"Marvel Avengers Assemble"; aka Not Emma Peel
First off, why is it called "Marvel Avengers Assemble" in Britain and nowhere else? Do they really think a significant portion of Blighty's movie-going population is going to confuse this in any way, shape or form with the 60s TV series or lame-as-all-hell 90's film?! No! Because most of the people ordering tickets weren't hiding in a cave in Kathmandu when The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 1-2, Thor and Captain America came out! Epic name fail.
When release day came Hawkes and Kam couldn't resist the siren's call of an early Middelsborough screening on Friday afternoon when they were both off and I was stuck at work. Then Spider texted to say "Nothing else matters until you've seen it! NOTHING! It's that good!" Then I threw a completely unnecessary tantrum about not wanting to see it for the first time with anyone who was seeing it for a repeat time. Kam reeeeeally wanted to go with me on Saturday but I know that boy would have blurted out half the spoilers before we even got to the picturehouse! So I avoided all geeky contact until Monday & went to go see it on my goddamed todd.
The pair working at the Empire ticket stand could only be described as legendary. The cinema was fairly dead so they were just mucking about - the girl sang the whole of "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast with not a lyric out of place as she danced around getting my popcorn and coffee while the lad tilted his head, inspected my long green coat and commented "That's a very... 'Rogue' outfit. Was that deliberate?" This was followed by me supressing a fangirl squee because yes, it totally was (Rogue's first ever comicbook appearance was in an Avengers Annual in 1981 so I'd thrown together a vague tribute outfit I could wear all day at work). I bought that coat in Prague back in 2004 because it looked so much like the coat Anna Paquin had in the first X-Men fillm and at £80 it's the most expensive item of clothing that I've ever bought but tooootally worth it for all the double takes it gets at comic conventions not to mention it's uncanny ability to keep the cold out.
Then we ended up all huddeled over the ticket machine discussing whether to sit me far away from or right next to the one lone guy who was the only other person to have bought a ticket for the screening and at what point it was safe to walk away from the credits without missing any easter eggs (I found out the US screenings get an extra extra secret scene of all the Avengers gang sat around eating shawarma that's not in the European cut - Waah!)
I did actually say hello to random-only-other-person-to-have-bought-a-ticket but he seemed kind of nervous that a strange pink-haired woman was talking to him so that ended quickly.
I liked the film, I wasn't as utterly, irrevocably bowled over as I thought I might be but then I'd gladly sit and watch two and a half hours of anything featuring Tom Hiddleston with his Loki hair (I do also luff him for his brain - he writes proper geeky articles in defense of the superhero genre - but my luff for the hair is quite significant). The fact that he's shown yelling "mewling quim" at Scarlett Johansson added greatly to my enjoyment too. When I first found out about that in a review I pulled a proper shocked cat face. A few days later I had to explain it to Kam because the big Glaswegian puppy is oblivious to welsh slang and just thought it was "random olde worlde talk", rather than Joss Whedon slipping the c-word into a 12A film. It was a joy to watch Kam pull the surprised cat face himself then.
The Tony + Bruce = Lab Buddies 4 evah scenes were flawless, I actually found myself liking Steve Rogers for once, Natasha was bad ass in a way that didn't seem as contrived as in Iron Man 2 (give a woman a serious hair cut and she will kick some serious ass) and Thor was just a big hilarious shampoo ad, as he always should be. The only thing that detracted from my comic-book fangirl inner-squeeing was the Hulk's first proper jolly green giant appearance. Black Window was shown papping herself... and no one else was aware enough to be fussed (well, the nameless trampled meatsheilds don't count). I get the impression that because it's somehow more culturally acceptable for women to show fear in the face of an angry aggressor, Widow was wheeled out as the sole signifier for the audience that Hulk represented a big scary problem, without detracting from the manly-man BAMFness of the other Avengers. But really, I think it would have had far more impact if a male character like Nick Fury, renowned for cucumber coolness, had been shown shitting a brick at the sight of a motherfucking Hulk on his motherfucking plane. And of course, there's the moment when Joss kills a fan-fave character. Again. Because he is Joss Whedon and that is what he always does, in ways that defy you to picture events working in any other way! "Damn you Whedon!" ...He also doesn't allow Pepper Potts to wear shoes at any point during the entire film - the foot fetish thing's just getting creepy now.
