I wasn’t a big fan of The Dark Knight Rises, without even getting into all of the discussion about the movie’s politics. Like Film Crit Hulk, I find it thematically confused, and I am one of those annoying types who can’t get past plot incoherence, even in action movies. I also thought it was way too long. But I understand that I’m in a small minority there and don’t want to be a snot about it.
The weird thing for me is that a lot of people have identified Tom Hardy’s Bane (and his voice) as the worst part of the film, whereas I found him by far the best part. I wasn’t as enamored of the Joker in the previous film as everybody else; I find the agent of chaos thing frustrating, as it seems to absolve the filmmakers of the responsibility to give him consistent motives. In contrast, I found Bane a more menacing and cool figure. (That was a little diminished at the end, following the reveal of a plot twist.) And I dug the voice, a lot. I find its weirdness, and especially that strange gentility to it, a lot more intimidating than if it had been a typically gravelly villain voice. It was familiar, though, and I couldn’t place it for awhile. But then it hit me.
He totally sounds like the Great Owl from Secret of NIMH. Compare, for example, about the 1:13 mark of the Batman clip (“With no survivors!”) and about the 1:45 mark of the NIMH clip (“Mrs. Jonathan Brisby?”). What say you?
Gin & Tonic
You’ve got an open tag somewhere. Things are very wide.
redshirt
I saw the movie at an IMAX theatre so of course it was overwhelming and awesome from a visceral perspective.
The plot was confusing – I felt at times that I’d missed something, even though I was paying attention. Maybe this feeling will disapate upon re-watch.
I sympathized with Bane quite a bit. Batman is by definition a product of the 1%. Bane crushing him like he crushed Wall Street was part of his OCCUPY vibe that I thought was potent. Smash the system, people!
Batman himself seemed like a secondary character in this film, which I found interesting.
Corner Stone
You must be a deeply unhappy person.
redshirt
Sadly, because I am a nerd, as soon as Bane had taken control of Gotham I was like “Send in Superman”.
Cuz seriously, if such a crisis did present itself, why wouldn’t Superman be there in the DC Universe?
And that’s why DC sucks.
Walker
Saw the new Total Recall last night at the drive in. To say that the movie had plot holes would be an insult to plot holes. Absolutely nothing made sense, particularly when they were trying to pay homage to the original (Why does a train that commuters take every day have a border crossing where people say how long they are staying? So we can have the “two weeks” scene).
Honestly, the movie is as if they took the original film, stripped it down to a bare, but recognizable skeleton, and played Mad Libs to fill in the rest.
Karmus
I thought the plot was overwrought, and also didn’t care for Bane’s voice much. I did enjoy the movie, but it wasn’t the awesomefest I found The Avengers to be. Good catch on the similarity between Bane and the owl. I liked the voice for the owl; it helped that you could see his beak move.
It won’t be a popular thing to say, I suppose, but I liked NIMH a lot more than DKR. It had a way better (or at least more compact and well-executed) plot.
Corner Stone
Why Gabby Douglas is America’s new sweetheart
Freddie deBoer
@Karmus:
NIMH is one of my favorite movies ever.
Sorry about the wideness, I’m a HTML noob.
Mnemosyne
I haven’t seen Batman yet (can’t get over Anne frickin’ Hathaway as Catwoman. Seriously?) but I let a group of co-workers talk me into seeing Ted. And I’m more than a little embarrassed to say that I actually liked it. It definitely crossed more than a few lines, but it avoided the pitfall of making Lori into a bitch and John’s character development felt really genuine.
Plus how can you hate any movie that loves Flash Gordon that much?
MattR
Flight to Barbados leaves in 9 hours and I think I am finally packed. We’ll find out tomorrow what obvious item I forgot. It is very early and I am knocking on wood as I type this, but it looks like Tropical Storm Florence will track north.
PS. I think the missing tag is somewhere in the post itself, porbably related to the embedding of the video
Walker
@Karmus:
That is heresy. Not heresy against DKR. Heresy against Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. That movie added all this mysticism that was antithetical to the spirit of the book.
My generation has a love-hate relationship with that movie.
Corner Stone
@MattR:
I could guess but that would take all the fun out of that moment when you board and it hits you.
