If it was good enough for The Avengers...

I'm a fan of Marvel, and have a great deal of love for what Disney, Marvel Studios and everyone involved has done in creating MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe).  I'm also a fan of Joss Whedon.  I'd be lying if I said Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn't a part of my teenage years, and I love Firefly.  So imagine my excitement at the knowledge that these 2 loves were being brought together for Avengers Assemble.  Picture a kid at Christmas, then times it by a very large number.  As well as being an annoyance for Family, Friends and Colleagues, I kept a close eye on how much longer I would have to wait to see Avengers Assemble by using a countdown app on my phone.

So after watching the latest Iron Man 3 trailer (below, for any who haven't seen it yet),

I decided to fire up the old countdown app:

Because where would we be without Iron Man?  Undoubtedly the catalyst for the MCU as we know it today.  Marvel had had big screen outings in the past, as far back as Howard the Duck in 1986.  But even the more notable and recent entries, Spiderman, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, were insular at best, and only just palatable at worst.  The arrival of Iron Man in 2008 changed the landscape for Marvel completely.  Understandably there were things going on behind the scenes to help things along.  The creation of Marvel Studios new base of operations, the appointment of Kevin Feige, and the systematic recuperation of the rights to all it's now stable characters, among others.

For me, the fan, Iron Man was the signal of a new beginning.  A beginning that has now lead us to this, Iron Man 3 and the start of MCU Phase 2.  Let the count down begin.

p.s. since starting to write this post, the countdown is down to:

6 weeks, 5 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes, 15 seconds

Ant-Man just keeps getting better...

A lovely post appeared on my Twitter feed recently from @SciFiNow.  They'd found an article on IFC.com about Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

http://www.ifc.com/fix/2013/02/spirit-awards-mary-elizabeth-winstead-edgar-wright

Having worked together with Edgar Wright on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (as Ramona Flowers, pictured above), Mary Elizabeth Winstead expressed her desire to work with him again at a recent awards ceremony.  In particular when asked about his upcoming work on Ant-Man.

Now that Ant-Man is slated for a 2015 release as part of Marvel's 'Phase 3' and post Avengers 2, we're still a long way off getting anything like concrete casting at this point.  But with Marvel being hot property at the moment, they'll be no shortage of interest in the lead roles.  Knowing Winstead's name could be in the mix makes it all the more interesting.

I could see Mary Elizabeth Winstead as The Wasp, couldn't you?

Next on my wish list is Ultron....

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

This is certainly the motto employed by the writers and director of Broken City starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe.

Wahlberg plays the part of Billy Taggart, ex Police Detective turned Private Eye, with Russell Crowe as Mayor Hostetler.

At the beginning of the movie we see Taggart up in court on a murder charge, having been involved in a shooting whilst trying to make an arrest.  Taggart has killed someone suspected of raping and murdering a 16 year old girl.  A technicality sees the suspect cleared of the charges, whilst everyone knows he was actually guilty.  The implication being that Taggart deliberately shot the man to see justice done.  Taggart himself is cleared of his charges, before being hauled into an office to meet with the Mayor and the Police Chief.  Here he is told that new evidence has come to light that will surely convict him.  The evidence can be made to disappear, but he has to resign.

After Taggart leaves the office we flash forward 7 years where he is now a Private Eye.  Struggling to make ends meet due to his good nature, he gets a call from the Mayor and is offered a large amount of money to follow the Mayor's Wife (played by Catherine Zeta Jones), as the Mayor suspects her of cheating.  As you can imagine, this is just a ploy for a far more sinister scheme that is being orchestrated by the Mayor against the backdrop of his re-election campaign.  The Mayor's Wife turns out not to be cheating, but trying to bring the Mayor down, with Taggart used as a pawn by the Mayor to prevent this from happening.

What ensues is some nice drama, suspense, with gunplay and scuffles.  In the end it boils down to a duel between Mark Wahlberg's and Russell Crowe's characters.  Both have hidden secrets and dirty hands, and when Crowe's Mayor tries using Taggart's skeleton in the closet against him, Taggart finds his shot at redemption by calling his bluff, sticking to his guns and taking the Mayor and himself down in the process.

