"Guys! Guys! I brought weed and pizza rolls!"

Marvel.com just released a batch of five new stills from The Avengers, and if these are any indication, the film will surely satisfy those fans desperate to see the Avengers staring intently at things and/or each other. Sarcasm aside, these were all incredibly boring. Everyone looked all serious and dour, so I thought they needed a dose of Chris Evans as Captain America, our little ray of sunshine. He’s such a rascal! (more after the jump)

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This week, Disney announced that Marvel’s The Avengers will be screened in 3D as well as 2D when it opens this May. The announcement seemed oddly timed, given that the movie has been shooting since April, and it usually doesn’t take this long for a multi-national corporation to decide it wants to make more money. That means the movie will be converted to 3D in post (post-converted 3D), and everyone promises the post-converted 3D won’t be as crappy as it was in Clash of the Titans.  Slashfilm points out that Joss Whedon actually shot the end-credit scene for Thor in 3D, and decided he didn’t want to deal with all the 3D rig’s extra equipment. Whedon spoke to JoBlo about it, presumably while they tried not to stare at his enormous forehead:

“there definitely are movies that shouldn’t be in 3D” while assuring fanboys “THE AVENGERS isn’t obnoxiously 3D.”
“There’s no, ‘Oh look, we’re going to spend 20 minutes going through this tunnel because it’s in 3D!’ And no one is pointing at the screen the entire time. But it’s an action movie. Things tend to hurtle toward the screen anyway.”
Whedon says he was 100% behind the [3D] idea. “Yeah, it’s fun!…I’m not a big fan of extreme long lens, talky movies – I like to see the space I’m in and relate to it, so 3D kinda fits my aesthetic anyway. And the technology has advanced so far in the past couple years.”

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if you’re still trying to get people to buy into this 3D upsell in the midst of obvious signs of decline, you’d want to put its best foot forward. In Slate’s report on the health of 3D back in September, for example, they reported that 3D screenings for Captain America (also post-converted) were making one-third of the money that 2D screenings earned. At least if you’re going to make it in 3D (Editor’s Note: please don’t make it in 3D), shoot it in 3D. But who knows, maybe the technology has come a long way, and this time it’s going to be different, and blah blah blah, maybe it won’t be as underwhelming as pretty much every other 3D movie I’ve ever seen. 3D! The Future is Meh!

Though as long as we’re post-converting to 3D, how bout doing those Scarlett Johansson cell phone pics? I’m tired of mashing my face against the screen to see inside of her butt crack.

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Here’s the trailer for Cabin in the Woods, directed by Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard, from a script by Goddard and Joss Whedon. It stars a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth (the release was delayed because of MGM’s financial problems), and supposedly features Richard Jenkins, though he’s nowhere to be found in the trailer. Basically, some kids go out to a cabin in the woods, and yadda yadda yadda, they f*ck each other and get killed. A metaphor for humanity, really. It reminds me of those movies I used to watch on cable in the 80s and early 90s in order to see some boobs, only in this case, it looks like someone took out all the boob parts and cut together a film using just the boobless crap. Not even Chris Hemsworth shirtless? Jeez, these guys must be purists. “What if we made a cabin movie that was really about the CABIN, you know?”

I guess it will all come down to whether you respect wood. Do you respect wood?

(click to enlarge)

Marvel just released two new big character banners for The Avengers, aka The Great Joss Whedon Experiment, and they look great, though I wish they would’ve put the Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) frame and the Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner) frame right next to each other. That way it’d look like he’s trying to listen to her ass with a stethoscope. Oh, Ruffles, you cheeky ass listener. Can you hear it now? The creak of its supple pert tautness? Oh you better believe he’d science you. He’d science you hard. (With his disheveled penis).

Meanwhile, I still can’t figure out what the hell Hawkeye’s job is going to be on this team. (Yes, I know, “Hawkeye is the surgeon,” hilarious MASH reference.) I’m already taking a pretty big leap of faith with the whole iron jetpack suit, magic shield, hot girl who beats up dudes, and mystical viking who can propel himself through the air by swinging a hammer, but a guy who shoots arrows? I don’t doubt that he’s very good at it, I just want to know one situation in which a bow and arrow would be preferable to a gun. Hmm, let’s see, so it holds half as many projectiles, which take twice as long to shoot, go half as fast, and are made of wood? Sorry, Hawkeye, we’re going to have to replace you. We had to go with “Redneck Man.” He owns two shotguns.

[Yahoo. Opens May 4th]

Joss Whedon, who’s supposed to be directing The Avengers right now, recently announced the completion of a separate movie, a film adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that he shot in secret. So I guess directing a huge-budget comic book movie isn’t that hard after all. I would have a witty joke for what a Whedon Shakespeare movie might look like all set to go, but I’ve never read that play or seen anything that Joss Whedon has ever done. So far I just have Hamlet farting on a skull while a dog covers its eyes with its paws. Am I close?

Joss Whedon has directed, adapted, cast and filmed an entire movie — an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” — in secret.
Whedon wrote and directed the movie. Actors include Sean Maher, who starred on Whedon’s “Firefly” and in his 2005 movie “Serenity;” Fran Kranz, who stars in “The Cabin in the Woods,” which Whedon wrote and is producing; “Castle,” “Firefly” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Nathan Fillion and “Angel” and “Cabin” star Amy Acker. Spencer Treat Clark and Jillian Morgese, newcomers to Whedon’s projects, also star.
The play is a comedy about two sets of lovers. The fast-talking Benedick and Beatrice banter cynically while the sweet young Claudio and Hero are so in love they can barely speak. Benedick and Beatrice get tricked into proclaiming their love for eachother while Claudio is fooled into rejecting Hero at the altar. But the scheme is foiled and the two couples wed. [TheWrap]

And here’s the word from the film’s official site:

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