Salon.com > Robert Downey Jr.

“Iron Man 3″ approaches $1 billion in global box office

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:12:00 +0000

"Iron Man 3," the Marvel Studios movie that now holds the second biggest film opening in the U.S., has reached $990.5 million in global ticket sales. THR reports that the Robert Downey Jr. film is now the No. 2 superhero movie of all time, behind "The Avengers."

From THR:

The tentpole has earned $691.9 million so far internationally, putting it at No. 11 on the list of top-grossing films.

In terms of global standing, Iron Man 3 has now passed up Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($963 million), Jurassic Park ($967 million) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($975 million) to become the 16th highest-grossing film of all time.

After North America, Iron Man 3 has taken in the most in China ($102.4 million), followed by Korea ($55.6 million), U.K. ($49.7 million), Mexico ($43.6 million) and Russia ($40.2 million).

“Iron Man 3″: A playboy grows up

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:45:00 +0000

As far as bored and cynical, playing-out-the-string comic-book action sequels go – hey, “Iron Man 3” is a pretty good one! The third and purportedly last of Robert Downey Jr.’s adventures as the armor-clad but increasingly vulnerable Tony Stark features one of Downey’s most nuanced performances, arguably a lot better than the movie around him, and keeps him separated from the physical and emotional protection of the Iron Man suit for extended periods. There are several good supporting performances, not even including Gwyneth Paltrow’s abdominal muscles, which is really all I can remember about Pepper Potts: Guy Pearce, as a nerd genius spurned by Tony Stark years earlier who comes back for revenge; Ben Kingsley, most delicious of all, as a shadowy techno-Osama known as the Mandarin.

“Iron Man 3″ trailer depicts Air Force One bombing

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:06:00 +0000

So much for the villainous aliens of "The Avengers."

The new trailer for "Iron Man 3," just released, depicts a newly elected president swearing revenge on supervillain "The Mandarin," just before Air Force One is bombed and government officials float through the air.

The Marvel series of comic-book movies have always lightly dabbled in politics -- Tony Stark, the titular "Iron Man," is a weapons contractor who's under perpetual scrutiny from the government, while his fellow Avenger Captain America is a jingoistic figure of American can-do optimism. They're far from the three movies depicting coups and paramilitary overthrows of the president coming out this year (those would be "White House Down," "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" and "Olympus Has Fallen").

The franchise is better known for action than real-world resonance of any sort. But a plot hinging on vengeance against a globally known terrorist striking back against American power may indicate that we'll be seeing more and more movies tinted with themes that wouldn't feel out of place in a Kathryn Bigelow movie.

Warner Bros. to turn episode of “Black Mirror” into feature film

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:30:00 +0000

Warner Bros. has picked an episode of Charlie Booker's British sci-fi series, "Black Mirror" to turn into a full-length feature film, which in November won the International Emmy Award for best TV mini-series.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Booker described it in The Guardian as a modern-day version of "The Twilight Zone." It tackles the dissonance between the routine things we do, like tweet and talk to smartphones, and the fact "that just five years ago would scarcely have made sense to us." Booker expounded:

This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror, my new drama series, is set. The "black mirror" of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone. The series was inspired, indirectly, by The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's hugely entertaining TV series of the late 50s and early 60s, sometimes incorrectly dismissed as a camp exercise in twist-in-the-tale sci-fi. It was far more than that. Serling, a brilliant writer, created The Twilight Zone because he was tired of having his provocative teleplays about contemporary issues routinely censored in order to appease corporate sponsors. If he wrote about racism in a southern town, he had to fight the network over every line. But if he wrote about racism in a metaphorical, quasi-fictional world – suddenly he could say everything he wanted.

The perfect double bill: Classic Hollywood from “The Artist,” Chaplin

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:10:00 +0000

There is the thing. And things about the thing. Or, to dress that thought up, all proper-like, there is meta perspective, a post-ironic approach, or that old standby, the homage.

"The Artist" was a much-beloved phenomenon last year. An exquisitely crafted love letter to the lost Art of Silent Film, it levitated into the hearts of some audiences -- including just about all the critics and the ever-unreliable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Why then, does it feel like such a chore to watch? And why do I feel guilty even thinking such a thing, let alone writing it? It’s like kicking the adorable Uggie the Dog.

Michel Hazanavicius approached this project with the most noble of intentions. To transport modern movie audiences back into time, by lovingly re-creating the vocabulary of the silent film. He succeeds totally in that department. But is this a round trip really worth taking? For "The Artist" seems like the master thesis of an absolutely brilliant film student, who really, really wants to impress the faculty on just how well he has done his homework. Hazanavicius has been candid on how he obsessively studied the silent film masters. Murnau’s "Sunrise" and "City Girl," and Chaplin’s "City Lights," were his textbooks, and it is clear that he read them well. Too well. There is the thing, and things about the thing.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”: Guy Ritchie’s cheerful, idiotic sequel

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:45:00 +0000

It's definitely possible to have a good time at "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," the latest motion picture offering from Guy Ritchie, the erstwhile Mr. Ciccone. If you saw Ritchie's egregious but enjoyable Christmas 2009 hit "Sherlock Holmes," you already know the rules: Don't expect anything that bears any resemblance to Victorian England, beyond the top hats and some mud. Basically, we're talking the authenticity level of a suburban St. Louis high school production of "Oliver Twist." And definitely don't expect any relationship to the canonical stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, beyond the names of the characters and the suggestion that the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson, M.D., has a kind of homoerotic subtext. Given Robert Downey Jr.'s queeny, hilarious, cranked-to-11 performance as the titular genius, you might actually not want to call that subtext. It's more like supertext, if that's a word. (Is Downey's full-scale "queering" of the Holmes character a liberatory act or a homophobic stereotype? Get to work, grad students!)

