Want to win a copy of the Ultimate Superhero Movie Special from Total Film? These babies are worth an Ayrton and we’ve got two to give away!

Take it from us, this 180-page bookazine is educational! Need proof? Well, you’ll be able to answer all of these devilishly difficult questions once you’ve devoured it from cover to cover.

If you’ve already bought your copy and want to win one for a friend, check out the questions below and email us your answers (competition email address can be found at the bottom of this page).

If you want to slip into a newsagents and check out the answers, we’ve handily included the page numbers at the end of the questions.

Everyone else, Google is your friend. Go!

Question 1: Which actor helped provide the voice for the Hulk in Avengers Assemble? (Page 41)

Question 2: Which blockbuster director helmed the pilot for TV medical drama House? (Page 60)

Question 3: Which superhero movie had to take a bus apart piece by piece and rebuild it to get it inside a building? (Page 102)

Question 4: Which superhero made his comic debut punching Adolf Hitler? (Page 35)

Question 5: Which character does Ioan Gruffudd’s Mr Fantastic morph into in the DVD deleted scenes for Fantastic Four? (Page 53)

Email your answers to: TMTcompetitions@gmail.com. That Film Thing’s UK competition rules and regulations can be found here. The closing date for this competition is 26 May 2013.

The Wicker Man was released in 1973, so you don’t have to be Countdown hottie Rachel Riley to work out that this year is the cult film’s 40th anniversary.

In response to that, Studiocanal, with the endorsement of The Wicker Man director Robin Hardy, has launched a worldwide public appeal to locate original film materials relating to the horror classic.

The now widely lauded film was released with minimal promotion in 1973 as the second feature of a double bill, alongside Don’t Look Now. What an original line-up that is!

However, that version of The Wicker Man was significantly shorter than Hardy’s original cut. That’s because in 1973 Hardy’s debut film fell victim to a boardroom takeover at distribution company British Lion, and had its release temporarily shelved. A finished version of the film that director Hardy was happy with had been delivered with a running time of 102 minutes.

When The Wicker Man did finally reach UK cinemas, 15 minutes had been cut – leaving the film’s running time a trim 88 minutes. Hardy and the other filmmakers had not been involved in the cut and did not approve of this new version.

Unfortunately, the negatives disappeared from storage at Shepperton Studios and were allegedly used as landfill in the construction of the nearby M4 motorway. They are considered lost forever.

“I never thought that, after 40 years, they would still be finding lost fragments of my film. We thought all of The Wicker Man had gone up in flames, but fragments keep turning up and the hunt goes on!”Hardy says.

A Facebook page has been created to help with the search and anyone looking for updates or with any news of a surviving print should visit the dedicated Wicker Man Appeal site.

“Help us conserve, restore and release one of the best British horrors of all time!” a Studiocanal spokesman said.

“No artist could imagine a more beautiful shape,” says Man Of Steel star Henry Cavill – and he’s not talking about the S on his chest in Zack Snyder’s Superman film.

“It’s incredible. A man can look attractive, beautiful even, but nothing like a woman naked. That’s why women would rather look at other naked women than at men,” the 30-year-old adds.

Cavill says his ideal woman is hot, naked and can hold a drink, admitting that the female form is his biggest turn on.

“I don’t like aggressive women because they’re always on the defensive,” he says in an interview with Glamour magazine. “What’s important to me is that a woman has confidence in what she is, as opposed to trying to conform to someone else’s type.”

“I like a good drinking buddy – and I can drink a lot,” the British actor admits.

Cavill is currently dating Gina Carano (Haywire, Fast & Furious 6) and says he’s willing to do what it takes to make things work: “It takes a lot of understanding from the other person, because there’s a lot of time apart. But I’ve always been a monogamous man.”

Man Of Steel opens in UK and US cinemas on 14 June 2013.

Gwyneth Paltrow plans to follow up her It’s All Good cook book by bringing her Californian recipes to our shores.

“I would make a Californian pop-up restaurant in London with all the healthy salads from the book and tuna burgers, salmon burgers and tacos,” said the 40-year-old Iron Man 3 star.

Mrs Martin also revealed that her health regime was originally started by the need to look after her British hubby’s tummy.

“He was focused on eating well for the tour,” she said of Coldplay singer Chris Martin. “So I started developing these recipes. Nothing processed or toxic, but still delicious. And that’s how the book came about.”

R.I.P.D. stars Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges look to have their work cut out for them, as we’ve already seen in the trailer for Robert Schwentke’s (Red) film (check it out at the bottom of the page).

And a new poster for the comic-book movie shows the boys packing serious heat to deal with the supernatural threat to our world.

