Thor has a few lovely ladies in his life. There’s Siff, the fellow Asgardian warrior. There’s Jane Foster on earth. The movie even adds a third, Darcy. Kat Dennings plays Foster’s student assistant.

Kat Dennings Talks Thor

“I think the Darcy role was expanded as we went through the rehearsal process,” Dennings said. “So she started out as something and ended up as something else. It was pretty great. There is a pretty great female presence in the film with Jane Foster and Darcy and Siff also and Friga, Thor’s mother.”

Dennings’ focus was on scenes with Natalie Portman. “Darcy makes food for Jane and mixes her Kaschi in the morning and basically she’s a new invention. She’s not in the comics. She just sort of hopes to be like Jane one day. She’s a hesitant student. Not to be biased, but I really like our relationship in the movie. I mean, we haven’t seen any of it but I know. I feel like our love in real life came out.”

Even though she was a new character, Dennings knew her Thor. “I’ve read a lot of the comic books just growing up, and I sort of felt for me anyway that I should sort of view the script as its own thing and not try to compare and contrast the previous stuff and just treat it like its own little universe. And Darcy wasn’t in the comics so I didn’t have to worry about continuity or anything like that.”

It was also Dennings’ first big budget blockbuster superhero film. “Our first AD had his own voice throwing equipment so he was standing in video village and he’d be like, ‘Back to ones.’ His voice would echo through the whole outside. There were hidden things. It was pretty big budget I would say, pretty nuts. And everyone was so good at their job. If you were like, “Oh, man, I could really use a piece of toast made out of rubber,” somebody would be like, FWING! They were so prepared it was amazing. I had come off of something that was done for like two dollars and then I came and did this. I was like oh my god. This is awesome. It felt good. I’m not going to lie. It was pretty great. I don’t know how many more movies I’ll be in like this but it was good to have one.”

Thor opens to theaters on May 6, 2011.

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Kat appeared on the Comic Con 2010 Thor Panel in San Diego, and as promised, here are pictures :) Kenneth Branagh, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston and Clark Gregg were also on the panel, and are scattered throughout the photos.

MTV did a play-by-play of the entire panel, which you can read if you press

There was no small amount of news and blazing-hot footage coming out of this year’s Marvel movie panel at Comic-Con. So without any further introduction, here’s what happened:

6:45
After a late start due to, well… a stabbing incident… things got underway with Kevin Feige taking the stage.

“I think by the end of this panel that skepticism might go away,” said Feige of the uncertainty that has long surrounded Marvel’s ambitious movie plan. “It’s extremely difficult and it’s never been done before… for a reason. Everyone needs to be assembled properly.”

And like the “Green Lantern” panel, this one kicked off with some early footage, offering the first official look at Chris Evans in costume. Here’s what the footage entailed:

- A voiceover repeated the famous Pearl Harbor declaration of December 7, 1941, as a “day that will live forever in infamy.”

- Over clips of WWII headlines and footage, the text narration revealed that “one story has never been told,” and the camera pans out to show Captain America’s shield.

- “Every army starts with one man,” it continues, and we’re given a full-body silhouette of Captain America. The camera then offers up a close-up profile shot of Chris Evans as Cap, as he turns to face the camera.

- The “Captain America” title flashes, and then… a quick shot of Cap slinging the shield!

6:49
“Captain America” director Joe Johnston took the stage along with the rest of the film’s major cast members. Johnston says the film is not going to feel like a war movie made in 1942. We have one chance to tell the origin story of Captain America and that’s what we’re going to do.”

6:50
Chris Evans on playing Cap: “It’s a little intimidating, a little daunting, but it’s exciting. … “The suit’s fantastic.”

Hugo Weaving on perfecting his performance as Red Skull: “He’s German, so I spent a lot of time listening to famous German artists. I’ve synthesized their voice into the voice of Red Skull.”

6:52
Chris Evans on the early debates surrounding his casting: “People here might have had an opinion one way or the other, but at the end of the day I’m trying to make a character come to life. … Hopefully if we do our job right and the movie’s good, no one will have a problem with it. I hope.”

Joe Johnston said he was partial to the Ed Brubaker version of Captain America, though “we’re borrowing visually from that version [and] … going slightly more modern than the original Captain America, which was basically a pair of pajamas with the stars and stripes on them.”

Kevin Feige was quick to point out that the suit seen in early concept art and in the footage was still just a “test version of the suit.” “What you saw was only a snippet from the costume test — it’s something that’s unequivocally the Captain America uniform, but can fit that period.”

6:55
Chris Evans says he “loves origin pieces” and “I think it’s great when you see who the person was before they’re given these amazing gifts.”

6:57
Hugo Weaving: “We’ve only been at this a couple of weeks.”

According to Weaving, his Red Skull mask is “a pretty extraordinary creation” and is composed of “a series of lightweight pieces on my face.”

