Revenge of The Fallen

My initial impression is this sequel is almost superior to the original. RoTF is a near perfect summer blockbuster. It has inspiring heroes and heroics, over the top special effects and no shortage of girls in their summer clothes. I absolutely loved the score, which framed and held the movie together in the absence of a particularly coherent plot.

That the characters are cartoonish, or the plot a loosely woven pastiche, is hardly, in this context, criticism.

It is unfortunate that apparently because the script had the audacity to tweak Obama (in much the vein that the original tweaked W) proffessional reviewers wanting to keep their jobs were not allowed to simply enjoy the movie. Instead they felt obliged to instruct us along the lines of:

The man just wears you out and wears you down, so much so that it’s easy to pretend that you’re not ingesting 2 hours and 30 minutes of warmongering along with all that dumb fun.

or

Memo to Michael: It's a toy movie. Your audience is predominantly teen and pre-teen. My kids don't need to see your salivating soft-porn fantasies or your reactionary militaristic politics.

Not that these reviewers should be taken seriously -- and, of course, they aren't. RoTF may earn more in its opening weekend than all the star studded Hollywood anti-war-movie efforts to date combined -- but its worth noting the precise "warmongering" "reactionary militaristic politics" embedded in the move, which reduce to: Don't negotiate with Decepticons.

Iranian Government

One interesting pattern in reporting on Iran is that the liberal media generally asserts that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are a duo and that the former is sub-ordinated to the latter, whereas more conservative media reports a power struggle between the two.

The most likely motivation behind this is that it is quite difficult to argue for engagement with a Government substantively controlled by Ahmadinejad. It is easier to argue for engagement with a Government in which he is a mere figurehead.

I suppose time will tell which side is reporting the straight facts and which is subsuming "journalism" to a political agenda.