Avengers Ensemble!

For some, the awfulness of Iron Man 2 will still hurt, not as much as the pain of the George Lucas/Jar Jar Binks/"Tone Poem" insanity period, but still painful in a "lets cure that techno virus thing that you've been suffering with using a handy injection of plot hole filler" way. However, it seems lessons were learned (we can hope one of those lessons is not to hire Mickey Rourke EVER again) and since IM2 (as the kids don't say) we've had "Shakespeare with Superpowers" Thor and..er..."War film with Superpowers" Captain America (or "Super Terrific Non Country Specific Solider" if you live in the East) and now the ingenius Marvel plan has reached its natural climax (or "phase 1" as big knob execs say) with "The Avengers" which is basically every Marvel Superhero thats had his own film out in the last 4 years (You won't see the X-men or Spider-Man as in the true spirit of the comics, the film rights aren't owned by Marvel Film Studios but by 20th Century Fox/Sony and the idea of 2 different studios teaming up to make the best superhero film in history is truly the stuff of geeky dreams). The film is out next year and directed by King of the Geeks, Joss Whedon. The trailer has just been released and is, in the true spirit of blockbusters & geek pleasing imagery, bloody amazing:


Aha! I lowered your expectations with a hilarious sweded version! (Thanks to Daily Blam)

And with your lower expectations, watch this!

The Dark Knight Rises Releases Ironic Teaser Poster

We've been dribbled some more Batman drool courtesy of Christopher Nolan's spoiler teat (or Warner Bros. marketing juice depending on your view). Below is the new teaser poster for "The Dark Knight Rises" which still sounds like an elaborately named tower block.
Batman teaser posters are usually better than the final posters so enjoy, and no, you're not the only one asking yourself why everything in the poster is falling towards you if it's called "The Dark Knight Rises"...coz, y'know, rising is the opposite of falling, isn't it....

First Look: New Batman Villain!

It seems only yesterday we all sat in the cinema watching Christian Bale's Batman and wishing it came with subtitles. Well it wasn't yesterday it was 3 years ago (ish) so its high time we had another chance to lean forward in our seats and wish we'd paid more attention in "How to Speak Grizzly Bear" Class. And that chance is now.
In case you didn't know, there's a new Batman film being made after Warner Bros. threw enough money to clear the debt of three countries convinced Christopher Nolan to make another one to "complete his trilogy". Called The Dark Knight Rises (which is also a REALLY good name for a East London tower block) it has a host of actual actors in it who presumably get to growl and mumble along with Christian Bale. Either way Nolan has yet to make a duff film (in my book anyway) so this is very exciting....see, I'm excited.

It also looks like they're trying a viral campaign to rival the last film (which had to be rethought at short notice once Heath Ledger died) and it seems to have kicked off today with a giant pixelated space appearing on the new website http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/ with instructions being that everytime the hashtag #thefirerises is used on Twitter a pixel will disappear, designed to uncover the picture over a prolonged period. Of course geeks were having none of this and the picture was uncovered within an hour.

So without further "ado" here is the picture of Batmans new nemesis...The Steampunk Egg!

X-Men First Class - Keep Up at the back there...

Years before Matthew Vaughn directed the awesome Kick-Ass he bailed out of the sponge suited Vinne Jones travesty that was X-Men 3. After everyone agreed that X-Men 3 was so bad it killed the franchise we were only left with an aging Wolverine for a bleak filmic future for the X-men. Until now.
Matthew Vaughn decided to return to the franchise like a kind of blockbuster dog that vomited up a bad film and trotted away, only to return to the vomitey bad film sick mess a few years later to see if tastes any better. Does it? you decide. Here's the first official and not-photoshopped by geeks look at X-Men First Class:

Tintin Revealed!

If there was a list of words you don't see together I'm pretty sure that "Belgian" "Ginger" and "Blockbuster" would be somewhere near, if not at, the top of that list.
And yet the world has just had its first look at Spielberg's new "blockbuster" about the unfathomably popular ginger Belgian detective, Tintin. Questions about how a blockbuster can be called a blockbuster before its even made any money at the box office aside, Tintin has been written by the creative genius that is Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Jekyll, Sherlock Holmes), Edgar Wright (like you need reminding) and Joe Cornish (Joe from "Adam & Joe" and "Attack the Block") so it would have to take some major bad turns to mess it up...

The pictures look either:
A) Fantastically photo real and technologically amazing.
or
B) Terrifying, like every other attempt to make realistic cartoons (Beowulf, Polar Express, Gollum, Knight & Day).

As long as they've finally figured out how make CGI eyes look like they have life in them and not like the dead soulless creation of a CGI designer then hopefully it should turn out fine. It's due out next October so they've plenty of time to exhaust everyone with hype like they did with Scott Pilgrim and Tron.

The Social Network Review using Trivia

The nutshell version is that this film is very good. So good the person sitting next to me felt the need to keep "tweeting" their thoughts throughout the film. While not seething with both rage & irony I managed to do almost unlimited Trivia spotting.
- It's about the origins of Facebook, so any thoughts of watching teenagers update their status for two hours are thankfully misplaced...
- Somehow you can still tell its a David Fincher film even without the threat of Aliens/Jodie Foster/Someone saying "the first rule of Facebook is that you don't talk about Facebook". Obviously if they did then it would defeat the whole point of Facebook.
- Its good to see that Fincher's unofficial directorial flair of "CGI cold breath" is evident. (go check if you don't believe me).
- Its got the new Spider-Man in it! (Andrew Garfield) His Nu Yoik accent is actually quite decent.
- Its got smug little shit Justin Timberlake in it! And most shockingly he's actually quite good? He is playing a smug little shit and founder of Napster* though.
- Trent Reznor did the soundtrack!
- It's got the girl who will be playing the "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" in it! (Rooney Mara, or as her friends probably call her "Wayne" Rooney Mara"). Yep. We go there.
- Using computer magic the Winklevoss twins are portrayed by the same actor even though two actors are named in the credits. Hopefully "Josh Pence" was aware of this or its going to be VERY awkward in the Pence household.
And the best triva ever:
- Its got the little boy from Jurrassic Park in it!!!

Wow. Turns out "unlimited trivia" is actually about nine points.

*Not a Social Network for people that like cheeky napping. But should be.

An Englishman, a Welshman and an American walk into a Web.

In frankly bizarre casting news, the "Welsh Ewan Mcgregor" Rhys Ifans has been cast as "The Baddy" in the new Spider-Man film. So not only is an English bloke (Andrew Garfield) playing Spider-Man but a Welsh bloke is playing his nemesis?
Who he'll be playing hasn't been announced but you can be sure that Rhys Ifans will:
A) Continue his trademark drunk acting style and not adopt his accent at all leading to a drunk Welsh super-villian. Great.
B) Somehow manage to appear in nothing but some dirty pants in a mistaken belief that the audience found it funny in "Notting Hill" and will stop loving him if he doesn't keep doing it.

With America still reeling from the fact that a English actor is playing a beloved all American superhero I can offer the following advice:

"That feeling you've got? yeah thats the same feeling we had when Renee Zellweger was cast as Bridget Jones, enjoy!"