO CRAZY
Baby Mama is down to number three and also in this and remarkably free from all advertising is Steve Martin and usually when this is happens it’s not so much a case of modesty, but too much ego. Gene Hackman was missing from all promotional material for The Firm years ago because his contract stated that his name always come before the title (even on Superman this was the case), but Tom Cruise’s contract insists that he be alone above the title, so he opted not to be mentioned at all (though in the film itself his name comes after Tom Cruise’s and before the title). It could be Steve Martin has a similar clause and god knows he ain’t the star of this so you obviously couldn’t do that, so he gets nothing. But he is funny and it’s been a long time since I said that about him.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE…
Forgetting Sarah Marshall holds at number four and also here from the Apatow repertory is Carla Gallo who was the female lead on Apatow’s TV Undeclared and pops up in his movies in what we’d politely call “ego free comedic cameos” while others may suggest it’s threatening to become a series of demeaning roles. She was the Toe-Sucking Girl who gets kicked in the face by Steve Carell in 40-Year-Old Virgin, the Period Blood Girl in Superbad and here she’s a one night stand who’d liked to be gagged (she had a non-slutty role in Knocked Up, but it was cut). She may have also had the infamous “Do the backdoor because all the johnnies go in front” line from Carnivale, but she can’t blame Apatow for that one (and it's still creeping me out). You have to wonder if she wonders why she couldn’t have the Kristin Bell or Mila Kunis role. I know I do. And god forbid he cast her in the roles he’s been giving to his wife. But at least she got this. Poor Monica Keena has gotten nothing and hasn’t been seen since playing E’s cheating girlfriend on entourage.

PUSSY. THERE. I SAID IT.
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is down to number five and there was a little interview with the writer/directors and some of the cast on Cinemax and apparently they were trying to set a record for most vagina ever seen on a mainstream film, apparently having hit every strip club in the south for women willing to do it. And they were specific about vagina and not just pubic hair, which is something that’s always bothered me. Until the Brazilian wax took over there was no true female frontal nudity. Men obviously show their genitals in frontal nudity but what women show is pubic hair. Until now. But can you imagine these girls telling their friends. “Hey, I’m in Harold and Kumar! I’m the third snatch from the left in the living room! Whee! I’m a movie star!”

GENRE FILMS
The Forbidden Kingdom is down to number six followed by Nim’s Island at number seven and Prom Night at number eight.

COUNT THEM OUT
21 is down to number nine and with 88 Minutes closing out the top ten at number ten they represent the alpha and omega of numerical movies. One’s a big hit, the other a sad failure.

BLONDE MUSIC
So, Madonna and Robyn both released new albums recently and I picked up one out of habit and the other out of genuine desire. Needless to say, the genuine desire was the better choice. I can’t remember much about Madonna’s new one except there were maybe two songs I liked. Madonna’s never been a true original, but at best she hopped onto something that was relatively new. Timaland, Kanye West, Pharell and Justin Timberlake are not relatively new. Everybody’s been there, done that and nailed it shut. She did better work with European dance producers. I actually found Britney’s last album more interesting to listen to and definitely a better club album. On the other hand I like pretty much everything on Robyn’s new one. It was called “Konichiwa Bitches” overseas, but sadly that title only remains as one of the tracks. Robyn was unfortunate enough to be a Swedish teen pop star two seconds before Britney, Christina and boy bands made it with Swedish pop tracks. Fate can be cruel that way. But “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know What It Takes” remains solid pop singles .

