MOVIES: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE

Its 1am and I have just got home after seeing the Avengers movie in London. The cinema was PACKED with people queuing to get in when we got there and even more when we got out awaiting the next screening.

All I will tell you is what I have just seen on the big screen is probably one of the most fun movies I have ever seen. I rank it up there with Jurassic Park for a movie that I saw in the cinema and loved from start to finish and that also lived up to the hype.

Wether your a comic extremist (like I am) just a general movie goer in general this is something you have to go see. Its a dream movie come true and something to just strap your self in and enjoy.

I am not telling you anything more about this movie just go and fucking see it!

 4.5 out 5

THE AVENGERS ON FILM: THEN AND NOW

So this weekend the dream comic book movie hits the movie theaters around the world. When the Avengers was first announced a few years back every comic book fanboy soiled them selves and waited for what seemed like forever for this movie to come out.

It is great to see that Hollywood is finally taking comic book franchises seriously as in the past this has not been the case. It has taken a long time for this day to come (a few decades even) but finally the time has come, and the movies the fans want are finally being made. Thanks to advancements in film making more things have become possible which makes the end result something more spectacular.

Today I will be showing you the previous attempts to bring these characters to life on the big screen.

THE HULK (1970'S=1990'S)

 The 1970's live action television show of the Incredible Hulk was a major success. Bill Bixby played the part of Dr David Banner the man who while trying to tap into human rage in an experiment became the Incredible Hulk. Now in the comic the character is in fact called Bruce Banner and the TV bosses changed it to David because they thought Bruce sounded gay, Mr Universe runner up Lou Ferringo was painted green and played the rampaging Hulk. The transformation scenes were pretty good for its time and Lou Ferringo was great as the Hulk but when you watch it today its very corny. One episode the Hulk fights a bear in a lake and the water is washing the green paint off of his skin. 

I and I am sure many people have great affection for this incarnation of the green skinned behemoth as it was the original and the show kicked ass back in the day.

In 2008's Incredible Hulk (which really stayed on the same path as the TV show) Lou Ferringo played a cameo role as a security guy receiving a pizza from Bruce Banner.

They killed this version of the Incredible Hulk off in a TV movie titled "The Death of The Hulk" in the early 1990's after David Banner falls from a helicopter. Bixby would also sadly pass away soon after. Everyone will always have a special place in their heart for this partnership of Bixby and Ferringo.

HULK (2003)

I remember being at my computer monitor in film studies crowding everyone round to watch the Superbowl trailer of this movie in early 2003. I was so excited that the Hulk was being given his own live action movie with all the CGI trimmings. When the movie finally hit the big screens in the summer awful reviews followed. I thought "they must be wrong or they just hate comics or something" so I watched the movie and.. they were right all along. Ang Lee decided to give us an hour or so of a bullshit background story which had nothing to do with anything and by the time the Hulk turned up it was like receiving an out of date birthday cake 10 days after your fucking birthday! This was also the year that Daredevil and Terminator 3 disappointed millions across the globe.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008)

In 2008 the Hulk franchise was rebooted to kick start the current Avengers movie. This time round we completely forget the last movie ever happened (which is fine by me) and start fresh. Edward Norton does an excellent job playing Bruce Banner and the movie is made with the same formula from the classic TV show and even uses the same music. The Hulk looked great and the battles with Thunderbolt Ross and the military are nothing short of breathtaking. Tim Roth becomes the Abomination and his clashes with the Hulk are bang on straight from the pages of Marvel. A great movie and if you have not seen it yet check it out before watching the avengers.

THOR (1988)

Thor made his screen debut in the 1988 Incredible Hulk Returns movie. Eric Kramer (from Robin Hood Men in Tights) donned the viking helmet and the hammer for the role. As a kid I loved this movie and Thor is great. He has an epic fight with the Hulk in a science lab (in which everything explodes) and ends up teaming with the Hulk to beat people up. He drinks beer all the time and has bar fights. 

