I'm not going this weekend. After going opening weekend to see The Hunger Games I said never again. So probably next weekend.

Oh, it was a hoot going to the midnight showing! I went with a group of 6 people and we were the first group let into the theatre at 8:30pm, along with one other guy waiting for his wife. We had a great time chatting about all kinds of fannish/nerdish things and even got him interested in a friend's etsy site that sells knitted Loki hats. (Jo wore hers and got a ton of comments on it.) But, yeah, really glad we went early because by 10 the theatre was pretty much full. Only the people going to the 3-D version had to wait in a line in front of their theatre. The rest of us could claim our seats and roam at will. Lot's of fun cosplayers there; I think the only one I didn't see was a Hulk. Lots of Captain Americas and Thors. I think Jo was the only Loki.

edited to remove extraneous apostrophes. Geeze, I know better.

That is a badass hat!

Isn't it? Chelsea made some modifications to it after the picture was taken because the horns kept drooping and she wanted them to stand up better. And Jo does some amazing fanart, which is not surprising since she's a freelance comic artist.

I keep reading so many amazing things about Avengers that now I'm afraid of being disappointed! What if it doesn't BLOW MY MIND WITH ITS AMAZINGNESS?? Aaaah, ten hours of agonizing waiting! And, uh, working. I should probably do some work now to distract myself.

Oh! I was planning reading the Wikipedia summaries of the movies to refresh my memory. Good plan? Unnecessary?

Last night, I went to see Tom Hiddleston's other movie that came out this year, The Deep Blue Sea, which is about disintegration of a love affair based on a Terence Rattigan play, directed by Terence Davies. It's a mannered, deliberate film, and had a kind of formal severity despite its fluid chronology, punctuated by these moments of incredible emotional violence. Rachel Weisz is un-fucking-believable as an upper class married woman with a staid, dull husband, who falls recklessly in love with Hiddleston's callow younger man. There were parts near the end where I found it difficult to keep watching because the emotions on her face were so raw.

The pacing on this was interesting. I mean, it's a common story, but given a huge melodramatic weight because you are so tightly in focus with Weisz's character all the way (who is named Hester -- of course!), but the film doesn't let you wallow in OTT self-indulgent romantic grief, which I was actually kind of hoping for. So you have this almost operatic grief on screen, but without conventional catharsis, and you're left with this terrible knot in the chest.

I don't know. It's a fantastic film, but not easy to watch.

I keep reading so many amazing things about Avengers that now I'm afraid of being disappointed! What if it doesn't BLOW MY MIND WITH ITS AMAZINGNESS??

Dude, you have to lower your expectations.

Just tell yourself that it's going to suck, and all your friends and critics are giving it rave reviews because you're secretly the subject of some experiment and everyone else are actually scientists experimenting on you.

Or, you know, spend the next ten hours watching cat videos.

Just tell yourself that it's going to suck, and all your friends and critics are giving it rave reviews because you're secretly the subject of some experiment and everyone else are actually scientists experimenting on you.

That must be it!

P-C, I was worried about the same thing, but seriously, this is Joss at his best. I went to see Cabin in the Woods last weekend, and while I found it entertaining and well-written, Avengers just blows it out of the water. I loved that even during all the battle scenes, it wasn't just violence for violence sake. Every fight exposed more and more of each character and who they were. Seriously, I'm going to go back and wallow in it. Also, expect to miss some of the better lines in the movie, because the entire theatre will be laughing at a quip and then a zinger comes back that the laughter just rolls right over and you miss it.

SailAweigh is an especially good scientist.