The Avengers: A Movie That Will Surely Kill Me With Anticipation

...and speculation. Seriously. I have been speculating about and anticipating this movie since I first discovered it was coming out. So I am going to share with you what I know, what I think I know, and what I want.

What I Know: The Confirmed Information About The Avengers Movie
There are very few known things regarding what this movie will have in store. It is known that it is indeed in the works and that it is expected sometime in 2011. It is going to combine characters and plotlines from Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, as we have seen through the "secret scenes" after the end credits of both of these movies. The movie is also going to pull characters from at least four other movies that are still in pre-production stages. The first of these is Iron Man 2, scheduled to release in 2010. The only big news about this sequel are the facts that Don Cheadle is taking over the role of Rhodey and Tim Robbins will most likely be Howard Stark (Tony's father). The next Marvel movie in line for 2010 is Ant-Man, based on the Jack Kirby comic book. Edgar Wright (known mainly for Shaun of the Dead) will be directing this movie, but as for the cast, nothing is known for sure. If you are not familiar with Ant-Man, shame on you. But you can check him out here: http://www.marvel.com/universe/Ant-Man_(Scott_Lang)
The next movie leading up to The Avengers is Thor (scheduled for 2010 as well), directed by...drumroll please...KENNETH BRANAGH. Again, no casting decisions have been made official, but Kevin McKidd was at one point up for consideration for the role of Thor. If you are unfamiliar with Thor, again, shame on you. But here is some information: http://www.marvel.com/universe/Thor_(Thor_Odinson)
And now we come to 2011. And there is one more Marvel movie scheduled to release just before The Avengers. It is a Captain America movie called The First Avenger: Captain America. It will be directed by Joe Johnston, who directed October Sky, Jumangi, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but more notably, worked on the visual effects for Star Wars Episodes IV-VI (original trilogy) and Raiders of the Lost Ark! So there is a lot expected of him for this Captain America film. Again, no casting decisions are official, but I will come back to this in the next section of this post.
Ok, here is what else is known. Robert Downey Jr. and Don Cheadle are the only confirmed cast members of The Avengers according to imdb. And the director has not even been solidified yet. Marvel is just so indecisive. It does appear that the screenwriter is Zak Penn, which is a good choice in my opinion. He wrote X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Fantastic Four, and the Incredible Hulk.
It is also known that The First Avenger: Captain America is going to have an extremely revealing flash back that is supposed to set up The Avengers perfectly. Details surrounding the flash back are unknown, but Howard Stark is going to play a significant role.
It is also known that the writers and masterminds behind The Avengers are intent on making S.H.I.E.L.D (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division) and it's hardcore director Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Now in reality, S.H.I.E.L.Dplays a minimal role in the start of the Ultimate Avengers and a nonexistant one afterwards. So all the purists out there are a little ticked. I, along with half of the Marvel comics fan population, would love a movie dedicated solely to S.H.I.E.L.D and Nick Fury. But enough of my opinions, that's for section three.

What I Think I Know: The Rumours Circulating Around The Avengers
Three Hollywood hunks are rumoured to be in the running for the Cpatain America role: Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt is also supposedly in the running for Thor. As I mentioned before, Gray's Anatomy's Kevin McKidd is also supposedly in the running for Thor. But Matthew Vaughn, who is working alongside Branagh on Thor, claims that he wants an unknown to be Thor.
Besides the Tim Robbins as Howard Stark speculation, the latest Avengers casting rumor was formulated when Eva Longoria was spotted exiting Marvel HQ with a stack of Ultimate Avengers comics in hand, woah! It is speculated that she will be The Wasp. Other characters besides Fury, Wasp, Iron Man, Hulk, Rhodey, Captain America, Thor, and Ant-Man who are rumored to be in the movie are Black Widow and Thunderstrike. And ss of now, Toby MacGuire is not supposed to show up in this movie. That is probably for the better. For more Avengers rumours, check out this blog: http://avengersnews.com/

