The Avengers : The Hulk steals the show!!

I saw the AVENGERS this weekend and, at the end, my face hurt from grinning so big. The movie unspoiled its contents and the awesome bits never stopped piling up. I am so wired I can't form a coherent thought, and so here, instead, is a salvo of stream-of-consciousness impressions, in whatever order.

Mark Ruffalo is simply terrific as the Hulk's alter (and calmer) ego. I actually prefer his interpretation of Dr. Banner over Bana's and Norton's. Ruffalo steers away from the deadening angst that made me fidget in earlier Hulk pictures. He finds a balance. This Banner exhibits a dry sense of humor but exudes this quirky, low simmer edginess. And I love Ruffalo's interactions with Downey, Jr., two swaggerful eggheads matching their test tubes against each other and applying big words. I like that there's respect between their two characters. There's an intriguing twist involving Banner's relationship with the Hulk, of which I won't say more. The Hulk - and this seems to be a unanimous impression - steals the movie.

Comic book geeks like me have recently been dogging Marvel's latest company crossover event, AVENGERS VS. X-MEN. And, yet, this film demonstrates that, sometimes, there's nothing more exhilarating than eyeballing an epic hero vs. hero scrap. Mjolnir, meet the Hulk's face. Have you ever wondered what happens should Thor's enchanted hammer go up against Captain America's indestructible shield?

The plot revolves around the far-ranging machinations of Loki, Asgardian god of mischief. Those who've read the AVENGERS' origin in the comic books should note a smidgen of familiarity, but only a smidgen. The Tesseract artifact plays a part. The bad guys Loki recruits as an invasion force aren't Skrulls. Not exactly. Certainly they pose an extinction level threat, alarming enough that some assembly becomes required.

Captain America is well utilized here, although I'm hating his awkward modern-day costume. I vastly prefered his more practical WWII outfit.

You and me, let's kowtow to Joss Whedon. His storytelling has big scope; it has grandeur. He orchestrates a sprawling, high-profiled cast and just about gets away with not slighting anyone. He does rely some on your familiarity with the character development sunk into the prior films. He manages to tie in various plot threads from previous Marvel pictures. Although Stark, Cap, and Banner get the lion's share of the spotlight, Whedon devotes time and space to side characters like the slinky but lethal spy, the Black Widow, and the likable, unobstrusive Agent Coulson. If you assume the Black Widow's defining action moment surfaces in that early interrogation scene, you'd be all kinds of not right. Scarlett Johansson ticks off Whedon's Buffy box, not only in things assskickery but also in terms of strong character beats (the Widow's dialogue with Loki happens to be an acting showcase). She's so much more here than when she was showcased in IRON MAN 2. But if I could pick out two people who may have been underused, they would have to be Maria Hill and Hawkeye. I do feel that Cobie Smulders was wasted.

I love that, like in the comics, Thor never gives up on his half-brother.

The first half hour is essentially a slow burn set-up, but it keeps you engaged. And at times Whedon does sacrifice narrative for those wild action sequences, and that's okay, because Whedon treats us to a series of marvelous cape-on-cape violence (in true Marvel fashion, these heroes harbor instant grudges against each other). But all those violent "misunderstandings" merely whet your appetite. Joss doesn't disappoint. The extended climactic combat sequence - as the Avengers hold the line against a horde of grotesque invaders from deep space - is off the charts and immensely gratifying. I'm reminded of the 1990s X-Men cartoon in which the camera would often track the X-Men in frenzied action, as they hurtle in and out of the picture, occasionally mingling with each other only to break off again into individual skirmishes. I was mesmerized by Whedon's sweeping, organic approach to the battle scenes.

No surprise, there are heaps of whip smart one-liners, plenty of them generated by a smirky Robert Downey, Jr. - and yet even Chris Hemsworth's regal thunder god elicits chuckles. No contest, though, the brutalizing Hulk - rendered to savage life in astonishing CG - captures two of the film's biggest laughs.

For pure escapism and sheer fanfare and fan service beyond expectation, THE AVENGERS is the best superhero movie I have ever seen. I have to see it again. But you, you make sure to stick around for the embedded scene during the post-credits and then for the post-credit scene. You may wet your pants.

Hours and hours later, I'm still big grinning. Joss Whedon actually pulled it off.

