Tagged: Hollywood

“The rumor about Wonder Woman’s movie debut” is, well…

  • News
  • January 6, 2014

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” – attributed to Mark Twain

There are times when the internet overreacts to things.  In most cases, the overreaction is unjustified.  Even if it is against a legitimately unpleasant act, like racism or other acts of cruelty, usually the reaction is wildly overblown, one that can often have a blowback effect and make the target seem like the one that has been wronged.

But this one…

Now, in reading the original article, one sees that this is not even a rumor, but the writer’s own Clever Theory.  It’s a pure ass-pull by the writer of what he thinks MAY happen.  But as soon as the article passes through one round of Chinese Whispers, it’s turned into a “rumor”, and I’m sure within a couple more, it’ll pop up with script samples and more “proof”.  We live in a world where the Worst Case Scenario is often the first case considered.

The articles that have sprouted from this have all circled around the idea of “I knew it!” and other such resigned aspirations. People are calling back quotes from WB executives who have described the character of Wonder Woman as being “complicated”.  So the idea of “dumbing down” the origin, or shit-canning it entirely, seems a perfectly logical response from a Hollywood executive.  So we have no problem believing such flummery as, maybe not the emis, but at least possible enough to break out the pitchforks.

There is a lesson here, perhaps two.

For the readers…scroll back up the chain a bit.  Don’t just read the story you found, but the one the writer links to, and if necessary, back to the original story, if indeed such a story exists.  Remember that much of what’s written on the Internet is written with a goal of drawing eyes to the story, over and above all else.  And so, if a fact or two is left behind, or trampled in haste, well, it all works out in the end, eh?  There are times I think some websites should be published on a yellow background, if you know what I mean.

For the executives at the WB – look carefully on how quick, vehement and virulent the reaction to this story has been, and it’s completely vaporous.  Imagine how bad the reaction is going to be if they hit one with a kernel of truth.  There are a LOT of people who have invested a great deal of hope and emotion into this upcoming appearance.  You should be greatly cautios in your actions with her.

There’s a bit of American History that applies here. A hoax news story was circulated that President Abraham Lincoln was planning to draft an additional 400,000 soldiers to fight in the War of Northern Aggression Civil War.  The reaction was…let’s go with “strong”.  There was a great hue and cry, and more interestingly, the price of gold went up, which was the ulterior motive of the men who planted the story in the first place.

Here’s where the story leans into, fittingly, rumor. The story goes that Mr. Lincoln had originally planned to conscript even MORE than 400,000 men.  But when he saw the reaction to a lesser number, amended his plans accordingly.

Please note, and emulate, the great wisdom of this great man.

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See Chris Pine as the Latest Jack Ryan in This Extended Scene

See Chris Pine as the Latest Jack Ryan in This Extended Scene

He’s been portrayed by the some Hollywood’s biggest names and goes through as many incarnations as The Doctor. Now, Chris Pine leaves the starship Enterprise to enter Tom Clancy’s world of modern day espionage in Jack Ryan: Shadow Unit, opening January 17. Paramount Pictures has provided us with this extended scene.

Based on the CIA analyst created by espionage master Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a blistering action thriller that follows Ryan from his quiet double-life as a veteran-turned-Wall Street executive to his all-out initiation as a hunted American agent on the trail of a massive terrorist plot in Moscow.

Ryan appears to be just another New York executive to his friends and loved ones, but his enlistment into the CIA secretly goes back years.  He was brought in as a brainy Ph.D. who crunches global data – but when Ryan ferrets out a meticulously planned scheme to collapse the U.S. economy and spark global chaos, he becomes the only man with the skills to stop it. Now, he’s gone fully operational, thrust into a world of mounting suspicion, deception and deadly force. Caught between his tight-lipped handler Harper (Academy Award-winner Kevin Costner), his in-the-dark fiancée Cathy (Keira Knightley) and a brilliant Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh), Jack must confront a new reality where no one can seem to be trusted, yet the fate of millions rests on his finding the truth.  With the urgency of a lit fuse, he’s in a race to stay one step ahead of everyone around him.

Mindy Newell: Making A List…

Mary Poppins in the CloudsI have a list of movies that is as malleable as a rubber band. Okay, certain movies, such as The Bridge on the River Kwai or The Searchers or The Best Years of Our Lives are always on that list, but their positions- 1, 2, 3, and so on- tumble around in my mind like clothes in a dryer. Other movies appear and disappear like the crew of the Enterprise on the transporter pad.