What I Want: If I Were To Direct/Write/Produce/Call The Shots for The Avengers, This Is What I Would Do
First of all, I would cut S.H.I.E.L.D's role down significantly and make a separate movie dedicated to Nick Fury and his clan. Then, I would write in a bunch of the lesser known Ultimate Avenger characters such as Ms. Marvel, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hellcat, Falcon, and Wolverine. As for casting, this is what I would want:
Nick Fury: Samuel L. Jackson
Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr.
Hulk: Ed Norton
Captain America: Matt Damon
Thor: Daniel Craig (no joke!)
The Wasp: Eva Longoria
Rhodey: Don Cheadle
Ant-Man: Matthew McConaughey
Ms. Marvel: Scarlett Johansson
Quicksilver: Oooo I don't know...somone with white-gray hair. If Anderson Cooper acted, he would be perfect. Hmmm maybe Mark Harmon or Pierce Brosnan
Scarlet Witch: Salma Hayek
Wolverine: Hugh Jackman
Hellcat: Marcia Cross (it's the red hair)
Falcon: Dennis Haysbert
Yep. That would be my star-studded Avengers cast. You have to admit, it would be pretty hardcore.
Well that is all for now. I will probably write more about this topic between now and 2011 because it is TWO WHOLE YEARS AWAY!!! How will I ever make it?

Frank Miller's The Spirit - Review

So I will start off by acknowledging the fact that I am most assuredly one of very few people in this world who is going to write a positive review for this movie. By all means, I am not going to declare this movie the best comic based movie of all time, because it isn't. Not even close. BUT I simply want to defend this movie as entertaining and artistic. I am not going to lie, I did leave the theatre thinking "Wow, that was ridiculous." BUT I also laughed out loud many times during the movie and loved the way it was filmed. I am going to start this review by addressing the latter.

The cinematography in The Spirit combined two things: stylized action reminiscient of a graphic novel and film noir. Awesome. For those of you who do not know what film noir is, I will give you a crash course. Film noir. It's that dramatic, low budget, black and white detective movie style that became popular in the 1940s. You know, the fedoras, new york accents, charming detectives, and blonde bombshells in bright red lipstick. Well The Spirit was filmed in this style with a couple of quirks though. Now add the graphic novelesque action and sound effects to the mix. The Spirit's red tie was intensified through digital coloring so it looked like it was painted on him. The whites and blacks in the film also were intensified to look like pages from a graphic novel. It's kind of hard to explain, but trust me, it looked cool and made me feel like I was reading a graphic novel. In one of the opening fight sequences, The Spirit was beating up on The Octopus and because of the over dramatic sound effects, I could envision the implied large, jagged bubbles with the words THWACK and CRUNCH written in them. And when the Spirit went off on his monologues, I could see the lines of all caps text sprawled across a page marred with colorful images before me.

The humor in The Spirit was weird, yes. But it was hilarious. Eisner and Miller said themselves that they wanted to make the movie funny. Scarlet Johansson's character was possible the strangest, but she was so matter of fact that it was hilarious. And a lot of the dialogue was just plain old ridiculous, but it was meant to be ridiculous. It's not like Miller was trying to create a thought provoking movie with depth to it. It's not like he thought he was writing a serious script and it ended up being a ridiculous one. It was meant to be ridiculous. I believe the simplicity of the plot for this movie was rectified by the wacky humor.

And now the rest of this review is going to be a direct response to another negative review I found online. Here is the link to it: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/24/DDH414SVMC.DTL
I am going to directly address each of the "problems" this person pointed out, so it will make more sense if you read it.

Response to Problem No. 148: The Spirit's costume is rad. Super rad. You don't need a kevlar and titanium dipped fiber suit like Batman to be intense. The red tie was sexy. And the simple mask humanized the Spirit. I liked the simple outfit.

Response to Problem No. 111: Samuel L. Jackson is amazing. End of story. I mean yeah, he was acting like himself, but I liked his take on the Octopus. His meniacle insanity brought a new edge to the character. I mean he killed a kitten. Some of the worst super villains don't possess the adequate level of evilness to kill an innocent kitten named Muffin.

Response to Problem No. 110: As I said before, the dialogue was so ridiculous that it was hilarious. "There's nothing I like better than kicking your ass ... except maybe eggs." Are you kidding me? That is a sweet line! AND a whole other section of this movie's dialogue is being ignored: the Spirit's monologues about the city. These are where some of the only true substance in the movie can be found. When the Spirit talks about his city as if it were his woman, it is the only time we see true human emotions from the Spirit. And these monologues make up for some of the just plain old ridiculous lines.

