The Focused Filmographer’s Avengers Initiative

With The Avengers coming out in theatres soon, Terrence Faulkner of The Focused Filmographer is running an Avengers Initiative blog-a-thon, featuring bloggers from various sites reviewing and discussing the movies that led up to the series: Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 1 and 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor. We’ll be looking at the roles different Avengers played in the films, how the films set up The Avengers, and what we expect from the characters in the film.

Fogs, of Fogs Movie Reviews leads us off with a look at Iron Man. Be sure to check it out. Also participating are Aidy of Aidy’s Reviews, Ruth and Ted S. of Flixchatter, Jaina from Time Well Spent, and Tajuana from TajGreeneMoviesInReview. You might recognize some of those names from the comments section here, but whether you know them from here, elsewhere, or not at all, be sure to check out their articles as they’re posted. I’m sure they’ll all be good reads. You can check out this page for the schedule of posts.

My own entry in the blog-a-thon will be going up Wednesday, May 2. I’ll be taking a look at the roles Loki and Hawkeye play in Thor, and how they’re set up for their parts in The Avengers. I hope you’ll head over there to see it when it goes up, and follow The Focused Filmographer for the entire blog-a-thon (and beyond! It’s a good site!) as we all get ourselves psyched up for The Avengers.

So long 2011!

It’s just a few short hours until the year comes to an end, so — along with pretty much everybody else in the world of blogging — I thought I’d take a look back on the past year of entertainment and my blog. I’m picking my favorites and least favorites, but I’m not getting too fancy with any awards ceremonies or anything like that. You want that, check out Fogs’ Movie Reviews’ Major Awards. The man has put himself through some inhuman suffering to be able to review not just the best but also the worst of the year, and if someone sits through both Jack and Jill and Big Mommas, he deserves some reward for his pain.

Me, I’m just keeping it simple with this one post. A little talk about the blog, a little talk about movies and TV.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I felt like I needed to watch something a bit more uplifting after yesterday’s viewing of Boyz N The Hood, and it seemed like the right time to go see Captain America: The First Avenger. One advantage of being late to the game is that by this time, word of mouth has gotten around and I had reason to think I wouldn’t be disappointed. The early promotional material — blurbs from the director, hints from the writers — before the trailers hit gave me some mild concerns, but I held onto my optimism for once. Captain America’s been subjected to some very bad movies in the past, but I felt that, handled correctly, a Captain America movie could and should be one of the best of the superhero genre.

I was not disappointed.