MIT rules Hollywood

Want a hit movie? Come here.

I just got back from seeing Iron Man, a good but not great action movie which begs the question "how big of an ego do you need to have to put yourself into the movie you're directing -- as a bodyguard w/ 3 lines?  Did Jon Favreau feel like no actor would 'get' the bodyguard character like he could?"  (OK, I'm just mad at Favreau for putting a 20-second extra scene at the very end, after sitting through 5 tedious minutes of credits.  Though, admittedly, Sam Jackson looked very cool as Nick Fury.  But I guess technically it was Nick Fury who looked cool as Sam Jackson.)

But I digress.  What I wanted to talk about was the domination of the box office by my alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

First there was 21, the hit movie about MIT students using their super math genius to bring down the casinos in Las Vegas.

Now comes Iron Man, the biggest movie of the year so far, also about MIT alumni kicking ass with their super genius.  It turns out Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.), the man who becomes Iron Man, is an MIT alum, as is his friend and liaison in the military, Rhodey (played by Terence Howard).  The highlight of the movie was the outstanding cameo by the distinctive MIT school ring, the Brass Rat, as seen on Terence Howard in clip #6 on this page.