Todd
@MattR:
Make sure you hit Kokomos, also, the Fish Pot in Speightstown.
Karmus
@Walker:
Which, I’m sorry to say, I’ve never read.
I’m going to have to fix that.
Sal
Bane sounded like Sean Connery to me, or a Connery imitation. The original voice for Bane tested very poorly, so was redubbed in production.
PanurgeATL
There are points in there where Bane sounds a bit like J.R.R. Tolkien. (And I don’t mean the unintelligible parts.)
One thing about the NIMH clip–the music is so much better. ISTR a study of some sort way back around 1990 that determined that oh well, people don’t really pay attention to the music anyway, and movie and TV music since then has largely been a matter of people just skating by with the minimum needed to suggest something, with not much in the way of thought, sensitivity or craft. (It sure does sound good, though.) What they didn’t understand is that whether people are paying active attention to the music or whether they remember all of it immediately afterward isn’t all that matters. I’d like to see what would happen if you put some of this music on those programs of music from today’s movies that orchestras have been putting together in order to bring in a few quick bucks.
MattR
@Corner Stone: I think it’s 50-50 whether the missing item is one that never crossed my mind or one that I thought about and was sure I packed.
@Todd: Thanks. I will check them out. If I make it off the beach.
Hill Dweller
Not really important in the grand scheme of things, but why did they give the Chinese swimmer, Yang Sun, a do-over after his false start?
It was a 1500m race, making a quick start insignificant, and he was the only swimmer to false start, but he wasn’t penalized. The rules say he should have been disqualified.
redshirt
Oh yeah, to weigh in on the most important nerd topic of the Summer: Avengers v. TDKR. My vote is completely for Avengers. A great, light, escapist awesome comic book movie. TDKR takes itself too seriously by this point.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
At first, I thought it was Sean Connery’s voice.
Karmus
This, absolutely.
And Freddie, yeah, NIMH is one of my favorites as well.
Mnemosyne
@Walker:
I won’t see the movie because the book is one of my all-time favorites. And, yes, there’s no mysticism in the book — it’s all about education and learning.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
The original post is messed up, not your comment.
Corner Stone
@Hill Dweller: Probably because he did not false start.
Mike in NC
Every Batman movie ever made has sucked.
YellowJournalism
@Mnemosyne: That’s funny because I thought Anne Hathaway was one of the best parts. I liked the movie overall, but I do agree that parts of it couldn’t decide if it was decrying the 1 percent or denouncing extremism and justice at all costs. Loved the last shots, though.
I just got back from Total Recall and found it less than satisfying. It had no sense of fun or life to it like te original did (And the original is full of plotholes, too.) I admire that they were going back to the original source material, but it seems like they didn’t bring with it a sense of excitement or wonder t the world and situation that was created.
I think it was because I didn’t give a shot about anyone, whereas in Batman there was emotional investment in a few characters. Also, Jessica Biel is a nice person ad can be quite charming in interviews, but as an actress there is nothing there; they could have used cardboard cutouts an achieved the same result with her character.
ArchTeryx
Well, remember that the original NIMH book was more or less science fantasy, back well before the genre was widely known. The movie was straight up Swords and Sorcery. Once you started to fit the characters into S&S archetypes it made sense. Brisby was a local peasant who got in way over her head. Her husband was a Freeman. Dragon was like any one of a number of fantasy beasts – a local hazard. The Great Owl was for all intents and purposes a classic Great Wyrm – ancient dragon full of millenia of knowledge, but also apt to eat anyone that annoyed him. Nicodemus was a powerful technomage (and like many powerful mages, allied with the neutral Great Wyrm). And so on.
Bane’s a different animal altogether, but the voices sure as heck sound similar…though in a way, it’s also a bit of an insult to John Carradine, who was best known as a Shakespearean actor, and put his all into his Great Wyrm character.
Trivia: I actually got to work next to the building on the NIH campus that part of the NIMH story was set at: Building 10, the largest research hospital in the country, sprawling at over a city block square. To a mouse or a rat, it’d be like trying to escape from an indoor acropolis.
Hill Dweller
@Corner Stone: What would you call it?
