Batman Begins: The Thread

- Bale was well cast but not genius
- Holmes is worthless, except for her stunt nipples
- Caine was great
- Neeson was great
- Freeman plays himself, or whatever it is that he does on every film he's in
- Oldman was nearly unrecognizable
- C. Murphy was genius cast
- Wilkinson wasn't great
- the script was fairly great with only a few "ham it up for the retards" lines
- beautifully shot and directed

sounds great. (OTM re: Morgan Freeman. so tired, so one-note. "let's get a token black guy in this movie" = his entire career)

DR. STRANGE appears to be back in turnaround, despite a draft by David (Blade/Batman Begins/Ghost Rider/The Flash) Goyer. This is not surprising In Teh Current Climate, given that the lead wears tights and a cape, sports meticulously groomed facial hair, is generally persnickety, and lives in Greenwich Village with his Asian houseboy.

Nonetheless, I see Jennifer Tilly as Clea the Magic Beard.

SILVER SURFER is rumored to be moving forward again. Probably start from scratch, though Andrew Kevin Walker may have done a draft back in the last millenium and Vin Diesel once expressed interest. Dude, Radd!

And of course, Nic Cage IS Johnny Blaze. Which is a bit of a disappointment, as Clifford Smith would have been the natural choice.

And Paramount just scuttled WATCHMEN.

Electric Company excepted, presumably

Clea the Magic Beard is my new children's band.

(I never saw Electric Company - I'm thinking more of the numerous token black guy/Uncle Tom roles he's played with what the Academy would probably call "a quiet dignity". Robin Hood, Unforgiven, Driving Miss Daisy, etc.)

they were minimal roles.

Is it just me, or is he actually very rarely recognizable? Like, I think the only time he was in a movie I realized it was him instantly was in Harry Potter.

I don't know. I like him. He's like Owen Wilson, or even Paul Newman. He's not got a huge range, really, or maybe just doesn't make very bold choices in terms of roles, but he's always interesting to watch. He's got PRESENCE.

I'd rather them play the token quiet black guy than the token black thug/sidekick, frankly. Even if they don't have much range.

Nic Cage is SOOO wrong as Johnny Blaze though.
http://aintitcool.com/images/johnnyblaze.jpg

(he did do a great voiceover as the posessed motorcycle in Heat Vision and Jack)

Tim Booth from James?

Keep in mind, Freeman went from being recognized mainly as Easy Reader on The Electric Company to playing a bunch of convicts, cops, and criminals, and getting his big break as the scariest pimp in screen history in 1987's Street Smart. Maybe he's played variations of a troubled, moral force ever since, but I never get sick of watching him in Johnny Handsome, Clean and Sober, Driving Miss Daisy (a bum rap in the making for a dude who once played Malcolm X), and Se7en. It's not necessarily his fault that Hollywood otherwise doesn't have enough imagination to cast him in anything but the roles of a loyal black friend or respected elder (Joe Clark, the president, God, etc.). Nurse Betty came close. Somebody should get him to play Professor Longhair.

Dude, Constantine was good! Better than Hellboy or any other supernaturally themed flick I've seen lately. I went to see Constantine expecting nothing of it, but to my surprise it never rang a false note. Also, it did something none of the recent superhero adaptations have done: it didn't rely on special effects. Who needs a CGI Satan when you can have Peter Stormare in make-up?

He's Lucius Fox, who, in the comics, is a fairly younger brilliant financier who covers Bruce's fop-acting ass in the boardroom many a time, whereas in the flick, he's a brilliant inventor of Bat-shit, which strikes me as more interesting for a film than for his character. I think he was even white in the old animated series, which may have been a nod to Billy Dee Williams in the first 2 films (Harvey Dent being the half-white half mutilated Two Face for decades).

So all of those shots of Hell in the promos were filmed on location???

Even though I recognize all the names, this sentence makes no sense to me.

very entertaining. bale actually pretty good as non-stiff batdude, i thought. a few problems though:

1) action scenes suffer from cutting too close & too fast, the bane of modern action cinema. not convinced nolan is an action director.

2) bad one-liners

3) somewhat anti-climactic (also common bain of modern action)

4) gary oldman looked perfect but his arc overlapped with katie holmes's too much ("one good man in a corrupt legal system"). glad they went the batman: year one way with him, at least a bit.

still... i liked it!

If he was in it, it must have been only for a minute because I don't remember seeing him. My whole review would have been about "Eww, Tim Booth, eww!"

I thought the same thing about the action scenes, s1ocki.

2) totally. especially the "i gotta get me one of those" lines.

the other two i'm ambivalent about.

i loved how they created bruce wayne the celeb.