“Marty Supreme”: The King Kong of Ping-Pong Is a Ding-Dong

Timothee Chalamet in period-piece mustache holding ping-pong paddle with American flag design, standing amid other players with paddles bearing their own homeland's flags.

Preening Putz Proud of Patriotic Paddle.

Everybody loves narcissists! They’re everywhere today! They’re an evergreen industry and a dominant species and we can’t stop throwing money and attention at them! They rule our reality shows, win our sports, determine our politics, influence our social media, hoard our headlines and flood our feeds! We’re posting about them nonstop and letting them live rent-free in our heads, comping them on head-utilities and buying them head-groceries! We just can’t stop talking, thinking, mocking, or mentioning and mentioning and mentioning and mentioning one of the most self-aggrandized narcissists of them all! We never seem to shut up about him in particular! And by “we” and “our”, I mean you ‘n’ yours — constantly feeding the troll, day-in day-out, exactly what Usenet newsgroups taught us never to do way back in the 20th century. I sure can’t wait for this century’s students to catch up.

Now’s the perfect era for a story like Marty Supreme — a slick all-American anti-fairy tale about an entitled motormouth who almost always gets his way thanks to his unspoken magical self-help affirmation, “Because I said so!” and tries to steamroll over every “NO” like the nice-guy twin to Ben Kingsley’s Sexy Beast human monster. It doesn’t hurt that he’s played by Academy Award Nominee Timothee Chalamet, that beloved Manic Pixie Dream Boy idol of millions who just turned 30 last month. Who wants to be mad at that face, as long as we viewers aren’t the ones suffering in his character’s self-absorbed path of destruction?

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Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Iron Man 3” End Credits

Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man 3, Marvel Studios

Tony Stark and his sidekick, the Bot Wonder.

Before seeing Iron Man 3, I’d run across the whole gamut of reactions online. Friends, acquaintances, and famous strangers I follow either thought it was Super-Hero Film of the Year or the worst travesty since Batman & Robin. I entered the theater with expectations that were high, but slightly different from the average Iron Man movie fan. I suspect most people wanted two hours of the armored Avenger punching and zapping things, with intermittent scenes of Robert Downey Jr. tossing quips like water balloons at unsuspecting characters. Fair warning up front: if you consider the hero’s costume the most important element of a Marvel movie, Iron Man 3 might seem a disappointment. For my money, despite the list of logical lapses my son and I brainstormed on our way out, so far it’s one of the most compelling films of 2013 anyway.

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“Iron Man 3” First Trailer: Destruction, Desolation, Mandarin

The first trailer for Iron Man 3 is here at last. Writer/director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, among several other sharp action-film scripts) takes Tony Stark and friends into their explosion-filled darkest hour, while Sir Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce show up in clips full of foreboding menace.

Cheers!