Hello Bruce and Chris: I listen to your Friday show pretty regularly, and enjoy it quite a bit, but I simply had to comment about your review of "Iron Man". You raved about this film, as did all the other film critics, apparently. You mentioned that it got something like 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and you were even puzzled that there could actually be 8% who did *not* like it. Your high praise for this film prompted me to go down and see it myself at the Co-ed. To put it simply, I got zero, nada, from this flick. No thrills. No interest. Nothing. Moreover, I was very much troubled by its benign portrayal of the military. It was a shallow, simplistic, good-guy/bad-guy look at war. Glorifying high technology, glorifying the lifestyle of the ultra-wealthy, and glorifying the "Lone Ranger" hero who flies to the rescue of cowering peasants being threatened by wicked, murderous "Injuns"; aka., Islamic terrorists. Thus leaving us all to adore the man in the metal suit, and wonder at his awesome power and righteous, all-American goodwill (and also the goodwill of the U.S. Air Force). I could go on, but let me refer you to an excellent article in the Asia Times that states perfectly what the problems are with films of this genre. And if you wouldn't mind, after you read it, can you let us know if you still view the film in the same way -- if you're still jazzed about it. Maybe you can comment on the air about this.

Here's the link to the article:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE24Df01.html

Regards
Al Gabis
Fairfield