Captain America: The First Avenger

RECALLING the cliffhanger TV series of the 1950s, Captain America: The First Avenger establishes the origins of one of the most popular superheroes from the Marvel Comics stable.

Admittedly, director Joe Johnston has an arsenal of state-of-the-art digital effects at his disposal to spruce up the old-fashioned ideals in Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's script.

However, there's something rather charming about the underlying themes of self-sacrifice and valour, and a chaste romantic sub-plot between the strapping hero and his feisty dame that never strays beyond a kiss.

Only the sadistic killing spree of the central villain - a power-hungry Nazi officer with a burned-off face - warrants the 12A certificate that makes Johnston's film unsuitable for very young audiences.

Captain America opens in the present day with the discovery of the wreckage of a gargantuan craft then flashes back to 1942 Norway.

Diabolical German officer Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) steals a Cosmic Cube belonging to Odin and charges mad scientist Dr Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) with harnessing the Cube's power as part of his plans for world domination.

Meanwhile in America, German defector Dr Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) is spearheading a secret programme to create the ultimate soldier.

He chooses asthmatic weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as the perfect candidate for the treatment.

"The serum amplifies everything inside: good becomes great, bad becomes worse," explains Erskine.

As if by magic, Steve is transformed into a muscle-bound hunk and he enthusiastically does his bit for the Allied effort by portraying a fictional character called Captain America at war rallies.

When good friend James Buchanan (Sebastian Stan) is presumed dead behind enemy lines, Steve joins forces with playboy inventor Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) and officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) to parachute in behind enemy lines as Captain America and single-handedly take on the Germans.

Captain America: The First Avenger is an entertaining introduction to the iconic characters, using digital trickery to impose Evans's head on a scrawny body before his metamorphosis.

Atwell makes her entrance by punching an insubordinate soldier in the face and she embraces her role as the gutsy love interest with fervour, sparking smouldering screen chemistry with Evans.

Their final scenes together are nicely judged, echoing a tender moment from Michael Bay's slam-bang Armageddon.

Action sequences are orchestrated with aplomb including a daredevil descent into a moving train.

'Captain America Will Return' promises a title card at the end of the film in place of the additional scene we have come to expect from comic book adaptations.

Indeed he will, alongside Iron Man, Thor and Hulk in the big-budget film version of The Avengers, which will be smashing and crashing into cinemas in summer 2012.

Qvoid Offers A Deep And Universal Puzzling Experience

Qvoid ($1.99) by Gavina Games is a must have puzzle game for the iPhone and iPad.

This universal offering comes with massive depth, an easy learning curve, and 96 levels of pure, neuron pumping action. Qvoid will test your puzzling abilities to the limit, but always with a cubed smile.

Qvoid is most similar to the classic Sokoban style of gameplay, though it has progressed far beyond that original concept.

Players are asked to rotate a cube about a grid, collecting colors along the cube’s white faces. Those colors must then be carried to a corresponding spot elsewhere on the board. When two like colors are combined, they vanish, leaving behind a blank square and a free pass to the next puzzle.

The game makes this difficult just about every way it can: Colored faces cannot be placed against a black square, nor can black squares (which are left after a match is made) be placed facedown either. And just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water, the game throws moving tiles, numbered squares, and color mixing into the equation. It’s a wicked concept, and one that’s split across all 96 handmade levels, with each requiring a higher level of cerebral concentration than the next. All in all, there’s easily 12 hours worth of gameplay hidden within Qvoid’s walls; potentially more, if you’re puzzle dumb like me.

In fact, with so much quality content, it’s hard to find Qvoid’s downside. The game is a whole dollar above the 99 cent sweet spot, but considering the number of levels offered, the developers can hardly be faulted. Not to mention Qvoid’s absolutely gorgeous graphics.

And they are gorgeous, trust us. Everything about the game’s look feels alive and springy, from the menus right down to the cube’s facial expressions. The developers have created a puzzling world that’s both challenging and good looking, a feat that immediately puts Qvoid above its competitors.

Qvoid also comes with Game Center integration, meaning players can enjoy global leader boards, as well as some (stiffly earned) achievements. The value of the leader board is debatable, however, as it’s simply a tally of players’ collected stars. Considering there’s a finite number of stars available in-game, the reasoning behind this bit of online stat-tracking is questionable at best.

The achievements, however, will require a large amount of effort on the player’s part. That likely comes as a boon for those requiring a truly masochistic puzzling experience on the iPhone. In fact, that may be Qvoid’s only real fault: The game can be hair-tearingly difficult at times.