Uriel
@Mnemosyne:
Seriously.
I was skeptical to, but she does a really good job.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Ann Hathaway is a fine cat woman. Why people think Bane means what he says is beyond me. He’s using poor orphans to plant bombs In the sewers. The pep talks he gives to sew confusion aren’t his politics. He’s a grifter who puts scarecrow in charge of the courts. I don’t think he’s doing more than manipulating folks to control the city.
What bugged me about the movie is that it so clearly moved to new York when the earlier films were clearly Chicago (save those ridiculous Commuter ferries). But since it’s hard to hold chicago hostage, new York it is. But since the Avengers and Spiderman already were out this summer, I’m kind of tired of the island city in peril plot again. I thought the 1990s films did a better job of designing the cityscapes so that Gotham was generic ominous big city.
Hypatia's Momma
One of my brother’s ‘liked’ this malicious lie on Facebook. We will be having words.
I used to think that the horror which is decomposing biological matter floating in a bucket of contaminated preserving fluid was the worst possible smell in the history of anything (ask me about cadaver care!). It turns out that’s incorrect.
MikeJ
@efgoldman:
The original was a short story that was nothing like the dog’s breakfast of a movie that was made of it. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the first movie. It’s just that nobody has ever made a movie of a Phil Dick Book that got remotely close to the original, even if you admit that Blade Runner was awesome, in at least 2 of the 73 releases.
Ok. A Scanner Darkly is the closest. But I think it was me and half the capacity of the small theatre at the googleplex that saw it.
Karmus
I must add to the chorus: thumbs up on Catwoman Hathaway.
redshirt
Robin was pretty good too. :)
Corner Stone
@Karmus:
Anne Hathaway cleared a huge hurdle for me when she was in Get Smart. Just blew me away at how good she was, even in a comedy. Really sexy, alluring, other adjectives that I had not seen from her, or in her, before.
Haven’t seen DKR but I can see her pulling it off.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, seriously. She is quite good. I still remember the movie dopes who dismissed her because of fluff like “The Princess Diaries” who we’re totally unaware of the plaudits she had received for her New York stage work.
On the other hand, “Ted” has surprised a lot of people and has been an unexpected box office hit. I still haven’t seen it and guess I should drag myself to the multiplex before it is displaced by the late summer films.
An odd comparison which says nothing remotely interesting about either film.
Corner Stone
@Hill Dweller: Not a false start since it clearly wasn’t.
Corner Stone
Texas A&M is going to get absolutely pile drived (driven?) in the SEC West this season.
Feel bad for those guys.
Corner Stone
Can someone please fix this damn format.
mainmati
Haven’t seen either movie but both voices reminded me of a slurry Sean Connery, frankly.
Uriel
@redshirt:
Superman is dealing with his own god-damned thing with his own god-damned bad guy in his own god-damned city!
Look it’s not hard: Gotham has upward of two dozen super heroes per square mile. Metroplis has one Superman, and his beat covers the whole city of Metroplis.
If he can’t occasionally count on the veritable army of highly trained, masked gothamites to take care of shit in there little corner of the world, how the hell is he supposed to balance defeating Lex Luthor with also filling the column inches at the Daily Planet? Let alone giving his relationship with Lois the attention it deserves?
Christ! Is it that much to ask that the god-damned I-can-do-anything-with-time-for-preperation Batman could, maybe, just maybe, prepare to take care of his own shit without having to give ol’ Clark Kent a call every five minutes?
Sheesh!
Corner Stone
I don’t care what Cole or mistermix says, NBC is fucking the proverbial pooch on this Olympics coverage. I’m tired of fighting their frackin iPad app to get a result I would actually enjoy.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Agree about Anne Hathaway in Get Smart, and I have to add that that movie was a very pleasant surprise in general: really funny, and smart as well. I even liked Steve Carell, about whom I am generally ambivalent, at best.
jwb
@Hill Dweller: The announcer told the swimmers to come out of their set. Yang Sun went off when he heard the announcer, which he mistook for the gun. It was not a false start because the announcement took them out of the set position, At least that’s my understanding.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Because Superman is a dick.
ETA: One of my favorite examples.
