Dunno if anyone has noticed this, but Madonna thinks she is Black Canary.

2009 Ahoy!

Another reason to not kill myself.

At last, I made it on to the Comics Reporter. Of course, I'm not the dude in the foreground, but over to the right, with the brown t-shirt and jeans that don't quite fit, that's me! It's from when I watched Ben Towel's booth for him at Heroes Con. I looked at 700 pictures from that con to see if I made it into the background, and finally, there I am.

Lookit this!

In which I discover I like XKCD.

Yay!

Finally, some cool Batman stuff.

Batman is for the Children?

Consider yourself spoiler warned....






So the Dark Knight. Really good. Not the greatest movie ever made, maybe the greatest comic movie ever made, but not the greatest movie ever made. A couple things still resonate and stick in my craw:

Christian Bale, you sir are not Batman Stop with the gravelly voice, and that's your free acting lesson from someone that couldn't act like a turd if they tried.

Hey Dark Knight, try not to be 9 hours long, oh you're only 2 and a half? Yikes! That felt like 3 days of my life passed me by in that theatre.

Heath Ledger, you're a great actor, you will be missed, you did a smashing job, and they're going to give you the Oscar. However, you probably don't actually deserve it.

There's a scene in the movie that really bugs me, extra spoiler warnings are go from this point on. Ok, that scene where Batman has to choose between his lady love and Harvey Dent, and the Joker tells him where they are. Now, when I saw that Batman saved Harvey in the movie, I was thrilled, because it was dead on characterization of Batman. Batman loves no mortal woman, if he loves anything more than his wrinkled butlers penis and his young ward's brown eye, it's Gotham City. Batman can love no woman. Sorry Julie Madison, Jezebel Jet, Silver St Cloud, and whatever your character's name was Maggie Gylenhall. Batman doesn't dig chicks, he digs buildings. When I saw Batman rescue Harvey I was giddy, because they had him make the Batman choice. Then I realized, he didn't make the Batman choice. Joker lied to him, so he made the Hollywood choice after all. That scene was the turning point for me in liking the movie, and it turns out it was a sham, I liked the movie because I was too dumb to realize what was really happening. After I thought about it a bit though, I decided that structurally, Batman has to make the wrong choice there, because in his arc he's still learning what he has to sacrifice for Gotham, so I ended up letting them off the hook for that. I think. Ask me again tomorrow.

I still debate whether or not Batman is for the children. This movie says "no," the comic says "no," but there's a part of me that says "yes," and another part of me that says kids are tougher than you think they are, and another part of me that says, kids shouldn't be allowed to watch movies where a woman has a knife held up to her mouth and is threatened with it being sliced open. Then again, the very origin of Batman is the murder of his parents. I dunno, it's an interesting discussion. Maybe not a flaw, just a subject topic.

On to the good points...

It's a tight movie, it's long, but all the plot points weave in and out very well, and it's marvelously executed.

Bat-Cycle is very cool.

Gary Oldman you are Jim Gordon, and I thank you for that.

The action is very good, and has some really wow cool stuff. Not Speed Racer cool, like shit I'd never seen before, but very riveting stuff.

The movie is the least comic booky comic book movie, and I thank it for that. It takes itself seriously, as much as a movie about a Leather Daddy with pointy ears fighting a man with a half a face can be serious.

The characterization of the Joker is excellent. He's shrouded in mystery, no crappy linkage to the Batman origin, he's a complex genius, and of course ker-a-zay. Downside in though, I never felt like the Joker was doing the mayhem because he thought it was funny. It seems he does the things because he can, not because he's telling this great epic joke that only he understands the punch line too.

There's my review, and my thoughts, good movie, but not the best ever, maybe the best comic book movie, but not super hero (that's the Incredibles ya'll). Onward and upward, I personally can't wait to watch Wall-E and Speed Racer again.

The Fart Knight

I'm going to see the Dark Knight in a few hours, and I must admit my trepidation. Everyone is the world has declared this movie the greatest movie of all time. Somehow. I have strong doubts about this, mostly based on the fact that I really hate Batman Begins. However, I'm doing my best to go into this film ith an open mind. Every time I see the picture of Batman riding the Bat Cycle (you call it a bat pod, the rest of us know it's the bat cycle) I get pretty excited. Then I remember who is playing Batman.



Christian Bale. Blegh. His awful Batman voice still rings in my sensative ears. To his credit, I didn't know he was British until a couple months ago. My general disdain of Bale has kept me away from most of his movies. When I did find out he was British I blew a gasket. Batman is American. He is an American institution, and no limey douche should get to play him in the movie. I'm very cool with the fact that the wonderful Scotsman Grant Morrison gets to write the monthly adventures of Batman, but there's something wrong about a british actor playing one of our great tragic psychopaths of all time. I swear if Clive Owen plays Captain America...

The only way things can be set right is if they let an American play one of their iconic roles. I demand reparations. For their stealing of Batman we want James Bond. We're swapping homosexual for homosexual here. At least our fictional hero had the balls to come out of the closet and tell the world he prefers little boys in green shorts to sexy, sexy women. Poor James Bond is still hate porking women in the hopes that people won't discover that he prefers the
taste of seamen.



The rest of cast of Dark Knight is fine. I'm even ok with the Australian playing the Joker, mostly cause I don't really like the Joker that much, and it does chap my hide a bit that Gary Oldman is James Gordon, but I like Oldman so I'll let that slide too. They should have let Alfred be an American, in this BBC version of Batman I'm going to see tonight. The inspired casting award goes to Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face (actually getting Bill Dee Williams back would have been my first choice), so I'm sure he's gonna rock balls the whole movie. The movie would be a million times better if they had gotten Eckhart to play Batman though.

Ok Ok Ok, I'm trying to keep an open mind, I am worried I've already judged it a piece of ass, and no matter how good it is I won't let it succeed. Still, it's a Batman movie, so I'm pretty excited, but if it stinks or if it rocks I've still got Morrison on Batman until 2010, and a roomful of Batman comics that are gonna be better than the movie, no matter how awesome it is. In a couple of hours we'll find out if I've joined the mindless masses, or like Chuck Heston I'm the only bastard left with a brain.