It's been a quiet week, as far as reviewing goes. There's a certain amount of tumbleweed involved in my life, at the moment.

Or there would be, if I could balance the different aspects of my life; more accurately, there's major tumbleweed in my life as far as reviewing goes, although I could actually go out and buy something to review, but that would show me as addicted. Addicted to reviewing. Which would be a little worrying.

I like the fact that I got five-hundred and fifty-five pageviews just over a week ago, although as usual I have absolutely no idea how, unless I was one of the 'featured blogs' on the front page for some nebulous reason and nobody thought to actually mention it.

I got to see Son of Rambow last weekend, and I was more pleasantly surprised by it than I expected to be; not least, as a Spaced fan, because of the unexpected presence of Jessica Stevenson, which was obviously an added bonus.

It was distinctly odd, though, watching a film which contained scenes featuring and set inside the cinema I was watching the film in, if you follow. Odd, but compelling, and definitely unique.

The thing is, nothing particularly excites me about film at the moment, which is a shame considering we're already past the foreplay when it comes to blockbuster season, although fitting the Indiana Jones film into the foreplay metaphor just seems unnecessarily difficult, not to mention... No, let's just not go there.

As far as I'm aware considering my relatively sheltered existence, the next full-on blockbuster is The Incredible Hulk, which has been blighted not only by arguments between, on one side, the star and director and on the other side, the studio, but also falling prey to the oldest Hollywood tactic in the modern filmmaking toolbox; if you want a villain, Hire an Englishman.

In this case, Tim Roth, who, unable to take on the Hulk with his cockney witticisms alone, becomes a monster - some might say, and Abomination, although I don't believe that word's used in the film - in order to fulfil the nietzchean - a word I cannot spell properly - idea that he who fights monsters, becomes a twelve-foot tall shit-brown lizard with a massive exoskeleton.

Yes, I'm paraphrasing.

The thing about the new crop of Marvel films, though, is that they're apparently in-house productions, rather than farming them out to big studios, which is a massive risk; a major studio can afford to write off a bomb or two per season if the rest of their output picks up the slack, but Marvel as a smaller studio relies on it's own merits, a history of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a massive comics production credit line to get things done, so if a Marvel Films flick bombs, it's going to be a real gut-punch.

Which would be a distinct shame, because Marvel as a filmmaking company seem to be going in for something that's pretty unprecedented in filmmaking at the moment; something, my friends, called "intertextuality", or, if you prefer, "cross-overs".

There's a big plan at work here. Some might even say a conspiracy. Because otherwise, why would a studio use an actor like Samuel L. Jackson for a five minute post-l-o-n-g-credits cameo in Iron Man? Granted, it could be a teaser for something that never happens, which is distinctly possible, but then Robert Downey Jnr. apparently has a cameo in Hulk as Tony Stark, and there have been quasi-official announcements about the Captain America and Thor films, which people are thinking is leading to an Avengers /Ultimates movie.

Which, let's face it, would be a really nice idea on paper. Getting all the actors together for an ensemble hero piece on the big screen done right would be a massive event, not least because that would be stacking up Edward G. Norton, Robert Downey Jnr, whoever's lucky enough to get the role of Captain America (now that they've officially announced Captain America: The First Avenger) and, apparently, Kevin McKidd.

I say apparently, because I can't find the information I had a while ago. Although now, apparently, Marvel have announced that Iron Man 2 will be released in 2010, and will feature a cameo from Thor. Which is nice.

If you haven't seen Dog Soldiers, go, go now! and get a copy, rent, buy or do various nefarious things to see it, because it's in my top ten. It's also the only place - although I'm sure he gets about - that I've seen Kevin McKidd acting, and he does very, very well for comedy horror, especially playing against Sean Pertwee.

Let's take a break for the most crazily hopefuly statement I've read in a long time:

Universal and its promotional partners hope The Incredible Hulk will be to Hulk what Batman Begins was to Batman and Robin.

Uh-huh. Good luck with that.

These are, basically, very good times to be a comics geek. Just because something's in the public eye, though, don't expect people to suddenly stop treating geeks like outcasts, though; just because book shops now have manga spinners and entire shelves of graphic novels, don't expect being a geek to become cool any time soon. Which is a shame, because these are shaping up to be really good times to be a geek.