NotMax
Have seen neither movie as well, but Tom Hardy was 5 years old when the NIMH flick came out.
Great Owl was voiced by John Carradine.
h/t imdb.com
Hill Dweller
@Corner Stone: Again, what would you call it?
It was a 1500m race, rendering the start less consequential than any other race. All they have to do is dive into the pool after the “gun”. No one else dove in the pool.
Amir Khalid
@Karmus:
I found The Avengers and Nolan’s Batman trilogy so different in intent and approach that I couldn’t make any such comparison myself. For what it’s worth, I do agree that the former is more lighthearted stuff. The heroes are decently well fleshed out as characters, and the action is entertaining enough; but unlike the Nolan Batmans The Avengers never really examines superheroism itself, whether it pays off for the hero or for his society. The first two Raimi/Maguire Spidermans and the new one with Garfield also do that, which is why I’d also favor them over The Avengers.
Hill Dweller
@jwb: I watched the live stream on NBC’s site, which had Aussie announcers, and they made it sound like they were doing Sun a favor by not disqualifying him.
It just seems bizarre that the guy was that anxious in a 1500m race. The start is almost irrelevant at that distance.
jwb
@Hill Dweller: It was an ambiguous case, but there was clearly a click or some such noise when the announcer came on to tell the swimmers to come out of their set. Since the announcement was to tell the swimmers to come out of the set, I presume that gave the officials discretion. And really would you want to disqualify someone in the finals if you didn’t have to?
redshirt
@Uriel: LOL. And also: Heh!
So, as I surmised: Superman is a dick.
piratedan
aye…..to Anne, she does a fine job. Wasn’t looking to hold the film to the high standard of the graphic novel, that’s a job for the fanboys… despite the dubiousness of Freddie’s comparison, was nice to have a shout out to NIMH, which has become something of a lost treasure in the middle of a lot of muck for the family film genre at the time.
Dave
Film crit hulk’s reading is dumb. S/he did not get that dark knight rises is all about narrative ejecta. If you had plot problems, it’s probably because Tdkr is constantly throwing its developments away.
Corner Stone
@Hill Dweller: Since he set a WR I think it’s a little loose to call the start “less consequential”.
I don’t call it anything because it wasn’t classified as anything. How in the world you think it was a false start, since none of the olympic crew or announcers called it that according to the rules, seems a little puzzling to me.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Agreed. NBC simply has no clue about how to deal with the InterTubes, and make money by expanding content and coverage.
Just stupid. Does NBC have the rights to the upcoming Winter Games? Maybe they will get a clue by then.
Hill Dweller
@jwb: The Aussie announcing duo that I referenced earlier were split on the decision. The woman thought it was the right thing to do(referencing the agony of someone disqualified for a similar offense years ago), but the man seemed more skeptical.
I suppose doing a restart prevented a lot of controversy.
Do you know why the announcer told them to get out of their starting positions?
Corner Stone
I just absolutely love women’s pole vault.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: A) She’s a Scorpio. That makes her automatically cool.
B) She’s done quite a bit of interesting work, though her turn in Brokeback Mountain was fantastic. Plus she voiced a Ghibli movie. Any voice actor will tell you that can be a real challenge.
Hill Dweller
@Corner Stone: Would you consider the start more consequential in a 1500m race or a 50m race?
It’s like the difference in Track & Field between the 100m dash, where getting out of the blocks is paramount, and the 1500m race, where the start isn’t nearly as important.
Moreover, Sun was the biggest favorite in any swimming event, man or woman, at this Olympics. He has no peer at 1500m. Sun could have been dead last after the first 50m and it wouldn’t have mattered.
The whole thing was bizarre. The only worry at that distance is a safe start. But the slightest sound set Sun off.
Corner Stone
If I could somehow find a way to attach myself to Tamron Hall I would seriously consider going for it.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Yutsy! I found your perfect birthday cake on Cake Wrecks.
To be clear, it’s not actually one of the Wrecks — it’s one of the Sweet Sundays genuinely awesome cakes that they feature.
Corner Stone
@Hill Dweller: This is fruitless as it was not called a false start by anyone that mattered.
And some times I’m reminded of the Seinfeld stand up comedy bit where he’s talking about the Olympics.
