Success of smartly written ‘Avengers’ is a good thing
$207.4 million is a lot of money. We can all agree on that.
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‘Avengers’ full of mayhem
“Marvel’s The Avengers” (PG-13): Most teens and lots of tweens will enjoy this witty, raucous ride, which doesn’t push PG-13 boundaries much at all. And they can thank their lucky (movie) stars that director (and co-screenwriter) Joss Whedon was the one to get this gig. His long (nearly 2z hours), eardrum-blowing, property-destroying mash-up based on the Marvel Comic series keeps humor and characterization simmering nicely, amid the 3-D, special effects and mayhem. The dialogue occasionally sounds robotic, but for the most part it sparkles. The intergalactic villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) invades the secret Earth-protection agency S.H.I.E.L. D. and grabs a renewable energy Cosmic Cube called the Tesseract. He aims to use it to subjugate humankind. Soooooo, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), leader of S.H.I.E.L. D., puts out the call to his superheroes, asking them to set aside their egos and use their brains, muscles and superpowers as a team to defeat Loki and the invading army of aliens he aims to unleash. There’s cynical Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); patriotic Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans); brainy Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who’d rather keep his violent alter ego in check; interplanetary god of thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who feels responsible for unleashing his brother, Loki; superspy/assassin Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); and high-tech archer extraordinaire Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Needless to say, the good guys win in the end.
Networks grab viewers’ attention with cliffhangers for May sweeps
I ’m probably not the one you should be reading on this subject. That’s because I’m still royally peeved—17 years after the fact—by how network TV chose to end “Under Suspicion,” a wonderful cop show years ahead of its time.
The Buzz
Buffalo, forreal Buzz has never heard of Bundle, which just goes to show that the ratings site knew what it was talking about when it voted Buffalo, ahem, the Most Unfashionable City in the United States. The wording is a riot: “Buffalo ranked as the least fashionable city in America with an index of 0.10. This makes Buffalo 10 times less fashionable than the average big city in America, and 32 times less fashionable than its downstate neighbor, New York.” Ha, ha! We love it. Let’s take this statistic and run with it. In our Zubaz pants!
The whole truth about Buffalo’s avant-garde arts scene
It was, no doubt, the preceding Buffalo Sabres 40th-anniversary exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery that poisoned the waters. Its incontrovertible “civic boosterism” may have looked playful to some eyes, but to many others, it was the nadir of exhibitions at one of the greatest cultural institutions we’ve had in the last century.
British-style wit in ‘Pirates’
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits” (PG): Many of the verbal jokes and even the sight gags in this laugh-out-loud British animated comedy—an ingenious blend of stop-motion puppetry, computer animation and 3-D—will, alas, go over kids’ heads. The film comes from some of the people who brought us “Wallace&Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” (G, 2005) and “Chicken Run” (G, 2000), and the humor is along those lines.
A journey of sacrifice in art and life
After spending 20 straight months working 80-hour weeks in a windowless print studio in the Arizona desert, Ed Ott had reached his breaking point.
Theater, music to rock Canalside
Summer schedule runs late June through August
Ch. 4’s slide is obvious in Sunday morning priorities
This came from an unhappy reader: “Is there any chance you can shame Channel 4 into carrying the second half-hour of ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday? There’s an infomercial there now.”
Oprah left out of Time’s Top 100
What? No Oprah? That’s correct. No Oprah. Time magazine threw its annual slick mag party for the “100 Most Influential People in the World” in its April 30 issue, and Oprah Winfrey was somewhere else having a latte.
Entertainment Calendar
Best bets:
- Fri 5/11: Above & Beyond
- Sat 5/12: Colin Hay
- Sat 5/12: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Duke Ellington Festival
- Sat 5/12: Teresa Giudice
- Sat 5/12: The Used
- Sat 5/12: Ray Wylie Hubbard
- Sun 5/13: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Duke Ellington Festival
- Sun 5/13: Justin Townes Earle
- Sun 5/13: Mint Condition
- Mon 5/14: Walter Trout
- Wed 5/16: Santigold
- more events »
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