Gone With the Wind, for instance. This is a movie that hops on and off my list all the time. On the list because of the incredible “brought to full life” performances and spectacle, and off the list because, as a devotee of Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer-winning novel, in which all the characters are given full, rich personalities, I can’t stand the way Scarlett is portrayed in the second half of the movie; this is a product of Victor Fleming’s direction, who was brought in after George Cukor, the original director, was fired less than three weeks into filming, and of Fleming’s rewrite of the script so that Rhett Butler became a more sympathetic character and Scarlett O’Hara much less so.

There are two explanations for Cukor’s firing. The first is that that Clark Gable— who supposedly wasn’t enthusiastic about playing Rhett Butler, and only agreed to do it after producer David Selznick agreed to help Gable obtain a divorce so that Gable could marry Carole Lombard — was not happy with the choice of Cukor as director.  Cukor was known as a “woman’s director,” and Gable was worried that Cukor’s attention to Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland as Scarlett and Melanie would overshadow any direction that Cukor gave Gable in playing Rhett. The second, and probably true, reason is that Cukor knew that Gable had worked as a gigolo in the gay Hollywood scene before breaking out into stardom, and that this, understandably, made Gable very uncomfortable working with him. So the actor threatened to walk off the set unless Cukor was replaced. But just as Cukor as known as a “women’s director,” Fleming was known as a “man’s director;” he gave very little advice and just shot the movie, wanting no dilly-dallying or investigation into a character’s motivations and he was not in the least respectful of either Vivien Leigh or Olivia de Havilland and their talents- oh, and by the way, for you GWTW fans, Leigh and de Havilland continued to secretly meet with Cukor at his home when off the set to investigate their characters’ motivations and how to play them.

Gone With the Wind was on Turner Classic Movies a couple of weeks back, and of course I watched it.  And it’s on my list again.  It also made me pick the book and start reading it again.

And then there is The Sound of Music. The movie is based on the true story of the Von Trapp Family, escaped from the 1938 political annexation, or Anschluss, of Austria into the Third Reich. Directed by Robert Wise (who directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture), the movie stars Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain Von Trapp. It was filmed on location in Austria, including Salzburg and the Nonnburg Convent, where the real Maria was a postulant. The music, of course, is unforgettable and iconic- in fact, midnight sing-alongs of The Sound of Music, a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show have become quite the thing- but more than that, and it’s something that makes the movie more than just a beautiful travelogue of the Austrian Alps, it’s the Nazi threat and the looming-on-the-horizon beginning of World War II that underscores what could have been just a “sappy” love story.

By the way, Carrie Underwood got a lot of grief from critics and non-critics, i.e. “pundits” on the Web, last week for her performance in NBC’s live broadcast. Okay, she was a little stiff and a bit ingenuous, but that lady can sing. There were also complaints that the teleplay “messed with the script,” moving songs around, leaving out the gazebo, and not having Captain Von Trapp engaged to “the Baroness.” Which annoyed the hell out of me, because the teleplay was based on the original Broadway show which starred Mary Martin as Maria and Theodore Bikel as Captain Von Trapp and ran for 1,443 performances, from 1959 to 1963.  Which means that it was the movie that played with the original script. Jesus, people, know your musical theatre history before you complain!

Anyway, it’s not a movie that appears on my list, but when I do watch it, I am enchanted and captivated, delighted, thrilled, and yes, just a bit weepy at the ending as the Von Trapps “climb every mountain” and “ford every stream” to escape the Germans’ every-tightening noose into Switzerland.

And then there’s Mary Poppins.

I remember going with my family to see it. I also remember my father not being entirely willing, but doing it because, well, that’s what fathers do. And I also remember my father really enjoying himself. Starring Julie Andrews (hmm, is there a theme here?) as the magical, mystical nanny and Dick Van Dyke as her friend Bert, the one-man band player, chalk painting drawer, chimney sweep Cockney, and deliverer of wisdom to sacked-from-the-bank Edwardian fathers, the film is based on English writer P. L. Travers’s series of books. Believe it or not, I never read the books, and I didn’t know what to expect on this family outing, except that I had a girlhood crush on Dick Van Dyke (or Rob Petrie) and my mom told me he was in the movie, so I was looking forward to it.

We all came out of the theatre singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and it became a badge of honor at school and at sleepaway camp that year to be able to spell it backwards (s-u-o-i-c-o-d-i-l-a-i-p-x-e-c-i-t-s-i-l-i-g-a-r-f-i-l-a-c-r-e-r-p-u-S and if you think I can do that without looking at the word while typing it out you’re giving me a lot of credit!)

