A Note from Nerd Nirvana

This was originally a draft from April 2014 that I never posted.  I no longer remember how I was tying the last paragraph back in to the Avengers franchise but I just like my enthusiasm over it.  So I am posting it now:

I was watching Captain America:  The Winter Soldier, which in of itself is a cornucopia of comic book geek goodness.  I understand general audiences are enjoying the Avengers franchise, but I can't help but feel you don't get the full geek gasm unless you are a bonafide comic-book geek (CBG).  Not since the Avengers appeared in my 1978 view master have I drooled over seeing the Cap with the Falcon and the Black Widow in audio/visual action.

     Add to that what I believe is an unprecedented moment (fellow geeks please correct me if I am wrong) that a a franchise with both product in a movie and on television are sharing the same universe and story line.  The same week that Hydra took over S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America, the ramifications of the story were played out in full in Marvel Studio's TV fare, Agents of Shield.  In the past you may have seen a TV series follow the success of a movie franchise, such as the Planet of the Apes, but it wasn't the same universe.  ("The same universe," is prime geek speak.)

      But along with the CBG goodness, I had an unexpected sci-fi movie geek moment as well, one that made me audibly squeal in the theater.  When I saw the close up of the council woman I had immediate facial recognition of the actress but I was too scared to believe it could be true.  Is that....?  Could it possibly be....?  It was Jenny Agutter from Logan's Run and An American Werewolf in London.

     One of my obsessions with movies and b-movies, and geek movies, is recognizing actors that for the most part have become obscure but never really stop working.  One of my favorite examples is Veronica Cartwright, an incredibly prolific actress who has been - just to name a very short few - in Hitchcock's The Birds, Alien, the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Witches of Eastwick where she played a similar witch-hunt character as she does right now on Resurrection.  I love to see her pop up in dozens of films and sci-fi TV shows. This pleasure could only be eclipsed if Roddy McDowall, the original Cornelius/Ceaser in the 60/70's  original Planet of the Apes movies were still alive to play a cameo in the current franchise.