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Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Thor: The Dark World: Film Review
Nobody gives good sneer like Tom Hiddleston, back once again in the pleather leggings and goat-horned helmet to play bad guy Loki in Thor: The Dark World and pretty much steal the whole show. Amiable hunk Chris Hemsworth may play the title character in this subset of Marvel's meta-Avengers franchise, but this well-intentioned "witless oaf," as his evil foster brother describes him at one point, is practically a guest at his own party here, as scads of new characters and millions of dollars worth of CGI crowd the screen. Most of it pales into insignificance when Loki takes the stage, which isn't often enough given how wildly uneven the sections without him are. Although director Alan Taylor manages to get things going properly for the final battle in London, the long stretches before that on Asgard and the other branches of Yggdrasil are a drag, like filler episodes of Game of Thrones but without the narrative complexity, mythical heft or all-pervading sexiness.
PHOTOS: Exclusive Portraits of Chris Hemsworth
In a year when so many box-office sure bets, especially sequels, have been a bust, it's harder than usual to predict how well Thor: The Dark World will do. Tracking numbers are predicting an opening weekend somewhere in the $75 million stratosphere. Meh word of mouth could diminish returns over the subsequent weeks, but who knows. There are a lot of die-hard fans out there, especially for the Marvel-verse, but then again they can also be a very discerning and exacting audience.
The opening sequence provides backstory on the Dark Elves, sharp-beaked, pointy-eared meanies from Alfheim who date back to before the beginning of time and claim a black, gaseous substance called Aether as their all-powerful weapon of mass destruction. They're seen being vanquished (but, of course, not quite) by Thor's grandfather. Thereafter, the story basically picks up where The Avengers left off, with Loki in manacles back on Thor's home planet -- or "realm," they call it -- Asgard, after trying to take over our world and trashing New York in the process. His glass-walled, whited-out cell in the dungeon bears a striking resemblance to similar baddie-holding pens in films past, from the X-Men franchise to Skyfall; there he reads books and has heart-to-black-heart chats with his adopted mother, Frigga (Rene Russo, finally getting more to do in this installment than just standing around smiling).
In uppity other realms, Thor has been putting down insurgents alongside his warrior buddies -- the Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander), and the "Warriors Three," Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano) and Fandral (Zachary Levi, stepping in for Josh Dallas) -- and preparing to take over from dad Odin (Anthony Hopkins) as king. Since the Bifrost bridge that connects Asgard to Earth was destroyed two films back, Thor has no means to travel to our world to see Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), the fetching lady scientist he became smitten with in the first movie but barely mentioned in The Avengers.
Luckily, omnipotent bridge-keeper Heimdall (Idris Elba) can see she's basically fine, albeit mightily annoyed with Thor for not staying in touch. Based in London now, she's trying to heal her wounded pride by having a blind date with nice but decidedly non-godly Richard (Chris O'Dowd, criminally underused). She dumps him unceremoniously as soon as her intern Darcy (Kat Dennings), who now has her own intern (Jonathan Howard), interrupts their meal with evidence of a space-fabric disturbance that seems familiar. While investigating the weird phenomenon, Darcy is sucked into another realm and infected with Aether, which sometimes give her scary white-free eyes, evoking happy memories of Black Swan.
PHOTOS: Behind the Scenes of 'Thor'
It turns out that The Convergence, the incredibly rare astronomical alignment of all nine realms, is beginning, hence the possibility of Bifrost-free travel between Earth and Asgard. Thor comes to collect Jane, gets slapped a few times for not calling her, and they commute back to Asgard to see its intricate landscape of cavernous assembly halls and gleaming golden towers, fashioned in the forge of many a mainframe, all impressively conceived and executed by production designer Charles Wood and visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison. That said, some of the more barren landscapes look decidedly less convincing with their papier-mache boulders and screen-like backdrops when Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), the leader of the surviving Dark Elves and his crew, come to try and collect their Aether.
The middle section is mostly a muddle, with endless cross-cutting between the Dark Elves plotting, attacking and then retreating to plot some more, earthlings Darcy and Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) worrying, and the Asgardians bickering over what they should do. The latter finally decide -- despite manifest evidence provided by two previous films that it would be a very bad idea -- to release Loki from jail so that he can fight on their side. Once Loki is back in play, magisterially sneering and loftily dispensing one-liners, the whole thing perks up again. Until, that is, he's off the scene again for reasons which can't be revealed.
The final showdown in Greenwich, London, squares off the Dark Elves and their unleashed Aether against the Asgardians and humans, managing in the process to grind most of Sir Christopher Wren's exquisite 17th century Royal Naval College buildings into a fine, powdery digitally rendered pixel dust. It's here, in this stretch, that the film finally gets its mojo back, finding the requisite balance between bombast and wise-cracks that made the first Thor work in its finest moments. Admittedly, nothing Loki-unrelated in Thor: The Dark World quite matches the hilarity of the scene in the first film where Thor strides into a pet shop and demands a horse, but the finale pleasingly gives the hardworking supports a chance to josh around, the stereoscopy comes into its own, and the editing, credited to Dan Lebental and Wyatt Smith, finds its groove. What a shame the script up until this point is too often so ramshackle and plodding, like the writers were finishing off the dialogue in between catering breaks.
With a project so firmly supervised by its studio, it's hard to tell how much director Alan Taylor should be credited or blamed for the finished result. The Dark World is certainly a far cry from the jaunty little indie crime caper Palookaville (1995) he started his career with. Since then, he's directed some great episodes on some of the very best TV series, including The Sopranos, Mad Men, and, most germane of all in this context, Game of Thrones, on which he also serves as a co-executive producer. Perhaps it's unfair to compare Thrones with The Dark World given the former has so much more scope to build its world over hours of programming, but for all the budget spent on lavish visual effects in The Dark World nothing in it quite compares to the White Walkers marching relentlessly through the snowy Northern wastes at the end of the Taylor-directed episode "Valar Morghulis."