Depending on the level, players may spend several minutes or several days deciphering a puzzle. The game’s learning curve is excellent, spacing out discovery with difficulty at exactly the right places. This means that no matter how hard the puzzle, the answer is within your grasp. Just try not to throw the iPhone against a wall, please.

At the end of the day, Qvoid offers one of the best puzzling experiences available for iOS. The game provides deep gameplay, more puzzles than one can shake a stick at, and graphics that feel right at home on the Retina display. All in all, it’s a $1.99 gem, and an absolute steal. If you’re a fan of puzzle games, get this app.

Film Review: Captain America (3 stars)

And to think that Quentin Tarantino was accused of rewriting the history of the Second World War. In the latest cinematic tale from the Marvel universe, Adolf Hitler is a minor threat compared with Johann Schmidt, a rogue Nazi officer heading up his own terror group bent on world domination.

The organization even has a catchphrase, carefully chosen to avoid copyReich infringement: “Hail HYDRA!” Hitler must have been Führious.

In one of the film’s first scenes, Schmidt invades an ancient castle in Norway, making off with a mysterious glowing cube and neatly tying together plot elements from Captain America, Thor and even Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hats off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the Narnia movies) for crafting this jigsaw puzzle, whose pieces also include Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Iron Man’s dad.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. While Schmidt is busy tearing up northern Europe, 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, digitally condensed) is trying to join the U.S. Army. No luck. You must be at least this tall to enlist, he’s told. It doesn’t help his morale that his good friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is about to ship out.

Rogers catches a break when a kindly German scientist decides he’d make the perfect test subject for a super-serum that will amplify his everything. “Good becomes great,” the scientist tells him. “Bad becomes worse.” (No word on what happens to average.)

The scientist is played by New Yorker Stanley Tucci as part of a free-for-all in non-Germanic casting. Toby Jones of Oxford, England, plays a Nazi physicist, while Australia’s Hugo Weaving gets the juicy role of Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull, who once took a dose of a super-serum prototype and now resembles a cross between Nick Cage’s Hellrider and a bowl of raspberry Jell-O.

Adding compliment to injury, Weaving based Red Skull’s voice in part on German filmmaker Werner Herzog, with the result that some of his lines sound like they’ve been lifted from a Herzog documentary. “Great power has always baffled primitive man,” he says Teutonically.

Rogers is super-serumed and vita-rayed from good to great, and immediately puts his powers to the test in a car chase in which he doesn’t have a car. The scene also puts the comic in comic book when the old superhero roulette game of save-the-innocent-kid-or-capture-the-bad-guy gets an unexpected twist.

Director Joe Johnston keeps a firm hand on the tiller and manages to balance the film’s giggles and gravitas. He’s had some flops of late (Hidalgo, The Wolfman), but calls on his period-piece expertise (October Sky, The Rocketeer) to infuse this one with the perfect tone of mid-century gee-whizardry.

Red Skull’s absurdly stretched automobile (complete with serpentine hood ornament), digital countdown timers and closed-circuit TV cameras represent the height of bad-guy technology. Rogers gets a special shield made of “vibranium,” and comes up with so many uses for it, the Swiss Army is probably thinking of marketing a version.

The shield has a patriotic star-and-stripes pattern, but Captain America manages to dial back the flag-waving to an acceptably low flutter. It helps that Evans’ character is mostly referred to as Captain Rogers and not Captain America – at least, he is after he breaks out of a demeaning USO song-and-dance tour and starts engaging in real, Nazi-kicking heroics.

Rogers also gets a multi-national team of commandos, played by Neal McDonough, Kenneth Choi and others. Comic fans may know them as Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, etc., but I found it easier to remember them by their headgear. “Beret, Bolwer; you’re with me. Cap will lay down covering fire. Helmet, keep a lookout.”

Good acting in such minor roles helps anchor the story. Tommy Lee Jones plays a cranky Colonel (when typecasting goes right), while Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter mostly looks nice in snug military garb while undressing Rogers with her eyes. She also gets to fire a gun several times, at good guys and bad guys.

The result is fun and refreshingly retro. It’s nice to see superheroes (as in the recent, 1960s-set X-Men: First Class) battling evil without all that post-9/11 angst. Captain America might be just a touch too long at 125 minutes (one attack montage too many, perhaps) but there’s a lot of ground to cover, not least explaining how a 1940s war hero will re-emerge in the here-and-now to star in next May’s sequel/spinoff, The Avengers. It’s the final piece of the puzzle, deftly handled.

