Bloc Magazine Spring 15

WWW.BLOCHOTELS.COM // 61 slayer ----------------------------------------------------- L aunched with a fanfare during the Superbowl ad break, the latest Avengers movie is bigger and badder than ever before. Joss Whedon, the brains behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has written and directed Age of Ultron, promising to take the franchise to new heights. The spectacular opening borrows from Bond movies with high octane, pre-title sequence that sets up the non-stop action to come. It confirms the total domination of the box office this year by Marvel’s owners Disney. Whedon has added several new characters to the Avengers ensemble of megastars, including Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, Aaron Taylor- Johnson’s Quicksilver and James Spader as robot super baddie, Ultron. The director explained: “I fiercely dislike the idea of just throwing in more people for the sake of doing that. But last time I had all of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes versus one British character actor, and I needed more conflict. “I’m having a blast with Ultron. He’s not a creature of logic - a robot who is genuinely disturbed. We’re finding out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is.” In the film, released April 24, Tony Stark revives a dormant peacekeeping program, but things go terribly wrong, forcing him to reunite Thor, Captain America and the other Avengers. The fate of Earth hangs in the balance as they battle Ultron – a technological terror hell-bent on destruction. BOX OFFICE Parker and EastEnders actress Tracy Ann Oberman. In the movie, the Moomins swap the happy, hippy safety of Moominvalley for the glitz and glamour of the Côte d’Azur, leading to inevitable holiday misadventures. French director Xavier Picard explained that his team had gone to great lengths to remain true to the look, feel and spirit of the original books. He said: “I wanted to do justice to Jansson because even though a TV series already exists they don’t exactly reflect what I’ve seen when reading the comic strip. I really wanted to translate the art of Tove Jansson into animation. “We’ve drawn around 120,000 drawings. It’s very unique right now because a lot of animation directors use 3D or different computer software. If you look at a Moomin, it’s very, very ‘pure line’, so for me it was evidence to do that on to animation.”