“It looks fantastic,” he added.

And to further whet our appetites, attendees were treated to yet another piece of footage from the film — an unfinished scene that still included the timecodes.

In the footage, a castle wall is blown inward, killing one of the two men inside. As the dust settles, we see a group of Nazis emerge, with orders to open up a tomb in the center of the room. As they struggle to open it, everyone turns to face a recent arrival — a pre-scarring Red Skull.

“It’s taken me a long time to find this place,” he tells the caretaker.

“What you seek is just a legend,” the caretaker responds.

“Why make such an effort to conceal it,” responds Weaving’s character.

The soldiers remove the lid form the tomb, revealing an ancient skeleton holding a sword and a transparent cube (the Cosmic Cube?). Red Skull holds up the cube, calling it a Tesseract — the gem of Odin’s treasures — and drops it, breaking it.

Red Skull then locates a secret panel on the wall and removes a small box coiled with golden serpents. He opens it, and is engulfed in a blue glow.

“Ordinary men were not meant to look upon it,” says the caretaker.

“Exactly,” says Red Skull.

And thus ends the footage… and the “Captain America” portion of the panel.

ThorUp next was the “Thor” team, with Kenneth Branagh, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Clark Gregg, Kat Dennings, and Tom Hiddleston.

7:06
When asked about Mjolnir, Chris Hemsworth said, “it’s a huge part of the character … [and] wearing the costume does a lot of the work for you.”

Kat Dennings said her character, Darcy, is “a new creation” and “she’s not in the comic books — she’s like Jane Foster’s little helper gnome.”

7:10
Tom Hiddleston: “The great challenge for me was that he is both the agent of chaos and the damaged younger brother. [He's] the jealous brother, the one who’s overlooked. [He's] the one who could’ve been the guy — but can’t be the guy because I dont have the guns this guy has (motioning to Hemsworth).”

“He’s a great liar,” said Hiddleston. “It was fun to play with whether he’s lying or telling the truth.”

Clark Gregg said he “loves being the glue that holds the Marvel Universe together.” The actor went on to reveal that he had no idea of the role he’d play between all of the Marvel movies, and even had to ask what his line in “Iron Man 2″ about needing to go to New Mexico meant.

And now… “Thor” footage!

There’s a lot to absorb here (in 3-D, no less), and it went something like this:

- The footage opens with scenes of Thor wailing on various people while Gregg’s Agent Coulson says, “You made my men look like a bunch of minimum wage mall cops.”

“Who are you?” he asks. And the camera goes in close on Hemsworth’s face.

We then get a look at Asgard as the camera flies overhead. We see Odin on the throne, as well as shots of the Warriors Three, Sif, Loki, Heimdall, and Frigga. Odin condemns Thor, who responds by telling him, “You are an old man and a fool!”

Odin casts him out, and the view suddenly flies through a galaxy of stars, finally landing on a shot of Hemsworth crumpled on the ground.

After Darcy and Jane Foster discover him, Thor opens his eyes and tells them, “Oh no, this is Earth, isn’t it?”

We get a few shots of Thor acclimating to Earth and talking with Foster, telling her all her questions will be answered when he finds what he’s looking for on Earth.

Cue: Thor ripping a sheet of plastic off a wall, revealing his hammer. When he tries to lift his hammer, he’s unable to do so — and he falls to the ground, screaming.

We then see Odin dying — a single tear falls down his cheek — and Loki ascending to the throne.

Various battle scenes unfold as Thor and The Warriors Three battle some unknown foe. It all culminates with a shot of Thor throwing a goblet into the fire as everything fades to black. A few seconds later, Agent Coulson is back on the screen, approaching some unseen object in the desert. As the dust clears, it’s revealed to be DESTROYER!

“Is it one of Stark’s?” an agent asks Coulson.

“I don’t know,” he responds. “That guy never tells me anything.”

Destroyer then open fires on the agents’ vehicles with a massive blast of energy from his facemask, and the screen fades to the “Thor” title — with rain dripping on the letters as they fade toward the camera.

The “Thor” Q&A session then begins:

Branagh told one fan, “We have some Donald Blake surprises in this movie,” and “there will be some touches that we think will be pleasing” regarding shout-outs to comic fans.

7:21
Asked about future films in Marvel movie-verse, Natalie Portman said, “I am not in ‘The Avengers’ but I am in the future ‘Thor’ films if and when they happen.”

A fan then approached the microphone and said he had just one thing to say to Feige: “Ed Norton!”

“He’s not here today,” said Feige. “We love consistency and we love continuity, but as he said in his very well-worded statement, Hulk is bigger than all of us.”

7:27
Feige then added a note that made many fans raise an eyebrow, telling a fan who asked about R-rated Marvel movies that “Frank Castle is under the roof of Marvel Studios now and we hope to bring him into the fray shortly.”

