Thoughts: 09-May-2010

Happy Mother's Day.

Film Review.

Iron Man 2: Director Jon Favreau. Very good sequel, as good as the original. Great story and lots of great action. Scarlett Johansson was very good in the role of the Black Widow and Jon Favreau did a great comedy bit with her during her big fight scene. I thought that Don Cheadle was wasted in his role, was not given that much screen time or character development. For that matter, Terence Howard who played James Rhodes in the first film, did not get that much screen time ether. Mickey Rouke did a great job playing the villain Ivan Danko aka Whiplash. And after the final credits, we get a setup for the upcoming Thor film with the reveal of Mjolnir crashing into the New Mexican desert. Great movie and a must see. A

News item: The Washington Post company puts Newsweek up for sale.

According to an article in the Atlantic a few months back, newsweeklies have not been doing well as the Internet and cable news channels are getting information to people a lot fast than a weekly magazine can. Only The Economist and the Weekly seem to be doing well. US News and World Report is now a monthly, Time has cut back on news reporting to focus on longer essays, and Newsweek went through a revamp to make it more like the Economist and be more of a thought publication as opposed to a news reporting magazine.

Well, the revamp is not successful. I picked up a copy of Newsweek a while back and it was a great issue on true crime. This got me to subscribe. I was unimpressed with the run of magazines I received, the content never lived up to the promise of that first issue that I read. Now the magazine is for sale.

I say that a weekly news magazine, should have a summary of the top stories of the week, some lengthy investigative journalism articles, and then a review section for movies, TV, theater, books, music, and other fine arts. Maybe some commentary on the sports world too. That to me could be a successful combination.

Also, who ever buys Newsweek, please fire Eleanor Clift.

Boston Red Sox were again smoked by the evil empire. Lord, do I hate it when the Yankees win and to smoke us like that. Good night nurse.

Cold Case (CBS): The season finale was on this past week and the show ended with some nice tie ups to previous story lines. That evil assistant chief got his comeuppance, Lily saved her sister and newborn baby, and the rapist who raped the mother of Scotty got killed in prison after getting set up as a rat by Scotty. The show may have seen its end with this season as CBS may not renew it. Good show over all, with 7 seasons under its belt has plenty of episodes for syndication. B

Oh well.