After the film I realized 1. My phone was dead and 2. I'd totally misread the bus timetable. When I bolted from picture house to bus stop I found with dismay that the last service was a weird stunted thing that only ran half way down the normal route. It ended up dropping me off literally in the middle of nowhere. The bus driver had no suggestions to offer in terms of finding a taxi rank or even a phone box. So instead I commenced an epic walk into the darkness (there are portions of the A690 with no lighting), knowing I'd be missing the connecting bus I needed as well. About halfway down I found a phone box but it turns out the only directory service listed in phone boxes is for a line that won't search generic terms like 'taxi company' - oh no, you have to tell them a specific company name in order to get them to spit a number out, and the only taxi company I could think of just didn't answer their phone after I wasted £3 on the whole effort.
There was an odd creepy moment where I was walking along with my torch and realized someone was walking from the opposite direction - no light but at a fairly quick pace. On the one hand I wanted to stop and and ask what the fuck he was doing walking in the middle of nowhere because the buses from his direction hadn't stopped. On the other hand I wanted to just sail on past because of the whole 'stranger danger' vibe. The compromise turned out to be a quick nod met with an "Alreet!", and we passed like odd little ships in the night.
I carried on walking until I could physically put my hands to a parked taxi in Durham city center, checked on Google later - I did 5.3 miles, with intermittent pitch blackness, in roughly an hour. I was actually quite proud of that, and I wasn't tired at all either, just annoyed that I'd had to do the whole thing with no music and was wasting time that could have been spent sleeping or trolling online or something...
In the taxi I ended up having yet another conversation with a cab driver about bikes. What is it about taxi men and motorcycling? They've all done it! This latest chappy was quite happy to reminisce about his old Honda Dominator and laughed his tits off at a story about Ha-Li, the belligerent little Honda CG I sold last year.
The next day I had to force myself out of bed to deal with Natwest - They've been causing problems by continually yanking out fines from my joint bank account with Hawkes and Elmo without notification which is then causing more unauthorized overdraft periods that cause more fines etc etc ad infinitum. I explained that because I'm still a little bit on the partially deaf side of hearing I'd prefer they dealt with Elmo. She was doing a grand job until she escalated the call to a manager who then suddenly decided she was going to make up her own laws that had nothing to do with the data protection act and refused to speak to anyone but me which was about as helpful as when I went to the actual bank two days previous and was reduced to shouting through the bullet-proof perspex and miming as the queue looked on because the clerks wouldn't come out to discuss it at the customer service counter or in one of the rooms. The manager bitch eventually gave me two choices - a refund of £170's worth of the charges or a further £48 kick in the tits. Needless to say I went with the former. Elmo seemed momentarily annoyed that I settled for the £170 but I just couldn't deal with her and the manager both talking *at* me when I only have one functioning ear! But what do I care, that's essentially clawed back my accommodation & travel for the Supernatural convention in a few weeks.
I think it might have been by way of apology for getting tetchy that Elmo then whisked me off to Yo Sushi at the Metro Center. I've always wanted to eat there but usually I'm with fussy-eater Kam who can't even look at a vegetable stir-fry without doing an impression of a vampire that's been shown a crucifix. We were greeted by a wildly over-enthusiastic blonde chef who was dusted with flour and had a Nordic accent I couldn't quite place. We nicknamed her Girl!Thor (after the action figure Elmo felt strangely compelled to buy from the Disney store on our way over) and then we ate our own weight in delicious Japanese food - quality tuna sashimi is one of the few foods with the power to literally make me go weak at the knees.
Elmo's last sushi experience was at a fancy-pants restaurant she went to while she was in Copenhagen last year - she spent a while recalling with disdain how she was made to take her shoes off and crawl on the carpet because the seats were sunken into the floor (and Girl!Thor sympathized loudly). Apart from that I think she liked it but Yo Sushi was definitely more her thing. I have to say I let myself get a little hypnotized by the conveyor belt while Girl!Thor explained the significance of the green lucky cat that was going around and around on a saucer like a happy little alien in a UFO Prius.
We've made a vow to go back for 'Sumo Sunday' at some point - you hand over £19 and the belt turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Man vs Food style record is 25 plates, neither Elmo nor I have any chance of coming close to that but we're thinking of dragging Hawkes in - once you get a few sakes down his gullet he turns into a noodle-eating machine at Fat Buddah so we're assuming the same rule applies to raw fish and pumpkin fritters...