And I still find myself singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” while cleaning the house and “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” when seeing kids play with them in the park and singing “Feed the Birds” when I see pictures of St. Paul’s in London. And after watching previews of Saving Mr. Banks  (which I’m definitely going to see) I downloaded the score to my playlist on iTunes.

That puts Mary Poppins on my list of top movies…

For a while at least.

Next week: …AND CHECKING IT TWICE.  My favorite Christmastime movies.

 

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

Take a Look at Saving Mr. Banks

Take a Look at Saving Mr. Banks

Walt Disney, the studio not the epoymous founder or Tom Hanks, has released several featurettes spotlighting Saving Mr. Banks, which opens today.

Genre:                   Drama
Rating:                  PG-13
Release Date:     December 13, 2013, limited; December 20, 2013, wide
Running Time:   120 min

Cast:                      Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Annie Rose Buckley, Ruth Wilson, B.J. Novak, Rachel Griffiths, Kathy Baker and Colin Farrell

Director:             John Lee Hancock
Producers:         Alison Owen, Ian Collie, Philip Steuer
Executive Producers:  Paul Trijbits, Christine Langan, Andrew Mason, Troy Lum
Written by:                       Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith

Two-time Academy Award®–winner Emma Thompson and fellow double Oscar®-winner Tom Hanks topline Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, inspired by the extraordinary, untold backstory of how Disney’s classic “Mary Poppins” made it to the screen.

When Walt Disney’s daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins, he made them a promise—one that he didn’t realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation.

For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn’t budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.

It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

Inspired by true events, Saving Mr. Banks is the extraordinary, untold story of how Disney’s classic Mary Poppins made it to the screen—and the testy relationship that the legendary Walt Disney had with author P.L. Travers that almost derailed it.

Notes:

  • Saving Mr. Banks is the first feature-length, theatrical drama to depict the iconic entrepreneur Walt Disney.
  • Richard and Robert Sherman’s original score and song (“Chim Chim Cher-ee”) would go on to win Oscars® at the 1965 ceremonies.
  • Mary Poppins won five awards of its 13 Academy Award® nominations: Best Actress (Julie Andrews), Best Effects, Best Film Editing, Original Score and Original Song. Among the nominations were Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
  • P.L. Travers’ father was a banker and is the basis for the Mary Poppins story’s patriarch, Mr. Banks—the character in the book whom the famous fictional nanny comes to aid.

 

Dennis O’Neil’s Tales From Texas

oneil-art-131205-150x193-1413425One of those, you know, jangly weeks: we arrived in Austin wearing the winter garb appropriate for Newark, where we began the journey, and stepped from the airline terminal into 70 degrees and regretted our bag full of long sleeves. Looked like it was going to be a sweaty few days, maybe, but not to worry: the temperature dropped thirty degrees overnight and by daylight, my cold weather jacket was appropriate and when we again moved into the outdoors we got our first bite of winter. No big problem: our destination, the Austin convention center, was just across a narrow street.

The convention was what conventions are, these days, with maybe more television actors than comics folk. We did manage to raise a few bucks for The Hero Initiative, always a good reason to go someplace, but the chill kept us close to the hotel and so we didn’t see much of Austin which, I’m told and still believe, is a righteous city. Maybe next time.

I didn’t speak to any of the celebs, either, though some of them have done work I enjoy. Never do chat with the thespians, even though I’ve been sharing con programs with their ilk for decades. Probably never will. (Maybe not next time.)

I’m the anti-fan I won’t approach VIPs, even when I could jury rig a reason to. Mari and I were sitting in a bakery during our first visit to what is now our home town and, I’ll be darned, who walks in but Alec Baldwin and his then-wife, Kim Basinger, and another woman, a nanny, I’d guess, holding a baby whose last name undoubtedly was Baldwin. They sat nearby. Now – small world – our son had recently spoken with Alec during a visit to Hollywood about a project they might have shared, though they didn’t, and so we had a great conversational opener, and Mari looked like she’d use it. But not grumpy me. I shook my head no and pretty soon we left.

Another instance: Larry Hama and I were playing video games in a California hotel and in comes TV’s Kojak, Telly Savalas. He stands between us, kibitzing for about five minutes, being ignored by the comic book guys from New York.. He leaves. Who could blame him? (Who the hell did we think we were?)