Viewers are advised to not make for the exit as soon as the end credits start rolling and stick it out until the very end if they want to see a postscript that reveals a character who may prove central to the next film. Indeed, the end credits have two Easter-egg scenes, in keeping with the trickle of in-jokes aimed at Marvel aficionados that provides a flash-quick cameo for one of Thor's superhero companions from The Avengers.
Production: Marvel Studios
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Kat Dennings
Director: Alan Taylor
Screenwriter: Christopher L. Yost, Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, based on a story by Don Payne and Robert Rodat
Producers: Kevin Feige
Executive producers: Nigel Gostelow, Stan Lee, Victoria Alonso, Craig Kyle, Alan Fine, Louis D'Esposito
Director of photography: Kramer Morgenthau
Production designer: Charles Wood
Costume designer: Wendy Partridge
Editors: Dan Lebental, Wyatt Smith
Music: Brian Taylor
Not yet rated, 112 minutes
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Airblaster's Gone Wild: Montana Part 1
Posted by: Evan Litsios / added: 10.22.2013 / Back to What Up
The Airblaster crew put together this Gone Wild video series to show how they get down on their snowboards. This installment takes the gang to Lost Trail Resort in Montana, where Tucker Andrews, Ben Lynch, and Tyler Carlton rip the terrain with percision and gusto. Get with the program and have some fun!
Airblaster: Gone Wild - Montana Part 1 from METHOD on Vimeo.
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Study: Flavored small cigars are popular with kids
ATLANTA (AP) — Small cigars flavored to taste like candy or fruit are popular among teens, according to the first government study to gauge their use.
About 1 in 30 middle and high school kids said they smoke the compact, sweet-flavored cigars. The percentages rise as kids get older, to nearly 1 in 12 high school seniors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The results — based on a 2011 survey of nearly 19,000 students, grades 6 through 12 — were published online Tuesday by the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Since 2009, the government has banned cigarettes with candy, fruit and clove flavoring, though it continued to allow menthol flavoring. There is no restriction on sales of cigars with such flavorings except in Maine, New York City and Providence, R.I.
The sale of cigarettes and cigars to those under 18 is illegal, but according to an earlier CDC report, about 16 percent of high school students were smokers in 2011.
Health officials say sweet flavoring can mask the harsh taste of tobacco and make smoking more palatable.
"The so-called small cigars look like cigarettes, addict as much as cigarettes and they kill like cigarettes," said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
Tobacco companies have said they oppose smoking by those under age 18. But the marketing of flavored cigars suggests companies are trying to interest kids in smoking, Frieden and others said.
"The tobacco industry has a long history of using flavored products to attract kids," said Danny McGoldrick, of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy and research organization.
Sales of regular and flavored cigars have boomed in the last 12 years, from 6 billion to more than 13 billion annually, according to calculations by his group.
The CDC survey also asked about menthol-flavored cigarettes. When those were included, more than 40 percent of kids who were current smokers in the survey said they were using flavored cigars or cigarettes.
- Health
- Addiction & Substance Abuse
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Nokia's Refocus Lens camera app promises infinite depth of field control
Nokia's just announced a new camera app called Refocus Lens at Nokia World that brings a Lytro-like variable depth of field to Lumia cameras. Likely to be the fruits of that Scalado purchase from a while back, it'll let you change the focus of a snapshot using "clever algorithms" while adding ...Tags: Ink Master jimmy kimmel Sons Of Anarchy Season 6 lamar odom Beyonce Haircut
Jersey Shore's Pauly D Has A Daughter! Surprise Love Child Revealed!!
Congrats!! Fatherhood is so special!!
We've just learned that 33 year old Pauly D has a daughter playing blocks around the Jersey Shore — and she's only a few months old! Aww!!
The mother, now 26, began hooking up with the MTV star when he was DJing in Vegas last year.
Though she's filed court documents to formally establish paternity as the daughter lives with her, Pauly's DNA test already proves he's the father. And he couldn't be happier about it, saying:
"I'm proud I'm a father. I am excited to embark on this new part of my life."
So wonderful!!
Congratz again, boo!! We hope everything works out peacefully and happily!!
[Image via WENN.]
Tags: baby, baby blabber, daughter, father, jersey shore, pauly d
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Whitney Houston Gets Wax Treatment in London
Her untimely death is still fresh in the air, and Whitney Houston was immortalized in wax thanks to Madame Tussauds.
The “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” songstress’ likeness was unveiled in London on Monday (October 21), and a choir of 30 gospel singers also showed up to provide a proper welcome.
Madame Tussauds’ Nicole Fenner told press, “We are very excited to be welcoming Whitney Houston on to our London music stage for the next eight weeks. This is a very special figure as it was created after Whitney’s very sad and untimely death with the close co-operation of her family, who were delighted by the results.”
Colin Vassell of the London Gospel Factory Choir added, “Whitney Houston is one of the most talented singers of her – or any – generation and we were delighted to welcome her wax figure to London. She is a personal hero of mine so to get to stand alongside her and sing was a slightly surreal but awesome experience. We chose a song she performed in the film ‘The Preacher’s Wife’ because it is so uplifting and great fun to perform. We hope we did her justice.”
Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/whitney-houston/whitney-houston-gets-wax-treatment-london-946791
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