Now if I could just co-ordinate an Avengers viewing with a Yo Sushi visit, that would possibly become a highlight of my funny little Spring!
When release day came Hawkes and Kam couldn't resist the siren's call of an early Middelsborough screening on Friday afternoon when they were both off and I was stuck at work. Then Spider texted to say "Nothing else matters until you've seen it! NOTHING! It's that good!" Then I threw a completely unnecessary tantrum about not wanting to see it for the first time with anyone who was seeing it for a repeat time. Kam reeeeeally wanted to go with me on Saturday but I know that boy would have blurted out half the spoilers before we even got to the picturehouse! So I avoided all geeky contact until Monday & went to go see it on my goddamed todd.
The pair working at the Empire ticket stand could only be described as legendary. The cinema was fairly dead so they were just mucking about - the girl sang the whole of "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast with not a lyric out of place as she danced around getting my popcorn and coffee while the lad tilted his head, inspected my long green coat and commented "That's a very... 'Rogue' outfit. Was that deliberate?" This was followed by me supressing a fangirl squee because yes, it totally was (Rogue's first ever comicbook appearance was in an Avengers Annual in 1981 so I'd thrown together a vague tribute outfit I could wear all day at work). I bought that coat in Prague back in 2004 because it looked so much like the coat Anna Paquin had in the first X-Men fillm and at £80 it's the most expensive item of clothing that I've ever bought but tooootally worth it for all the double takes it gets at comic conventions not to mention it's uncanny ability to keep the cold out.
Then we ended up all huddeled over the ticket machine discussing whether to sit me far away from or right next to the one lone guy who was the only other person to have bought a ticket for the screening and at what point it was safe to walk away from the credits without missing any easter eggs (I found out the US screenings get an extra extra secret scene of all the Avengers gang sat around eating shawarma that's not in the European cut - Waah!)
I did actually say hello to random-only-other-person-to-have-bought-a-ticket but he seemed kind of nervous that a strange pink-haired woman was talking to him so that ended quickly.
I liked the film, I wasn't as utterly, irrevocably bowled over as I thought I might be but then I'd gladly sit and watch two and a half hours of anything featuring Tom Hiddleston with his Loki hair (I do also luff him for his brain - he writes proper geeky articles in defense of the superhero genre - but my luff for the hair is quite significant). The fact that he's shown yelling "mewling quim" at Scarlett Johansson added greatly to my enjoyment too. When I first found out about that in a review I pulled a proper shocked cat face. A few days later I had to explain it to Kam because the big Glaswegian puppy is oblivious to welsh slang and just thought it was "random olde worlde talk", rather than Joss Whedon slipping the c-word into a 12A film. It was a joy to watch Kam pull the surprised cat face himself then.
The Tony + Bruce = Lab Buddies 4 evah scenes were flawless, I actually found myself liking Steve Rogers for once, Natasha was bad ass in a way that didn't seem as contrived as in Iron Man 2 (give a woman a serious hair cut and she will kick some serious ass) and Thor was just a big hilarious shampoo ad, as he always should be. The only thing that detracted from my comic-book fangirl inner-squeeing was the Hulk's first proper jolly green giant appearance. Black Window was shown papping herself... and no one else was aware enough to be fussed (well, the nameless trampled meatsheilds don't count). I get the impression that because it's somehow more culturally acceptable for women to show fear in the face of an angry aggressor, Widow was wheeled out as the sole signifier for the audience that Hulk represented a big scary problem, without detracting from the manly-man BAMFness of the other Avengers. But really, I think it would have had far more impact if a male character like Nick Fury, renowned for cucumber coolness, had been shown shitting a brick at the sight of a motherfucking Hulk on his motherfucking plane. And of course, there's the moment when Joss kills a fan-fave character. Again. Because he is Joss Whedon and that is what he always does, in ways that defy you to picture events working in any other way! "Damn you Whedon!" ...He also doesn't allow Pepper Potts to wear shoes at any point during the entire film - the foot fetish thing's just getting creepy now.