It's pretty standard stuff as far as plot goes, complete with slow motion exit by a redeemed and triumphant Wahlberg at the end.  Good performances by the leads, and a good supporting turn by Zeta Jones make it above average and good entertainment.  If you're at a loss for what to go and see this week before the big blockbusters start to drop down, you won't go far wrong here.

Silver Lining and the Oscars...

With The Oscars done for 2013, I looked back on the winners and found no surprises, other than that of Best Actress. This year it went to Jennifer Lawrence, and up to that point my main knowledge of her came from The Hunger Games.  When initially offered the part of Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence said she needed several days to think about it. Even though she was a fan of The Hunger Games novels, the scope of the part and the project could potentially go on to effect her future career.  As we know, she took the part, and I must say that it definitely seemed a part that didn't quite sit comfortably with her on screen. It will be interesting to see if that changes in the next instalment, now having one under her belt.  As a result of that performance, I couldn't imagine her sinking her teeth into a role that went on to land her the Best Actress Academy Award.

I missed the initial run of The Silver Linings Playbook at the cinema.  It was a time when I was still suffering the effects of an awkward and unintentional 'man date' situation.  Myself and a friend went to see Ruby Sparks together, not really knowing what it was all about.  As the credits began to roll, we looked across at each other knowing exactly what the other was thinking. What we had seen could only be described as a date movie.  Because of this, and an inkling that Playbook could be another potential 'man date' situation in the offing, Playbook passed me by.

Luckily, due to it's Oscar success, it was brought back for a select few showings.  So off I went, making sure I didn't miss another opportunity.  I had to get over my initial frustration at my local cinema not putting any trailers in before hand (something I've only experienced once before), which lead to me missing Bradley Cooper's opening monologue.  Once I had done this, I knew from the start I was watching something that I wouldn't find entirely comfortable.  In part due to the brilliant performances by Lawrence (Tiffany) and Cooper (Pat), and in part because they are so well supported by the likes of Robert De Niro (Pat Snr.), Chris Tucker (Danny) and Jacki Weaver (Dolores).

Pat and Tiffany are both Bi Polar sufferers.  Pat begins that film in a mental institution, where he has admitted himself to avoid jail time for beating his wife's lover to within an inch of his life.  Tiffany has lost her husband, and subsequently started sleeping with everybody she can.  The mental problems suffered by the main characters are so well executed, and between them Cooper, De Niro and Weaver create a home that is so exquisitely dysfunctional that you can see where Bradley Cooper's Pat has come to suffer from his own demons in the way that he does.  Pat's then dogged refusal to believe that his relationship with his wife is over, and his and Tiffany's using of each other to get what they want, is played out well enough to make you wonder why this would ever be considered a romance of any kind.  So that in the end, I was so convinced that their happy ending wasn't going to happen that I found myself fighting the urge to shout at the screen in frustration.

I enjoyed the film that much that it left me wondering not whether Jennifer Lawrence was good enough for her Oscar, but whether her own amazing performance was verging on being swallowed up by the strength of the supporting cast.  If you haven't seen this film already, get in there while you can for this limited post Oscar run.  You won't regret it.

And the Oscar for numbest bum goes to....

With the Oscars just around the corner, there are a lot of very good films hitting the cinemas.  Most of my free time has been spent watching these films, and I've found it difficult to find time to blog my thoughts on them.  There's little surprise why, here's the last four films that I've watched and their running times:

Lincoln - 2hrs 30mins (150 mins)

Django Unchained - 2hrs 45mins (165 mins)

Flight - 2hrs 18mins (138 mins)

Zero Dark Thirty - 2hrs 37mins (157 mins)












The average running time of the four films above is 152.5 minutes, so even if we generously don't round that up to 153, that's a 2 hour 32 minute average running time.  I can't imagine that cinemas vary greatly in the amount of advertisement they show before the start of the film.  At my local franchise, we are made to endure at least 30 minutes.  The only exception to this being when we went to see Total Recall in IMAX, when for some unbeknown reason the film started immediately with no advertisement before hand meaning we missed the first five minutes whilst enjoying a burger.  This means that my last 4 visits to the cinema have seen me spend on average over 3 hours in front of the screen.  As I'm sure any Father will be able to testify, that's a lot of time!

