Iron Man 2 Review: See Mjolnir at the End Credits

Spoilers ahead but just so you know, Iron Man 2 is Awesome!

It begins where the first film ends, with the press conference, zooming into the city to a small run down Moscow apartment where Tony Stark's press conference is visible on TV. A dying man says his last words, the son cries out, the scene shifts to the walls covered with news clippings from another era including the blueprints of the ARC reactor with two names visible - Howard Stark and Anton Vanko.

Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) builds a chest piece similiar to Tony Stark's - the title sequence runs.

Jon Favreau has done a fantastic job creating a sequel worthy of the first Iron Man film  from setting up Ivan Vanko's reason for destroying Stark to the introduction of new characters, Scarlett Johansson does a beautiful job portraying Nastasha Romanoff including the action, Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has better visibility, Don Cheadle is just great as Lt. Col. Rhodes. Original cast members Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Jon Favreau replaying Happy Hogan - all great and nice to see them again. Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) gets limited viewing but with a key scene in the end.

Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer isn't as mean and serious as Jeff Bridges'
Obadiah Stane. He comes out more weasel than warlord. Mickey Rourke - great character portrayal as the vengeful Whiplash.

Storyline suffers a bit in the middle when Stark has to confront his imminent death due to toxic blood chemistry caused by his body's reaction to his chest piece. It slows down a little while Stark's re-invents a new chest piece (triangular) plus an alcoholic bout but gets back with a vengeance when Iron Man with War Machine battles Crimson Dynamo/Whiplash and armored drones. Amazing!

Where does it go from here? Its time to reveal the Mandarin and the origin of his ten rings - the starship that crashes to Earth containing the rings that will transform him into Iron Man's deadliest foe - plus an additional villain, Fin Fang Foom one of the ship's occupants. There's a huge potential story for Iron Man 3  director Jon Favreau has done a great job with the franchise, its in good hands Marvel should consider themselves lucky to have his dedication and craft.

RDJ is as usual, fantastic as Tony Stark, nuff said!

 (Spoiler below!) 

Stan Lee Cameo
Stark mistakenly refers to Stan Lee as Larry King.

The legendary Hammer of Thor (Mjolnir)

Martin Scorsese:Early Films

Scorsese born in New York grew up watching films at an early age,developing a love for the cinema. He got in NYU film school, his first production, It's Not Just You Murray! won the 1964 Producer's Guild Award for Best Student Film.

Influenced by Italian cinema's neo-realism, Scorsese early works was a window to his New York childhood a mixture of street life and movies he watched. The early films showed the energy and grit that will evolved in his future films.

Here are two films Scorsese has done as a student filmmaker at NYU. The third, Who's That Knocking at my Door, is his first feature.

 It's Not Just You Murray! (1964)

A short film on the life of a small time hood and his back-stabbing associate, in Murray Scorsese just holds the camera going about New York filming with close ups and zooms. Its well paced, clever, satirical and this is a student film. Scorsese has a natural talent for interpretation - visualizing his ideas to the point, no more no less.

The Big Shave (1967)
A man gradually shaves his hair eventually shaving off his skin. The scene gets graphic and bloody Done as a project for his film class Scorsese depicted the Vietnam war's self destruction in a shave.

 

Who's That Knocking at my Door (1967)
Featuring a young Harvey Keitel in his debut film. The first of the J.R. trilogy clever camera work and the use of rock music as a soundtrack was a first before Easy Rider. But Who's That Knocking at my Door was shown publicly three years later. Scorsese did some experimentation on camera angles, rythmn, etc, an early work that shows the evolution of a master director.

 

 

 

 

 

LAMBS in the Directors Chair Index

Can't Get Enough of Kick Ass? Listen to the Soundtrack!

A collection of You Tube videos from the Kick Ass movie soundtrack!

By now it is clear that Mika is not as other artists are. His surname could just as well be ‘Singular’. Enveloped in an imaginative musical world of his own creation, he is one of the few British male pop stars of his age that doesn’t run with the pack. Classically trained, racially mixed and prone to theatrical physical gesture, he has become a scion of ambitiously delivered self-expression. He says his music can be condensed easily, ‘the basic principals are that it is joyful and empowering and doesn’t cowtow to fashion or convention,’ calling to mind an old and almost forgotten pop notion: individuality. About Mika

Kick-Ass: Music from the Motion Picture

Kick Up a Good Time with Kick Ass!

It's a fun funny movie with incredible action stunts Chloe Moretz is amazing as Hit Girl! The movie does a homage to the 60's Batman TV series and Quentin Tarantino films and yes, the action has a lot of gore giving the movie an R rating.

Kick Ass gives a good blend of funny and reality Aaron Johnson's superhero fantasies are tempered by cold reality when as Kick Ass he gets stabbed, ran over and left for dead. It becomes more fantastic with the introduction of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) again, tempered by cold reality with their origins.

