Nerd Up

The Hollywood Reporter (via The Playlist) has a fascinating feature  on the challenges and pleasures of creating a film score for a summer blockbuster. Longtime listeners will know that I am a film score junkie, so this piece was right up my alley and I’d strongly suggest you check it out if you are too. Of particular interest is how they are trying to make the film scores connect, not only from Iron Man to Iron Man 2, but also from Iron Man 2 to the new Captain America film. And with The Avengers film on the way too, who knows how they’ll be able to weave everything together?

Read the rest of this post on SlashFilm.com…

“I’m the best at what I do and what I do ain’t very nice” says Wolverine at almost every opportunity. While unclear on what he actually does, this mission statement is abundantly clear that Wolverine is the best at it, whatever it might be. Since being a superhero should probably be considered “very nice” — I mean, it involves beating bad guys but also rescuing people, thwarting evil, et cetera — we can technically rule that out.

Many Marvel heroes aren’t just defined by their superhero status or their powers; they’ve also got other interests and aspects of their personality that define them far more than their costumes. For instance, Nightcrawler is a teleporting mutant and member of the X-Men, but he is also a priest. Maybe. Actually, that’s kind of a confusing subject. But the point is, many of the Marvel superheroes have jobs outside of their duties as superhumans — some of whom are good at them, some of whom aren’t. So this list is a look at who you might want to hire and who you should stay away from if you suddenly ended up running a temp agency in the Marvel Universe.

Continue reading "The 5 Best (and 5 Worst) Marvel Characters at What They Do

Check out some new images of the War Machine figure from the Iron Man 2 Movie Series line. All of these images show the figure out of box in numerous poses, with some closeup shots focusing on the detail of the figure. Arguably the most highly anticipated figure from the 6″ movie series, this figure is exclusive to Walmart and should be available in North America soon.

Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios has released a character poster for the anticipated sequel "Iron Man 2" which will be available at this years WonderCon.

The character poster features Black Widow who is played by Scarlett Johansson.

According to WonderCon, if you are going to the event stop by the WonderCon Booth (#242) to pick up your free poster (while supplies last)!

The film stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Iron Man 2 is due out May 7, 2010.

Check out the character poster below and let us know what you think.

With the world now aware of his dual life as the armored superhero Iron Man, billionaire inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) faces pressure from the government, the press, and the public to share his technology with the military. Unwilling to let go of his invention, Stark, along with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Don Cheadle) at his side, must forge new alliances -- and confront powerful enemies.

As you’ve probably read, part of the storyline of Iron Man 2 involves Tony Stark’s attempt to bring back Stark Expo, a world fair-like industrial and scientific exhibition which his father, Howard Stark, first launched in the 1960’s. The mystery of the 1974 Stark Expo is a centerpiece of the new film. As part of the viral marketing for Iron man 2, Marvel Entertainment has launched a website for Stark Expo 2010 at starkexpo2010.com.

The new site features almost 20 images of the fairgrounds/exhibition, an interactive map of the expo, along with videos, one of which includes Tony’s father Howard Stark (played by John Slattery). I’ve included the images after the jump. You will definitely recognize a bunch of these locations from the trailers. A lot of great art design from the making of these sequences is featured on the site. You’ll have to go to the website to explore the videos.

The website also features a countdown, only 38 more days until the 2010 Stark Expo takes place in Flushing Meadows, New York, the same location of both the real world 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair and the 1939/1940 New York World’s Fairs. I doubt any Iron Man viral event will really take place in Queens New York on that date, but the site promises that tickets will be “available soon”.  May 7th 2010 is the date of the film release, and the date of the expo. Take a look around, did we miss anything?

Source – /film

Some cool new footage and … isn’t Black Widow supposed to be Russian?

Marvel has released the first image of the new Whiplash character design, created by Marko Djurdjevic (X-men, Thor) for an upcoming mini series. Is this the look and concept we can expect from Mickey Rourke’s character in IM2?

Very reminiscent of the art style used in the Metal Gear Series.

Iron Man looks dope! The animation kind of reminds me of what Tony Stark would look like in the Evangelion series. Wolverine on the other hand makes no sense, how can you transform a burly/hairy Canadian midget into an effeminate ninja. I guess they missed the memo on the hair, he’s Canadian so he needs hockey hair right? One can only wish they made this a full anime series, nerd sigh..

That’s right, Tim Robbins (Shawshank Redemption!) is in Iron Man 2

From what I’m told, Tim Robbins is going to be playing Howard Stark in an important flashback sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Captain America films. Jon [Favreau] wanted to get a good actor because he didn’t think the guy who played Howard in the last film could carry such an important scene. Makes sense to me because Howard Stark would be around the time of the Captain America Super Soldier experiment.

B-b-but wait it get’s worse!

I’m also told that HAWKEYE and BLACK WIDOW are definitely in Iron Man 2 and they wont be cameos either.

Get out that purple apron!

Via Mi Gente over at Latino Review