Thor and the Hulk grab a picture with their creator the legendary Stan Lee

THOR (2011)

 In 2011 Thor was given his own mega Hollywood make over and hit the big screens last summer. A well written and casted movie Thor was great fun to watch as a comic fan or just a general movie goer. Chris Hemsworth does a spectacular job playing the god of thunder from Asgaard. With a great supporting cast with names like Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins and great direction from Kenneth Branagh the movie was an all round action packed success.

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990)

With the successful release of Tim Burton's Batman a year before you would think they would up the game when making a Captain America movie a year later. The truth was they did the complete opposite and made possibly the worst superhero movie of all time. I have never been able to sit through the entire film it is really that bad. Try and sit through the whole thing without burping sick I dare you!

CAPTAIN AMERICA (2011)

Shortly after the release of Thor we were treated to Captain America: The first Avenger a few months later. This was last movie released to fluff us up for the 2012 Avengers movie. Unlike Steve Rogers last trip to the big screen, this time round it's a home run. Great story telling straight from the pages of the comic telling the story of how Hydra came to power in WWII. Evans is great as Steven Rogers and Hugo Weavings portrayal of the Red Skull is superb.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE (2012)

We now come full circle with this weekends release of the Avengers movie. For the first time ever all these guys are going to be put together on the big screen for the dream movie. What will the end result be? Check back for my review shortly..

GAMING: METAL GEAR SOLID PEACE WALKER C4 RANT

Oh how I really wanted to complete metal gear solid peace walker.. Unfortunately theres a shitty championship manager mode which isn't an option! You have to play through it or you cant progress any further. I play Metal Gear Solid because I like sneaking around and blowing up giant killer bosses. I do not play games like this so i can manage teams and organize people to do specific roles.

So I am a huge MGS fan and have been since 1999. I got the MGS HD collection on Xbox 360 and have been enjoying playing the games in their timeline order. After beating MGS 3 I was enjoying playing the exploits of Big Boss back in the day. I really started to enjoy Peace Walker until I beat a very tricky boss (a tank with gay respawning soldiers just for good measure) and was not allowed to progress any further.

The reason for not being able to progress is due to Snake not having any C4 to blow a barrier up. So how do you get C4? Well first you have organize a team at your mother base (a separate part of the game which I am ranting about) and get your wamky team to build it for you. Not only do you have to get the team to level 12 to even be able to make the C4 but you then have to earn points for them to build it.

So I looked online and the only way to solve this problem is to replay all the old levels again or do some other mundane gay shit to rack points up. So this whole time we are meant to believe that Snake just sat there smoking cigars waiting for his team of monkeys to create C4?

I love Metal Gear Solid but this is fucking BULLSHIT!!!

Assassins Creed has a similar thing with the assassins guild mode where you can control teams of assassins and assign roles to them. The difference is in that game you can still progress through the games story line without even playing it. In Peace Walker it is essential that you MUST do this side mode or like me you will end up stuck.

I have rented the HD collection and do not own it. So why the fuck am I going to bother maxing out my armies stats and making sure that all of toilets are always clean on mother base when I will be posting the game back soon anyway?

I do not intend to nor want to replay all of the missions I have just played to build stats up for this shitty side mode. In the past the sensible thing to do would have been to leave some C4 laying around somewhere for the gamer to pick up and carry on!

All I wanted to do was play through the story of the game nothing else. After hours of trying to sort the mother base mess out I have had enough. What I am going to do now is eject the disc and pretend this whole thing never happened, and then play MGS on the PS1.

SUMMER PREVIEW

So summer is pretty much almost here and it is almost time for the Lost Entertainment online summer party. During the upcoming months the site will be getting a summer make over and the articles and posts will all be summer related. 

From summer blockbuster movies, past summer sporting events, summer foods, summer drinks, summer toys, its all being covered with no stone left unturned . I recently went to visit the set of the long gone Big Breakfast show and managed to get some snaps. I will be digging out the photos from my Malta trip for a great article about a summer holiday a few years back. 