He sticks his face forward and says, “Greatest guy in the world.” pulls it back maybe a half inch and says, “Loser nobody’s ever heard of.”
Ask Mariel Zagunis about having no peer.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: If it’s chocolate I’m in! I’d love a Doctor Whooves cake, especially with the Tom Baker scarf!
Hill Dweller
@Corner Stone: As I said earlier, the Aussie announcers on NBC’s livestream referenced someone in the recent past being disqualified for a similar incident. I used the term ‘false start’ because that’s the only term I knew to describe it, but what Sun did was/is(?) a disqualifying offense.
Apparently they used the feedback from the speaker system to excuse Sun diving in, which certainly avoided any controversy. Although the rest of the field having no problems makes Sun’s reaction even more bizarre.
True, being the favorite means nothing, but Sun wasn’t going to lose because he didn’t have a good start. Hell, he wasn’t going to lose because he had a bad first 50m. Over that distance mistakes aren’t as amplified.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: Is a Dr Who cake bigger on the inside? I don’t know what ponies add to it.
Thought of another place for drinks. Roof of the Red Lion hotel, 5th & Union.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I’m flexible. I could even pop in after work if we schedule late enough. That parking garage is a fucking disaster though. BG just needs to get us a firm date.
EDIT: I’d take a Dalek cake over a TARDIS!
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
I’m sure that would be super-easy for a decent bakery to do. Just don’t go to the one the RNC used for their Obama cake. Their inability to CENTER THE FRIGGIN’ ARTWORK, combined with the crappy piping, was what sent me off to Cake Wrecks.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Lotsa decent bake shops around these parts. Something like that would DEFINITELY not be a Wal-Mart cake!
pseudonymous in nc
@Brachiator:
Yes, they do. No, they won’t, because people who want to watch the Olympics are not NBC’s customers; NBC’s customers are people who want to buy commercial time, and those customers will pay more for commercial time if people who want to watch the Olympics are funnelled towards tape-delayed, strung-out primetime packages.
VPNs will be even easier to use by then.
Yutsano
@pseudonymous in nc: Not to mention the number of Russian oligarchs who will want their share of that sweet sweet NBC/Olympics cash. The amount of graft and corruption that will happen to pull off Sochi will be nothing short of epic.
MikeJ
I would have sworn yesterday that I was stupid enough to hike on Mt. Rainier on the hottest day of the year. Only went up to ~5600′, but that was plenty, starting from ~2500′.
And then today struck. Ugh. Hotter than the hottest day. And even hotter tomorrow? No thank you. Somebody please stop it.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: It breaks by Monday.
Geoduck
Compared to the rest of the country, we’re getting off very easy. I’m not complaining.
MikeJ
@Geoduck: The rest of the country has aircon. Yes, the weather sucked when I lived in DC, but that was what I passed through between the house and the car.
And ch 5 has it hotter tomorrow than twc does, 92.
Origuy
We haven’t had a beer thread in quite a while, so I’d just like to put in a word for Lagunitas Brewing Company’s A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale. Beer Advocate gives it a 93, I say yummy.
+2
SatanicPanic
@redshirt: Avengers! I am not a fan of Batman, except the first two Tim Burton movies. Otherwise, I find him depressing. Avengers rocked. I was expecting to be disappointed, and I was not. Loved that movie. +3
WereBear
@SatanicPanic: The point of Batman IS the depression.
Look at his backstory. Look at his sidekick; another orphan. Look at the caliber of villains, all of whom seem to have histrionic personality disorder.
He’s the Dark Knight. Of the soul.
Randy P
@Walker: I’ve been wondering if the new movie was an attempt to get closer to the original Philip Dick story, “We can Remember it for you Wholesale”. I’m going to guess based on your comment that the answer is probably “no”.
@Mnemosyne: My wife and I laughed all through the trailer and we’re tempted to see it, but we were afraid that we might have seen all the jokes in the trailer and the real movie is just 2 hours of “ha ha, isn’t it funny when a teddy bear swears and farts”. Now you’ve got me tempted again.
Concerned Citizen
http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/2679/large/LindseyGraham.jpg?1344006371
This guy needs a throat punch.