It’s also nice in this world of remakes, reboots and homages to see Ash’s car from Evil Dead getting sucked into a portal. Classic.

Here’s the official blurb:

Bridges and Reynolds headline the supernatural action-adventure R.I.P.D., as two undead cops dispatched by the otherworldly Rest In Peace Department to protect our world from an increasingly destructive array of creatures who refuse to move peacefully to the other side.

R.I.P.D. opens on 19 July 2013 in the US and in UK cinemas on 30 August 2013.

MUST READ:
R.I.P.D: the long road to the screen for Peter Lenkov’s comic

Submissions are now open for this year’s Moët British Independent Film Awards, which will be held on Sunday 8 December 2013.

Nominations will be announced on Monday 11 November 2013, when sales of the main sponsor’s product – Moët & Chandon return as title sponsor for the fourth year – will no doubt rise.

Nominees would be wise to celebrate those nods, too – as they’ll have won chance to join prestigious company.

In 2012 Bart Layton picked up the The Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director for The Imposter, Broken took home the coveted Best British Independent Film, Andrea Riseborough won Best Actress for Shadow Dancer, while Toby Jones (Best Actor) and Peter Strickland (Best Director) won for their work on Berberian Sound Studio.

Olivia Colman also collected her second BIFA in two years, this time for Best Supporting Actress for Hyde Park On Hudson and Rory Kinnear took home Best Supporting Actor for Broken.

Now in its 16th year, the awards were created by Raindance in 1998 and set out to celebrate merit and achievement in independently funded British filmmaking, to honour new talent, and to promote British films and filmmaking to a wider public.

Previous winners of the Best British Independent Film award include Tyrannosaur, The King’s Speech, Moon, Control, Slumdog Millionaire, The Constant Gardener and This Is England.

“Noel Clarke got big,” says the guy sitting next to thatfilmthing, and he’s right in both senses of the term. The actor has bulked up from his Doctor Who and Kidulthood days but he’s also in one of the most high-profile releases of summer 2013, albeit briefly.

Given that Star Trek has always been ‘the franchise’ on TV, it’s genuinely exciting to have such a major mover and shaker back in the mix when it comes to movies. JJ Abrams’ 2009 reboot may not have been to everyone’s tastes, but it brought an ailing series back to life and turned something incredibly nerdy into a mainstream movie. You can see why they handed him the Star Wars gig.

It’s an attractive premise going into this film that there’s so much material to work with within a Star Trek universe. The fledgling Federation has yet to tangle with Klingons – who make an appearance – be overrun by Tribbles or even begin their first five-year mission. If Abrams can mine those touchstones for action and adventure without getting his geek on too much, this sequel could deliver more than the $366m worldwide box office of his first Trek movie.

However, a second film presents its own problems for the director. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan has long been held as the greatest entry in Star Trek’s big screen outings. Abrams’ first movie may have reset the Trek timeline to start things afresh but this is still the same universe and there is the possibility to rehash Khan if he wants to. Yet it takes a brave man to mess with a ‘classic’…

Instead, we get a Bond-style adventure in the vein of Skyfall. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the disgruntled Section 31 agent looking to get back at his former masters, just as Javier Bardem’s Silva turned terrorist against M in that film. Cumberbatch is pretty much perfect as the ruthless John Harrison, his deep, bassy voice carrying the weight of his character’s words. He’s also both fast and furious in a way Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and The Rock could only hope for.

Action and adventure seems guaranteed when Kirk is assigned to track Harrison down in his bolt hole beyond Federation space and Abrams confidently and competently delivers the set pieces. Having such a well-defined set of characters to play with, the hope is that this Star Trek sequel will also pull off the chatty, zippy kind of ensemble movie that Joss Whedon did with Avengers Assemble.

And while it does draw elements from the whole crew – Simon Pegg’s light relief, Zoe Saldana’s emotional needs, Sulu’s command ambitions – the real story here is still the bromance between Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock. The interspecies fun as they butt heads and misunderstand each other’s actions is entertaining, yet it falls short of Iron Man and company’s efforts. Anton Yelchin’s Chekov, for one, is woefully underused, although newcomer Alice Eve (as Doctor Carol Marcus) makes a good first impression.

Watching this in Imax 3D summed up the film’s overall performance in general. The technology can’t keep up with JJ’s frantic camera swooshes, and you’re likely to see ghosts. And while there are moments where the audience emits genuine oohs and ahhs as debris hangs in the air or a star ship’s vapour trail leads into infinity, these are farther apart than we’d have liked.

