I enjoyed Spy Game quite a lot. I remember not really being interested in seeing it but went out of a lack of anything better to do and being glad I did. I've rewatched it a couple times on cable since.

I like what they're saying about Batman Begins -- because yes! Batman does not have superpowers. Catwoman is NOT part cat etc.

Though this quote from the article made me laugh:

"The thing that's cool about Batman is that when you're a kid growing up and imagining yourself being him, if you had access to that kind of money and that technology, you could be him."

You'd also need a very specific take on reality that isn't currently found in the DSM-IV.

Another article on comics, movies, ComicCon at the NYTimes. (I bet Buffistas/foamy works as registration.)

Ok, over my vacation my buds and I decided to grab an On-Demand movie for a rainy day. There was a lack of general comic goodness that none of us had seen, so we ended up with Euro-trip.

It was slightly better than I expected, although not really good. The best part by far, was the Matt Damon shocker. Does anyone know how it is that even happened?

You'd also need a very specific take on reality that isn't currently found in the DSM-IV.

What, you don't think Batman is a narcissist? All of his self-flagellation can, with a little interpretation, be taken as turning a whole city into his private psychodrama. Talk about ego!

I thought Spy Game suffered from unintentional silliness. I don't have any specific objection to Redford or to Pitt in it, but the whole motivational structure of the movie, from start to finish, was just Too Much. Also, although it's realistic, watching someone manipulate world events by dint of a telephone is just not as sexy as watching a fistfight.

The funnest part of the Bourne guest-casting was being like Oh! That is what those guys look like when they're at home! LOTR actors out of their wigs look very different -- I hardly recognized either one at first.

I thought Spy Game suffered from unintentional silliness.

Dude, your take on reality is that it's unnecessarily silly. Using the nostrum "Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel" as a diagnostic tool, I suspect you may be the thinkiest person alive.

Perhaps, but I don't go blunderbussing around rural Chinese prisons, do I? I mean, I also do not sell the girlfriends of my proteges to rural Chinese prisons.

Generally speaking, I think selling a supermodel to China, only for China to hide her in a rural prison, is the nadir of foreign policy silliness. It wanted only Richard Gere holding a sit-in in Tiananmen Square to be sillier.

I mean, I also do not sell the girlfriends of my proteges to rural Chinese prisons.

So you say.

cuts eyes suspiciously at Nutty

Also, although it's realistic, watching someone manipulate world events by dint of a telephone is just not as sexy as watching a fistfight.

Nutty, I love how you can say that the movie needed more realistic motivations in one sentence, and then say that the realism in the movie wasn't as sexy as a big explosion later on in the same paragraph.

(And I thought Redford manipulating the world via telephone would have been sexy for you, it seemed like your sort of thing)

Sometimes it seems like the demands you put on movies must leave the poor movies confused and frustrated, wondering how the night could have turned out so badly, and at just which point it all started to go south.

I don't remember liking Spy Game as much as I thought I would. Probably because of Redford's insistence on being a Golden Boy.