Thunder and Lightning and Smoke and Mirrors

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I find myself in a state of mind that would give Thor a righteous boner - I am at war with myself. On the one hand I really enjoyed everybody in Thor. I thought Chris Hemsworth struck a fine (emphasis on fine) balance with the braggadocio tipping into outright silliness that Thor needs. He made a far more appealing hero to me than Entourage-Man Tony Stark. I thought Natalie Portman was charming, even if she was just basically playing Natalie Portman. I'm okay with that, I like Just Natalie Portman. And I liked Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings as her science friends (and how refreshing was it for there to be two lovely ladies being friendly with each other in a superhero movie? Two! My god!) 

I loved Anthony Hopkins showing up and undoubtedly making a couple of million bucks to bellow a couple of times - I do believe one of his actual lines was "ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!" - and then take a nap for the rest of the movie. I even found myself smiling at the reappearance of Rene Russo, someone I haven't thought of once since she wore that slinky see-through dress in The Thomas Crown Affair. She even got to brandish a sword for a second! That was exciting. I love it when women in long flowing jewel-encrusted gowns with piled-on ringlets get all stabby. And I really really dug Tom Hiddleston as Loki, with his slightly less than Michael Fassbender features and kick-ass curved-horn helmet (do you think I could pull one of those off? Like, riding on the 7 train?).

And yet, didn't it really feel like the script needed another couple run-throughs? Like this was just a n early sketch. As if there were entire pages that said, "They Talk About Things For Awhile Here" or "Frost Giants Lurk Here" or "We Swoop Above Asgard For Half An Hour Again Here."

Speaking of Asgard, fuck you Asgard. God. You know, they had SO MUCH MONEY to play with on this movies and that city was so boring to look at. Was there anyone on the streets ever? There was nothing exciting about it, nothing that I felt like I hadn't seen that before.

That's actually my main problem with almost everything except the delightful cast - there wasn't anything that I felt my eyes pop over. There was nothing like seeing Spider-Man swing through the streets of Manhattan for the first time. When the SHIELD Agents joked that the Robot Protector was one of Tony Stark's I nodded in agreement. The Frost Giants (and that Frost Balrog of theirs) were dully designed - they're basically an exact copy, minus the wings, of the bad guy from Jeepers Creepers. And it doesn't help that everything in that Ice Kingdom was the same color and so dark as to be indistinguishable. And I didn't even see it in 3D so there's no excuse for the glasses darkening things here - I can only imagine how murky those scenes must've been with the glasses on.

Of all unexpected things, my favorite bits were the jokey bits. Chris Hemsworth smashing his cup at the diner, Chris Hemsworth getting hit by the car that second time, his drinking night with Stellan Skarsgard (I actually wish we'd gotten to see more of that). The battles didn't seem well-thought-out at all and were shot in close up too often - the one or two times the camera pulled back to show us what the hell was going on I breathed a sigh of relief, but then back tot he indistinguishable blur. It struck me afterwards that, looking at the trailer for Tarsem Singh's Immortals on the big screen before this movie, that I already feel more satisfied by what Tarsem's shown me there in just two minutes than the images Branagh & Co. were able to conjure up.

All this sounds angry, doesn't it? But that's not entirely where I stand. Because I liked everybody so much, and even if I was waiting for the to do something that bowled me over for two hours and never much got that, I enjoyed their company. Like Hemsworth's performance I thought the film nailed the simultaneous bombastic-jokey tone that a Thor movie would die without. When it was over I thought to myself, good god I can't wait to see what Joss Whedon does with the characters from this movie that transfer over to The Avengers! He'll have something for them to do.

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Hot Thug Thor

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With the release of Thor today it seems a fine time to recollect that time Chris Hemsworth played a consistently half-naked thug in David Twohy's underrated caper A Perfect Getaway, right? I mean it's always a good time to recollect a half-naked Chris Hemsworth, not just today, and it's also always a good time to recollect A Perfect Getaway, and not only because Timothy Olyphant is also half-naked and naked-naked in it. I really let that sentence get away from me. 

Anyway I prefer this rough-n-tumble Chris Hemsworth to his airbrushed Hammer-god counterpart upon first inspection. How about you?

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poll by twiigs.com

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Alright with that important matter outta the way, now y'all can head over to Celebrity Beehive and read my take on all the movies coming out this weekend. yes, there are movies other than Thor out this weekend. I know, right? Weird. And if anybody wants to tell me what this broom jumping thing is all about go to town, I'm still too lazy to look that shit up.

And now for no good reason except every good reason here are the Hemsworth brothers touching each other.

Nat Ben & Me Made Three

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I mentioned this on Twitter last night in a fit of in-the-moment enthusiasm (see here and here and here!) which eludes me today, although I feel as if it ought to be documented for posterity's sake. (The posterity of immediately forgotten obscure-end-of-the-internet blog posts!) Natalie Portman and her ballet-beau with the perky arse Benjamin Millepied were at the screening of Tom Tykwer's Three at MoMA that I went to last night. They are wee little pretty people. She's obscenely pregnant. I had to fight the urge to hiss "What happened to my sweet little girl?" at her. I won that fight, but I lost the battle of trying not to stare at Benjamin's ass. It wasn't the wonderland I dreamed of, but perhaps if he'd been wearing his white tights... a law must be passed stating that ballet dancers can only wear white tights in public, don't you think? It's criminal, the unsnug jeans he felt comfortable leaving the house in. Criminal!