After the film I realized 1. My phone was dead and 2. I'd totally misread the bus timetable. When I bolted from picture house to bus stop I found with dismay that the last service was a weird stunted thing that only ran half way down the normal route. It ended up dropping me off literally in the middle of nowhere. The bus driver had no suggestions to offer in terms of finding a taxi rank or even a phone box. So instead I commenced an epic walk into the darkness (there are portions of the A690 with no lighting), knowing I'd be missing the connecting bus I needed as well. About halfway down I found a phone box but it turns out the only directory service listed in phone boxes is for a line that won't search generic terms like 'taxi company' - oh no, you have to tell them a specific company name in order to get them to spit a number out, and the only taxi company I could think of just didn't answer their phone after I wasted £3 on the whole effort.
There was an odd creepy moment where I was walking along with my torch and realized someone was walking from the opposite direction - no light but at a fairly quick pace. On the one hand I wanted to stop and and ask what the fuck he was doing walking in the middle of nowhere because the buses from his direction hadn't stopped. On the other hand I wanted to just sail on past because of the whole 'stranger danger' vibe. The compromise turned out to be a quick nod met with an "Alreet!", and we passed like odd little ships in the night.
I carried on walking until I could physically put my hands to a parked taxi in Durham city center, checked on Google later - I did 5.3 miles, with intermittent pitch blackness, in roughly an hour. I was actually quite proud of that, and I wasn't tired at all either, just annoyed that I'd had to do the whole thing with no music and was wasting time that could have been spent sleeping or trolling online or something...
In the taxi I ended up having yet another conversation with a cab driver about bikes. What is it about taxi men and motorcycling? They've all done it! This latest chappy was quite happy to reminisce about his old Honda Dominator and laughed his tits off at a story about Ha-Li, the belligerent little Honda CG I sold last year.
The next day I had to force myself out of bed to deal with Natwest - They've been causing problems by continually yanking out fines from my joint bank account with Hawkes and Elmo without notification which is then causing more unauthorized overdraft periods that cause more fines etc etc ad infinitum. I explained that because I'm still a little bit on the partially deaf side of hearing I'd prefer they dealt with Elmo. She was doing a grand job until she escalated the call to a manager who then suddenly decided she was going to make up her own laws that had nothing to do with the data protection act and refused to speak to anyone but me which was about as helpful as when I went to the actual bank two days previous and was reduced to shouting through the bullet-proof perspex and miming as the queue looked on because the clerks wouldn't come out to discuss it at the customer service counter or in one of the rooms. The manager bitch eventually gave me two choices - a refund of £170's worth of the charges or a further £48 kick in the tits. Needless to say I went with the former. Elmo seemed momentarily annoyed that I settled for the £170 but I just couldn't deal with her and the manager both talking *at* me when I only have one functioning ear! But what do I care, that's essentially clawed back my accommodation & travel for the Supernatural convention in a few weeks.
I think it might have been by way of apology for getting tetchy that Elmo then whisked me off to Yo Sushi at the Metro Center. I've always wanted to eat there but usually I'm with fussy-eater Kam who can't even look at a vegetable stir-fry without doing an impression of a vampire that's been shown a crucifix. We were greeted by a wildly over-enthusiastic blonde chef who was dusted with flour and had a Nordic accent I couldn't quite place. We nicknamed her Girl!Thor (after the action figure Elmo felt strangely compelled to buy from the Disney store on our way over) and then we ate our own weight in delicious Japanese food - quality tuna sashimi is one of the few foods with the power to literally make me go weak at the knees.
Elmo's last sushi experience was at a fancy-pants restaurant she went to while she was in Copenhagen last year - she spent a while recalling with disdain how she was made to take her shoes off and crawl on the carpet because the seats were sunken into the floor (and Girl!Thor sympathized loudly). Apart from that I think she liked it but Yo Sushi was definitely more her thing. I have to say I let myself get a little hypnotized by the conveyor belt while Girl!Thor explained the significance of the green lucky cat that was going around and around on a saucer like a happy little alien in a UFO Prius.
We've made a vow to go back for 'Sumo Sunday' at some point - you hand over £19 and the belt turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Man vs Food style record is 25 plates, neither Elmo nor I have any chance of coming close to that but we're thinking of dragging Hawkes in - once you get a few sakes down his gullet he turns into a noodle-eating machine at Fat Buddah so we're assuming the same rule applies to raw fish and pumpkin fritters...
Now if I could just co-ordinate an Avengers viewing with a Yo Sushi visit, that would possibly become a highlight of my funny little Spring!