"HE'S LIKE THE YODA OF COMICS" - my friend Liz
Bringing you the very best in comics art and cosplay - 10,000 posts and still going strong! KoC has been linked to/reblogged by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Brian Michael Bendis, Dave Gibbons, Gail Simone, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Kieron Gillen, Mike Deodato Jr, Marcio Takara, Adam Hughes, Paolo Rivera, and Ty Templeton. KoC has also been mentioned on Comics Alliance & The Mary Sue. (I'm not one to brag, though.)
My personal blog is here, FWIW.
Official trailer for Thor: The Dark World, due in October!
Man Of Steel trailer; Zack Snyder’s vision of Superman bows June 2013. Thoughts?
ICYMI (via Newsarama):
The two newest cast members of X-Men: Days of Future Past are familiar ones: Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer announced the news Tuesday via Twitter, indicating that the actors will indeed be returning to the familiar roles of Professor Xavier and Magneto. Singer previously worked with Stewart and McKellen on 2000’s X-Men and 2003’s X2: X-Men United.
James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are also returning for the film, reprising their X-Men: First Class roles as the younger versions of Xavier and Magneto, respectively. (Days of Future Past is a time travel story, but you already knew that.)
X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled for release from Fox on July 18, 2014.
Of course, there’s really one apposite response here:
IRON MAN 3 official trailer! In cinemas May 2, 2013.
Thor (Avengers movie version) by Adi Granov.
Cinematic Avengers by Eric Muller.
The Avengers - Lets Go To Shawarma (by MGF Customs/Reviews)
Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other’s, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.
I have never been more inspired than when I watched Harold Pinter speak in a direct address to camera in his Nobel lecture in 2005. “Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond with the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Some times you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.”
Big talk for someone in a silly superhero film, I hear you say. But superhero films offer a shared, faithless, modern mythology, through which these truths can be explored. In our increasingly secular society, with so many disparate gods and different faiths, superhero films present a unique canvas upon which our shared hopes, dreams and apocalyptic nightmares can be projected and played out. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings – stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of every man’s life, and we love it. It sounds cliched, but superheroes can be lonely, vain, arrogant and proud. Often they overcome these human frailties for the greater good. The possibility of redemption is right around the corner, but we have to earn it.
So, I saw the Avengers film today.
Rest assured, it delivers on the promise hinted at by the tag at the end of Iron Man in ‘08, and the hype it’s been (justifiably) been saddled with since. It’s a genuinely satisfying, thrilling and - dare I say - fun movie from start to finish; any film that opens with a decent enough car chase and then proceeds to up the ante/scale in each subsequent act, without losing sight of the plot/character focus, deserves praise.
Each of the main cast members holds their own in this film. It’s an ensemble piece, no mistake, but each team member gets their chance to shine. No diva moments here (except for Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, but hey, he is the antagonist). Joss Whedon, whose potential was glimpsed in many an episode of Buffy/Angel and hinted at in Serenity, finally delivers with aplomb and flair. The script moves at a rattling pace, but allows its cast to breathe when needed.
Is it a perfect film? No (the explanation for Thor appearing in the story is handwaved in, and is equally handwaved out again at the film’s denouement), and despite Whedon coming close to imitating latter-day Michael Bay in the final third of the film, the 2+ hours running time whooshes by with little slack or flab. (Cameo from Harry Dean Stanton notwithstanding.)
You will laugh, as it is a Joss Whedon film, and his Buffy-speak has become part of modern-day lexicon. You will cry, as again, it is a Joss Whedon film - and to say any more will spoil. Whedon’s love for the Marvel Universe is apparent via in-jokes, sly references, and the inevitable post-credits sting (and if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel fanboy like I am, you’ll lose your shit).
Suffice to say, The Avengers is a true crowd-pleasing experience, and hugely enjoyable if you’re a comic-book fan. I can’t recommend this highly enough.
And to Whedon’s assembled (ha!) cast above, I say: take a well-deserved bow, you’ve all earned it. Roll on the sequels!
[Gaspar Saladino’s Avengers logo design sourced via Dial B For Blog; Kevin Feige (far right), Whedon et al at SDCC 2010 via bigkevsgeekstuff on Flickr.]
