Saw Avengers last night here in London. All good loud dumb fun. The biggest laugh was when the Hulk throws around Loki, although it reminded me a bit of the old Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny violence. Everyone is indestructible and no matter how many buildings they get thrown into, it's just a matter of brushing off the rubble and making a few groaning sounds, and it's back into the fray. That super-gun that Coulson had merely  knocked Loki over (one of hundreds of times he was knocked over) and he just gets up again. Whack-a-mole. Or WWF.

The end battle was a visual spectacle (similar FX to the end of Transformers 3), but all without any tension. Surely in Avengers 2, then can solve the 'too many characters' problem by adding a few more and then killing a few off to show that they are vulnerable. And did a single civilian get injured? If you're going to hurl exploding cars through the streets of NYC, you're going to crush kiddies and their cute pet kittens. More of the consequences/stakes please in the blu-ray (which doesn't have to be PG-13 rated) or Avengers 2.

Also, Loki says 'what is an ant to a boot' but this 'boot' seems very keen that the ants kneel in servitude. Gods make themselves petty if they care so much whether the ants are worshipping them enough. If a Hollywood star becomes A-list, they tend to resent the constant adulation and want to retreat and be normal. Loki comes across more as a needy C-list celeb.

What else? The forced bickering is become a lazy, cliched way to show character interaction. This got boring in the first season of 'House'. Everyone in movies seems to have Asperger's these days. The flying aircraft carrier was cool. You guys are right about Fury & the Plinkett test. Good call.

I'm already giving $20 (Imax 3D), two hours of my time, and an open mind. After that, ask not what else I can give to the movie, but what the movie can give to me.

If she prefers Episode I, then... "you need some space but you still want to be friends"

Wow... over $100M in ticket sales on the 3D re-release.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the... public"

- HL Mencken

It's also fascinating how Pirates of Silicon Valley started with Steve Jobs being a drugged out hippy while Bill Gates was a ruthless unscrupulous businessman/nerd, and yet it turned out that Gates (through his philanthropy in Africa) actually walked the talk, whereas Steve Jobs' desire to 'give something back' was never apparent right up to the very end.

PoSV paints Jobs like a unstable Californian religious guru. If not Apple, then an Evangelical mega-church.

Sounds like the Joker in Dark Knight, that can anticipate what the Police will do several moves ahead.

Watched this for the first time last night.

However radical, bold and impressive it must have been when first released, it seems dated in that 1980s Reagan-era far-right Republican way: the government law enforcement bureaus are useless, only a lone vigilante with a gun can get the job done, heroes are dumb working class all-American schmucks, while villains are culturally sophisticated and classically educated, due process of law is a waste of time. Bruce is the hero even though he killed more people than the bad guys did.

Anyway, it had frequent use of a trope which I don't think has been given a formal name but I've seen it everywhere:

The good guy is in a room and the bad guy is about to come in. There's a cut to the bad guy entering the room, and then another cut to the good guy who is now hiding in a completely different place, for example a closet in an adjoining room. The thing is, the good guy has had NO TIME to get to the hiding place as the editing cuts were done in real time.

Does anyone know if that trope has a name?

Cool fan concept art. I'm guessing the Lady Jessica and Duke Leto looking at the Guild removalist van.
So long as Hayden Christiansen is not Paul Atreides. And Adam Sandler is not Gurney. And Will Ferrell is not Duncan. And Mike Meyers is not the Baron Harkonnen.

Even Fincher admitted in an interview here in London, that GWDT was 'one for the studio' as opposed to 'one for himself'.

Hopefully you get some traffic via The One Ring.Net...

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012/03 … e-trilogy/

Not much variety in endless sand dunes. They'd have to be huge - like mountains. Dunes do photograph well with the sun low and shadows over the ripples but that would get dull quickly as there's no variety.

LOTR had meadows and forest and mountains and lakes and waterfalls and plains and underground mines.

Avatar had bio-luminescence so the forest looked liked a cool night-club or bar. And floating mountains. And giant trees. Hard to beat that.

Maybe if you brought in the other planets in the Dune universe as some intrigue takes place on them. Every House has its home world. That would generate some variety.

The aesthetic of Dune (a retro future with robes and aristocracy and priesthood and no technology) fits nicely with the modern genre trends.
Even since it became apparent space travel wasn't going anywhere, it's fantasy that's overtaken hard sci-fi in movies, novels and TV shows: Game of Thrones, LOTR, Narnia, Camelot, Harry Potter, superheroes, etc.
What few proper sci-fi movies there have been recently (Sunshine, Event Horizon, Supernova, etc) are just haunted houses in space rather than a vision about the future. In the 1950s & 1960s was the golden era of hard sci-fi (with shiny jump-suit uniforms, comparing & contrasting various utopian civilisations, impact of technology, etc)

So a movie adaptation of Dune can be made to fit more with the fantasy elements (giant sandworms and period costume) rather than the hard sci-fi elements.