And with that, the “Thor” panel ended… but wait, there’s more!

AvengersAfter showing the “Thor” footage one more time, the film changed to a narration by Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, revealing an “Avengers” logo.

7:40
Jackson soon appears on stage to introduce Gregg, Hemsworth, and Evans back to the stage as well as a special guest: Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr.

Saying he initially thought Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” was an ambitious movie, he soon changed his mind. “Marvel Studios is going to take all their characters and put them into the same movie? That is most ambitious,” he yelled.

Downey then went on to introduce the new members of the “Avengers” lineup: Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and director Joss Whedon.

“I have had a dream all my life and it was not this good,” laughed Whedon. “This is the Avengers!”

The whole group then gathered on stage for the requisite photo op, closing one of Comic-Con’s most impressive panels of the year.

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As you all hopefully know by now, Defendor is being released in cinemas across Canada tonight! And then in LA on Monday, where our own Rachel won a pass for two to the premiere. It will be awesome to hear what she has to say about the film over the weekend. :)

Have a pre-film interview with Kat from the Province:

She grew up toddling on the rolling green lawns of Bryn Mawr, Penn. — home to the world’s best women’s’ college and Katharine Hepburn’s alma mater — but Kat Dennings says while she fell in love with the classics, it wasn’t exactly a literary thing.

“I love the old musicals like Top Hat and An American in Paris,” says Dennings, who registered as a bona fide blip on the ingenue radar in the wake of playing Norah opposite Michael Cera’s Nick of Infinite Playlist fame.

“I didn’t want to be an actress from the very start. I went through a ballet stage first. Then I wanted to be a mermaid.”

Now starring in actor-turned director Peter Stebbings’s debut feature Defendor, Dennings says she has no problem taking on a variety of different roles, or even playing the crack-addicted sex trade worker (as she does in Defendor), as long as she maintains her personal and professional integrity along the way.

“I don’t really care if the choices I make are good or bad, but it’s important to me that they’re honest,” she says.

When it came to Defendor, Dennings says she was interested in taking on a low-budget project that seemed, in many ways, to be a labour of love for director Stebbings — as well as an ode to the steely-hearted city of Hamilton.

The story of a mentally challenged man who decides to clean up “the Hammer” by donning black clothing and taping a big “D” to his chest with duct tape, Defendor tells a familiar vigilante story with a human twist.

Stebbings says he was well aware of the archetypal source material he was working with, but wanted to strip it down to the basic mechanics of good and bad, and stick as close to the baseline as possible.

“I think people need to see how a lot of people in our society live. We turn a blind eye to all the invisible people out there, whether they are dealing with drug addiction or a disability,” says Stebbings.

“I spent a lot of time in Vancouver and I used to go to the First United Church at Hastings and Gore. I definitely saw how the other half lived,” he says.

Dennings wasn’t all that familiar with that other half, but in order to play the role of a teenage prostitute in this Canadian take on Taxi Driver, she did spend some time with a spokesperson for sex trade workers.

“I worked with a woman who was very familiar with this world and it was really helpful because this character [ironically named Kat] isn’t anything like me at all. She has nothing to hang on to,” says Dennings.

“I have a great family and supportive friends and I’ve been blessed in so many areas of my life. Kat, the character, has none of what I have. She’s got nothing to latch on to,” she says.

“I have to say, being in Hamilton for four or five weeks was also a huge help. That city certainly gets you in the right mood to smoke crack,” she says, her tone a perfect deadpan.

Starring opposite Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, who plays Arthur Poppington (a. k.a. Defendor), Dennings says she found all the support she needed on set because Harrelson is the kind of actor who commits completely.

“If Woody hadn’t been there, the movie would have fallen apart. You have to believe in Arthur, and I swear, every time we were in a scene together and I looked into his eyes, I believed. He really transformed into Arthur — without tricks or anything — and that kind of made the experience for me.”

Dennings says she has no overall design on her career. She’s going to take it one part at a time, and right now, that would mean playing Darcy in the forthcoming Thor movie directed by Kenneth Branagh.

“Ah. I don’t know. I want to keep growing. Hopefully, I can do more comedy. I really like it and I think growing up, my favourite two actresses were Bernadette Peters and Madeline Kahn. They were great actors who made funny look easy. And that’s probably the hardest thing there is to do,” says Dennings.

“If they ever remake The Jerk, I’m going to fight to be in it.”

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Defendor’s website is officially up and running, and it lists Defendor’s release date as February 26 in select theatres in LA, and February 19 in Canada, namely Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary. \o/ Rachel will go see it if she can locate the LA theatre, so maybe she’ll write a review for you guys if she’s successful. <3

Official Website.
Facebook.
Twitter.

Stills.
On Set.

