Start Your Weekend Off Right With This Killer BATMAN Music Medley

I love me a good film score and superhero movies are often known for their iconic musical themes.  When I was a kid, there was nothing quite like the one-two punch of John Williams' Superman and Danny Elfman's Batman.  But I also respect the hell out of James Newton Howard's work on Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.  When Batman Begins first came out there were a lot of complaints that it was missing a memorable theme that you could hum to yourself while walking out of the theater, but Howard's score is kind of sneaky brilliant - you might be hard pressed to remember the tune off the top of your head, but it's instantly identifiable as soon as you hear it.  And then there's Neal Hefti's impossibly catchy theme song to the old Adam West Batman series, which finally hits Blu-ray this November!

Batman Evolution by The Piano Guys is great because it's not only a masterful performance of all three pieces of music, but the video itself is wonderfully staged.  Including each of the Batmobiles is a great move that can't help but bring a smile to your face.  I also love their construction of West's Batcave and the way they twitch with every "POW!"  Hearing the Elfman theme woven into the Hefti theme as it transitions over is inarguably cool and also that guy has a giant bat sticking out of the bottom of his cello!

Happy Friday.

Podcast Episode 30: ROGER RABBIT And Robin Wright At THE CONGRESS

The first 30-40 minutes of Ari Folman's The Congress is absolutely riveting.  Robin Wright plays a fictionalized version of herself, an actress who threw away her early stardom in order to take care of her young son.  Now, as the filmmaking process stands on the edge of a massive shift away from flesh and blood actors, Robin is offered one last contract by a studio who wants to digitally scan both her physical and emotional likeness in order to insert her into whatever film they see fit.  Folman and Wright clearly have a lot to say about the power of choice and the nature of control, and maybe it's just my love of Hollywood inside baseball but the whole thing is fascinating.

And then we jump 20 years in the future and becomes largely animated, and while the visual palate is both fun and stylish, the story goes somewhat off the rails here. I think it's mostly because the status quo of this new world is not very firmly established before the audience is dropped into a communal hallucination where it becomes difficult to distinguish reality from imagination. It's a visual feast to be sure and often quite funny, but it also borders on incoherent at times.  I was expecting to see Wright interacting with various incarnations of her artificially created self, but instead she gets embroiled in some kind of revolution before emerging into an apocalyptic nightmare in search of her son. 

Still, even in its weaker moments the film is always engaging, and in its stronger moments you cannot tear your eyes from the screen. You should watch this movie if only for the actual scanning scene where Harvey Keitel, as Robin's agent, delivers a heart-breaking monologue that will burn itself into your memory. 

And since we're dealing with blurred lines between humans and cartoons, we also talk briefly about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, although that conversation was ultimately cut short by my wife's insatiable desire to see college football. 

Jenna Gabriel joins us for all this plus a discussion of film vs digital projection, Tarantino's takeover of the New Beverly Cinema, the design of the newest Batmobile and the dubious merits of Space Jam. 

Next Week: In light of a possible fifth entry, we kick off a month-long rewatch of the Rambo series. 

Take A Gander At The Newest Batmobile

A series of low-res phone images hit the web a few days ago giving us our first decent look at Batfleck's new whip in Zack Snyder's upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.  That's what happens when you leave the thing parked and unattended on the streets of Detroit.  But Snyder's no dummy and figured, "Well if the cat's out of the bag, we might as well make the cat look like fucking alien warship."  Thus we get the official image above.

I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of this particular image.  Something about the perspective seems a little off, mostly because the wheelbase seems to be about a mile across.  Perhaps we'll learn that those shafts and pistons up front are there to separate the wheels from the chassis of the car, presumably to give those center machine guns a wider lateral target range.  Still, from the image above this thing looks an awful lot like Nolan's Tumbler.

The spy photos actually give a better view of the Batmobile in that it actually looks like a car.  I also dig the kind of gull-wing doors that open up and look like the points of the bat cowl.  That's exactly my kind of stupid and almost gives me hope that this thing might not be all gloom and doom.  Almost.

Behold The Batfleck!

By now I think we've all kind of vaguely grown somewhat almost comfortable with the idea of Ben Affleck taking over the cape and cowl as Batman in Zack Snyder's rapidly expanding cinematic take on the DC universe.  But the question remained as to what exactly that cape and cowl would look like.  Now we have our answer and it's...actually pretty damn great.

First off, I love that it's a black and white photo, even though that obscures some of the details and makes it difficult to discern precise color values.  Is the suit all black?  Is there some grey in there?  Hard to tell.  There does seem to be some distinction between the body of the suit and the gloves/cowl, but that could be more a matter of texture than color.  Personally I'd love to see a classic grey and black suit (I was never really a fan of the blue) but that might just be too much to hope for.  The cape appears to be more leather than fabric and I'm a big fan of the shorter points atop the cowl.

That textured look seems to largely fall in line with Henry Cavill's suit from Man Of Steel, as does the logo on the chest.  Just the other day I was mulling over the distinct differences between the Burton and Nolan bat symbols and thought, "I wonder which way Snyder will decide to go?"  Affleck is sporting the "fat bat" insignia best known from Frank Miller's excellent Dark Knight Returns.  That's hardly a surprise, considering that Snyder introduced the project at ComicCon by having Harry Lennix read a passage from Miller's novel, so I expect that version of the character will play a very significant influence on this latest incarnation, even if the story bears little to no resemblance.  But this new logo, which I totally love, is a smart and simple way to instantly differentiate Batfleck from all who've come before him.  I just hope it pops from the suit a little more than it does here.  My wife didn't even notice it the first time she looked at the picture.

And let's not overlook that Batmobile!  The giant wheels are a clear holdover from the Tumbler, but I'm very happy to see something that looks more like a car than a tank.  It's utilitarian AND sporty!  But will it shoot flames out the back?  Only time will tell.

This is how you introduce a character.  It's different enough from previous Batmen to feel exciting without doing something completely bonkers like the supposed mechanical exo-skeleton that George Miller wanted to feature in his ill-fated Justice League movie.  I have a sneaking suspicion that this Batman is going to be far less concerned with "real-world practicality" than he is with "having cool shit that looks awesome on screen."  But that's Zack Snyder for you.