Once the action starts you begin to feel your in a Tarantino flick (more like Kill Bill) and its an amazing feeling you won't forget!

Planning to watch it again soon. So, go kick up a good time with Kick Ass, Big Daddy and Hit Girl! Can't wait for the next!

Whedon Helming Avengers

Might be able to yell "Avengers Assemble!" soon.
-Joss Whedon's Tweet

Marvel Studios and Joss Whedon are wrapping up talks for the Avengers Movie slated May 4, 2012. Whedon will direct the superhero team of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk. Reworking Zak Penn's script, Whedon will be bringing in that creative strorytelling, humour and action that has attracted a huge fan base for his works.

Whedon, a third generation writer, created the cult hit, Buffy the Vampire Slayer he followed up with Angel and Firefly. Dollhouse is his latest venture all for Fox TV. Serenity - based on the scifi series Firefly, is his sole film work. Whedon spun out his TV shows to comics having done Astonishing X-men in 2008.

Trade Marks
Plans storylines far in advance for all his television series, allowing for remarkable long-term continuity.
Frequent use of nouns as adjectives, by adding the suffix "-y"
Features tough, strong female characters
Kills off characters who are among his most popular, to keep his audiences surprised.
Supernatural and science fiction themes
from IMDB

"The Avengers" would star Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Hemsworth (Thor) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury). Edward Norton may also return as the Hulk.

Splice : A Nightmare Future?

Splice Movie Synopsis
Elsa and Clive, two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Named "Dren", the creature rapidly develops from a deformed female infant into a beautiful but dangerous winged human-chimera, who forges a bond with both of her creators - only to have that bond turn deadly.

Parahuman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A parahuman or para-human is a term used to describe a human-animal hybrid. Scientists have done extensive research into the combination of genes from different species, e.g. adding human (and other animal) genes to bacteria and farm animals to mass-produce insulin and spider silk proteins. Note that individual genes can be transplanted between species without the transplantation of whole cells.

Xenotransplantation - Profits vs. Risk
From insulin to organ transplants research into crossing human genes to animals (xenotransplantation) have been the forefront of biotech corporations-lives can be saved and profits made from a cure for diabetes while the waiting list and demand for donor organs rises. Weighing out the risks involved from viral contagion, these corporations are risking a pandemic from these short lived experiments. Patients with organ transplants from pig liver or baboon heart lasts, at most, a month. H1N1, a flu virus transmuted from pigs (first thought to come from Mexico, now believed to have originated from asian swine) started a global pandemic. Diseases are just the beginning, as science find ways to advance anti-rejection drugs for transplants research will evolve into parahumans - animals with human genes to create "spare organs" for the organ donor market.

So far, the WHO has instituted guidelines for future xenotransplantation research to reduce risks of  future diseases.Other government agencies have followed suit. Right.

Will the 21st century be the harbinger of a nightmare future of epidemics, organ factories and parahumans?  We can only await the fruits of these xeno-research for better or worse. Splice gives a contemporary glimpse, a fictional but thought provoking future (H.G. Wells' "Dr. Moreau", Shelley's "Frankenstein" , "Species" comes to mind... ) of things to come...

 

related links:
Xenotransplantation:How Bad Science and Big Business Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics

https://ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/xeno.pdf

Uncaged.co.uk

Resident Evil AfterLife 3D

Afterlife is the fourth installment in the Resident Evil movies based on Capcom's survival horror video game of the same name (first released in Japan as Bio-Hazard). Escaping the zombies from Extinction, Alice (played by Mila Jovovich) and clones bring their battle with the Umbrella Corporation to Los Angeles with help from Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke).

The movie's 3-D is brought to you by James Cameron's innovative Fusion technology used in Avatar. Afterlife is the most expensive of the Resident Evil films (estimated budget $80 Million). Taking its cue from Clash Sony is making sure everyone knows (horror and 3D fans) Afterlife is true 3D (will anyone settle for a 3D converted theater or go for Imax?) USA release date Sept 10, 2010.
 

How much did they make?  With an average budget of $43 million, The Resident Evil films took in triple their budgets worldwide with Extinction the top grosser.

Resident Evil Total Film Gross (courtesy -The Numbers)

Released	Movie Name	1st Weekend	US Gross	Worldwide Gross  ↑	Budget
9/21/2007	Resident Evil: Extinction	$23,678,580	$50,648,679	$146,162,920	$45,000,000
9/10/2004	Resident Evil: Apocalypse	$23,036,273	$50,740,078	$128,940,078	$50,000,000
3/15/2002	Resident Evil	$17,707,106	$39,532,308	$103,200,000	$35,000,000
8/27/2010	Resident Evil: Afterlife	-	-	-	-
Totals			$140,921,065	$378,302,998	$130,000,000
Averages			$46,973,688	$126,100,999	$43,333,333