Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Nick Fury and Hawkeye are going to the Oscars.

The Avengers will assemble on Feb. 24 to present at the 85th Academy Awards, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced Feb. 6.

The cast of “Marvel’s The Avengers” who will present: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk).

Downey has two Oscar nominations under his belt: one for Best Actor for “Chaplin” (1992) and a Best Supporting Actor nom for “Tropic Thunder” (2008). Evans will be making his Oscar debut. Jackson was nominated for Supporting Actor for “Pulp Fiction” (1994). He is also in Best Picture nominee “Django Unchained.” Renner was nominated for Best Actor in the 2009 Best Picture winner, “The Hurt Locker,” and for Supporting Actor in “The Town” (2010). Ruffalo received his first nomination for Supporting Actor in 2010 Best Picture nominee “The Kids Are All Right.”

The Avengers join already announced presenters that include last year’s acting winners.

Jean Dujardin, Christopher Plummer, Octavia Spencer and Meryl Streep will return to present at the 85th Academy Awards.

As is the tradition, the most four recent acting category winners will return to the Oscar stage and bestow the honor on four more actors. As is the custom, the Best Actor Oscar winner typically presents the Oscar to Best Actress and vice versa. The Supporting Actor presents to Supporting Actress.

Dujardin won the Oscar for Best Actor for “The Artist,” which went on to win Best Director and Best Picture for a total of five Oscars.

Plummer won the Supporting Actor Oscar for his heart-warming role in “Beginners,” where he plays a man battling cancer and coming out of the closet. Plummer was 82 at last year’s ceremony, making him the oldest actor to win an Academy Award. (It may be interesting to note that Eli Wallach is the oldest Acting Honorary Award winner, receiving the award at 94. Emmanuelle Riva, nominated for “Amour,” could steal the title from Plummer if she wins Best Actress on Feb. 24. She is turning 86 on Oscar Night.)

Streep was a somewhat surprising win for Best Actress, even though her role as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” was remarkable. She won over Viola Davis, nominated for “The Help.” In her acceptance speech, Streep addressed those who may think she shouldn’t have won.

“When they called my name I’d had this feeling I could hear half of America going, ‘Oh no … oh c’mon … why …her … again?’” Streep said. “But whatever.”

Spencer was the frontrunner for the Supporting Actress category — for her performance in “The Help.”

Mark Wahlberg and Ted, the animated bear from the movie “Ted,” have also been confirmed presenters.

The 85th Academy Awards, for outstanding film achievements of 2012, will be presented on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and will be televised live on ABC and in more than 225 countries worldwide.

Toledo Free Press Star Lead Designer and Film Editor James A. Molnar blogs about all things Oscar at TheGoldKnight.com. Watch him discuss movies on “WNWO Today” around 5:50 a.m. on Fridays. Also, listen to James discuss movies on “Eye on Your Weekend” on 1370 WSPD every Friday at 6 p.m.

Tags: 85th annual, Academy Awards, Captain America, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Hawkeye, Iron Man, James A. Molnar, Jean Dujardin, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Wahlberg, meryl streep, Nick Fury, Octavia Spencer, Oscars, presenters, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, TED, The Avengers, The Gold Knight, The Hulk, The Oscars

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Arts and Life, Film, Star, The Gold Knight.
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“The Avengers,” now playing in theaters worldwide, is burning up the box office and pleasing crowds of all stripes — including longtime, die-hard comic book fans, arguably the most demanding crowd of all. What accounts for this strange phenomenon? In large part, comic fans have been well-served by the blockbuster film’s steadfast devotion to its four-color source material, despite several differences between the two.

The comic book team of superheroes came together in 1963’s Avengers No. 1, due to the machinations of the trickster god Loki, a catalyst mirrored in the film, but with the addition of Nick Fury’s covert “Avengers Initiative.” The comic and the film include Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk as founding members, but the comic also sports Ant-Man and the Wasp as originators — Captain America didn’t come along until issue No. 4 in 1964, Hawkeye in 1965 and the lovely Black Widow in 1973. Incredibly, since that first issue, nearly 100 other heroes have joined the ranks of the Avengers.

The prickly atmosphere that permeates the film, leading to volatile disagreements between its champions, reflects a situation that came about in Avengers No. 2. By the end of that issue, the Hulk quit the team in a huff, citing the alleged disdain the other members harbored for him; this paves the way for the green behemoth to become one of the Avengers’ earliest enemies and for one of Captain America’s first missions with the group. As in the film, Loki’s wily manipulations are centered on the Hulk, but the comic lacks the onscreen “Macguffin” of the Tessaract — called the Cosmic Cube in other Marvel Universe titles.

One of the greatest assets of the movie comes in the faithful portrayals of the heroes’ comic book personalities and backstories, a credit to the writers and directors of the Marvel films that have satisfied the hungry masses of comic fans. “The Avengers” proves that a film can retain the essence of what’s most important to the print medium’s admirers and still make sense to — and entertain — the wider public. Now if only a certain other major comic book company and its corporate studio owners would wake up, smell the money and jump on the comic-to-screen bandwagon …

Tags: Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, The Avengers, Thor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Comics, Star.
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It was about two years ago. I was on the air on 92.5 KISS FM one Wednesday morning, and I informed the assembled crew about what I felt was a pretty big piece of entertainment news: It had been announced that Joss Whedon would be directing and writing the upcoming Marvel superhero crossover epic “The Avengers.” Everyone in the room quickly laughed and basically said, “Who cares?”