Today’s must-see viral videos

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:15:00 +0000

1. Tom Green was planking before planking was cool

Though the sheer fact that Tom Green started the planking thing would be further evidence of its not being cool, right?

2. Planking to the oldies

Though if Richard Simmons is participating, it actually makes the whole thing seem way more legit.

3. Kathy Lee and Hoda on "Pooper Snoopers"

"Today" show red alert: Big brother is watching your dog poop, via doggy DNA.

Guess the celebrity encounter from Rob Lowe’s memoir

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:35:00 +0000

When The New York Times reviewed Rob Lowe's new memoir "Stories I Only Tell My Friends," they caught on pretty quickly to the actor's autobiographical shtick. Lowe knows he's handsome – and a pretty talented actor – but he also knows that people really want to hear about his famous friends:

In 1976 his mother moved the family to a modest house on Point Dume, in Malibu, Calif., because of its air quality, and guess who the neighbors were? Penns and Sheens. Rob is taken to see the miniature model for a cheesy sci-fi movie in the works, and guess what the battle station and spaceship are called? Death Star and Millennium Falcon…

Guess who liked to make home movies of his schoolmates? Chris Penn, brother of Sean. Guess who Chris’s best friend was? Charlie Sheen. Guess what Charlie’s father, Martin, had been doing? Having a meltdown while making "Apocalypse Now" for Francis Ford Coppola.

“Due Date”: Downey, Galifianakis on road to nowhere

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:30:00 +0000

You would think that any movie where Zach Galifianakis gets Robert Downey Jr. hella stoned and then dazzles him with explications of the brilliance behind "Two and a Half Men" is bound to be a good time. I mean, you would, right? But dude-comedy specialist Todd Phillips' new "Due Date" is an oddly listless and downbeat affair, setting these two beloved eccentrics adrift in a road movie that's rarely funny enough to connect as absurdist comedy and rarely compelling enough to work as recession-era male-bonding melodrama.

Both guys are fun to watch, at least in patches. Downey, of course, would be entertaining if he were reading stories from the Financial Times out loud; there's no living American movie actor who seems both so effortless and so effective. If he plays pretty much the same soulful wiseass in every movie, the characters are somehow all individually convincing, or maybe they're all subsets within the much larger performance of playing Robert Downey Jr. It could be a gag, all by itself, that Downey plays a straitlaced architect in "Due Date," a tightly wound Type-A achiever who's never done drugs and is mortified to find himself trapped with Galifianakis' loser deadbeat on a cross-country road trip. But his performance is low-key and largely realistic, and never remotely resembles shtick.

I am “Iron Man” with a pacemaker

Sat, 22 May 2010 00:20:00 +0000

After a close brush with death, it is not uncommon to make a list of the things you have yet to achieve, after which it is not uncommon to escape to the movies. It was in this context that I discovered I was not living up to my man-machine potential.

But sitting in a movie theater last weekend, it became clear what had drawn me (and a reluctant friend) to see "Iron Man 2." Iron Man's powers are generated from an implant designed to keep his weakened heart from failing. Of course, there are differences in our individual circumstances. Tony Stark, the man beneath the Iron Man armor, designed his own implant in an effort to save himself from a piece of shrapnel traveling to his heart. Not only that, he created the device using material provided by his unwitting captors (Asian Reds in the original "Tales of Suspense" comic; Middle Eastern terrorists in the movie). I am not nearly that clever; my device was built by Medtronic, a Minneapolis company that was started in a garage and is now the largest medical device company in the world. We have so much in common, and yet I have so many things to learn from him. Sure he's a little smoother in social situations, and better connected, yet at our core we share something rare. We are both cyborgs.

“Sherlock Holmes”: Downey by Law

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:35:00 +0000

Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" is entertaining in a glossy, mindless way — every corner of it is packed with hyperkinetic life, which is not to say that it's likely to stick in your memory for more than a few hours after you've seen it. The screenplay and story are credited to no fewer than five writers, and that's not even counting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created the characters — and brought them to life with his elegant prose — in the first place. Ritchie seems to think that a detective-and-doctor team who solve crimes by, oh, thinking about them just isn't dynamic enough for the screen, so he turns Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson — played by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law — into action heroes: They kick, punch and karate-chop their way through various scenarios in which the cutting is fast, even when the motion is slow, and the computer-generated effects are plentiful.