Rust never sleeps

Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
- Black Sabbath, Iron Man

S'awreet, he's just pissed.
- Mike Myers, So I Married An Axe Murderer


Profound. Which brings us to the latest bowel-shaking dork-pocalypse to strike the nerdosphere, the release of Iron Man, a fillum based not on the thoroughly epic (if thoroughly stupid) Sabbath tune but some Marvel comic or other, and starring professional drugs enthusiast Robert Downey Jr (and had he not laid off the gear he'd have been looking more and more Downey - as in syndrome - by the day) as a Bruce Wayne esque billionaire with a serious complex of the military-industrial type. He makes weapons, nasty pasties kidnap him, he busts out his tinpot arse-kicking skills, shit proceeds to occur, good carries the day, sequels are foreshadowed, the end, mate just park the Armaguard trucks around the back of the cinema to collect the takings thanks Stavros. And so it turned out, save for significant trouser-darkening on behalf of studio officials when it turned out that someone in Nerd Demographic Scheduling had royally fucked up re picking an unencumbered opening weekend: their blessed target audience were going to be forced to choose between the simultaneous launch of Iron Man and that of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Revenge Beyond Thunderdome Of The Citizens On Patrol (or something. I stopped paying attention after Lotus Turbo Challenge II.) However, all was good, at least some of the GTAIV audience found time to decouple from their games consoles, crawl out of their parents' basements and report dutifully to their local megamulticlusterfuckoplex to spent their hard-earned. Or their hard-allowanced as the case may have been.

Ah, it's easy to be cynical. Particularly when you're a cunt. By all accounts Iron Man is a decent movie, albeit one you could have a fairly decent stab at scripting on the back of a damp coaster down at the Frog and Dirigible. I say 'by all accounts' as I probably won't be going to see aforesaid celluloid joy in the ultra-mega-megaplex. Excuses: busy work life, busier home life, young bub, no time. Actual reason: can't be arsed. I stopped going to movies years ago, make it to maybe one a year, two with a prevailing wind and favourable current. And as for Iron Man, I already know everything I need to know about it, specifically that the Sabbath version of the song doesn't get used in the movie (largely because in the song Iron Man goes postal and starts handing out the smackdowns because everyone's left him to rust having saved the world etc.) But, so long as that monster-truck riff got dusted off to scare the kiddies with, all is right with the world.

Over the years I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why it is that I don't like movies. Being an amateur psychologist I've come up with theories which base my lack of interest in film in basal causation ranging from frustration with unimaginative, derivative plot development to deep-seated childhood fear from being scared arse-biting-witless by the fucking ignormous rock monster from the Never Ending Story movie. (And why was their a Never Ending Story II anyway? What a lot of wank.) But a few years ago I accepted the real reason - I have an attention span shorter than Tom Cruise's dodger and this, coupled with the recent advent of fucking ridiculously overlong running times, means I... hey, look, a squirrel. Case in point the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, which ran for the best part of three hours despite being the last in a three film series - exactly how many fucking hours do Hollywood screenwriters need to tell a story these days? And it's not like spinning the fucker out to three hours, or even three entire films (thanks v. much Wankowski Bros.) is a new idea. Titanic: three hours to sink the fucking thing? The English Patient: three hours of waiting for something to happen, any-fucking-thing would do, only to find out that fucking nothing was every going to?

Truth is though I'm rarely not frustrated by anything I see. Last thing I saw in the cinema would have been Casino Royale - which was actually pretty good, then again it didn't have much to compete with given Die Another Day was the worst Bond film ever, made by a cross-dressing sheep shagger who thought what Bond really needed was to be air-dropped into a XXX sequel by way of Once Were Warriors. (In case you're wondering, that XXX link IS work-safe... most of the ones which Google found weren't, surprisingly enough.) But the way Casino Royale's director (another Kiwi, Martin Campbell who also helmed Goldeneye, the best of the recent Bonds - and not just because it spawned a kick-arse Nintendo 64 FPS) managed to integrate the story with the original Ian Fleming book, despite the latter being older and less relevant than Fred Nile, was impressive. As was Eva fuckin' Green, man. Jaysus. Feck, arse, girls.

Another potentially dicey book-fillum conversion was pulled off by the team who (finally) brought The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy to the big screen. Granted, it was probably a lot easier once Douglas Adams had dropped off the twig given how many times he'd pulled veto over film versions of his book which he wasn't liking the looks of, but the balance of opinion seems to run that Adams would have approved of the way his rambling, discursive tale was Hollywooded into the structure of a coherent film. Which ran for just over 90 minutes, thanks very much. If you can't tell your story in an hour and a half, your story is a load of cock. FACT.

Having Box Office on pay TV means not being arsed to go to the cinema doesn't mean you can entirely avoid crap new-release fillums. Such as, in the past year or so, Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby (engagingly stupid) and Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny (fairly dismal). But funnily enough, the best film I've seen in the last year or so has been... Kenny on terrestrial free-to-air. For a film about a man who sells portaloos, it was definitely nowhere near as shithouse as it could have been.

Jaysus (again). That's a gots-to-go line. The Doctor is OUT.