Well, now, they better care. Because it turns out that Whedon — the visionary behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly,” “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and other titles which bring a smile to many geeks the world over — was just about the perfect choice to craft a film out of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Between his uncanny ear for witty dialogue and his ability to balance a wide range of characters, Whedon has managed to make one of the best popcorn flicks imaginable — a shot of pure fun from beginning to end.

The plot is pretty simple, really. The secret organization S.H.I.E.L.D. is trying to harness the “potentially unlimited power” of a glowing cube of McGuffin, and accidentally creates a portal unleashing Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s nasty brother. He plans on enslaving humanity. That’s basically it, as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) begins to assemble a team comprised of all the heroes Marvel Films has been introducing fans to over the past three summers.

It’s a pretty good thing most of these characters have been thoroughly established in the public’s imagination by now, as anyone who isn’t familiar with the heroes will be lost pretty quick. Everybody gets their moments of introduction, yes, but “The Avengers” takes for granted that we pretty well know who Iron Man, The Hulk and everybody else are by this point.

But really, that’s fine, because once the hellos are out of the way, it’s the moments of interaction between the cast where the movie really begins to shine. Whedon crafts lines and situations for his actors that are hard to watch without a big grin on your face. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is as vain and glib as ever, Captain America (Chris Evans) continues to be a man out of time, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) looks on all around him with an understandable superiority complex, and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is a ticking time bomb.

One of the key relationships, though, comes from two of the lesser-known characters — Black Widow (played tremendously by Scarlett Johanssen) and Hawkeye (played by the awesome Jeremy Renner). Even though they don’t share a tremendous amount of screen time, her mission to save him from Loki after he’s brainwashed provides one of the film’s purest emotional motivations.

But “Avengers” isn’t really about character. The whole thing is a set-up for an hour or so of the most kinetic, entertaining action sequences imaginable, where every hero gets a chance to be as bad-ass as they can be. Whedon’s story construction resembles the guy on magic shows who keeps ten plates spinning simultaneously, as he balances all his heroes and the makes the battles fun, with plenty of doses of wry humor, as well.

Damn, is that last hour something to behold. The entire final battle is an ever-escalating war of attrition centered on the streets of Manhattan. As Whedon showed with many of the climactic conflicts on his television adventures, he knows how to craft scenes that are thrilling without ever being incomprehensible. Unlike the fast-cut, shaky-cam action of the past few years, here is grand excitement that is never confusing to follow. There’s one, long, unbroken shot which manages to focus on all of the heroes in sequence, and it’s as joyous a single moment as I can recall in movies in quite some time.

The journey isn’t perfect, though. As mentioned, though Whedon and his co-writer, Zak Penn, give each hero time to have some dramatic moments, that’s still a LOT of characters in a not-a-lot of screen time (at 142 minutes, the movie still feels short). What makes the best superhero movies is when we enjoy the heroes just as much when they’re out of costume as we do when they’re in them — that’s why films like the original “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight” last.

“The Avengers” doesn’t have that level of depth, which ultimately puts it a notch below the very best. But what it does bring is amazingly fun action that satisfies the kid in all of us. This is the kind of rip-roaring adventure that we imagined in our backyards as we played with superhero action figures. Thanks to Whedon and his collaborators, if only for a couple hours, we get to play all over again.

Tags: Avengers, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Jeff McGinnis, Joss Whedon, Pop Goes the Culture, The Hulk, Thor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 at 10:28 am and is filed under Arts and Life, Film, Pop Goes the Culture.
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The term “franchise” has, in the past few years, come into prominent play in the comics industry. It is meant to identify a family of titles built around a central concept. Marvel Comics’ “Avengers” franchise currently stands, for example, at four books with a fifth title on the way to expressly showcase the lineup of characters in May’s hotly anticipated “Avengers” feature film.

Let’s face it: despite a rising Dark Knight and a shorts-less Man of Steel, it’s this May’s “Avengers” movie that everyone is really looking forward to. And with good reason — Marvel has been building its movie universe much like its comic counterpart and insuring brand loyalty along the way.

That’s why the company is adding an “Avengers Assemble” title to its comic franchise, joining “Avengers,” “New Avengers,” “Secret Avengers” and “Avengers Academy.” And, yep, you guessed it; the new book’s team mirrors the film’s, namely Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and the Hulk.

One of the more interesting wrinkles of this “Avengers” mania can be found in Marvel’s recent announcement that its star scribe and “Avengers” guru, Brian Michael Bendis, will step down from writing three of the five titles after this summer. Sure, Bendis has been writing the main “Avengers” books for the past few years now, but it’s a bit surprising to have him walk away from the franchise just when the greatest number of potential new readers will be searching for their “Avengers” fix after viewing the film. Still, going out on a high note isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the “Avengers” in 1963 as a fun way to put all their top heroes into one bag, and they made it work with bold ideas and lots of colorful action. Things are a bit more complicated today, but the visceral thrill of having a bunch of cool characters all on the same team and in the same title is still present.

The “Avengers” film is poised to crank that thrill up to 11 and Marvel will be there to feed the need.

Tags: Avengers, Batman, Black Widow, Captain America, Comic books, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, Jim Beard, Marvel Comics, Superman, Thor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 at 11:55 am and is filed under Comics, Star.
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