KICK ASS BLURB

mara · a grateful fan

KICK ASS BLURB

Lula · Beguiled at Heart and Weird non stop

Great piece PITA B thanks for posting it.

Hit Girl sounds quite the character, truly interesting thought about the gender politics, being interested as I am in the portrayal of female comic book characters!... I'm even more magnetised to this film now!

And the more I read about the character Kick-Ass, the more dimensions to him appear, it sounds like some tragic elements going on there.

Not the first time super heroines/heroes have not had superpowers and rely on 'superhuman' skills, but this appears to be more humanistic, quite unique in the context it is given, the not flashy costumes, the non slickness of it, that it is woven into a story of our times...so for me I'm very excited about how groundbreaking to the whole 'superhero culture' this film will be!

PITA B · Guru

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1103988/BAZ-BAMIGBOYE-Im-slumming-loving-it.html

There really is something about a loveable loser..........who turns out to be a hero underneath it all when he vows to change his life!

Taking a gamble on a lovable loser

Aaron Johnson in the Kick Ass costume

Ave Lizewski is a super-hero for our times: bankrupt of powers.

He's called Kick-Ass, and he wears an obviously hand-made costume and brown clod-hopper boots - but he's a winning role for the fast-rising 18-year-old British actor Aaron Johnson.

Dave Lizewski is every boy (or man) who has ever looked at a super-hero in a DC or Marvel comic and thought: 'Yeah, I wannna be him!'

Director Matthew Vaughn's hoping there are plenty of them out there, because the film-maker and writer (he penned the script with Jane Goldman from Mark Millar's comic book Kick-Ass character) has bet $47million (£32million) on there being an appetite for a nerd with super-hero attitude. 'I'm going to live or die with this movie,' Vaughn told me, only half jokingly, on set at Elstree Studios before he wrapped filming on Kick-Ass last month.

Vaughn, who produced Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, believes he has a winning formula again in Kick-Ass.

Johnson's co-star is a smashing 11-year old, Chloe Moretz, from Los Angeles via Atlanta, Georgia. She plays mild-mannered schoolgirl Mindy Macready, a.k.a. the deadly Hit Girl.

You don't mess with Hit Girl. Hidden away in her outfit are guns and knives, and she knows how to use them. I saw Chloe rehearse some stunts and she's wicked with a blade - a fact which may upset some people when they see the movie - plus, she's an ace gymnast.

'When people see the movie they'll realise that Hit Girl is just a girl who goes after the bad guys. She's just a little girl and this is just a movie. No one is going to seriously think that's what I do in my spare time,' the super-smart Ms Moretz explained to me.

'Hit Girl only kills real bad people,' Vaughn insisted. 'She loses her mum to these thugs and her dad, an ex-cop [played by Nicolas Cage], trains her up so she can defend herself. The movie's not a documentary and it's not real life.'

The running joke in the film is that Hit Girl, at half the size of Kick-Ass, is all action and not scared of runnning right into danger. And it's the gender politics of the piece that add a frisson.

That said, the violence in it could present a bit of a ratings challenge for our film censors.

Whatever rating it gets, the film is going to catapult Johnson's career. He's made several films, including Gurinder Chadha's Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging (in which he played Robbie, the teenage 'sex god').

Kick-Ass is a great role, but Johnson doesn't see Lizewski as pin-up material.

'Dave's lost his mum; he hasn't got any friends at school; he's at that age where he wants a girlfriend, but he's the boy at school who's never really been noticed.

'He's a weakling who looks up to these heroic comic culture heroes. When he's hidden behind a mask and in a costume, his confidence comes through. It's just private for him. He desperately wants to be a super-hero in a comic book, but he gets in over his head.'

Johnson has a picture called The Greatest at the Sundance Film Festival on January 15. Incidentally, the main bad guy in Kick-Ass is played by Mark Strong, an actor who never stops working, and the stunts were created by experts who worked on 300, Hellboy 2 and Jackie Chan's movies