I am also in the middle of loads of preparation for the season by writing and filming lots of footage for the upcoming posts. I am so excited to be doing this whole summer gimmick and once thats over I will be doing a halloween countdown as well as a christmas one after that. 

So watch the video below to get your self in the mood. This video is a mash up of different clips related to the stuff I am going to be writing about with "Surfin USA" covered by Blind Guardian.

GAMING: GTA IV FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

So today I posted some shit games that lovefilm decided to send me instead of the ones I actually wanted. So I decided I would play some GTA IV until something better turns up. Grand Theft Auto games have always been a great way for me to kill time as well as the pedestrians and cops of Rockstars fictional America. This has been a favorite past time of mine since 1997 and I am sure it will be for many decades to come.

As I got older and got more experienced at the game, the levels of carnage and chaos I can cause is something quite spectacular. Last year I made a video montage of the game with footage of one of these outbursts (click here to watch), with Motorheads cover of "Breaking the Law" playing in the background.

Today I stole a tank from the LCPD and went on a rampage killing everything I could come into contact with. I filmed some footage of the mayhem and put Metallica's (best song!) For Whom The Bell Tolls in the background for good measure.

I will be filming more of these video games music montages in the near future. At the moment I am just learning and having fun.

This is from GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony on xbox 360. If you wish to add me on xbox live my online tag is SGT W0NKEY if you ever wanna kill some cops or something. I use no cheats also as I am that damn good!

MOVIES: YOUNG BRUCE LEE

I class myself as a Bruce Lee megafan. After first viewing Enter The Dragon in 1991 my life was forever changed after that day as I had found a new hero to look up to and that man was the late Bruce Lee. I loved (and still love) Bruce Lee because he was the baddest dude on the planet but used his powers and skills for the benefit of others. Bruce Lee is pretty much the all around archetype that any man or young boy aspires to be.

When I first heard a few years back they were making a new movie of Bruce's life I was excited but at the same time worried that it might go wrong. When I was 9 I went to see Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story at the cinema and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I still get goosebumps when I watch it to this day, even though it was very cliche and the demon sequences are quite baffling.

I never heard anything again about the new Bruce Lee movie and just presumed the project had been scrapped like most of the bullshit you read in movie magazines and rumor websites. Last night while having a flick through the world cinema section (yes I do watch other movies that do not include explosions and zombies) I found the movie. The reason I never heard about it was because the movie never made it to UK cinemas. The movie is Chinese and I really don't mind subtitles as long as it's a good movie and this one turned out to be a cracker.

The movie is about Bruce's life growing up in Hong Kong before he left for America to become one of the most iconic people of all time. The movie is based on the book by his younger brother Robert titled "Bruce Lee: My Brother" which is something that is on my "to read" list along with like 15 other books. The movie gives us a bigger insight to Bruce Lee the human being instead of Bruce Lee the legend.

If you are expecting tons of fight scenes and action this may not be the movie for you. This movie is about Bruce's family life and what it was like growing up in post war Hong Kong. Bruce's father was a very famous stage actor and Bruce himself was a very famous child actor in many movies. I am sure you can find these movies on youtube but as I have them already on vhs I have never looked.

The movie also tells the story of Bruce's friendships with the people he loved and how far he would go to look out for the ones he loved. The movie does have a few fight scenes and does tell the story of Bruce's path to becoming a martial artist, but this film tilts more to the drama route than the action route. You can look at this one as prequel to Dragon The Bruce Lee Story if you fancy watching both on the same day.

The movie is well acted with great conviction, there are moments of sadness, excitement, laughter, and joy throughout the whole movie. The movie is shot beautifully and everything contrasts really well.

So my final word to you is go buy/stream/rent this movie, even if you are not a Bruce Lee fan it is still a great film. If you are a fan of Bruce then this is a must see!