BOBBY’S BIG DOWNTOWN PARTY
The Tribeca Film Festival snuck up on me this year, so I didn’t get to invest myself in it as much as I’d liked. But even after looking over the movies I didn’t see anything that truly captivated me. None of my favorite directors from the past had anything new and a great deal of the bigger films (Speed Racer, Baby Mama, War Inc) were going to be released soon anyway, so why bother? My only real miss was Trucker starring none other than Michelle Monaghan. A lot of the documentaries seemed interesting, but I don’t watch documentaries. They’re like some well made broccoli; it’s really good if you eat it, but you never really want to eat it. Ultimately, I only managed to squeeze in two films in one day: Terra and Fighter.
Terra is an animated science fiction film set in the far future where a race of peaceful tadpole-like creatures find their lives disrupted by the last survivors of the planet Earth, looking for a new home. One of the Earth pilots crashes while pursuing one of the inhabitants and she takes care of him in order to find out why they took her father. Because it’s aimed at kids, he has a cute robot companion who instantly teaches her English and she just happens to an inventor who can help him repair his ship. Of course the pilot (voiced by Luke Wilson) realizes that it would be wrong to kill these inhabitants to save themselves, but it’s too late because the military has overthrown the civilian government of the earth-ark (which is women and minorities while the military leader is a white male) and plans on wiping them out by changing the atmosphere to breathable oxygen. The film actually gets better as it gets darker, because apparently the producers simply had no clue how to make this a straight-up kids film.

Ever see Girlfright the movie that made Michelle Rodriguez a star? It’s about a girl from the New York projects who takes up boxing and winds up in the ring against her love interest. Well if you ever imagine what that would be like with martial arts, then I’ve got a movie for you. Fighter is about a young Turkish girl in Sweden who is secretly studying kung-fu against her family’s wishes because it’s in a mixed-class and good little Muslim girls can’t be around boys. That she develops a flirtation with a guy in class doesn’t help. This becomes a problem when her brother becomes engaged and one of the friends of his future brother-in-law turns out to be a student and notices their connection. This leads to a food-fight-kung-fu battle between the two in the kitchen at the engagement party. No, I’m not kidding. If you were looking for your average gritty, slice-of-life story of immigrants in a new land, look elsewhere. This takes that story and adds a little over-the-top martial arts to it, with backflips and slow-motion gravity-defying leaps. It saves the film from being a depressing indie cliché, but it removes it too much from reality. It would have served itself better to be a bit more grounded (not to mention not forced so much use of the obvious Asian girl stand-in). And she’s just not good enough to kick ass the way she does in the climatic tournament (where she faces off against both her crush and the Turkish guy who betrayed her secret, naturally). But the characters are all well drawn and given depth. The father is shown to genuinely love his daughter, even though he forbids her to study martial arts. He’s afraid it will damage her future and he wants her life to be better that his. But when her study does, in fact jeopardize her brother’s engagement, he is unsparingly brutal to her (emotionally, not physically). I both fear and look forward to the inevitable American remake.

A LITTLE ART FILM WHOOP ASS
Redbelt was at the Tribeca Film Festival, but since it was opening this weekend, I opted not to kill myself trying to see it and paying $15 there. This was written and directed by David Mamet and I’m not a Mamet fan. Let me make that clear. Yeah, the dialogue can border on poetry with its rhythm and use of language, but it often threatens to become a parody of itself and women are usually no damn good. Plus, he loves con men and scams. He’s said as much. I hate cons and capers. I’d rather watch paint dry. However, a movie about a martial artist clinging to his personal sense of honor in a corrupt world appealed to me, so I caved and sure enough he still manages to get a con or two into it (complete with Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna along for the ride). Sigh. Chiwetel Ejiofor, aka, Most Likely To Succeed Denzel, is a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu instructor in LA. One night lawyer Emily Mortimer stumbles into his dojo and when she accidentally shoots out his front window by grabbing a cop’s gun, sets the entire movie into motion. He can’t afford to pay his rent and replace the window so he goes to his brother-in-law for a loan, only to learn the brother-in-law failed to pay that same cop for bouncer work earlier, so there’s no bouncer. So when a movie star gets into a fight, he’s the one to break it up. The movie star then invites him to his house where he reveals a training technique he uses, which is then stolen by the promoters of a mixed martial arts tournament. A tournament his brother-in-law is part of promoting. That the movie star’s manager is also part of promoting. Using Mortimer, he tries to sue for the use of his idea only to find out they know all about the gun incident which could land them all in jail for covering it up, which ultimately leads to him bending his own code to fight for money. Basically, he is the only good man in a town filled with lying scum. Unfortunately the poster pretty much gives away the ending, but I have to say I’m impressed with Mamet going for a somewhat feel-good ending, where the good guy just whoops ass and comes out on top. By the way, the title refers to the highest level one can achieve in Japanese martial arts---which is why the Koreans made red belt the last stop before black in taekwondo, just to fuck with them.

