Come anticipate "The Dark Knight Rises" with *BATSPOILERS*

nnnnno man. what? she was one of the best things about it.

devito's the weak link, it pains me to say

yup

Maybe not as much weak as on a different plane of ridiculousness than the others.

devito's not bad, he's just sort of off in his own, noisier and more obnoxious movie the entire time. the bruce-selina-shreck stuff is so good, but the movie has no confidence in it.

JGL is great in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lookout

lol forgot looper wasn't the first time JGL was mentored by Jeff Daniels

When Bane was reading Gordon's OMG SHOCKING note about Harvey Dent i was like "So everyone instantly turns on the police cos this guy who is obviously a psychopath reads a letter that in no way could have been forged or completely made up and yes we will all trust this masked man who blew up our football stadium instead of the police who have kept crime at an all-time low"

But then i realized, this is just totally something that would happen in a comic book. Like a man wearing a bat costume.

yeah it's not really "too ridiculous to enjoy" so much as less enjoyable than it should be considering how fucking ridiculous it is

yeah i honestly think the most vehement critiques of this movie rely on pretend that the movie isn't essentially comic booky or that Nolan thinks it isn't (xp)

But then i realized, this is just totally something that would happen in a comic book.

a bad one

You do believe in Bane reading the letter because you just think he couldn't have made it up.

He doesn't need to: he could've said the Dent act violated human rights and released them.

I couldn't watch the Keaton films - then again I really hate fun.

Totally agree on Catwoman gratuitously riding around on Bat bike.

i don't remember if there's any real depiction of the city 'turning' on the cops after he reads the letter -- doesn't he immediately start blowing shit up and just holding the city hostage immediately afterwards?

it just seemed like something he was doing to add insult to injury, mess with everyone's head or lower morale even as he already had everything in control

The cops were all stuck in the tunnels.

But there would be no reason to turn onto them. It was the the lawmakers (the establishment) who pushed through the Dent act.

And yes, the ultimate goal was to crush the people's spirits before physically destroying the city. The turn on the establishment is a made up story.

like i said above i just found all the harvey dent stuff way unnecessary and incredibly belaboured

Well after he says the Dent act is a lie he frees all the prisoners. Yeah wouldn't people want the cops to protect them from these newly freed prisoners? Maybe the prisoners just took control of everything. At any rate the point of it all is the epic scene of Batman and Bane fighting in the midst of a thousand cops and criminals kicking the shit out of each other.

dent's thematic importance to the whole trilogy definitely exists largely in nolan's head

ya srsly who in the world gives a shit

still find it wicked awkward that they avoided even a passing reference to the joker

"The Dark Knight Trilogy"

i would say the best parts of this trilogy are the first half of 1 and the joker stuff in 2

and the bane plane scene

smoosh those together, you got a good movie.

for sure

The Dark Knight Begins

Yeah, one would think the people weren't buying it for a second but what could they really do?

Watching DK and DKR back-to-back the Dent stuff seems totally necessary and something they had to deal with in some way -- they didn't do it cleanly but the attempt didn't bury the film and leads to those finals scenes in the snowy morning light. Really amazing that they thought to set a scene during the day in a film series that takes place in the dark for such obvious reasons. Nolan took the risk and totally pulled it off.

xps

But then i realized, this is just totally something that would happen in a comic book. Like a man wearing a bat costume.

problem is nolan's batman movies all take place in this awkward middle ground between comic book lightness and gritty realism, i get the feeling he resents the comic book tropes and sees them as obstacles blocking him from his 'true vision'

Watching DK and DKR back-to-back the Dent stuff seems totally necessary and something they had to deal with in some way -- they didn't do it cleanly but the attempt didn't bury the film and leads to those finals scenes in the snowy morning light. Really amazing that they thought to set a scene during the day in a film series that takes place in the dark for such obvious reasons. Nolan took the risk and totally pulled it off.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, December 9, 2012 3:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

must have slipped my mind that today is OPPOSITE DAY

There is not a single scene in The Dark Knight that establishes that anyone other than a few cops and Batman gives a fuck about Harvey Dent

He was elected.

