I've been meaning to (1) write something about Guardians of the Galaxy, which we took the kids to and very much enjoyed a few weeks back, and (2) point y'all towards my favorite film critic ever.

THE FKN HULK.

But I can probbably do both just by pointing at the green giant's breakdown of Guardians.

It helps if you read it in SHOUTY HULK VOICE.

SO. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED BUT AUDIENCES ARE KIND OF GOING NUTS OVER GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY .

FOR GOOD REASON, TOO. HULK FOUND IT TO BE A REALLY FUNNY, ENTERTAINING MOVIE THAT PROVIDES US WITH A BEVY OF NOT-TECHNICALLY-NEW-BUT-FEEL-NEW CHARACTERS THAT ARE PRETTY DAMN LOVEABLE. AND WHILE SUCH BLATANT ATTEMPTS AT CHARM TEND TO FALL FLAT IN OTHER FILMS, THAT WHOLE "REALLY FUNNY" THING IS WHAT REALLY ELEVATES THIS ONE. THE HUMOR REALLY STICKS, DOESN'T IT? FOR THE LAST WEEK HULK'S SEEN PEOPLE RECITING ALL THEIR FAVORITE QUOTES OVER AND OVER AGAIN (PERHAPS HELPED OUT BY THE FACT THAT THERE ARE SO MANY QUOTABLE LINES). HECK, IT'S ALREADY THE TUMBLR MOVIE OF THE YEAR... STILL, AS WITH ANY FILM, THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE LEFT SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS AS TO WHY GUARDIANS HAS HAD SUCH IMMEDIATE RESONANCE, LARGELY BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTICED A NUMBER OF AREAS WHERE THE FILM IS PERCEPTIBLY LACKING, WHETHER IT BE SOME OF THE CONVOLUTED PLOTTING, THE ON-THE-NOSE EXPLANATIONS OF MOTIVATION, A FEW DRAMATIC BEATS FEELING THIN, OR EVEN THE SAMEY-FEELING MCGUFFINISM IT HAS TO OTHER MARVEL MOVIES. THESE ARE INDEED VALID OBSERVATIONS, BUT WHAT HULK WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST IS THAT THEY ARE ALSO UTTER PROOF OF HOW LITTLE THOSE ASPECTS CAN (SOMETIMES) MATTER TO THE OVERALL QUALITY AND AFFECTATION OF A GIVEN FILM.

Also, his stomping of the latest Transformers movie is a thing of brutal beauty.

But, yeah, Guardians, I really liked it. And now the kids are playing 70s funk on a never ending loop.

The first Dead Snow was pretty good. I mean, undead Nazis, hard to top right?

Apparently not.

Gotta say I've been looking forward to this flick in a big way. The trailers have been tempting and now the crits are in... and they seem pretty much in agreement that this is one of the stand outs of the year.

My fave so far is this from iO9 which is a gloriously spoiler free celebration of the latest Marvel franchise.

So yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy is dripping with nostalgia, for space opera and Baby Boomer pop music, and for funny action movies. For stories about friends having an adventure together, all of that.

The word "nostalgia," of course, means "pain." Specifically, the pain of yearning for a lost home. (In the same way that "neuralgia" is "nerve pain.")

And there's definitely an undercurrent of sadness and hurt going through this, which the "Awesome Mix" pop soundtrack helps to bring to the surface. But the wounded undertone also shows up in keenly observed moments where Rocket or Drax reveals a hidden misery. Of the five misfits, Groot is the only one who's not deeply damaged, and his friendliness helps throw the scars of his comrades into relief.

That undertone of sadness does a lot to help the film achieve a consistent tone, with all the weird elements in the mix. (You could write a whole essay on the importance of "undertone" to "tone," actually.)

Part of what Guardians does that's clever is throw you in the deep end pretty much from the beginning — Peter Quill is the only Earthling in the film, and he's grown up in space, so he's totally familiar with spaceports, blasters and alien sex. Peter Quill is already Star-Lord pretty much at the start of the movie, and he knows his way around.

This mirrors our own familiarity with these kinds of stories (everybody's at least seen Star Wars), and flies in the face of conventional wisdom that space-opera needs to keep at least one foot on the ground at all times. But it also allows the movie to speak directly to our yearning for classic adventure stories, by playing with the familiar elements without any lengthy preamble.

And in all those shots where Peter Quill's ship, the Milano, is flying through some holy-shit-cosmic vistas, to the accompaniment of some 1960s or 1970s anthem, I feel like this film is doing something pretty complicated. We're up to our neck in the spacey wonder, but the music is tethering us to Earth and to Peter Quill's emotional backstory — and also, reminding us that we've seen this shit before in classic space operas. Instead of holding your hand, writer-director James Gunn gives you syncopated hand-claps. And some cowbell.

Totes worth a read. And a watch.

I ran the trailer for this a while ago and peeps seemed to like it. Now there's a 21 min feature at Kickstarter which is well worth a look.

Can't embed it here, sorry, but you can follow the link.

There might never be another official Star Trek series, despite recent rumours, but it's beginning to seem as though that won't matter; there's so much indie fan talent doing their own thing with Roddenberry's story world. No idea how that works with intellectual property law, but it does seem to work.

Having enjoyed Star Trek Continues Ep 3, I was stoked to find this pop up in my news aggregators a while back. A feature-length kickstarter about the Klingon-Federation war that predates ST-TOS.

The production values are great. I hope they can build from this teaser into a full length movie.

But now, back to the deadline.

I dips me lid to Beeso for this link to a kind of brilliant bit of work reimagining movie posters from alternative time lines.

And the must see action blockbuster that Leonard Nimoy rode to crossover big screen stardom when he escaped the gravity well of Star Trek.