Thor didn’t have to play a proverbial bridesmaid in other superhero films nor did Chris Hemsworth have to prove his box office might elsewhere before a Chris Hemsworth-starring Thor got the greenlight. The Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t have to pal around with Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 so that audiences could get used to them before they got their own movie, nor did Chris Pratt have to prove box office strength elsewhere before being handed a star-making role in a star-making franchise. Jason Momoa didn’t have to prove his box office pull (Conan the Barbarian from 2011) earned $48 million worldwide on a $90m budget) before getting a shot at apparently playing Aquaman in the Warner Bros. (Time Warner Inc.) DC Cinematic Universe, and Andrew Garfield did not get cast as Peter Parker in Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man because of all of those Lions for Lambs riches. Hollywood is filled with male-centric franchises based on characters both popular and niche played by little-known actors as a matter of course.

If the first major Marvel superhero movie with a female lead is Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, or if (related digression) Fox’s first female X-Men spin-off is a Jennifer Lawrence-led Mystique, then it will merely prove that female-centric superhero films have to jump through the kinds of hoops (uber-established character and super popular movie star in the lead) that male-centric ones do not.

From here.

On the very same day that this op-ed runs, this tweet appeared:

Yes, apparently Marvel has cold feet about introducing the character “cold” as a cameo. You know, like they did for Hawkeye in Thor. Seriously, this sort of comedy writes itself now.

Celebrate The 40th Anniversary Of Little House On The Prairie When All Nine Seasons Arrive For The First Time Ever In High Definition Digital HD September 9th‏

Subject line for maybe the least enticing PR email I will receive this week.

You Can Tell a Lot About Someone by the Type of Music They Listen to

You Can Tell a Lot About Someone by the Type of Music They Listen to

Redo: do you have any thoughts on the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy? They were a Creation band for a while there.

From what little I’ve heard – and it is very little, I confess – they’re kind of great in the way in which they perfectly encapsulate the Creation aesthetic of the time. There’s a bit of shoegaziness, a bit of the Smiths in terms of Johnny Marr guitar sound and Morrissey-esque phrasing, and a pleasant-but-utterly-undynamic quality. I really should investigate deeper, to be honest.

(Weirdly, they remind me of the contemporaneous That Petrol Emotion, even though they don’t really sound alike? I tend to run all those bands together in my mind. JBC, TPE, Kinky Machine. I suspect I heard them all on the radio at the same time or something and that’s why.)