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Your Highness in 150 Words or Less

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Probably could've lost about twenty minutes, but the film's not anything approaching the dung-pile some've claimed. I had fun! Sue me. And I was sober, even. It's loose and stupid in that precise stoner-flick way. It was very nearly exactly what I expected and wanted from having enjoyed the trailer. I want to buy a van just so I can airbrush this movie on the side. Puppet molestation, shirtless James Franco, Minotaur erections, oh my. The finger-dragons were really nifty, and I still wholly enjoy Danny McBride's shtick. But the whole show's stolen by a hilariously underplaying Justin Theroux, who flitted through just long enough to make me sad he never seems to want to act anymore. Why, Justin? Why? You are always the highlight of the things you occasionally grace with your presence.

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I Am Link

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--- What Goes Up - Producer David Heyman gave a fairly lengthy interview with Collider that's totally worth reading. In it he talks about the final Harry Potter movie, but most importantly there's new info on Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, that stuck-in-space movie that bounced around from actor to actor until finally settling on Sandy Bullock and George Clooney. It'll start filming in the Spring and he sounds in awe of the plans that Cuarón's got for its visuals. Cannot wait, it's been far too long since Children of Men.

--- China Man - I'd spaced on the fact that Cristian Bale was making a movie with Zhang Yimou, but here are the first pair of pictures from it, so spaced no more.

--- Fang Banged - There's something very odd about this new picture from Fright Night. The way it's lit, I mean - it looks like a perfume ad to me, not like a movie still. Anyway it's a sexy perfume ad, what with Colin Farrell and the fang-bite swooning and all. But is that Toni Collette in the picture? I hope not, since the woman is bitten and kinda dead-looking. 

--- Speaking of Fright Night, that movie's director Craig Gillespie has signed on to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which once had Mike White attached and would have been so awesome. Now, who knows. Natalie Portman is still producing, so will she star? 

--- Are You A God - I guess people have started to see preview screenings of Thor - for the sort of geek-out you'd expect from such a geek, click over to read Harry's take at AICN. From that perspective, it looks golden. I have to say that Kenneth Branagh being behind the camera does instill me with some hope that the film could be slightly more than we're expecting from the goofy commercials. Beyond enormous pecs, Chris Hemsworth does have real talents on-screen - I'd forgotten how good he was in the opening scenes of Star Trek.

--- The King's Hand - When I wrote yesterday that I wouldn't be writing up my thoughts on each week's episode of A Game of Thrones until at least a day later, I forgot to mention that you could and definitely should go check out Sean T. Collins site for more timely recaps and reviews. He knows of Westeros like a seasoned pro.

--- Turtle Circle Jerk - I found this list at Hobo Trashcan of "Ten Movie Heroes Who Were (Probably) Virgins" amusing, but the avoidance of the possibility of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doing any same-sex explorations seemed short-sighted to me. Okay, so there are no female turtles anywhere to be seen? Well history's proven time and again that teenage boys, with all those hormones, will find a way, if you catch my drift. Man this was a geeky fucking paragraph. It's like Donnie Darko talking about the Smurfs sex-lives up in here.

--- He's Cursed - And here's another fun list - Complex listed the 10 Worst Wes Craven movies. I love the man but it doesn't surprise me you can fill a list of ten rather easily, the man's redefined the notion of a spotty career. Every ten years he does something awesome, and then it's back to the doldrums again. Hey, it's more than most directors get to do. And for the record I would list My Soul To Take as worse than Cursed.

--- Leigh's The One - In a post-Insidious world, we're finding ourselves actually clicking on shit having to do with director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell, where their previous Saw-based reputations never would've gotten us there. Plus now that I saw them in person I know that Whannell is pretty adorable, and I'm easy like that. Anyway here's a bit with Leigh on an awesome sounding horror-comedy script he's written about kiddie zombies called Cooties. Love it.

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I Just Spent Ten Minutes...

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... scouring the web to see if any of the stupid paparazzo bothered to train their cameras on the best view of Benjamin Millepied when he was caught jaunting about in sweatpants with Natalie Portman earlier today (via), but no, none of them did. Stupid paparazzo! These opportunities don't come along that often, you fools! Grab them when you can! That's my advice to all of you. Grab ass while you can.

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From Hanna To Highness

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One of the lessons I have learned from having to keep better track of what's coming out every weekend now that I write a column about it week in and week out is what an enormous mess of shit that I don't want to see there is constantly coming out weekend after unholy weekend. So much dreckitude! So when a weekend rolls around where there's not just one movie but several that I want to see, well now it feels like something of an event. This weekend there are four movies that I want to see coming out. Four! Head over to Celebrity Beehive to get my thoughts upon them.

Of course wanting to see and actually finding the time to see are two very different things. As I mentioned earlier I'm seeing The Book of Mormon tonight, and then there's Carrie playing at BAM on Sunday... finding time for four movies in between all that in the span of two days will prove a little much. The only one I know I'm seeing for sure is Arthur, which is the one I've probably got the least expectations of (although the brutal reviews for Your Highness have got me second-guessing myself there). 

Oh well, there's always next week! It's amazing how front-loaded movie-going feels these days, as if, if I don't take the chance and run to see something the very first minute it's available, then I've lost the chance forever. It took me a couple of weeks but I finally got myself out to see Paul last weekend, even though it'd faded from the national discourse right quick. Miracles can and do happen!

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poll by twiigs.com

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