Bizarre image of Dour 2011

Who could, after five-star concert of Foals in a day, still shining in the firmament-Dour? Many more bands than we thought. Never before was the musical bar so high that alternative Walloon festival, which is also the highest number of visitors in its history and was received so prone area had expanded. Heavy precipitation, the only spoilsport, but Suede singer Brett Anderson show us how it came to Aberdour deal with it: do not talk about it, and yet you make it rain soaked everything. The persistence of Suede (****) was infectious: more and more people troepten together in the mud for The Last Arena, sang loudly along with the glamorous rock 'Trash' and 'So Young' and imagined themselves one hour long "The Beautiful ones.
Suede had yet been recognized in several other (*****), Pulp Britpop sensation in his grand comeback Dour polite. Jarvis Cocker, frontman as a little too out there, took all his old tricks and tics up to the audience to please: sarcastic humor, John Cleese-like locomotion and of course songs about the darkest sides of love. Obvious highlights: 'Disco 2000' and 'Common People', sketches in which sexual euphoria and melancholy shake hands reached.
Bizarre image of Dour 2011: Keith Caputo, Life of Agony (***), singer who is in his mid-conversion operation from male to female. From the audience when he encountered was a cowboy hat, he even cracked a joke: "Am I a cowboy or cowgirl a?" For many metalheads occurred did not matter, the Moshpit boiled as usual.
But you do not need to play metal out of it scorching, Two Gallants proven and This Will Destroy You (***) (***) each in their own way: first with the wild, sense of doom pervaded folk punk, the second instrumental music with loud guitars and screaming that floated on the occasional sampled movie dialogue. Postrock, therefore, another genre that always strike at Dour. (****) Pioneers Mogwai this year even if the main stage, where they provided the perfect soundtrack to the sunrise over the ancient heaps of Borinage.
Even Ice Cube (**) has played against this background, but games with his audience - "Say ho!" - Are persistent and brag about the west coast he confirmed above the clichés that you know about hip-hop. Sin, because in the neighboring tents were many acts that were heard how adventurous genre that still can be. Poet Saul Williams and Ghost (***) (***) placed both the central word, without losing sight of danceability. The militants, dressed in a yellow robe American Williams became a real nigga with attitude while British Poet Ghost with his dubpoëzie rapper showed a more contemplative.
Also in 13 & God (****) got a stream of words over you, from the mouth of Doseone, the nasaalste most rappers. His exuberant stage behavior contrasted beautifully with the thoughtful, but extremely effective indietronica of German brothers Markus and Michael Acher, also the pair behind The Notwist. Highlights of: at the same time fragile and combative "Armoured Scarves.
For the hip-hop versions of Bibio (****) (****) and Flying Lotus were totally unnecessary words. So let Bibio, dressed in a T-Shirt Thin Lizzy, The Ballroom at the clubbers with Barstools meej a slippery guitar and dance beats softly wavering. Flying Lotus put the Magic Tent eivolle then under high with twisted version of "Idioteque" (Radiohead) and "Paint it Black" (Rolling Stones), after turning in a breakneck, free abstract, jazzy set was played. Both acts illustrated in this way the essence of Dour: adventurous, eclectic and highly danceable.

Working Long Hours: Is It Worth It?

In this age, when the 40-hour work week is increasingly viewed as part-time, many of us are pulling long hours at the office. But at some point, all that time spent in the cube reaches a point of diminishing returns and it's worthwhile just to call it a day and head home.

Determining that point, however, is tough, as Laura Vanderkam writes in a recent piece for Fortune.com. Vanderkam, the author of the helpful time-management book "168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think," examines the academic research on hours worked and actual productivity to try to come up with an answer.


Researchers at Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics and other institutions have launched a CEO Time Use Project to determine how a chief executive's time corresponds with a company's performance, defined as revenue per employee and the profitability of the firm. (The project uses time logs kept by CEOs' personal assistants, among other data.)

The study, which so far only has data from a group of Italian CEOs, found a strong correlation between the hours worked and the productivity of the firm; every one percentage point rise in hours worked meant firm productivity rose by 2.14 percentage points, Vanderkam writes.

However, the research doesn't necessarily mean we should all simply put in longer hours to be more productive. The researchers found that how the executives spent their time was key to their productivity. For instance, meeting with employees correlated with increased productivity, but meeting with other outsiders did not. What's more, the Italian CEOs in the study were working what, for many Americans, is considered a short workweek: 48 hours on average.

Vanderkam, not surprisingly, doesn't come up with a magic number for the optimal number of hours to work, but readers, I'm curious if there's a magic number of hours you can work in a day or week before you hit a wall or start to achieve diminishing returns? Or a number of hours worked for you to achieve maximum productivity? For you, do more hours equal greater productivity? Or are you more efficient with a shorter window of hours to work?

