Come anticipate CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR with me

How could u.

I have tix to see this on Monday at a special screening hosted by the Russo Brothers: http://thedaily.case.edu/news/emmy-award-winning-directors-joe-and-anthony-russo-to-host-local-screening-of-marvels-captain-america-civil-war-may-2/

oh wow, awesome!

Saw this last night in a packed venue at the event mentioned above -- it was done as a thank-you by the Russos to Case Western Reserve University, helping them fundraise for the next phase of the new Maltz Performing Arts Center. Had a nice intro by CWRU president Barbara Snyder, and then Anthony Russo talked a bit. Joe Russo was absent as he's apparently got some kind of chest infection from all the traveling they've been doing to overseas premieres.

Russo told some funny anecdotes about their time at CWRU as grad students, including constantly pestering Prof. Louis Gianetti (who film buffs know as the author of the text Understanding Movies) for advice and feedback; and forming a short-lived improv troupe, which they then reviewed in the student paper under the byline of a name they picked from the phone book, and gave themselves a scathingly bad review.

Anyway, I'd love to let lose with some spoilers for this movie, but until people see it this week, just a few non-spoiler observations:

- Russos continue to be great at choreographing and shooting action. You always know where things are happening.
- Despite the amazing number of superheroes in this movie, it feels very human-scale and not "comic-book." That is, the stakes are big but revolve around people, not cosmic or existential threats.
- Paul Rudd remains my #1 man crush.
- There is what I thought was an insanely bad, uncanny valley moment in the movie, then it's lampshaded as being something other than what you thought.
- Daniel Bruhl is underused.
- Black Panther, y'all.
- Peter Parker finally feels like a legitimate teenager.

I am down with that except fuck a Paul Rudd.

The action sequences are great, and the one that starts in an apartment and moves is amazing, half way through I had to remember to breathe - and I'm still smiling at *how* they introduce Black Panther in that sequence. And the balance where you don't believe any of them are invincible, they are dangerous to each other, but they are emphatically not regular humans.

(tempted to put up the spoilers screens to find out more about the uncanny valley you're talking about)

Fuckin chess spoilers can a mod get that pls ffs

What the hell, I guess I'll go see this tonight.

this was so great. no spoilers at all, but one piece of Don Cheadle's dialogue almost made me tear up.

it knew how to offset the more pathos-y moments with the right blend of humor without turning it into a farce.

BvS was a skidmark compared to this. a nutty, corny skidmark

Worth the price of admission just for, "Are you Tony Stank?"

i hope that was the dialogue that made neanderthal tear up

Yeah, great to see Stan Lee turning up in another movie about a character he didn't create

Stan Lee is about a million times luckier than Ringo Starr

The whole audience cheered and applauded at the end of this. Don't think that would have happened at many B vs S screenings... especially in peckham.

The one character that Stan Lee indisputably created by himself is Stan Lee.

Frankly Mr Stank Lee

relax everyone stan lee will be dead soon

Now that Marvel is part of Disney, Stan gets a cryogenic suspension unit next to Walt

he's like the winter soldier now - they only break him out of cryogenic to make cameos in movies

I'll see this this weekend. In the meantime, I volunteer a couple of times a week at the elementary school library, and noticed today that the boys in the kindergarten class (most of whom are still more or less picture book level) were super excited to check out any book with "Civil War" in the title. I think this is a great opportunity for Marvel to get in on cross-promotional education opportunities: they should start affixing important historical events to every movie from here on out. "Spider-Man: Magna Carta." "Iron Man: Japanese Internment Camps." "Ant-Man: Dawn of Genetic Mapping." "Black Panther: Ada Lovelace, First Computer Programmer."

lol Tony Stank was great.

and "can you move your seat up?" "No."

also ws Aunt May

Aunt Tomei

Tomei-aged Aunt May makes way more sense than the traditional Aunt May who is somehow as old as Peter's great great grandmother.

is marisa tomei immortal? srs q

I thought Tony Stark was one of the few characters Stan Lee actually had a significant hand in creating. Well, the idea of a rich arms dealer who was also a superhero, anyway.

Eh, people have kids at odd ages, families have odd gaps between siblings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/movies/captain-america-civil-war-review-chris-evans.html

This very crowded, reasonably enjoyable installment in the Avengers cycle reveals, even more than its predecessors, an essential truth about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s not so much a grand science-fiction saga, or even a series of action-adventure movies, as a very expensive, perpetually renewed workplace sitcom.

This left me cold. Peaked about halfway thru with the big airport battle. The rest = zzzzz

Also really tired of these movies all looking the same. Dudes in colorful spandex fighting in anonymous parking structures and shit

Yeah workplace sitcom is about right

that's a feature not a bug etc etc

nouveau work sitcom

If anyone can convince me these movies are actually like JLI or Hitman I promise I will watch them

NB Hero Hotline is not high quality enough, Damage Control is too mired in impenetrably irrelevant Marvel continuity IME

No, these movies aren't actually like JLI or Hitman. For which we can all be thankful.

They're doing a comedic Damage Control TV series at some point.

Good old them.

I've tried my damnedest to figure out who owns the rights to Damage Control but all I've turned up is a web of anonymous holding companies so I'm gonna have to go with 'them' for the time being until more clues come to light about this enduring mystery.