Response to Problem No. 75: Ok first of all, the Spirit was NOT a misogynist. On the contrary, he LOVES women...all of them unfortunately. But I don't have a problem with him jumping from woman to woman. I mean James Bond does that. And does anyone ridicule James Bond for doing so? I didn't think so.

Response to Problem No. 34: These were the "quirks" I was talking about earlier. The use of a Nokia picture camera in a film noir styled movie was funny. It was not some mistake that they included it. It was on purpose. It was funny people, F-U-N-N-Y. Sheesh.

Response to Problem No. 5: This movie was never trying to be another Sin City. An R-rating is not required for interesting action sequences. There was still plenty of violence in this movie. It was just super stylized and dramatic, not like the graphic violence of 300 and Sin City. The blood was insanely red, completely fake looking. And a lot of the fight sequences were shown as shadows against a brick wall background. It's because they were trying to mimic the look of a graphic novel, as I said before.

So this concludes my review of The Spirit. Here is the point I am trying to make: No, this movie does not have a complex plot or any philosophical themes behind it like Dark Knight, Sin City, and Batman Begins. BUT what this movie did have was unique cinematography inspired by graphic novels and film noir and an insanely quirky sense of humor that will [hopefully] have you laughing out loud. Just go see it for yourself. Trust me. The critics are not always right.






(Unless the critic in question is me. I am always right.)

The Dark Knight Review I Wrote at 3:00AM Just Minutes After the Midnight Release

Sorry if I skip around a lot...it is 3 in the morning.

If you thought Batman Begins was amazing, just wait until you see this.

At the start of Dark Knight, Batman (Christian Bale) is doing his usual thing: ridding the city of Gotham of the classic petty crime. But when a new criminal mastermind known as The Joker (the late Heath Ledger) comes into the picture, he must join forces with new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). The Joker quickly propels Gotham into anarchy and pushes Batman closer and closer to the line that differentiates a hero from a vigilante.

With a plot such as this, good acting is needed in order for it to be effective. And the actors in Dark Knight were right on spot. Christian Bale gave another superb performance as our masked hero and suave billionare. And as a bonus: even when fighting he managed to be as sexy as ever. Whoever the casting director was, I would like to give them a high five. Why? Because they hired Maggie Gyllenhaal and dropped Katie Holmes like a hot potato. Holmes was the only weakspot when it came to the acting in Batman Begins, but Maggie delivered a much better performance as Rachel Dawes in Dark Knight. She actually evoked emotion, an ability Katie Holmes has never quite grasped. Gary Oldman really stepped up his game in this movie as well. His character played a much larger role in this movie than it did in Batman Begins, and Oldman was certainly able to rise to this. Aaron Eckhart absolutely surprised me in his role as Harvey Dent. I previously considered him a mediocre actor, this having mostly to do with the fact that he had never really played any complex roles before this. Now I am trying not to give anything away, so all I will say is that Dark Knight truly showed exactly how versitile of an actor he is. Oh yes and Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman rock, there's not much more I need to add to that. They were meant to play Alfred and Lucius. And yes, I have saved Heath Ledger for last. Because he exceeded my expectations...and my expectations were freaking high!! For a while Heath Ledger was just a face. He was a good looking, charismatic guy that played simple roles. After Brokeback Mountain, we realized: woah this guy can act. And then He played the role of The Joker. A role like The Joker was a role unlike anything he had ever come close to doing and he completely blew the character out of the water, in a good way. The way he spoke, the way he moved, everything he did was so perfect for The Joker, even though most of it was stuff we had never before really seen in The Joker. You would think that the role of a psycotic and yet perfectly sane, mass murdering clown-faced anarchist would never be able to be portrayed in a real way, but Ledger did it. He convinced us that The Joker was a reality. The last role I would have ever thought him to be cast as ended up being his last role ever.

