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Marvel Phase 3 – They’ve Given Us Too Much to Talk About

Okay, when Marvel leaked their Age of Ultron trailer last week, I was excited. And we were starting to get some rumors on the next movie in the works, Captain America 3. It’s going to have Iron Man! It might be Civil War! With those little tidbits, I figured that would be it for a while. After all, we’re seven months out from the next Marvel movie, and we just got the first trailer for it…

Then last week, DC announced all of their movies between now and 2020. I haven’t even had a chance to talk about these – so check out the post about them on We Minored in Film to cover that! The announcements are both exciting and expected, as they are movies for the members of the Justice League. The Marvel equivalent would be announcing Hawkeye, Hulk, and Black Widow movies to go with the existing titles.

And I feel that there’s an element of DC forcing this play, but maybe it was always planned. Marvel announced all of Phase 3, all in one go! With release dates, subtitles, and everything! I should add, though, that it seems their plan was to announce all of these movies – and then show the trailer for Age of Ultron that evening. By which point, there would have been way too much for one day.

Alright, so to try to keep this halfway manageable, there’s a great article on The Mary Sue about the movie announcements already. So I’m going to add a bit of my own speculation and excitement about the movies!

Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Comics

Update: Also, check out some thoughts from We Minored in Film: the good and the bad.

First Impression: Constantine

Full discolosure, the only experience I have with Constantine is the movie with Keanu Reeves, which personally I enjoy. It was a fun romp through a story of demons, angels, and other vaguely religious aspects. Last Friday the tv show Constantine premiered and David and I were both excited about it. Now when the show was announced of course we got articles detailing how it would follow the comics or not. Since I have not read the comics I do not have that to base on I just have what I know from these articles and from the movie. So far what I have seen I am enjoying it and I like where it might head.

The first episode does a good job of introducing us to a lot of different paths for the show to follow, which is good. Some of the problems with shows can be if they do not give you enough meat to sink your teeth into it can easily lose your interest. Constantine gives us plenty to sink our teeth into. The big thing is that there seems to be some big bad brewing in the underground, which the other side wants help with as well. The other piece is that we discover a mistake that Constantine made that cost a little girl her soul, which definitely feels like something that is going to keep coming up because I can’t imagine he is going to stop looking for a way to help her. The other piece is that they gave us a good introduction to the various supernatural elements that we will see throughout the show. (Spoilers for Constantine after the jump.)

Book Review – Among Others by Jo Walton

“I do not miss my toys. I wouldn’t play with them anyway. I am fifteen. I miss my childhood.”

-Jo Walton, Among Others, p.160

Found on http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8706185-among-others

So I (finally) finished reading Among Others by Jo Walton. This novel won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the British Fantasy Award. This is what got it on my radar, for sure, and might be where you’ve heard of it. After all, that’s a lot of the big awards, and it’s rare for one book to run away with all of them.

So there must be something for everyone in this book, right? A relatable character, a known world or a well-actualized fictional one. Right? Oh, and it’s about fairies and magic. So the fairies must be well defined, and the magic must have a solid system and explanation.

Or… none of those things.

I don’t know if I can place what makes this story so good. Or why I liked it so very, very much. But I am going to try. So to do that, let me tell you what the book is about. I suppose what follows could be considered spoilers, but only in a basic sense that I tell you about the book, and better yet, let the book tell you about itself.

The Interesting Marketing of Sunset Overdrive

One of the first games to really be a big name exclusive to a single new console is Sunset Overdrive. This game looks ridiculous, it reminds us a little of Borderlands, and we’re intrigued. Not enough to get an X-Box One to play it, but if we end up with one, we’ll probably end up with this game, too.

However, what’s been interesting for us this week was seeing one way they’ve marketed this game: by paying YouTubers to figure out a way to drum up hype.

So the folks over at SourceFed Nerd went and caused some mayhem and explosions, with Microsoft footing the bill. That sounds fun, right? Videos below!