Hasbro definitely gets an A for their efforts in hiding the fact that all these Avengers-branded roleplay toys are just rereleases of the toys that came out for each heroes’ individual films. The catchy/annoying rap is made tolerable by the cool shot of the kids standing around in a circle emulating the poses from the Avengers trailers alone.

Granted, there’s no Hawkeye or Black Widow to be found. How hard would it have been to have a kid in some shades chillin’ with a bow? Or a young lady with…a gun?

On a semi-related note, Walmart.com has begun selling the Avengers LEGO sets as of yesterday. I snagged a couple and I’m glad I did, because they’re showing up as out of stock now.

It’s a good week to be a Marvel fan. A few hours ago the new trailer for Marc Webb’s reboot of Spider-Man debuted and it is pretty amazing indeed. I loved the first Spider-Man movie when it came out, but then again I was a sophomore in High School and I haven’t really watched them since that time. The Amazing Spider-Man looks like a Spider-Man movie I can get behind.

Andrew Garfield looks great as Peter Parker, and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey will be a welcome break from whats-her-face playing MJ. The tone of the film looks great. Spidey cracks jokes and displays some impressive acrobatics, and the costume and tech look awesome. All in all, this is one of the top four movies I’m most excited about in 2012, along with…
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The year has come to a close and it’s been swell. This time last year, we had just changed the name of the site from Saturday Morning Central to Top Hat Sasquatch, and the team began to grow. The first group effort was an article about the best movies of 2010. It’s fitting that a year later, after the site has grown with the addition of Bubble Pipe Theater, that we would end with a best movies podcast. It’s the first show that our good friend and contributor Justin Lacey of HorribleNight.com has sat in on, and we were glad to have him. In the show we talk Apes Rising, Captain America and Thor, Super 8 and Attack the Block, Hugo and Hanna, and everything in between.

It’s just a teaser—in the grandest sense of the word—but the new trailer for next year’s The Avengers movie has dropped. Perhaps the biggest highlight is the glimpse of this Hulk iteration. It’s too quick to make judgment but it certainly looks promising.

The whole Joss Whedon-directed film has a ton of promise, actually. These are all heroes we’ve come to know on the big screen in recent years. Rather than spending one-third of the film with exposition and origin stories, we can expect fistful after fistful of action.

Who wants to get in line now for the May 4 opening?

(Unintended hilarity for your third or fourth viewing of the trailer: at the 0:50 mark, pretend that’s a Scarlett Johansson fart leading to the explosion.)

When I was growing up there were a few movies that I used to rent all the time from the video store. I (read: my parents) never bought them. They were like old standbys; always there when I needed them, ready for me to take their little dangly cardboard tags off the hooks and up to the counter in exchange for a VHS tape in clear-plastic and a “Be Kind Rewind” sticker.

Captain America was one of those movies for me growing up. I wasn’t crazy about comic books per se, but I loved Superheroes, as most kids do. Obviously, I watched plenty of cartoons, but in a time where live-action Superhero movies were rare you had to take what you could get. Besides, you could only watch the Batman and Superman movies so many times.

Because it went direct to video, seeing the 1990 Captain America movie at the video store for the first time was a surprise. Where did this movie come from? Who is this man dressed as Captain America? Why is the Red Skull Italian? In those days there was only one way to find out, and that was to rent the video.
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