Why does my nose rise into the air when I encounter the renowned? The answer does me no particular credit. What it comes down to is, I’m afraid that they’ll be jerks and I won’t like them, or, worse, it will be obvious that they don’t like me, and this emotional frisson will get between me and the venerable person’s work. I won’t be able to enjoy it and that could be regrettable.

The weather in Austin continued to be iffy and for a while, there seemed to be a possibility that we’d be snowed in. The flight was late taking off and we were cramped for hours – were the new airline seats designed by Torquemada? – and I was thinking Oh just, please, let me get to my cozy home. We got here and found the house cold. The heating system had failed and we were a pair of icy oldsters. But a savior drove in from Orangeburg past midnight and got the heating machine working and I later thought What a great job this guy has…driving alone through the night making people warm…

Well, between the jangly week’s beginning and a major holiday a few days later, and some mild sore-throat/cough/sniffle action, we didn’t see the new Hunger Games movie. If I were into idolatry, I might adore the film’s star, the splendid Jennifer Lawrence. As long as I didn’t have to meet her.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Yep, More From The Tweaks!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

 

REVIEW: 2Guns

2-Guns-DVD-CoverThe buddy picture was a staple of the 1970s and 1980s, possibly dating back to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but it’s been largely missing from more recent Hollywood fare. As a result, you have to given Universal Studios credit for recognizing the somewhat fresh approach in the Boom! Studios graphic novel 2Guns. Steve Grant paired two men in a drug story that felt familiar but with every action, things were never what they appeared, freshening the entire concept. Add in the charismatic Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, stir, and you have a crime story worth taking a look.

Out now on Blu-ray from Universal Home Entertainment, the film starts off with a robbery and never really slows down. Washington is Robert Trench, Bobby T, and Wahlberg is Michael Stigman, Stig, paired up to rob Mexican criminal drug lord  Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos) of $3 million in cash. Neither is ware that both men are phonies with Bobby working undercover for the DEA while Stig is a member of Naval Intelligence, hoping to obtain the money to fund their cover operations.

Instead, they wind up robbing a bank in Tres Cruces, New Mexico and walking away with over $40 million in kickbacks paid by the drug lords to the CIA. The agency dispatches Earl (Bill Paxton) to recover the money and he cuts a bloody swath as he nears the truth and the cash. Along the way, the friends discover the truth about one another but then the revelations keep on coming as Bobby realizes he’s been set up by his sometime lover Deb (Paula Patton) and Stig discovers the Navy would rather sweep the scandal under the rug than do the honorable thing.

And chasing them all is Papi, who wants revenge for being robbed and humiliated by the pair. Olmos looks like he’s having the most fun although the two lead performers also banter nicely. The problem with the film is that Blake Masters’ screenplay never properly develops a single character so they feel sketchy. We don’t know what drives Bobby to spend three years undercover and what he’s had to give up or why Stig thinks it’s okay to use drug money for government purposes.

Under Baltasar Kormakur’s direction, we get lots of nice scenes set in New Orleans, and New Mexico and some inventive action sequences but everything feels like it’s on the surface. It’s a cleverly constructed plot and no one seems interested in exploring the larger themes or motivations. Maybe this is why it was aimed at late summer, when most audiences stop thinking and accept whatever’s on the screen.

Watching at home, you stop and realize how little of the story holds up under scrutiny, especially the whole Deb betrays Bobby sub-plot. The disc includes several extended and deleted scenes, none of which add anything to a deeper understanding of the story. Koramakur and producer Adam Siegel provide a standard commentary that shows no one seemed interested in making this a more complex tale. The movie comes with “Undercover and into Action”,  a fairly by the number Making Of featurette.

The Point Radio: CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL Crosses The Line

PT102113

This week, CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL winds up it’s 5th season on Adult Swim (Thursday at 12midnight ET), closing a year that saw an Emmy win, bunches of cool guest stars and even more over-the-edge episodes. Co-Creator and star, Rob Corddry talks about how it all came together and just what changes that Emmy brought to the show. Plus Oni Press has another indy sell-out and the most important name in Hollywood now is The DVR.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Mike Gold: Tales To Diminish

Gold Art 131016I’ve been going to big-time national comic book conventions for 45 years. This amazes me because I can’t imagine doing anything for 45 years. I’ve got a very short attention span.

The first major shows were run here in New York by Phil Seuling, and they were wonderful. Just about everybody in the industry was there, surrounded by more fans than anybody thought existed. In 1968, attendance was around 300 people – 300 fanboys, virtually all fan boys, virtually all asking themselves the same question: “You mean, there are 299 others who are just like me?”