VERDICT: 7/10 

Finally, the first trailer for the much-anticipated third film in Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright‘s hilariously blood-soaked ‘Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy‘ (AKA  the ‘Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy‘).

With Wright directing and his regular collaborators Pegg and Frost, once again, starring, The World’s End sees five friends having a second go at the epic - yet failed - pub crawl they began in their twenties.

Over the course of the night it becomes clear that the real struggle is “not just theirs but humankind’s” and that reaching the final pub on their crawl, the titular World’s End in Camden, is the least of their worries.

The World’s End opens in UK cinemas 19 July 2013 and in US cinemas 23 August 2013.

Don’t believe us? Here’s what you could be doing during your four-day stay at the Stratosphere, with its theme park strategically placed 900ft above the Las Vegas strip.

Any UK consumer who visits the Acer UK Facebook Star Trek Into Darkness page between now and 30th June 2013 can win the holiday for four to Las Vegas.

Extra features include a helicopter ride over the Las Vegas skyline and dinner at the Firefly restaurant, which is on theme as it’s styled like a futuristic spaceship.

Find out more details about Acer’s Star Trek competition at ThatGadgetThing or by heading direct to Acer’s Facebook page.

Star Trek Into Darkness opens in UK cinemas on 9 May 2013. It stars John Cho, Noel Clarke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alice Eve, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Peter Weller.

So it’s no surprise that people are getting pretty excited by Marvel’s newest possible film franchise, Guardians Of The Galaxy, with Super’s James Gunn set to direct and preposterously muscular WWE wrestler Dave Bautista to feature as preposterously muscular intergalactic warrior Drax the Destroyer.

As thrilling as all this sounds, Guardians Of The Galaxy is still a pretty odd choice for a silver screen treatment, being one of Marvel’s lesser known properties. Its lack of audience recognition isn’t its biggest potential drawback, though – that would be its list of characters, which includes a sharp-shooting raccoon (Rocket Raccoon) and a giant sentient tree-man (Groot) as two of its principle protagonists.

Well, turns out as far as the murky world of superhero intellectual properties is concerned, you can go weirder (and much, much lamer). Allow thatfilmthing to give you a run-down of the least likely comics to get a film treatment anytime soon:

US-1

US-1 is the product of America’s short-lived love affair with trucks, following the success of Smokey And The Bandit. It tells the story of Ulysses Solomon Archer (a handy acronym for USA) on the trail of the man who killed his brother, an evil trucker who has sold his soul to the devil for a super-powered 18-wheeler.

Ulysses is armed in this quest with the ‘amazing’ ability to pick up CB radio channels thanks to a metal plate in his head; saving him about 50 quid and allowing him to listen to fat racists loudly eat meatball subs and listen to White Snake in the stinking cabs of their ice-road trucks. Go US-1!

The Legion Of Super-Pets

A team of super-powered pets, created as part of the Legion Of Superheroes universe. Comet (horse), Krypto (dog), Streaky (cat) and Beppo (monkey) all possess Superman-level strength, speed, flight, heat vision and presumably super-colour-blindness, super-incontinence and a super fear of fireworks and lightning. Together they fight intergalactic crime.

It’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility that a Legion Of Super-Pets film gets made, especially with the industry-wide superteam boom, but with the bashing chimps have been getting in the press the last couple of years, Beppo might have to sit this one out.

Skateman

The very existence of Premium Rush (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a bike messenger who fights inner city corruption via ‘wicked stunts’) proves that the suits up in Hollywood still labour under the assumption that ‘totally radical’ sells.

Enter Skateman, a Vietnam veteran and roller derby champion who takes to the streets with a scarf wrapped round his head, a pair of cut-off jean shorts and his trusty rollerskates to fight crime. Absolutely dire premise, but we could see this getting rubber-stamped by accident following a heavy night on the Columbian marching powder.

The Red Bee

Ostensibly your standard unpowered vigilante hero, The Red Bee is distinct from all those Batman clones out there in that he doesn’t utilise crack military training, exorbitant wealth or sweet gadgets in his war against crime like your Iron Men and your Green Arrows. Instead, The Red Bee has a bee. One bee. Called Michael. Michael lives somewhere in the folds of The Red Bee’s garish costume and can be unleashed to sting his enemies.

And while The Red Bee, with his reckless lack of powers, training or capacity for intimidation, seems like least likely comic-book candidate for film adaptation, we’ve saved the best (worst) for last…

Stardust The Super Wizard

In the expository text at the start of each terrifying Stardust adventure, the narrator assures us that ‘his vast knowledge of interplanetary science has made him the most remarkable man that ever lives’ and he’s not wrong because Stardust seems to possess every form of super power conceivable. No one knows where he came from, only that he has an eternal, un-quenchable thirst for justice.

