Testosterone Heaven

Now that they're over, Fiorella can weigh in on the Oscars.

Not that she knows anything about Slumdog Millionaire, but she does have a few comments to make about The Dark Knight, whose Oscar loss every red-blooded male in the country still seems to be lamenting. She has a few choice words for Iron Man too, another male fantasy feature. Not exactly sacred cows--more like sacred bulls.

Son insisted we sit down with him and watch Dark Knight, which had generated a lot of good publicity, especially centering around the performance of Heath Ledger, who died of an overdose soon after the movie was wrapped up. Fio's take was that Ledger did a good, albeit rather hammy, job reinventing Joker, but the posthumous editing played him up so much that it put the story out of balance. Dark Knight became a Joker movie rather than a Batman movie. And, a word to the wise--loads of graphic gratuitous violence, including the death of the leading lady, does not a Chinatown make.

Son gave Iron Man to Husband for Christmas so after he (Son, not Husband) returned to college, Fiorella had to sit through that cherry bomb also. The star here was Robert Downey Jr, newly clean and functioning. But, to tell you the truth, I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. He looked like a grubby little monkey to me, not quite as tall as his leading lady and certainly not as pretty. And his character's supposed brilliance never rang true--why was it he didn't realize what a babe Gwyneth Paltrow was until he spotted her at an outside event barely wearing a backless dress? In addition, the movie wasn't paced right, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. By the end of it, I didn't care whether Iron Man survived or not.

Husband and Son loved them both, but for my money, if you want a great action movie, go to the video store and rent The Terminator. Or just turn on the news as Arnold battles with the California legislature.