So, sat as I am, filtering through the swirling thoughts, emotions, and questions posed by the films above I thought 'does a films length, determine it's Oscar worthiness?'.

Rule 2 of the Oscars states that a film must me more than 40 minutes in length to qualify as a feature film, thereby qualify for the Oscar for Best Picture.

It would be amazing and hugely interesting if a 41 minute film had won Best Picture, however, the film with the shortest running time ever to have won is Marty (1955) at 94 minutes.  In a write up for the film during the time, it was said,
"Don't expect that record to be broken anytime soon, either.  Oscar winners are gettin' longer, not shorter."
After doing a little digging, I came across a great piece of work on collider.com (http://collider.com/oscar-best-picture-statistics/) which gives a breakdown of running times for the Best Picture winner.  The graph plotting the initial data makes it look as though the running time varies a lot, showing that a long running time doesn't always mean Best Picture winner.  Further study from this site shows that for the individual concerned, the average running time of films they have watched (which is a lot) is between 90 and 120 minutes.  It also shows that 80% of Best Picture winners after 1960 are longer than 2 hours.

So if you're planning on a trip to the cinema at the moment, beware of a numb bum.  There are a lot of potential Oscar winners out there at the moment, and as I've found, that means you'll be in for the long haul.

If you haven't bought a copy of Dredd...

The theatrical release of Dredd was met with a lukewarm reception at the box office.  It didn't recoup it's $45 million budget, making only $36.4 million.  Many who have seen it were left scratching their heads.  How could such a good film pull in such poor box office numbers?  Many speculated that it was the hard boiled, unyielding nature of it's action.  Gruesome, ultra violent, in an age where more and more films water down to achieve box office acceptance (Taken 2 is the most recent, and notable example of this), Dredd took off the gloves and swung away with knuckles bared.

Mistake?...

Most certainly not.  Doing anything but what they did would have been a disservice to the source material.  What Pete Travis and Alex Garland (with the help of many others) have created is, in my opinion, the most faithful, and downright best, comic adaptation of recent memory.  Although the film is greatly self contained, with no annoying 'wait until the next film' loose ends, I would dearly love to see more of this world and the characters within it, we know there are plenty more to introduce.  Little touches like the 'Chopper' graffiti tag, and an interview here with Alex Garland http://whatculture.com/film/alex-garland-interview-dredd-3d-slo-mo-sequel-ideas-more.php gave me hope that this would happen.

Then came the box office numbers...

Shortly followed by the reviews and articles saying that a sequel now would not happen.  Dredd had one more card to play, the DVD/Blu-Ray release.  We've come a long way since the days of Shawshank Redemption and VHS.  A film that also had a disappointing box office run, only to receive several Oscar nods and become the top rental film of 1995.  I can't see Dredd getting any Oscar nominations, and piracy is rife, but I've got everything crossed that home sales can elevate Dredd from box office disappointment to cult classic, and if the stars align a sequel.

So far so good?...

In the first week of sales, Dredd has shifted over 650,000 physical copies alone.  As well as topping the digital sales chart.  If this trend continues, and doesn't prove a flash in the pan, who knows?  So if you haven't bought a copy already, what are you waiting for?!

I'll even put the links here for you...

Physical:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dredd-Blu-ray-3D-Karl-Urban/dp/B008OGHUFK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359059898&sr=8-1

Digital:  https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/dredd/id588738013

DO IT!!

Hold off on the Nolan box set....

If you, like me, think that Christopher Nolan has the midas touch when it comes to the big screen, then this could be good news.

In the void following the release of the last of the Dark Knight Trilogy, all eyes (ears, and digital equivalent) have been on what direction Nolan will take next.  And it looks like we might not have to wait long to find out.

Interstellar, a time travelling, sic-fi epic penned by his brother Jonathan may well be next on his list.  Originally tipped to have Spielberg at the helm, rumours are rife that the recent 'indefinite' postponement of Robopocalypse may have caused Nolan to make a move on this project before Spielberg officially put his name to it.

Let's hope there's more to follow on this soon.