Press release: Disney announces boatload of Disney/Pixar/Marvel release information...

I'll let you decide what is newsworthy versus what is not.  Of course it would have been more newsworthy had Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier *not* gone the 3D route, but there you have it.  I'd be shocked if Guardians of the Galaxy and the newly announced Ant Man (my daughter will be excited as she's a big fan of The Wasp) don't go the 3D route as well.  The sad news is the removal of Phineas and Ferb from the summer 2013 schedule to parts unknown in 2014.  That can't be a good thing, right?  Anyway, the whole load of newly dumped info is after the jump.  The field is now yours. Oh, and just for fun, here's the newly released synopsis for the rather epic-sounding Thor: The Dark World.

In the aftermath of Marvel's Thor and Marvel's The Avengers, Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos... but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all.

Scott Mendelson

She has a name. Her name is Sharon Carter! On the way we discuss actresses and female characters in genre fare.

One of the big would-be stories yesterday was the announcement of five actresses apparently on the 'short list' to play Sharon Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Such stories are always big news in the blogsphere, mainly because it allows bloggers to write a handful of sentences and then decorate their site with various pictures of attractive women.  What's amusing/disconcerting about these stories is how pretty much every single website describes this role as 'the love interest' or 'the romantic interest'.  Most of the sites can't even muster a token 'female lead', opting to describe the role as Steve Roger's "arm candy".  Look, barring some inexplicable surprise, we all know that one of the five actresses in the running (Emilia Clarke, Jessica Brown-Findlay Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, and Alison Brie) is likely playing Shield agent Sharon Carter, distant relative (grand-daughter/great-niece, etc.) of Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter in the last Captain America film.  She has a name, she has a character and a history that can be referred to when discussing this casting news.  How about we use some of that information instead of just referring to her as Steve Roger's newest sexy time partner?