The lighting in Dark Knight was much different than it was in Batman Begins. Batman Begins was very dark lighting wise. Yes, there were definitely dark parts in Dark Knight (woah I said dark too many times), but there were more daylight scenes. Christopher Nolan (the director) was definitely going for some intense cinematography this time around as well. Every explosion/chase/fight had its own aesthetic quality to it, making it look truly like a piece of art. An example would be the scene that has constantly been shown in the trailers, the one where all of the police are standing in the street and suddenly disperse. The uniformity of the colors combined with the random directions and paths of their dispersal made a beautiful scene. It is the little cinematography tricks like these that separate an average action movie from an amazing one. And it goes without saying, but the special effects were amazing. Even at the end with a certain unexpected guest...I am being cryptic on purpose, this is a spoiler free review!

While Dark Knight may have been brighter lighting wise compared to its predecessor, it trumped it in grimness. There was more death and more despair, but isn't this what we love about Batman? Gotham is pushed farther than ever when The Joker takes control of its streets. Dent reminds us that "the night is darkest before the dawn", but for moments during Dark Knight, we are convinced that Gotham may never live to see the dawn. Batman is a symbol of hope though. So when he himself starts struggling with the line that separates hero from vigilante, we realize the full impact that The Joker has made on the troubled city. And yes, more people die. And their deaths galvanize anarchy in Gotham, proposing Batman with his greatest challenge yet.

Dark Knight was riveting. No joke. I can not even count the number of wise lines that were uttered by both Batman and The Joker alike. The story of Batman has always been able to capture the idea of good versus evil and the connection between the two in such a brilliant way. Endless dissertations have been written on the ideas and concepts that Batman embodies. Dark Knight lived up to the philosophies that are centered around Batman. It focused particulary on the thin line that separates good and evil. The Joker tries at great length to push the Batman past this line and force him to do what he has thus far refused to do: kill. Dark Knight showed that this is truly the only thing that separates Batman from The Joker, other than that, they are essentially the same.

Dark Knight was creepy and could certainly cause nightmares for me tonight (and it made me officially afraid of Joker cards), but it also managed to throw in those classic little one-liner jokes (real jokes, not Joker jokes) that we became familiar with in Batman Begins. Alfred and Lucius are the source of much of these funny bits, but The Joker also had his fair share of moments that made us laugh (to balance out the ones that make us shutter).

If a great movie is expected to draw out a full range of emotions from its viewers, then Dark Knight is definitely a great movie. You will laugh at The Joker's dark antics, you will be terrified at some of the more intense ones, you will be saddened by the state of Gotham and by loss, and you will be angered at the cruelty of some of The Joker's actions. The Dark Knight truly is an emotional rollercoaster, which is not always typical for a "superhero" type movie, but most of this comes from the character Batman himself. He is much more complex than your average superhero, which sometimes makes it harder for writers and the production team to do the character justice on the big screen, but Nolan delivered exactly what was needed to live up to this.

Ok I am getting tired, so I am just going to get to my point. Dark Knight was awesome. It was everything a superhero movie should be and more. It lived up to the DC comics story that it was born from and it is deifinitely worth seeing more than once. If you did not see the midnight showing, you missed out. There is always something different about the atmosphere and energy at a midnight showing. People in my theatre (woop! shout out to theatre 2!) were clapping throughout. But really, please get off facebook and make your way to the movie theatres if you have not already. Thank you, and goodnight (finally).

P.S. In my opinion should be at least nominated for the following Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup (Joker, duh).

The Joker: The Creepiest Villain Whom We Love To Hate.

So yes, I am such a comic nerd that I fully intend to discuss this topic thoroughly. And I am putting off my budding screenplay by doing this, but I felt it was necessary to write this note before this coming Thursday at midnight, for obvious reasons.

The Joker. All he has to do is laugh and we are all quivering in our pants. Why are we so intrigued by his disturbing and yet profound character? And why are Batman and The Joker so intricately connected in a twisted relationship? And what makes the Christopher Nolan/Heath Ledger interpretation of this manical clown so literarily superior to the others? These are all questions I intend to answer in this three-part super note!