Class builds -- Cleric

Last week we discussed how personality influences class choice, so after some deep reflection, you have decided that it is time to reveal your true nature and be reborn as a cleric in Aion! Either that, or maybe you just wanted to solo some dungeons to horde all the loot. *cha-ching* Perhaps you already became one to impress that really cute voice in vent who is always looking for a healer. Whatever your reason, the life of servitude is for you. Now what?

Welcome to Build-a-Cleric. While some Daevas are content to just play with what they get from drops or quests, a number actually want to outfit their characters the best they can. Even if leveling too quickly to worry about uber gear thanks to mentoring and an easier grind, it is never a bad idea to keep an eye on endgame. And with the plethora of manastones, armor sets, weapons, and stigmas available -- not to mention advice, both solicited and unsolicited -- it can be a daunting task to maximize your potential. So to help you wade through the possibilities, Wings Over Atreia will be exploring each class individually and highlighting popular and effective builds. With any luck, some advance knowledge will help you make informed decisions and avoid the catastrophes of expending all of your energies in obtaining the wrong gear for your needs. Nothing shouts broke like having to re-socket entire sets or enchant new ones!

While class builds can change during the course of leveling, it is never too soon to think about what endgame build you want. This can help save some grief later in the game when you realize that you sold/trashed the one silly stigma you needed for a build because you thought it was worthless! Been there, done that. Worse is socketing a set of gear with the wrong manastones as most of the ones needed by clerics run for at least a million kinah each; factor in how many you use per item when multiple manastones break (therefore losing all in the piece) and it can really add up fast. Picking out your preferred build ahead of time will definitely save money.

Juggler Philip Anderson is featured entertainer in this weeks Street Performers Series

As the month of June winds down, the Downtown Holland Street Performer Series, sponsored by Gentex Corporation, is showing no signs of doing the same!   The weekly Series continues Thursday, June 30 from 6:30 p.m . to  8:30 p.m, with close to thirty different artists and groups from all backgrounds entertaining the crowds on Eighth Street.  In addition to the scheduled performers, contact juggler Philip Anderson will also make an appearance this Thursday as the “Gentex Performer of the Week.”

Contact juggling focuses on the movement of objects, such as orbs, in contact with the body.  It differs from regular juggling in the fact that the moving objects or props are not released into the air. Contact juggling involves three main techniques: body rolling, palm spinning, and isolation.  Body rolling is when an orb is manipulated around a juggler’s hands, arms and body, while palm spinning is when graceful and fluid movements are used while an object is kept in motion.  Isolation is when an orb is manipulated so that it appears suspended in place.

A seasoned performer from Grand Rapids, Anderson spends many hours a week practicing contact juggling, along with magic, comedy, and acrobatics.  He is thrilled to be able to show off his contact juggling skills at the Series for the first time. “I’ve heard about the Series for years and have always wanted to be a part of it,” said Anderson.  “Friends who have performed in Downtown Holland have encouraged me to participate. I can see why, as I’m already falling in love with Holland!”

Also making their debut at the Street Performer Series this Thursday will be The Daredevil Circus Company.  This Grand Rapids-based group of highly trained artists has traveled around the world performing their act, which includes aerial silks, hoops, and trapeze, fire eating, acrobatics, contortion, and more.  They will be joined at the Series this week by gospel musicians, henna tattoo artists, balloon twisters, steel guitarists, mimes, and many other talented performers.  While the Series is free for all to attend, tipping the performers is highly encouraged.

Chic cube a 'flawless' B&B

Saska Graville discovers a seaside stay in Cornwall that delivers on every expectation, and rivals London five-stars for service, too.

IT’S not often that a hotel (or, in this case, bed and breakfast) takes me by surprise. Delights me, yes. Disappoints me, sometimes. But it has been a while since I’ve arrived to check in somewhere and been excited to be there. Salt House in Cornwall has that effect.

It might have only two bedrooms but this sleek, contemporary property, on a hillside overlooking the bay of St Ives, packs a punch when it comes to location, service and sheer quality of stay. For a start, there’s its appearance. Flawless. It’s hard to think of another B&B that better personifies how far the category has advanced since the days of chintzy armchairs and nosy landladies. (Swan House in Hastings, England, is the only other one I’ve stayed at that comes close.)

Salt House is a white cube, not at all what you expect in a quiet residential cul-de-sac. All sleek lines, sharp corners and lots of glass, it has been renovated to within an inch of its life by its former graphic-designer owners, Alan and Sharon Spencer. The bedrooms, North and South, are upstairs (the Spencers live on the ground floor), both with huge balconies looking out to sea.