God, I wanted to like this movie so hard. At the outset, it had such a great take on the superhero genre, sort of an anti-Invincible story. It even offers a reasonable explanation for why a kid wouldn’t get beat to shit every time he tackled thugs! So, why, god why, did it collapse into a violent mishmash of cliches and spectacle?

It had so many chances for a resolution of “violence is never a hero’s answer” or “violence is okay in certain situations” or even “we don’t have a clear answer for violence,” but instead the resolution(?) was “this is how to kill people in boner-inspiring ways.” By the final scenes, several people had walked out of the theater.

I guess it was most bothersome that the film couldn’t decide whether it was a witty comedy/action movie or just a silly comedy to be taken at face value— Probably one of the best lines in the movie was incredibly self-referential (“man, that was one strange sounding bazooka!”) but I can’t possibly like it when it completely threw off the tone of the film.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Maybe I’m just a crotchety old man.

Max Tannone, “History Town (Mos Def vs. Desmond Dekker)”

From the recently released Mos Dub mixtape (available here, fo free!) comes this delightful little mashup. I was first introduced to “007 (Shanty Town)” thanks to Diplo/Santigold’s Top Ranking, and hearing it reinvented as the beat here was a pleasant surprise. The rhymes are quick enough to keep the dub sound from putting me to sleep, and there is enough extra production here to separate this from the rest of the “beat + acapella = mashup” DJ crowd.

dem a shoot dem a loot dem a wail a shanty town


Worthy Cause of the Day: Courtesy of The Stranger’s Dan Savage.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry: I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty to draw Mohammad in a bear suit or give me death!


UPDATE: This should go without saying, but nothing ever really does. The whole point of this is not to offend Muslims, it’s to offend censors. There are no sacred cows in comedy (see The Aristocrats for more on this). If you are offended by something on television, change the channel, close your eyes, walk away. Do not send death threats to the show’s creators. That last part really ought to go without saying, but, as I mentioned above, nothing ever really does.

Don’t do anything to offend anyone. Just do what’s funny if you’re trying to be funny; but your goal shouldn’t be to offend censors or to lash back at terrorists. Do you really think the people who are targeted by this joke will lighten up or something? This is just being a dick to Muslims everywhere as opposed to actually having a point.