Avengers Assemble (2012)

Film review: Avengers Assemble (2012), directed by Joss Whedon

Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk. In the same film. Directed by Joss Whedon. Geeks everywhere should erupt in fangasms. Those appreciating superhero films from a more ... aesthetic point of view ... it's a film jam packed with hunks. And Scarlett Johansson. (Yeah, kinda lopsided.)

What's the best way to see this ultimate comic book geek extravaganza? With a bunch of fans, of course! Which is exactly what we did last night. Our local Cineworld sold out each and every showing, so I think we're in for a blockbuster. Unsurprisingly.

SHIELD is a secret defense organisation, led by Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson, all kinds of badass). They have an energy cube, the Tesseract, that professor Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), from Thor, is trying to research. One day, it activates, turns into a portal to another planet, and out pops Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and he's hell-bent on taking over the planet. Taking the Tesseract with him, along with a selection of SHIELD people he has "enchanted" - including Selvig and master archer Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

Fury needs to find the Tesseract before all kinds of mayhem breaks loose, and gets his people - Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) to assemble a bunch of people who could possibly be of help. But when your crew is made up of Tony "Iron Man" Stark (Robert Downey Jr), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Bruce "Hulk" Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and you're joined by the alien demigod Thor (Chris Hemsworth) ... things aren't going to run as planned.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Film review: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), directed by Joe Johnston

It's early 1940s, and puny Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, shrunk using CGI) has been declined to join Uncle Sam's forces for the fourth or fifth time. His buddy Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is a soldier about to be shipped off to Europe, and he's tall, dark and handsome. What is Steve? A nice guy who gets beaten up a lot, but who wants to fight for what's right.

During one of his attempts to enlist, Steve is noticed by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who approves his application for being in a program to create a super soldier. You don't necessarily need to have great physical strength to be a hero. Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) doesn't agree, but lets the doctor get on with it. Aided by Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell - it's never explained what she as a Brit is doing in the US military) and Tony "Iron Man" Stark's dad Howard (Dominic Cooper), little Steve soon becomes big, hunky Steve. And seconds after that, hell breaks loose.

The lab was infiltrated by a Nazi spy - Heinz Kruger (Richard Armitage, will get to him in a bit), though he's never named in the film - who causes havoc trying to steal some of that supersoldier-creating serum with which Steve was injected. You see, Kruger works for an organisation called HYDRA, a Nazi specialist weapon section. At the helm of HYDRA is a scientist called Johann Scmidt (Hugo Weaving), with his sidekick Dr. Zola (Toby Jones). Schmidt doesn't plan on being Hitler's lap dog for long - he wants the whole world. Cue a doomsday device, let's call it the CUBE-INATOR, and lots of heroics ... if only the great symbol that is Captain America - i.e. Steve - could find a moment in his busy schedule of Inspiring Speeches to go save the world ...

Sunshine (2007)

Film review: Sunshine (2007), directed by Danny Boyle

When I first saw this film, I was wondering what sort of a film it actually is. Is it meant to be sci-fi, a horror story, drama, what? It feels like some sort of peculiar mix between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Event Horizon. Not necessarily a bad thing, except I’ve yet to see a Kubrick film I actually enjoyed watching. (Oh, except for Full Metal Jacket; I seem to remember that being a good film.) They’re in space and it’s fairly slow-paced and then creepy things happen.

More specifically, it’s in the future, the sun is dying, and in order to re-ignite it, a crew is sent to deliver some sort of bomb to it, which (at least in theory) will start a chain of events leading to a less icy planet Earth. Problem is, the Icarus mission goes missing. Back to square one. A second Icarus mission sets out to do the job instead, and somewhere near Mercury, they pick up a signal … Is it possible that the original space ship is still out there?

Friday morning surprise from the Hay Festival

Driving to work this morning, we ware listening to the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show with Chris Evans. I realised they were live from the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts (must remember to go there in the future) when Alex Jones (the Welsh lady on The One Show) was reading a story as the radio was switched on, and I remembered they'd been talking about going to the Hay Festival on yesterday's show. They were reading out the stories of the runners up in the under 9's 500 word writing competition, and Alex read a story about a knicker-pinching dog - didn't realise at first that it was written from a dog's perspective, so someone hiding a little girl's knickers in their bed was slightly confusing, as you can imagine!

"Stop looking at me like that!"

A bit later on, when we were coming up to turning off the A52, the next reader was introduced ... Ben Willbond, a.k.a. Henry VIII (and others) from Horrible Histories. In my head, I went bouncing up and down going "Oooh oooh oooh!!" like an overexcited monkey, but outwards I just had to stop myself from grinning too excitedly.

Captain America - proper trailer out!

Lo and behold! Fans of Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones and RICHARD ARMITAGE - enjoy! Richard is only in it for a tiny li'l bit but he SPEAKS! Man has trailer time! :D

Captain America - first trailer

Thanks to MG at FLY HIGH! for the link! :) Here's a first look at the trailer for the upcoming Captain America movie. Richard Armitage is in it, but blink and you miss him (ca 00:23).



Are you looking forward to this as well? Are you a comic book to film fan or just a fan of Richard Armitage or one of the other actors?