In Which I Go To The Avengers And Also The Moon

I don't exactly feel qualified to *review* this movie and do it any justice, as I'm not a Marvel connoisseur (let me just pause here for a moment to exult over the fact that I spelled "connoisseur" correctly the first time for once), but I will say I enjoyed it. Since I've hardly gotten around to seeing any of the individual superheroes' movies, why was I looking forward to this one so much? Good reviews aside, Joss Whedon and Iron Man were not the only reasons ... but I'd be lying if I said those didn't factor in. 

I mean, c'mon, Stark's like a scrawny obnoxious Batman, gets the best theme music, suits up in Cyclones colors ... what's not to love? 

Okay, some of those may be Ames-specific, but two out of three ain't bad.

Also, since about half of the guy's screen time is as a GIANT FACE with some computer-y stuff around it (for most of which time I managed not to think, "BuffyBot?") ...

Tony! How is your money?

...you can't help but notice what pretty eyes Robert Downey Jr. has. I mean, I am seriously a little envious of those eyelashes.

As for Joss Whedon, well, I've already managed to reference his work once and I haven't even gotten to the part where I'm referencing his work, so, there's that. Grr. Argh. Speaking of, when Thor (whose lines were funny for the opposite reason of Stark's -- he's got such a dead serious expression and delivery) is describing the Bilgesnipe (do you not have those?), despite the scales I can't help but picture it as Dru's chaos demon. All slime and antlers, y'know.

Anyhow, it's a fun movie, just watch it. Whether you know what's going on or not it's tons of fun visually -- in action and fine details as well as in more "posed" scenes like the Avengers on the street or the final remnant of the name on the Stark building. My mom watched it, didn't realize that Bruce Banner = The Hulk until like halfway through the movie, and she still loved it. As with any movie with source material, your biggest concern would probably be if you go in knowing *too* much about what's going on. When consistency/accuracy is at odds with mass appeal, guess which one invariably wins out?

Oh, and of course, watch the news monitors near the end for the "superheroes, in New York?" cameo.

And finally, let us have a moment of silence for all of the space-eels who died being awesome.

That's a moraaaaay

Well. In other news, the moon was pretty last night. Wait wait, I'm going somewhere with this.

I'm still figuring out my new camera, so most of the time I'll just set it to Auto and hope for the best. Because of this, at first all of my pictures were like this:

So the following dialogue ensued.

ME: Camera, why you gotta be this way? You were EXPENSIVE for a point-and-shoot, man! You've got like, 25x zoom! Is this really the best you can do?

CAMERA: Maaaaaybe.

ME: Is that so?

CAMERA: I'm not tellling....

ME: You know what, enough of this. MANUAL OVERRIDE!

CAMERA: !!!

ME: [presses random buttons]

CAMERA: Ow, wait, stoppit! Fine, fine, this is how well I can actually see it, okay? Are you happy now?

ME: Dang, Camera, why couldn't you have just started with that?

CAMERA: I dunno, didn't see the point. Now it just looks like a rock instead of a glowy rock. What could you even use this picture for?

ME: I can ... I ... I'll show you Camera, I'm gonna put it on a BLOG!

CAMERA: 'K, whatever, can you put my lens cap on now? It's getting late and my battery's low.

ME: We still have a long way to go, Camera.

I like to think it was secretly trying to teach me how to use the Manual function, though. I mean, I'm still clueless, but it's a nice sentiment.