Also don't agree with the need for a mention of the Joker. He failed to corrupt/destroy the people of Gotham but destroyed Dent; that's his legacy, which is addressed. So they are clearly closing off that strand from DK but also following on from the League of Shadows in Batman Begins, which the Joker was not a member of.

Finally saw. Uneven at best. Anne Hathaway as the best Catwoman ever and JGL's strongest performance since Mysterious Skin are by far the best things about it.

hathaway's the 4th best catwoman ever, at the most

i'm ok with that ranking as long as Barney Pfeiff isn't in the top 3

she's #1.

pfeiff dawg was a good one but barney pfeiff is pretty morbsian

seriously want to read an Armond White review praising Premium Rush in comparison to Easy Rider, which was never more than an incoherent work of a drug-addled era, whose sloppiness and indolence paved the way for self-indulgent "art" cinema by know-nothings for decades to come, etc.

i'm just joshin' with The Pied Pfeiffer, we're old friends

so you want to read an otm Armond White review xp

that's too obvious. no, armond needs to negatively compare Premium Rush to the underrated Jason Patric vehicle Rush

heard my little sister mutter "I phail u" under her breath in a really stupid voice, and it took me a second to understand what she was referencing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqJVfhnhN48

Ha! I've started doing a stupid Bane voice to annoy my brother. Its working so I'm carrying on for a while.

I'm older.

Tying into the dynamic where Christopher Nolan loves James Bond and now the two franchises' are mirroring one another: the Southern redneck cop that is in on the police chase for Batman in this movie, he seems to recall the redneck cop that's boat-chasing after Bond in "Live and Let Die." I'm sure it's a reference to that character, or at least that's what I thought seeing it in theaters.

And I'm pretty sure he's in the 3rd Batman but he might be in the 2nd,, too or only in the 2nd

i would bet there's a big overlap between people who got way too excited about TDKR and people who consider MBDTF the best record of the past decade, and not just because they were both immensely popular.

― NASCAR, surfing, raising chickens, owning land (zachlyon), Monday, July 23, 2012 11:46 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

i still have no idea what this post means. is the group of people who like that album substantially different from the group of people who like the other kanye west records? didn't ilm like it a lot?

i don't even remember what i was talking about then but uh, i wasn't talking about people who just liked it a lot i was talking about people who consider it a timeless classic along the lines of [any other classic album the writers of rolling stone wouldn't argue with]. people who are obsessed with the canon of the monoculture, people who want to feel like they're witnessing the release of Pet Sounds or The Godfather as it happens and get really excited when pitchfork breaks their 10.0 rule for it. with some sociopathic behavior they might become the type of people who send death threats to critics that lower an anticipated movie's RT score. some people just find extreme levels of pleasure not only in watching/listening to critically-hyped-up mainstream/middlebrow things but in feeling like they're a part of the culture that hoists them up. it's like internet fandom but instead of my little pony or dr. who it's about whatever an appropriate amount of critics approve of.

when i type this i'm thinking of a few select people on my facebook wall, maybe it's not as common as i think.

No, you're on to something with that criticism. I remember a few years ago someone I knew wrote a blot post lamenting that the younger generation, our generation, lacked a "Beatles" or entertainmeners that spoke for "us" and to "us."

The Beatles were that rare example of the most popular of something also clearly being the best, and for everyone to all agree with that assessment. And so there are people that are after that moment of clarity and triumph in entertainment. It's not enough that Dark Knight or Kanye West make millions of dollars: it has to be a part of a generation's personal brand and unite us all or something.

We want our "Pet Sounds" and Godfather movies so some day we can flog some other persons' grandchildren with "You missed out, born too late imo" nostalgia