Part One: Batman Who?
Sure, Batman is the true hero in the story, but come Halloween, who do we dress up as? I will give you a hint: it requires an excessive amount of makeup and green spray paint. Since the original version of The Joker, created by - well this is a disputed subject in itself but for simplicity purposes I will say - Bob Kane, audiences and graphic novel readers have developed a curious infatuation with this particularly creepy villain. Is it his ominous calling card, a joker extracted from a deck of cards, that he leaves on bloodied corpses? Is it the dark, witty comments he tends to make? Or is it that freaky cackle? Sure, we for some reason love all of these aspects (or rather, love to hate them), but there is one element that The Joker possesses that makes him particularly interesting. He is totally psychotic. Unlike most villains who tend to have very specific goals for obtaining ultimate power, The Joker just kills people. Sometimes he has a plan, but for the most part he is just koo koo pants. And yes, this is the reason why it is hard to sleep in the same room as our Batman comics, but it is also what makes him steal the show from other villains and even Batman himself.

Part Two: The Odd Couple
"You complete me." Yep, that is an actual line stated by Heath Ledger's Joker in Dark Knight. But this is no allusion to a gay relationship between the two star-crossed heroes, but rather the statement that defines the concept of good versus evil. To have good, there must be evil, to have evil there has to be good. It is an essential law of the cosmos, but it is also applicable to Batman and The Joker. In a way they are completely dependant on each other. And they have known from the beginning that one of them would have to kill the other in the end (woah, Harry Potter much?). A classic Batman graphic novel quote even said: "I've been thinking lately. About you and me...." (ok I have to interrupt again...because I just realized that this is yet another line that starts out sounding like it is being said to a lover! ok back to the quote...) "About what's going to happen to us in the end. We're going to kill each other, aren't we?" And actually, over the years The Joker and Batman alike have each died a couple of times, always coming back one way or another of course. But their relationship interests us. It is not your typical hero/villain relationship. In this relationship, the mysterious man in black is good, while the clown is evil. Now that's twisted!

Part Three: The Joker Remix
The Joker we are going to see in Dark Knight is going to take creepy clown to a whole new level. To start, a new concept has been developed behind the messy makeup and permanent grin that have made The Joker an icon. In the past, it has generally been explained that The Joker had been pushed into a vat by Batman. The vat had contained some icky gooey poison stuff that turned his face discolored and painted an indefinite wide grin on his lips. But Heath's Joker has a much different story. His grin is a large, curved scar that he attributes to an abusive father, though this could just be The Joker's twisted sense of humour. And the makeup, well the makeup he wears by choice. And that makes it so much creepier. And definitely increases his level of koo koo pants. The simplicity of why he is the way he is freaks us out far beyond the complicated origins of chemical vats and such ever did. In Dark Knight, much of the Jack Nicholson one-liners have been done away with. The Joker is anything but joking. He is to the point, but still manages to be eerily dark humoured and highly manipulative. There is even less cackling, but there is a plethora of creepy. Take this Heath Joker line for example: "Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the little emotions." Yep, creepy.

Incredible Hulk Review

Ok so I will start off by saying that this movie exceeded Hulk by a lot.

I loved the camios of Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno from the original television series.

My feelings about the movie itself are mixed. Besides the amaxing Ed Norton, the acting was mediocre. The Abomination looked...weird. The plot was ok. Directors and writers always take the Hulk story differently than any other superhero story. They make it drama-filled and add too much emotion. I mean yeah, Banner obviously has a continuous inner struggle to be able to control his emotions and anger, but there was too much focus on the inner struggle. I would have liked to see a little more action, but like I said before, this movie was MUCH MUCH MUCH better than Hulk.

The beginning of The Incredible Hulk showed any quick flashes of documents and data and if you pay close attention, some interesting things popped up. Stark Industries came up, along with the name Nick Fury. These appearances were quick and seemingly insignificant, but I think that they actually played a much larger role which I will discuss later.

I do not know how I felt about Betty. It just seemed like we did not have much reason to want Banner to be with her in this movie. Sure, she was able to calm down the Hulk, but other than that, she was very 2-dimensional and not unlikable but not likeable either. I did want to kick her father, the general, in the face, but he was a jerk face. But he was not quite bad enough. Does that make sense?

I think that they could have done more with the Brazilian chase scene. The setting was perfect for an intesnse Bourne-like chase scene, but what they did with it was weak.

