Age of Ultron

I finally saw it. And I hate to say it, but Whedon screwed up in one particular area.

I'm fine with Bruce and Natasha. I'm fine with it. But it came so far out of the blue that I...please, Joss? If you're going to do something like this, give us a flashback. Show us something. Don't just say "Oh, they're in love now).

Other than that? It wasn't up to the standards of, say, The Winter Soldier (which was as close to a perfect movie as I've seen lately), but it was definitely a lot of fun.

Elizabeth Olsen (yes, she is related to the Olsen twins) knocked it out of the park as Wanda Maximoff (sadly, showing up Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Pietro, who simply could not do the eastern European accent).

Paul Bettany was possibly the perfect Vision - the exact right balance of wisdom and naivete, the perfect note struck on "do AIs have emotions?" This was a character that worried me as to how they'd do it when he showed up (I do wish they'd let Pym keep Ultron and Vision as creations instead of handing them over to Stark - I don't like Pym much, but really, they took away the best part of him).

Oh, and nice setup for a pissed off Black Panther coming charging out of Wakanda after his vibranium. Uh, sorry...

Which brings me to some vague amusement. In our long running Buffy tabletop campaign we put an artifact quite similar to an Infinity Gem into a PC in order to keep it from being united with the others.

Mr. Whedon, have you been reading our campaign notes? ;).

In another note, I saw the first trailer for "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and as a fan of the original I was impressed:

1. The trailer starts with Henry Cavill as Solo in the back of the car. I knew instantly which movie I was watching.
2. Armie Hammer IS Ilya Kuryakin. Dang it.
3. Thank you, THANK YOU for resisting the temptation to modernize it. It didn't work in the A Team, where the writers somehow thought they could slot out Vietnam and slot in the Gulf like they were different colored lego bricks. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. could only have been written (like some of the best Bond) during the Cold War, and the movie is apparently going to be a prequel, set in the early 1960s. A period piece, just as it should be. Now, can we have the tailor shop?