Tyro
The weird thing for me is that a lot of people have identified Tom Hardy’s Bane (and his voice) as the worst part of the film, whereas I found him by far the best part
Agreed. I think Bane will be remembered as one of the great movie villains of film.
I, too, don’t think TDKR or TDK were anything other than “pretty good” movies. They both suffer the same narrative incoherence. You can tell there’s an IDEA there, and the characters keep telling us about it, but it’s never shown. TDK is about the contrast between Batman vs. Harvey Dent, even though Dent is relatively undeveloped. TDKR is about the contrast in perspective of Gotham of Batman vs. Bane. Both agree that the citizens of Gotham are horrible, awful people. Bane thinks this means that they deserve to be destroyed. Batman wants to save them despite themselves and then finally get away from them for good.
Todd
@Mnemosyne:
Superdickery is one of the finest sites on the Internet. Seduction of the innocent (all the gay imagery and dialogue between über wealthy, disinterested in women, middle aged bachelor Bruce Wayne and his teenaged “ward” Dick Grayson) is priceless. And let’s not forget all the “needs a safe word” lesbian BDSM imagery from Wonder Woman. “Sufferin’ Sappho” indeed.
Shawn in ShowMe
Wow, superhero movies have really come a long way. Back in my my day, hrummph, hrummph, we’d just reenact our favorite General Zod scenes from Superman II until our parents ran screaming out of the room. We didn’t burden ourselves with these “idea” concepts you speak of. Ideas, blah!! These characters were our friends.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Tyro:
I would have agreed with you until the plot twist at the end. I can’t think of any way to handle that without sucking most of the menace out of Bane.
Mark S.
TDKR has tons of plot holes, but my favorite one comes towards the end so SPOILER
The cops who’ve been trapped in the sewers for FIVE FUCKING MONTHS! They get freed and they’re all ready to jump back into action?! Nobody has rickets, or PTSD? Their clothes aren’t rags?
And in the big street battle, everybody has guns but I guess they all holster them to go punch each other in the face. That’s not how armed battles usually work.
Anton Sirius
@YellowJournalism:
The original source material is a Philip K Dick short story that’s about four pages long…
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Corner Stone: Well, if you ask Zagunis, she’ll tell you she has no peer. Any time she ever lost, it ha nothing to do with her opponent beating her.
I watched her bouts in the semis and medal rounds. Looked to me like Kim made a tactical shift after the first break, it confused Zagunis, and she never recovered. Zagunis gave no props to Kim (“I handed it to her”). In her match with Kharlan, she stormed off the piste without shaking hands with anyone. Great sportsmanship there.
“I handed it to her” Kim beat both the current women’s sabre World Champion and the current women’s sabre Silver medalist (and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist) in back-to-back matches to win the gold medal. Kim deserved more than “I handed it to her” from Zagunis, and Zagunis should have exhibited at least enough grace to shake hands with the judge and her competitor after losing the bronze medal.
Yep, Zagunis is peerless. Just ask her.
Brachiator
@pseudonymous in nc:
Increasingly, people want to watch stuff anywhere, everywhere, and any time, and have devices that let them do it efficiently. NBC would be foolish not to tap this new market.
But then again, they may be too stupid to learn. But it is frustrating to observe how antiquated the coverage is, and how much time they spend suppressing coverage and information about the games. A coworker and I are doubly pissed because we both attended the 1984 games and maybe have a little sense of how much there is for a spectator, and how I’ll served viewers really are by NBC’s craptastic coverage.
cckids
@Mark S.:
Seriously. I mean, they don’t even have facial stubble. Was Bane truly shipping razors down along with the food & water? One of those little details that bug me.
John N
Just wanted to chime in to say that I thought that Ted was a REALLY bad movie.
JoyousMN
Just my 02…hus and I saw Batman yesterday and I was ready to leave about 10 min after the very good opening. It was incoherent and slow and as others have mentioned there were really stupid plot holes. And Bane sounded like a bad Sean Connery imitation. And I’m sick of Michael Caine.
oh well, YMMV.
Patricia Kayden
@efgoldman: What an awful story. Will the Righties run to his defense?