Awww I loved JLI

this was enjoyable. black panther was badass, spidey was great, marisa tomei is still hot af. definitely not as good as winter soldier but it was fine. if you're getting sick of marvel movies though i don't think there's gonna be a lot here for you.

it's hard for to imagine how they shoehorn so many characters into two 1/2 hours gracefully. do they pull that off?

also i had a friend in college (cough almost 20 years ago cough) who had the biggest crush on marisa tomei, his dorm room was plastered with pictures of her

(another wall was plastered with images of bruce springsteen FWIW)

it's hard for to imagine how they shoehorn so many characters into two 1/2 hours gracefully. do they pull that off?

p much. the OG characters are fairly easy, and the new ones are pretty deftly inserted (Spidy transition a little forced, but it's still cool as fuck)

I've tried my damnedest to figure out who owns the rights to Damage Control but all I've turned up is a web of anonymous holding companies so I'm gonna have to go with 'them' for the time being until more clues come to light about this enduring mystery.

It's not a mystery that the best of JLI was done by either Maguire or Hughes with Giffen, DeMatteis and Helfer. It's also not a mystery that the best of Hitman was done by Ennis & McCrea. The covers might not say it, but the OK-to-goodish bits of Damage Control I've read were by McDuffie & Colón, or especially McDuffie & Baker. It was the pleasant, sitcommy nature of 'Mazing Man by The Answer Man and deStefano that made me get Hero Hotline out of 50c bins.

Based on their excellent work as directors and senior, hands-on producers on television sitcoms Community and Arrested Development, I'd be very intrigued by a superhero workplace sitcom by the Russos, if it was on the level of the other superhero workplace sitcoms I cited.

From his work writing and directing on sitcoms and comedy films and being funny on comedy gameshow podcasts, I was looking forward for years to Edgar Wright's comedy superhero film, and disappointed when he got boned off it weeks before production. Rudd's comedy instincts, combined with an enormous appreciation for Reed's directing and commentary track work on comedy films, got me to give their replacement work a go when I had to wait a few hours for somebody and nothing else was on.

Being mildly diverted by that movie where the little guy from Ghostbusters shrank his kids 22 years before didn't make me think the first Captain America would be a good or funny movie. Thinking The Transporter 2 was one of the best visually-directed action films I'd seen in years and years has not yet made me interested in seeing the second Hulk film. Liking the comedy film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang means I'll give Iron Man 3 a chance if it's ever five minutes from starting on TV when I'm home and not about to do anything else.

Comedy action films The Specials, Slither and Super, combined with Mantlo's brother's statement, made me go and see Gunn's next film on purpose in the cinema.

I've watched every episode of Buffy seasons 1-7 and Angel seasons 1-5 at least twice, but I went to see Much Ado About Nothing in the theatre in 2013, and have not been botherd to watch The Avengers even when it's been five minutes from starting on TV when I'm home.

Speaking of, the comedy relief bits with Keaton and Elton in the previous Much Ado I saw in the theatre don't instill much confidence that Thor is an effective workplace sitcom. What's it closer to: JLI #51, a Michael Schur show, or Keaton's Dogberry?

Alias is the easily second-least-awful Bendis comic I've read, but it didn't convince me to sample anything else he's done since in the hopes of similar bearability. The "idiot plot"ting, endless wheelspinning and utterly flat structure of Jessica Jones has not done anything to make me give The OC or the Twilight film adaptations the benefit of my previous profound doubts.

Successful executive producer of television Dwayne McDuffie is still dead IIRC?

I thought this was OK. It's got some issues--it might not be quite as good as Age of Ultron tbph--but the stuff it does well, it does really well.

Sorry, I meant to note "Rudd's comedy instincts" in workplace sitcoms like Wet Hot American Summer and Parks & Recreation. Not so sold on McKay's own workplace comedies The Other Guys or Anchorman 2, but the resulting film didn't appear to be trying to be a workplace sitcom to me - though it would likely have been much stronger if it had. Have Peña work within a variety of ensemble scenes, rather than stealing the screen, let Douglas' gravitas be undercut through interaction, and probably do more with that guy who plays Agent Kington in workplace sitcom / action film hybrid Decker.

man u shd pitch marvel or smth

this was, i thought, much better than age of ultron. possibly it helped that i saw it in 4d, half-drunk--every action sequence seemed more interesting than every equivalent sequence in that movie; there was a lot more to work with in light relief; none of the 'serious' bits as out-of-left-field forced as scarlett johansson's weird monologue whedon apparently had left over from dollhouse. that said, i'd probably have felt better about myself if i'd gone to see a movie for grown-ups.

the big airport fight sequence is probably the first time i've seen, on film, the wacky fun over-the-top superhero fight done well--ant-man being launched on hawkeye's arrows, and so forth. the action-as-in-punching-people pretty much a freitag's triangle deal, building from the ground-level stuff to the increasingly ridiculous, and declining to a finish with three guys punching each other repeatedly in front of a fixed camera. the action-as-in-the-narrative kind of all over the place. which is okay, i guess, for an action film--and kind of free-ing--as long as the whizzbang moments follow the correct rules of scale, you can put whatever you want in between them, it's a free lunch. winter soldier had much better free lunches.

this ruled