The following year, Seuling’s comic con grew to over a thousand, and many think twice that. Attendance continued to grow like Hank Pym on crack. Conventions proliferated to the point where, perhaps a decade ago, they started attracting extremely serious “support” from the sundry media industries and running a comic con became big-time business.

So this past weekend, 45 years and three months after Phil’s first, we had the New York Comic Con. Numbers are all over the place, but the show sold out some time ago. Evidently, some 135,000 people showed up – if true (and we’re not counting guests, pros, speakers, and press), then the New York Comic Con attracted a larger audience than the San Diego Comic Con, but, to be fair, both are severely limited by a lack of floor space and a lack of navigable aisles.

That’s not all NYCC has in common with SDCC. If you want to buy a Chevy, you could do it on the convention floor. If you want to insure your new car with Geico, you could do that as well. If you want to find out if you’ll get a parking space anywhere near the convention center the next day, there was a psychic there who might advise you accordingly.

Whereas NYCC had an enormous amount of media attractions and booths and panels, SDCC still has more because, essentially, Hollywood moves down to the border during Con week. Nonetheless, it is clear that NYCC shares at least two things with SDCC.

The first is that the aisles are clogged worse than Chris Christie’s arteries. If you’re trying to go from aisle 100 – where the ComicMix booth lived – to Artist’s Alley, it was a 20-minute walk, with the wind. If the Javits had decent taxi service, I would have considered using it. 135,000 people in the building built to comfortably house half that many at best means “you can’t get there from here.” There are lots of friends I wanted to see but couldn’t get to without borrowing vines from Tarzan.

The second is that neither show has all that much to do with comic books. NYCC still beats SDCC on that front, but only by a very narrow margin. It’s an autograph show, it’s a media frenzy, it’s a celebrity clusterfuck.

I believe I went to six major shows this year. Of those, I personally enjoyed only three, and those are the three I always enjoy. The MoCCA small-press show in Manhattan is always inspiring – it’s a two-day affair full of youth, creativity and energy, and it only requires one day of my life. The Heroes Con show in Charlotte North Carolina is truly about comic books. It’s large but it’s very well managed, and Reed Pop!, the people who put on both the NYCC and Chicago’s C2E2 (and who seem to know very little about comics and clearly care even less) should go out there and take notes.

My favorite show remains the September Baltimore Comic Con. It’s been growing steadily and attracting enough pros and decision-makers to sink the Titanic. It’s all about comics – strictly comics, to repeat myself for the sake of emphasis. The Harvey Awards dinner always is one of the highlights of my year, and it would be even if they didn’t hand out the best swag-bag that one can barely lift, let alone carry.

This year the Reed folks added something to their NYCC. They had chips on all the badges. You had to stand in line until a staffer scanned your badge with an iPad in order to verify your legitimacy. That’s annoying, but it’s even more annoying to leave the place. You had to stand in line for another chip scan in order to get out of the building. If you left at the end of the show day, it could take you a half hour to get from your last roosting place on the floor to the scanning line and then to the door.

I don’t know what would happen if your badge came up invalid when you were leaving. What would they do? Throw you out?

That would have been faster.

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: The Tweeks!

 

Mindy Newell: The SHIELD Bug

newell-art-131007-150x155-4553886I’ve been down with what is either an incredibly horrible cold or what technically would be considered a mild flu since last Tuesday, although “mild” is definitely not in the eyes of the sufferer – achy and sore, exhausted just doing nothing but unable to sleep enough to wake up feeling like I slept, coughing up disgusting stuff from inside my chest, a nose that is either stuffed or running depending on the time of day, alternately hungry and nauseous in the same minute…

Anyway, my brain is definitely not completely “there” this week, but here are some thoughts.

So far not terrifically excited by Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. I thought the pilot episode was basically meh and if it wasn’t for the involvement of the combined powerhouse of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and Joss Whedon it would never have been picked up by ABC, much less been given a full season of episodes. For one thing the new agents (meaning those we haven’t seen in the MCU) are too homogenously Hollywood; everybody is the same pretty face and body, as though the casting office went to the Paris and New York fashion shows instead of the theaters in their search for new talent. Note to ABC: Marvel’s universe is not DC’s universe. It’s built around imperfect people having imperfect lives, super powered or not. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea to hire a Melissa McCarthy or Kevin James as agents. Y’know, some imperfect people. Imperfect people who can… act.

