Yoda will now pimp anything for cash

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/cele … 2051827568

All of Rihanna's lines...

http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/read-eve … eship.html

The DiF dudes were right in their commentary. One of invincible inflatable punching-doll Avengers had to die to raise the stakes for them, reveal vulnerability, and lower the character-count, and Hawkeye is the most expendable with his lame bow-and-arrow. The Dark Ages are over, bro. We've been using guns since the 15th century at least.

^ This relates to the earlier 'do big loud dumb summer blockbusters get a free pass from criticism?' debate.

Do 'CG effects demonstrations' count as movies? If we spend our money on them, knowing full well it's going to be dumb, do we have to right to wail about them being dumb?

There's also another factor that'll contribute to the future quality of big budget movies - the Chinese box office. The US domestic box office is becoming less important, which means producers will need to pay attention to what plays well in China. The Chinese have been isolated from western culture for so long and therefore didn't grow up with 1980s action movies that we sneer at now. It's all new for them. And if they love their new-found movie diet of cartoon wall-to-wall explosions without dialogue and simplistic good v evil plotlines, then that doesn't encourage sophistication and subtlety, morally ambiguity or self-aware genre references.

If you look at the top 100 all-time on box office mojo, US domestic box office used to be over half of total worldwide gross. Now the current top ten averages about a third, some even have a quarter, and that'll only continue to shrink.

Funny - reminds me of the time an Australian reviewer got stuck into Ridley Scott when he was promoting Black Hawk Down - for the movie being an "America Fuck Yeah" pro-war propaganda piece.

Thanks for listing the special features. It's a pity the deleted scenes haven't been merged into the movie (e.g. LOTR EE). Some directors don't like to do this, some do.

Here's Charlie Brooker's (of the Guardian in Britain) review of seeing Avengers...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … experience

I suppose Civilization is a popular game and you're playing God. -ish. Except you wouldn't play Civilization in God-Mode i.e. where everything always ended up your way all the time. Otherwise you're basically left with Autocad.

I'm just trying to get into Loki's mind to figure out his motivation. If ants are to us what we are to Loki, then I can't really work out what he's trying to achieve. "Look Dad, here's my ant-farm I built myself - it's all mine."

But as Dorkman said, Loki could be just mad, so anything goes.

I accept that. With a madman/alien/God, anything goes, fair enough. Don't question that it doesn't make any sense because he/she/it is insane. That's fine. But it does add something for the audience if the antagonist has a clear motive that one can relate to. In The Insider, the evil corporate CEO wants to maximize tobacco profits and share price.

But if it's just a psychopath or insane man/deity, it might as well be a hurricane or some other natural disaster that just randomly wreaks havoc.

Fair enough. He likened humans to ants. How much pleasure would you get if an ant colony bowed down to you? I think 7-year-olds get a thrill from waving a lit match around in an ants nest, but you grow out of it by about 10.

I can remember playing Doom (showing my age here) in God-mode and it got pretty boring after a few minutes.

Thanks for cleaning that up. In that case, Loki's best tactic would have been to stay out of the way, let the aliens attack and wreak havoc and then come in at the end and 'save' humanity and be hailed as a messiah. Sort of a real life '9-11 Truther' scenario. I just don't see how blowing up New Yorkers' cars is going to get everyone onside if you're there from the start.

When the British took over India, they did it by making protection-racket deals with the ruling princes. It was quite efficient and surprisingly few administrators were needed to rule over 200 million people. And most of the army was made up of Indians! Even the Nazi concentration camps had Jewish collaborators.

By that analogy, if the aliens wanted to rule (rather than just exterminate), then they should hijack the existing political infrastructure. Turn the existing rulers into puppets by showering them with gifts and protecting them from threats (real or perceived), and most of the population will go along with it.  This has been the tactic from at least Roman times, if not earlier.

Where did Jesus promise the end of all wicked people? Is there a specific quote from a Bible verse?