Salmon Sandwich - Spring Cinebinge

Film poster for The Pirates! - Courtesy of Columbia Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first visit to "the pictures" in quite a while and I was determined to see several films and begin to pull my "Unlimited" card back into the black.

The first I saw was The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (aka The Pirates! Band of Misfits) which I have been meaning to see for ages. Despite my reservations about 3d I was forced to don the magic specs for this one in order to get straight on with viewing and to stick to the plan of fitting in three films. Pirates didn't disappoint, though I can't recall the 3d contributing much but a loss of brightness. I love, and am in awe of, the Aardman claymation films and shorts which have now achieved a jaw-dropping sophistication or alternatively become so clever that you forget how clever they are. I remind myself of the skills and patience involved in the technique and the film becomes not just very entertaining but hugely impressive. Anyway the main point is it's claymation and it's pirates what's not to like? The voice cast is star-studded and includes Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Salma Hayak, Martin Freeman, Lenny Henry and Brian Blessed (how could you not cast the blessed Brian in a comedy pirate film) . There have been some criticisms of Pirates but mostly when Aardman's own standards are being used as a very high benchmark. For myself I was happy just to go with an enormously fun adventure (with scientists). I really don't want to give too much away but it opened my eyes to another side of Queen Vic, not to mention Jane Austen. I started my cinema day out with a broad grin. Incidentally I prefer the tagline I've seen "It's a plunderful life!" to the one in the above picture.

The filling of the sandwich turned out to be salmon. I hadn't particularly wanted to see Salmon Fishing i

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 08: Actors Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor attend the Cinema Society & Opium Yves Saint Laurent screening of 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' at the Crosby Street Hotel on March 8, 2012 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

n the Yemen but timings made it the best option and I was curious to see what they'd done with it, having read the Paul Torday book. The answer is that they've turned it into a pleasant competent romcom and filed away any sharp edges. Not having a very good memory for detail in books or films after any length of time, I wasn't in a position to make careful comparisons but I was constantly aware of a feeling that "it wasn't like this". When I got home I checked and no, it wasn't a bit like this. The ending in particular is entirely different. I'm well aware of the pressures on film makers not to risk huge amounts of cash so I was neither surprised or particularly upset by the smoothing of the edges of Salmon into an anodyne romdram and, if I'm honest, I did enjoy it. The cast included Ewan McGregor and Kristen Scott-Thomas and it was directed by Lasse Halstrom so its credentials were pretty good.

The smile was still on my face and I headed back to get the final ticket of the day for Avengers Assemble. Again there seems to have been a lot of carping about this but to me it did exactly what I expected and has been deservedly popular. This time I found myself aligned with Peter Bradshaw, whose reviews normally express the total opposite opinion to my own, and very disappointed by the brief grumpy and factually inaccurate take of Philip French who, it would seem, didn't actually bother to see the film before making his opinion known in a couple of throw-away paragraphs.

The film, as if you didn't know, brings together various Marvel superheroes, many of whom have previo

Captain America and The Avengers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

usly featured in their own films: The Hulk, Thor and Iron Man for example. Also joining them are Hawkeye,  Black Widow and Nick Fury (who dropped in on Captain America at the end of HIS film). They are pitted against Tom Hiddlestone's wonderfully amoral Loki because let's face it anything less than a god is not going to last long against that mob. One of the important factors in making this work as a film is a witty script amongst all the now-commonplace CG whizbangs and it shines particularly in scenes featuring the cynical and very human Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jnr) and Hulk's boffin alter ego played by Mark Ruffalo. In fact between mighty hammer god Thor, heroic Hawkeye, the squeeky clean patriot captain, wisecracking Stark, tank-like Hulk and the wicked Widow trying unsuccessfully to wash away the terrible sins of her past, there is plenty of contrast in the group for which we can perhaps thank Stan Lee (who surely must be the richest man on Earth now?) and his collaborators at Marvel all those years ago. Yes Phil, I did say years ago. Despite the fact that you seem to think this idea was cooked up recently in an outpouring of recession yankangst, The Avengers date from 1963 and, no it wasn't a result of American trauma post-presidential-assassination either, that came several months after the misfit mob was formed. In fact, despite the constant attempts to fit the superhero film into a context of the injured national psyche, aren't good superhero movies always popular and isn't the world always full of danger and misery if you want to look at it that way? Perhaps there is something in the birth of these comics in turbulent times but I wouldn't read too much into it. The studio suits always want guaranteed returns and can always look back to a superhero blockbuster that made a lot of folding green. Hard to find a time when prosperity in the U.S. wasn't also tempered with an unpopular war or two anyway so a very difficult hypothesis to test.

Avengers (comics) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not surprisingly, given the audience response and the wealth of possibilities afforded by the theme, the sequel is already commissioned. As far as I was concerned it was the ultimate popcorn movie: Full of action, sharp dialogue and laughs and lived up to my expectations of a film directed and co-written by Buffy and Firefly man Joss Whedon. It was great to see it in a packed cinema and join in the excitement and shared laughter. One particular bit of Whedon-esque cynecism caused us collectively to laugh out loud, something I rarely actually do even when a film is very amusing. Sometimes you've just got to channel your inner kid and go with the flow. The benefits, i.e., going home still with that broad grin in place, are worth it.