P.S : But seriously there is a movie that's been keeping people getting goosebumps all over when they see the trailer. You guys know what am talking about right?? yes, the epic conclusion to the Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series : The Dark Knight Rises. Am waiting for it to hit the big screens =)

Mocking Jay : A powerful, unflinching look at the effects of war

This was a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy. I can only compare it to "Ender's Game" - and that is extremely high praise, indeed.

When I first closed the book last night, I felt shattered, empty, and drained.

And that was the point, I think. I'm glad I waited to review the book because I'm not sure what my review would have been.

For the first two books, I think most of us readers have all been laboring under the assumption that Katniss Everdeen would eventually choose one of the two terrific men in her life: Gale, her childhood companion or Peeta, the one who accompanied her to the Hunger Games twice. She'd pick one of them and live happily ever after with him, surrounded by friends and family. Somehow, along the way, Katniss would get rid of the awful President Snow and stop the evil Hunger Games. How one teenage girl would do all that, we weren't too sure, but we all had faith and hope that she would.

"Mockingjay" relentlessly strips aside those feelings of faith and hope - much as District 13 must have done to Katniss. Katniss realizes that she is just as much a pawn for District 13 as she ever was for the Colony and that evil can exist in places outside of the Colony.

And that's when the reader realizes that this will be a very different journey. And that maybe the first two books were a setup for a very different ride. That, at its heart, this wasn't a story about Katniss making her romantic decisions set against a backdrop of war.

This is a story of war. And what it means to be a volunteer and yet still be a pawn. We have an entirely volunteer military now that is spread entirely too thin for the tasks we ask of it. The burden we place upon it is great. And at the end of the day, when the personal war is over for each of them, each is left alone to pick up the pieces as best he/she can.

For some, like Peeta, it means hanging onto the back of a chair until the voices in his head stop and he's safe to be around again. Each copes in the best way he can. We ask - no, demand - incredible things of our men and women in arms, and then relegate them to the sidelines afterwards because we don't want to be reminded of the things they did in battle. What do you do with people who are trained to kill when they come back home? And what if there's no real home to come back to - if, heaven forbid, the war is fought in your own home? We need our soldiers when we need them, but they make us uncomfortable when the fighting stops.

All of that is bigger than a love story - than Peeta or Gale. And yet, Katniss' war does come to an end. And she does have to pick up the pieces of her life and figure out where to go at the end. So she does make a choice. But compared to the tragedy of everything that comes before it, it doesn't seem "enough". And I think that's the point. That once you've been to hell and lost so much, your life will never be the same. Katniss will never be the same. For a large part of this book, we see Katniss acting in a way that we can only see as being combat-stress or PTSD-related - running and hiding in closets. This isn't our Katniss, this isn't our warrior girl.

But this is what makes it so much more realistic, I think. Some may see this as a failing in plot - that Katniss is suddenly acting out of character. But as someone who has been around very strong soldiers returning home from deployments, this story, more than the other two, made Katniss come alive for me in a much more believable way.

I realize many out there will hate the epilogue and find it trite. At first, I did too. But in retrospect, it really was perfect. Katniss gave her life already - back when she volunteered for Prim in "The Hunger Games". It's just that she actually physically kept living.

The HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers", has a quote that sums this up perfectly. When Captain Spiers says, "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."

But how do you go from that, to living again in society? You really don't. So I'm not sure Katniss ever really did - live again. She just ... kept going. And there's not really much to celebrate in that. Seeing someone keep going, despite being asked - no, demanded - to do unconscionably horrifying things, and then being relegated to the fringes of society, and then to keep going - to pick up the pieces and keep on going, there is something fine and admirable and infinitely sad and pure and noble about that. But the fact is, it should never happen in the first place.

And that was the point, I think. 

By the end of the book I realized how true and how perfect the ending was. This book series was never a "fairytale" story. In war things don't end with sunshine and butterflies. They end with broken people trying to pick up the pieces of there life and put them back together the best way they can. That is the most heroic effort of all. Not killing President Snow, not defeating an entire army all by yourself. No, a true hero is someone who has been through hell and decides to still try to move forward despite the pain and difficulty of each day. Kudos to Suzanne Collins for giving a generation of people far detached from real war, the chance to realize that it isn't glorious or rewarding. It's heartbreaking and you are never the same.