But maybe I’m being too hard on a new show that has had the weight of high expectations around its neck like the proverbial albatross. Isn’t there anything I’ve liked about AOS?

Of course.

Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson. Oh, and Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson. And then there’s Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson.

I also like Lola, Phil Coulson’s 1961 red Chevrolet Corvette C1. (Phil Coulson is played by Clark Gregg.)

I like that Lola has a little bit of DeLorean in her.

I like Sam Jackson showing up as Nick Fury and dressing down Phil Coulson (who is played by Clark Gregg.)

I liked seeing J. August Richards – Charles Gunn on Angel – on TV again, playing the manipulated and man-made superhero/supervillain of the pilot. Whedon has a good, no, great, eye for talent and he often hires and rehires actors he has worked with and brought to stardom…maybe we’ll be seeing other Wheedon “school” alumni on AOS? Alexis Denisoff – yes, I know he played “the Other” in The Avengers, but so what? – Elisha Dushku, Tom Lenk, Amy Acker, Gina Torres, Nathan Fillion….

Actually, those are the kind of actors I would have liked to see making up the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D on ABC, Tuesdays at 8 PM, EDT.

Still, the pretty faces of Hollywood might grow on me.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Natalie Portman and Marvel Promote Science Careers for Women

Natalie Poretman Thor The Dark WorldBURBANK, CA – October 1, 2013 – SEEKING THE NEXT JANE FOSTER!  In MARVEL’S THOR: THE DARK WORLD, Academy Award® winner Natalie Portman portrays astrophysicist Jane Foster, an independent spirit who follows her heart and journeys to a new world.

Marvel Studios, UL (Underwriters Laboratories), Dolby Laboratories, National Academy of Science, Girl Scouts USA along with the famous El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, are proud to team up to sponsor a nationwide MARVEL’S THOR: THE DARK WORLD ULTIMATE MENTOR ADVENTURE in conjunction with the November 8th release of the film starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman.

MARVEL’S THOR: THE DARK WORLD ULTIMATE MENTOR ADVENTURE aims to empower girls 14 years and up, in grades 9 – 12 nationwide, to embark on a journey to discover their potential and future in the world of STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  Through the collaborative efforts of Marvel, UL (Underwriters Laboratories), Dolby Laboratories, National Academy of Sciences and Girl Scouts USA, girls will have a chance to go out into the real world and ask successful women in STEM fields about what they do, how they got where they are…and how others can follow in their footsteps.  The process is designed to help students to understand who they are, and why this experience can be impactful on their futures. For more information, rules and how to apply, visit www.ultimatementoradventure.com.

“MARVEL’S THOR: THE DARK WORLD ULTIMATE MENTOR ADVENTURE is a chance to inspire a generation and by doing so, to change their future –and ours – for the better,” said Victoria Alonso, EVP, Visual Effects & Post Production, Marvel Studios.

Finalists of MARVEL’S thor: the dark world ultimate mentor adventure will win

a week’s trip to Southern California, provided by UL (Underwriters Laboratories) and Dolby Laboratories. The Ultimate Mentor Adventure will allow the girls to meet some of the most incredible Women in Science such as Dolby Laboratory Senior Scientists, conducting interviews and be challenged to participate in experiments. It will also include interactive events and go behind-the-scenes where the general public is not normally invited – all while having their adventure filmed. On Friday, November 8th, the winners will conclude their excursion and be recognized at the Premiere Screening of their Ultimate Mentor Adventure documentary short.  The video short will be shown at the El Capitan Theatre prior to a screening of MARVEL’S THOR: THE DARK WORLD in Dolby® Atmos™ on opening day.

About the Movie

Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World continues the big-screen adventures of Thor, the Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself.  In the aftermath of Marvel’s Thor and Marvel’s The Avengers, Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos…but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. To defeat an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor sets upon his most dangerous and personal journey yet, forced into an alliance with the treacherous Loki to save not only his people and those he loves…but our universe itself.

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano and Jaimie Alexander with Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World is directed by Alan Taylor, produced by Kevin Feige, p.g.a., from a story by Don Payne and Robert Rodat and screenplay by Christopher L. Yost and Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, and is based on Marvel’s classic Super Hero Thor, who first appeared in the comic book Journey into Mystery #83 in August, 1962.

Thor: The Dark World is presented by Marvel Studios. The executive producers are Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Craig Kyle, Alan Fine, Nigel Gostelow and Stan Lee. The film releases November 8, 2013, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

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