goldenfiddle

Anne Hathaway, Miami, May 11, 2012

Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev performs the Lifted Dong pose on Conan.

Enhance.

On loan from his Asian environs, Divad Q. Nead, aka “Swamp Thing,” rose from his Cape Cod cranberry bog with a six of Narragansett to catch a late nite showing of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers.

Can One: George Clinton makes for an awesome Thanos. Tom Hiddleston, recently seen berating Rachel Weisz in Deep Blue Sea, carries his scepter like a nine iron, not necessarily a bad thing. I drink to the magical Stargate ice cube. Without Spader, however, this little bit of sci-fi suffers the lack of inquisitively twisted faces. I drink to the invincibility of Nick Fury. He takes a bullet, gets up, jumps from a Blackhawk, gets up, shoots straight. Renner drives versus Cobie Smulders. Smulders gets smothered.

Can Two: I have never used the word “exposition” in a sentence. Under my beer breath, between popcorn handfuls, I said “This is one damn long exposition.” It’s true. How else does one teach an audience of attention deficits about the history of Thor, Cap’n, Hulk, Widow, Hawkeye, and Stark in 30 minutes? Downey carries the quippy parts and somehow, Paltrow appears in most scenes barefoot, looking like she enjoys champagne [it’s apple juice]. Tony clearly needs more drinks. Stark tower resembles something out of Mumbai’s nightmares about its future architectural masterpieces in contrast with its expanding slums.

Can Three: Now we’re getting somewhere. Thor’s on the roof. Every action movie I’ve ever seen has a character land on the roof, claw through a roof. It turns out that the Captian’s Stark built shield makes for a fantastic foil to Mjolnir. Together, they make a big boom! amidst the trees. When a tree falls in the forest, it definitely makes a sound. Does a Hulk shit in the woods? OK, so Loki gives himself up to brainwash the six into fighting each other. Is that what the stick does? I thought it turned people into zombies and shot lightning. It does everything. Banner and Stark in a lab together is a movie I’d like to see.

Can Four: I’m pretty sure that ScoJo enjoyed the Black Widow suit more than she dug saying the lines she was given. She is no Gina Carano. I’d pay $13 to see those two fake fight, but then again, watching Ewan go down on the beach to a Superman punch was quite good. [Note: See Haywire again]. Iron Man’s token way to disable enemies, according to what I’ve seen, is to fly them way up in the sky. When will someone bleed? Does the Stark suit actually kill anything with all those little missiles? Faceless space alien robot creatures are not the new Cylons, are they? They do seem to have their sleds built by the Hobgoblin, however, and that makes me giggle.

Can Five: Epic city battles equal the sides of buildings being carved out without collapse. This is an action movie rule. The military shoots upwards at a 45 degree angle at every invading force. Captain America does an awesome front flip over a taxi, then another. I can’t tell if  I’m rooting for the humans, the superhumans, the demigods, or the average joe archer. If the Allspark and the Tesseract did a cross country drive together, do you think, by the time they reached San Francisco, that there’d be any benzedrine left? I want Nick Fury’s leather coat, but then again, James Joyce wants his eyepatch back. More outright cursing is needed from Jackson. I’m laughing too much at ScoJo being tough. Gina Carano, help.

Can Six: I should save this last can for the parking lot. Something to the denouement of this film leaves me wondering if I should go back and watch all the other Avenger’s character films again from the start. I’m missing a tugboat load of context here. Is this a film that supports the reading of comic books over the ignorant digestion of the films? I sneak into a midnight showing of “Avengers” without paying to sober up and watch the last act all over again. Ruffalo is going to play Hulk in six more films. Everybody’s in a franchise. Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini must have had this discussion at one point in their relationship. So, when’s the next Black Widow film and when it comes, do I get my ScoJo versus Carano?

andrewti:

Santa Paula, 2012

iTunes: The Raveonettes, Into the Night EP

William Daniels, “Still Life With Relief Chalice, Fruit And Glasses In A Stone Niche II,” 2007, Oil on board, 54 x 41.5 cms

Interview: Jack White (Photo by Craig McDean)

Proof that Kenneth Parcell is the Delbert Grady/Jack Torrance of 30 Rock.

A: Steven “Steve” Barron