Stardust’s adventures are drawn in a washed-out, amateurish style by Golden-Age psychotic/art-brut auteur Fletcher Hanks. Villains are Neolithic, Stardust’s head is pin-tiny in proportion to his body, there are almost no women. There’s also no sense of jeopardy in Stardust’s stories; he will always win, because you can’t beat a god. Rather, there’s this lurking sense of inevitability; what awful thing will he do to the gangsters this time? What disproportionate retribution will he mete out? One issue, for instance, ends with him sending a man into space to circle the planet, locked in stasis, forever. Chilling.

If it was made – and we’re imploring Hollywood to stay away from this one – but if it was made, only David Lynch could do this strange, dark, oddball title justice.

“How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing,” says The Red Baron in Blackadder Goes Forth. “For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you it is the basis of an entire culture.” If The ABCs Of Death is any guide, it seems the horror community feels the same way. And yet, that’s a surprise, given the premise of this project.

Inspired by children’s educational books, The ABCs Of Death is comprised of 26 individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given $5,000 and free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving death.

Given that there’s only one T to work with, it’s therefore impressive that so many feature the toilet. If the directors were trying to make a point, then mission accomplished – thatfilmthing won’t be going to the loo again anytime soon without checking to see that everything is in order.

This anthology movie helpfully kicks off with an explanation of the premise – as mentioned above, 26 shorts using the alphabet – but it also ends each segment with a similar explanation. Don’t worry, we’re not going to spoil any of the “A is for…; B is for…” captions here, as they are part of the fun. What’s particularly satisfying is that entries usually avoid the norm: C is not for Cannibal, W is not for Werewolf and Z is not for Zombie.

The ABCs Of Death has the feel of Asian J-horror anthology shows, which is one of the film’s strengths and also one of its weaknesses. Since each segment is a separate entity, directors don’t know what went before or what will follow. Because of that there’s no real core running through the film, other than the obvious sense of death. It’s kind of like following the YouTube link to something twisted and then clicking the links to the similar material posted around it.

What follows is a crazy mix of styles that blends together a lot of sex, plenty of cheese, animation and claymation, homage, cartoony violence, action and sci-fi, and buckets and buckets of blood. They’re usually short and sharp, so don’t worry if the one you’re watching right now isn’t tapping the vein, there’ll be another one along shortly.

While some fire wide of the mark, there are some real surprises here. D plays like a twisted music video that’s only missing Keith Flint from the Prodigy bouncing around in the background, while Simon Rumley’s P carries some real emotional weight. F takes the hard-fought prize of most bizarre entry, plus there’s some knife-sharp social commentary thrown in for good measure – we’re looking at you, X.

By the time we reach Z, the end is so batshit crazy as to make most of what went before seem (almost) sane. The duds that do pop up along the way – Kill List’s Ben Wheatley’s U is disappointing, but at least you won’t be shouting “where did the money go?” as you will at Ti West’s M – can’t completely derail a project that is fun and fertile.

Unsettling, uncompromising, uncomfortable and disturbing, The ABCs Of Death will only benefit when it quickly moves onto DVD and you can quickly skip to your favourites.

VERDICT: 7/10

If you’ve spent the last few months hiding in a cave building your own set of robo-armour, it’s our duty to tell you that Tony Stark is back. And – as befits the billionaire playboy in our modern celebrity-obsessed world – everyone is talking about him.

Set not long after the events that took place in Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble, Iron Man 3 sees Jon Favreau vacate the director’s chair in favour of Shane Black. In return, the creator of Lethal Weapon, writer of The Last Boy Scout and director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang promised to deliver something a little different. And he doesn’t disappoint.

The very first Iron Man movie will always hold a special place in thatfilmthing’s hearts, but as the obvious pressure of making sequels better than the original builds, this is a damn good effort. The action set-pieces are phenomenal, there’s some clever sideways thinking and Black teases unforgettable performances from Guy Pearce and Sir Ben Kingsley.

The plot of Iron Man 3 – like the preceding two films – is an amalgamation of several stories from the comic books. Needless to say, it remains faithful to the original stories, including some big, bold plot points.

Even the end credits are brilliant, with a look and feel that is clearly a nod to ’80s action-detective TV series like Magnum, Matt Houston and Charlie’s Angels.

Our only problem is that the latest word suggests Iron Man 3 is possibly the last instalment for ol’ shellhead in what has been an excellent series of movie adaptations. Say it ain’t so, Marvel. Say it ain’t so…

VERDICT: 8/10