In the past few days, reports have been coming in that Kat has been cast in “Daydream Nation”, starring opposite Josh Lucas. Variety writes;

Kat Dennings has been cast in the independent romancer “Daydream Nation” opposite Josh Lucas.

“Daydream,” directed by Michael Golbach from his own script, begins shooting in Vancouver on Saturday. Project’s produced by Lila 9th, Screen Siren and The Film Farm.

Story centers on a disaffected high school senior who finds herself deposited along with her widowed father in a desolate Canadian hamlet where boredom leads her into an affair with a teacher and into a more promising romance with a druggie teen.

Dennings was recently cast in “Thor.” Her credits include “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and “The House Bunny.”

She’s repped by Management 360 and CAA.

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I’ll take a leap and assume she went to Vancouver for filming yesterday and that’s when Air Alaska lost her luggage.

In other news, “Thor” has an official release date. It grabbed the vacant Spiderman 4 spot of May 6, 2011, according to the Examiner.

Kyle XY star Jaimie Alexander has revealed that Thor cast members are to start rehearsals in a matter of days.

The news indicates that the Kenneth Branagh-directed film is on track to begin shooting in early January.

Posting on Twitter, Alexander, who will play Sif, said: “Excited to start rehearsals next week!”

Thor’s cast includes Chris Hemsworth in the title role, Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Kat Dennings (Darcy), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Idris Elba (Heimdall) and Stellan Skarsgård.

According to Production Weekly, Marvel has chosen to give the movie the shooting name of Manhattan.

Thor is due to be released on May 20, 2011.

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Kat Dennings (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) has joined the cast of “Thor,” the Marvel Studios production that begins production in January.

Dennings will play Darcy, who works with Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster character.

Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston have been cast, with Kenneth Branagh directing.”Thor,” scripted by Mark Protosevich, Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller, centers on a partly disabled med student who discovers his Norse god alter ego, the hammer-swinging Thor.

Paramount will release the film on May 20, 2011.

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Natalie Portman has a lot to look forward to in Kenneth Branaugh’s “Thor” film, which she’s scheduled to begin production on soon as Jane Foster. Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba and Chris Hemsworth are all confirmed to be starring at her side, but Portman dropped a potential casting bombshell this weekend while promoting her new film “Brothers.” “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” star Kat Dennings may have a role in “Thor” as well

“Well I’m really excited,” Portman told MTV News. “Kat Dennings is going to be in it with me and she’s a good friend and an amazing actress, so I’m looking forward to that.”

The “Thor” cast is already full of big names, and most of the obvious characters from the comics have already been cast, but Kat Dennings’ arrival would still be huge news — though it raises a sizable question mark over who she might be playing.

Portman seemed enthusiastic about her own part and the world of Asgard that Branagh will be adapting to film.

“Well, I was really excited when they told me Kenneth Branagh is directing it because it seemed like such a smart choice but such an unexpected choice, that it was like ‘This is really weird. I have to try this,’” Portman said.

Arriving in the Marvel Universe’s rendition of Norse mythology has required a lot of education, but she’s currently hard at work figuring out how it’s put together. “Yeah I’ve been learning more about it now,” she explained. “I was really unschooled about the world of Thor before.”

Dennings previously said that she’d like a shot at Tim Seeley’s “Hack/Slash,” but she made no mention of “Thor.” There aren’t many big female parts left in Asgard, but Dennings definitely has the moxie to pick up the part of Enchantress if she happens to be in the script. That’s just a hunch, mind you, but the floodgates of speculation are now unofficially open.

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When Disney downsized the bulk of Miramax’s employees and announced that the company would be reducing its output to only three or so films a year, it was assumed that the next product slated to go into production — the Richard Linklater romantic comedy Liars (A to E) — would be safe from the scythe. After all, Linklater finished casting leads Rebecca Hall and Kat Dennings two months ago, and the story (which found Hall and Dennings visiting Hall’s exes on a road trip to retrieve lost items) offered plenty more juicy roles for actors.

Alas, when I talked to Linklater today, the greenlit project had suddenly run into a red light. “It’s no longer happening, unfortunately,” Linklater confirmed. “It didn’t really work out. It’s tough.”

As a result, Linklater has found himself unexpectedly unemployed. “I don’t think I have anything coming up!” he said. “Everybody asks me about School of Rock 2, and that’s not really happening. It’s not on the front burner. Mike White was writing on it a long time ago, but it’s become dormant.”

The School of Rock sequel had been buzzed about online as of late (White’s Gentlemen Broncos press tour probably contributed to that), but Linklater said the spike of interest doesn’t correlate with its likeliness to happen. “I’m surprised to hear all this. I saw Jack [Black] the other night, and we talk about it. We’re not gonna do it just to do it. Let’s just say it’s still kind of on the backburner and it’s no one’s next project.” ♦

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Sucks. :/ Hopefully she’ll be cast in something else soon!