CHOOSE THE DRAGON’S PATH
So my quest for a school is over. Not that I found anything, it’s just because I cannot do any more searching. I’m mentally exhausted from it all. My final scouting mission was at Shaolin Kung Fu Training Center, which I spied while leaving the Chinese Kung Fu WuShu Association a week ago. This was much better than NY Shaolin, but probably not as hardcore as that Shaolin Place in SoHo. The shifu (teacher) actually comes from the Shaolin Temple, which is why, three days later I can barely walk. I’m not exaggerating. My legs are literally buckling constantly under me and it’s not funny. Again, we’re in the west twenties, not twenty feet from Hung Gar Kung Fu, and a block away from both NY Shaolin and Chinese Kung Fu WuShu Association. This was more of a “sink or swim” mentality. I was just kinda expected to follow along with their routine with no explanation of it. And the low horse stance. That’s why my quads are non-functioning now. Constant low fucking horse stances. Didn’t hurt at the time. Didn’t really hurt too much the next day. Saturday, I was a fucking invalid. On the upside the workout is solid and after basics there were forms done and I got to learn the first part of one. But again, no name was given and not much explanation to it. But it was heavy on repetition, so it’s pretty much imprinted in my mind now. One huge, odd downside for me was that the floor wasn’t clean. I’m sorry, but how could your training hall not be clean? Isn’t that what new students are for, to sweep? This place had fucking dust bunnies and when we were made to run around for the warm-up our jet stream spread them around. That actually bothered me more than anything. Also, the instruction seemed a bit…distant. Like he knows he’s just selling his art to Americans who don’t give a shit, so he’s not really investing himself too much. You’d have to prove you want this to for him to really go that extra mile for you. So now what? I’m sick of going to schools to the point I’m thinking of rejoining Crunch (I found out if I stay a year, my job reimburses me at least $350, so that’s pretty much $30 a month off any gym I join). Okay, because I’m just tired of this, I’m going to let you people pick for me. Here are your choices.

NY Shaolin – Cons: Sloppy technique, crappy music played during part of the work out, instruction is cordial but non-explanatory. Pros: Asian instructor, only $50 a month, I’d probably be the best student in no time, I can walk home in good weather and cute blonde actress black belt.

Harlem Taekwondo – Cons: Distance, non-Asian instructor (which I know makes no sense considering my first instructor wasn’t Asian and was great). Pros: solid discipline, my old style and maybe in Harlem I’ll find a wife to make my family happy (even though the instructor is African and married to a white woman and they have a little carmel-colored son running around the dojang). $120 a month.

Hung Gar Kung Fu – Cons: New style to learn from the ground up, forms taught as a separate class. Pros: Asian instructors, solid discipline, good personalized instruction, basics every class, can walk home in good weather. $120 a month.

Alan Lee Wushu Kung Fu – Cons: Non Asian instructor, new style to learn from the ground up, tumbling exercises, crappy music played throughout class, no free trial class to actually experience it, only two classes a week allowed for beginners. Pros: Affordable, everyone looked top notch from what I saw, can walk home in good weather. $60 a month for the two classes

Shaolin Kung Fu Training Center – Cons: Training hall dirty, somewhat perfunctory instruction. Pros: real deal Asian instructor, my legs are still quivering three days later so you know the workout is solid, forms and basics every class and can walk home in good weather. $120 a month for two classes a week ($80 for one class a week and given my thighs, that might just be enough).

Premier Martial Arts – Cons: BLACK AND GREEN UNIFORMS! Though they claim taekwondo it’s actually mixed martial arts so nothing approaching traditional, which the hot chick in the shorts pretty much admitted to while doing her sales pitch. Pros: It’s only three blocks away so there’s no excuse not to go and the aforementioned hot chick in shorts. $75 a month.

OR - Chuck it all and go back to swimming at Crunch.

Cast your votes!