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Avengers on Parade by AgarthanGuide via BoingBoing.

This is for our friends who have seen The Avengers more than once and are mourning the death of Maurice Sendak. Delight and sadness: a strange cocktail of emotions but not exactly rare.

Comic strip by Maurice Sendak and Art Spiegelman in the New Yorker, 1993

Need more cheer? Here’s the very Molly Ringwald 1986 Weekend Mix by Pop Etc

We just saw 16 Candles again. We still love it. Watch it back to back with Young Adult: brilliant.

Sting (b. Gordon Sumner) as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in David Lynch’s weird, ill-fated (But we still like it) adaptation of Dune. Behind him are Sardaukar soldiers, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit, and is that supposed to be Beast Rabban? Not our idea of Beast Rabban.

Dear Gordon,

Yes we address you by your real name, not the one by which you are addressed by millions (or is it thousands now?). Though it is many years since we parted ways, we feel compelled to inform you that ABS-CBN/Star Cinema, the biggest movie studio in the Philippines, has made a movie called “Every Breath You Take”. Yes, the biggest hit of your career appears to be the theme song for their latest production, which stars matinee idol Piolo Pascual. The song is sung in their trailer—not your version with The Police, but a cover by one of ABS-CBN’s many contract stars.

Not that we doubt the watchfulness of your business team, but these movies make tons of money even with the peso-dollar conversion rate and we hope you have charged accordingly. You wouldn’t want to keep touring in your old age, would you, singing “Roxanne” at theme parks, or even after that, in hologram form (whether fake or real). To paraphrase your backing vocals in that old song, “You want your ro-yal-tees…”

JZ

The official announcement of the break-up, reprinted in Twisted II. (Of course all the Twisted books are in print and available at National Bookstores etc.)

Click on the images to enlarge.

It opens today. No idea what it’s about but it has the Joss Whedon imprimatur and it stars Chris Hemsworth. Sold!

* * * * *

1. That IS Chris Hemsworth’s real voice, not a remix. Yet another reason to giggle uncontrollably whenever he’s onscreen.

2. We hereby declare this Chris Hemsworth Week, which we shall celebrate with alternate viewings of Avengers and Cabin.

3. It’s a horror movie, but much more than that. Where there’s Whedon there’s irony. Director Drew Goddard references nearly every horror flick ever made and futzes with the tropes. You want monsters? Here be monsters.

4. Smart, disturbing, unpredictable entertainment. Not for the squeamish. With a cameo that brought us great joy—we’re still deciding whether this or the cameo in the 21 Jump Street movie is The cameo of the year.

5. You know how every season of Buffy ended with an apocalypse that Buffy and the Scoobies had to avert? (If your answer is No, you may stop right here.) Think of Cabin in the Woods as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer season-ender in which Buffy decides that she’s suffered, sacrificed, and saved humanity enough times and maybe it’s the post-humans’ turn.

6. Plenty of cuts though, or the projectionist was spastic.

Chrisses or Chri?

We are judged by the way we look, which is grossly unfair, but so are most aspects of our existence. Stupid social climbers will search your outfit for designer labels and, finding none, will judge you unworthy of their attention. Good riddance to them; you don’t need their acceptance and fake friendship. However, until everyone perfects their telepathic abilities, attentive strangers will form impressions of you based on what you’re wearing. They have little else to go on. So give fashion a little thought.

Think about The Avengers. Note how superheroes begin their world-saving careers with big fashion statements. Captain America’s unitard and shield declares that he stands for the ideals enshrined in the Constitution of the U.S.A (which his strapping constitution emulates). Iron Man’s armor proclaims him as a representative of the jillion-dollar American military-industrial complex, while Tony Stark’s Black Sabbath T-shirt expresses his disdain for authority. (Iron Man is a conflicted man-child, as Robert Downey Jr reminds us.)

Thor’s costume announces that he is a mythological deity, which he must be because ordinary mortals cannot get away with an outfit like that. Black Widow’s outfit, though, is generic hot girl, and Hawkeye’s costume seems to have been obtained from a Village People tribute band.

He still looks like Mark Ruffalo!

The Hulk’s fashion statement is the most dramatic. But he’s naked, you point out. Precisely: whenever The Hulk emerges he rips out of Dr. Banner’s clothes—a huge green mass of rage that no outward calm can conceal. Dr. Banner’s regular shirts and pants ARE the costume in which he hides his true self.

Read our column today in the Philippine Star.

Hyman Strachman, 92, has sent hundreds of thousands of illicitly copied movies to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read it in the NYT.

From IWDRM, Clive Owen and cat in Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men.

See the guy on the couch with the cat? Write a story about him in 1,000 words or less. Post it in Comments on or before 11.59pm on Friday, 4 May 2012. The author of the best story will receive Neonomicon, the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows.

Begin conversation.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.