Iron Man Three (light spoilers)

 So i've just returned from the midnight showing of Iron Man Three, its 3:30am so forgive me if this review is a little choppy but I must blog about this right now.

I am going to start with my one true love, Visual Effects. There were so many great companies and artists working on this film, and they really brought their A game. Somehow they managed to bring a certain amount of gritty realism to FX that ordinarily would be over the top even by comic book standards. There's one scene where a large number of Iron Man suits are involved in battle, and start flying around, shooting and blowing up and yet somehow the viewer can totally accept it as real. This, in my opinion  is the art of good Visual Effects. It's not just about putting CG objects in live action footage, it's about putting it there and no one being able to tell. The level of detail that these guys have gone into, right down to the scratches on the paint work, is phenomenal. Hats off to these guys and gals, not just for proving that VFX is an art form, but for being an inspiration. It's not just about blowing stuff up (though that is cool and there is a lot of that) but making things look real, and it reminds me as a recent graduate and freelancer, that I should never stop learning the craft because perhaps one day I'll get to work on projects like this myself.

I'm not going to spoil too much of the story. I'm an avid hater of spoilers and so wouldn't wish to ruin the experience for anyone. Go and see it, it is beyond worth it. It's probably the cleverest plot line for a action film I have seen in a while, and had some particularly good twists and turns. All the clues are there for you if look out for them, but if you miss them, it all ties up in the end. It's got great Tony Stark dialogue, with humour in dollops, oozing with the same cocky swagger RDJ brings to the role. I was told in a very cryptic fashion before I saw this film, that something about the villain will split the fandom in half, and it most certainly will. I personally think it was a very ballsy move on the writers part, and one that brings an old school, cliched, comic book bad guy right up to date. Others will disagree. Watch out for Ty Simpkins, Starks unlikely side kick, who's a great little actor and bounced off RDJ with the talent of a real pro. They say never work with children or animals, well in this case they got the casting spot on.

What I really liked about this film, is the way they dealt with Tony Stark as a character. In the comic books, he got a bit dark towards the end, and yet they managed to work with that in a Disney fashion that shouldn't disturb the younger audience and yet still manages to deal with the a character post a highly traumatic experience (ie. The Avengers Assemble plot line). It also, quite cleverly, deals with the question that the Captain posed in the Avengers movie. Who is Tony Stark without the suit? The answer, well wait and see, but it is finely executed, with tonnes of symbolism as Stark learns more about himself and love and all the things that made Pinocchio a real boy. It's heart warming really,  and exciting, incredibly dramatic with laugh out load humour, high adrenaline action and just plain awesomeness. I couldn't have asked for more from a Marvel film. If you're not sold, just watch the trailer below!

A few things to finish off with.

1. Go see it immediately. I, in fact, will almost certainly be there again tomorrow night. 
2. Wait until after the credits, there's a nice little gift for you Avengers fans at the end.
3. Anyone else REALLY annoyed at how it's Iron Man 3 in all the promotional stuff but the film is in fact Iron Man Three? I don't know, that just annoyed me. It's really the only thing.

Book Snobbery

When faced with the open choice of what exactly to write my dissertation about, my initial response was: a) write what you know, and b) write about something your lecturer will like. So obviously having already written an essay on him, and knowing my lecturers love of him, I chose Milton Glaser.

Obviously I then changed my mind.

I appreciate that Glaser is in fact one of the greatest graphical minds of our time (and even a previous time) but why should i write about what I already know about? Surely the whole point of this dissertation, and even university, is to learn. I want to be able to research and develop, perhaps find a passion I didn't know I had, and even a whole new inspiration that will blast my practical work into a whole new dimension.

I switched my idea to comic books, and how they translate to the movie industry. This may seem like an odd decision, certainly a more difficult one, and one of no academic consequence. I definitely know what my colleagues think, having put up with their mocking as I sit nose deep in graphic novels as they play countless games of bridge. But I believe this to be the correct choice.

From an early age I remember being taught to read. My mother, brilliant woman that she is, used to play games with flash cards, slightly larger than a deck of playing cards with words and images on front and back. Connect the correct word to the picture is how it all began, and later copying entire sentences, learning spellings and joining up letters. By the time I started first school I could already read. My fondest memory is of curling up in bed with my mother, all jim jammed and surrounded by pastel stripes and brightly coloured pictures of animals as she read to me. My brother, 2 years older than I, would feign disinterest but would eventually end up perched at the end of my bed as the story went on. I never remember picture books, always proper hard back books; The Famous Five, Brear Rabbit, and my all time favourite, The Magic Faraway Tree. As I got older it was I who read to her every night and eventually, I read alone.

It was this advanced reading ability which led to a certain snobbery. I didn't read books with pictures(except for a certain dinosaur book - how embarrassing). In year four when I was just 8 or 9 I remember sitting in class reading Watership Down, a massive 400 page beast that put the other children in class to shame. Whilst they were discovering comic-books and using the pictures as aides, I was far ahead. Perhaps this is why, up until this summer I had never read a comic-book. Now I have developed an overwhelming need to enter this world and find out what I've been missing all these years. I have friends, intelligent people, who know the Marvel universe like it was their own. I watch the new Marvel movies and catch just a glimpse of of that wonder. I'm a decade late, but this is as good a time as ever, and now the otherwise useless information I shall gather will in fact have use.