What The Incredible Hulk did do, rather excellently I might add, was lay out the basis for a rumoured Avengers movie coming in the future. The final scene between the general and Tony Stark confirmed that Nick Fury and Iron Man are building a team of superheroes. The following small characters that appeared in The Incredible Hulk are actually quite significant Marvel characters that will probably show up in Avengers:
Mr. Blue is The Leader, the evil supergenius who becomes Hulk's enemy.
The doctor that treats Betty Ross is Doc Samson, the psychiatrist superhero from the Marvel Universe.
The college student that captured the footage is Mr. Magee.
The other college student with him is Mr Jones, the boy that Bruce saved in the original comics who is now the Red Hulk.

All of this information makes th movie much more interesting indeed.
Gotta love the Marvel Universe and the fact that all of its inhabitants are intertwined.

Good Avengers website: http://marvel.com/universe/Avengers

Atonement Review (Book, Not Movie).SPOILER WARNING (book & movie)

Yesterday, I spent my last day of spring break finishing up Atonement. Upon finishing the book, only a few hours passed before I insisted we watch the movie (earlier in the day while we were out on errands I had requested my father take me to the movie rental place). The movie was good, but it puzzled me that the writer had decided to mimic the book closely in small insignificant details and left out more major ones, such as the leg in the tree and the Stuka bombings. But the ending revealed something to me that I failed to notice in the book and it forced me to go back and re-read parts of the book. Briony never went to Cecilia's house to atone. She never found out if Robbie had come back to her. In fact, she later discovered that Robbie had never made it back from France because he died from septicaemia. And Cecilia was killed in the bombing of Belham station. Her visit to them was merely the way she wanted to think of it, not what really happened. Briony wrote her own novel entitled Atonement and it was made up of this false reality. So two very important questions popped in my head: How much of the book "actually" happened and how much therefore was made up by Briony for her novel? And did Briony ever in fact atone? First I will address the first two-parted question. Atonement is broken into four parts. The first and last parts were "real" and the middle two parts were Briony's model, her version of the story, sugar-coated and embellished. The second part that described Robbie during the English withdrawal from France was all a part of Briony's novel. In the final part, she refers to Mr. Nettle, which was the name of one of the corporals that was walking with Robbie in part two. It is possible that this Nettle guy never even met Robbie Turner, but was simply a person Briony received war information from for her novel and then re-payed by incorporating him in her novel. Robbie and Cecilia most likely never met for tea, because this was part of Briony's novel. And how would she know that they had met while he was on leave if she never spoke to them since he was taken away except for one letter to Cecilia that never produced a response. Briony just did not want the lovers' last moment together to have been when he was led into a police car, handcuffed. The leg in the tree is another matter of intrigue. I recalled how Briony looked through a window while searching for the twins and saw her mother's leg crossed over her other. I was puzzled as to why so much detail went into the description of this leg, which appeared to be "disembodied". Could this have been the silent subconscious inspiration for the leg in the tree that Robbie looked upon in Briony's novel? And the words "Come back. I'll wait for you. Come back." It is possible that Cecilia never uttered these words to Robbie. How would Briony know what was said by her to him before he was taken away? Or what their letters contained? She NEVER saw them after her crime. Now I will address the second question I proposed. Did Briony ever atone? In my opinion, she did not. Her moment of atonement was when she gathered the courage to seek out Cecilia and apologize and recant legally. But that never happened. It was a figment of her novel. The real Briony was to much of a coward to do this. To atone is to make ammends, and she in fact never did this. Maybe she wanted to later on, but by then it was far too late.

The Idea.

I used to have a blog...it lasted about a month before I gave up on it. But I realize that this was because it was too specific. It was a blog specifically dedicated to reviewing television shows on a weekly basis. With the disgusting amount of television I watch, this proved quite impossible. So I created this. Revolutionary Thoughts. Don't ask about the title; I like it. Instead of forcing myself to stick to a certain subject and an impossible time schedule, I will upload and write as I please. This blog will be dedicated to all things I like to write about: politics, television, books, movies, philosophy, comics, art, etc. I will start by uploading some things I have previously written just so it does not look so barren. New stuff should appear within the week.