batman | the m0vie blog

Check out Mondo’s Dark Knight Rises Poster…

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Darren

Mondo are great even if – as somebody who lives in Ireland – I’m relegated to simply posting screenshots of their distinctive alternate posters. They did a whole bunch of alternate posters for The Avengers, which were awesome. And they’ve done one for The Dark Knight Rises.

The artwork on this is by Jock, who is one of the most distinctive Batman artists working. If you want to see more of his work, you could do a lot worse than picking up The Black Mirror, which is also one of the finest Batman stories of the past few years. (If not, you know, ever.) Just sayin’ is all.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avengers, batman, Christopher Nolan, dark knight, Dark Knight Rises, imax, Ireland, Jock, Mondo, poster, posters, Warner Bros | 2 Comments »

A Look Back at Burton and Keaton’s Batman (and Bruce Wayne)…

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

With the release of The Dark Knight Rises just around the corner, it seems like Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman is getting a lot of attention and generating a lot of reflection. I have to admit, I think that the director’s take on the character presents the best live action interpretation ever, and probably the single best take on the character since Batman: The Animated Series during the nineties. However, I can’t help but feel that Tim Burton’s take on the character gets brushed aside a little too easily, dismissed from consideration far too quickly. In particular, I’m especially fond of Michael Keaton’s superb central performance as Bruce Wayne and Batman. While I wouldn’t necessarily rank his performance as better than Christian Bale or Kevin Conroy, I do think that Keaton’s Batman (and especially his Bruce Wayne) get unfairly overlooked.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: batman, bruce wayne, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight Rises, joker, Keaton, michael keaton, michelle pfeiffer, tim burton | 4 Comments »

Scott Snyder’s Run on Detective Comics – Batman: The Black Mirror (Review)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Darren

These past few years have been a great time to be a Batman fan. On top of Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy, you’ve also had the Arkham Asylum video games, Grant Morrison’s genre-busting run on Batman & Robin and now Scott Snyder joining the franchise. Indeed, even the lesser on-going series (like Tony Daniel’s Batman or Paul Dini’s Streets of Gotham) are still relatively entertaining, if significantly flawed. However, when good creators have gotten their hands on the Batman mythos in the past five years or so, incredible things have happened. And Scott Snyder’s Detective Comics run, The Black Mirror, is one of those incredible things.

Jump in…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Arkham, Barbara, Bat, batman, Batman: The Killing Joke, Black Mirror, bruce wayne, Dick, dick grayson, gotham, gotham central, gotham city, Grantmorrison, james gordon, James Gordon (comics), joker, paul dini, robin, Scott Snyder, Snyder | 2 Comments »

Gotham Central – On the Freak Beat & Corrigan (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Darren

If you ask me, Gotham Central is the highest quality Batman title that has been published in quite some time – if not the most consistent Batman comic book ever published. These final two volumes contain the second half of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s celebrated forty-issue exploration of life within the Gotham City Police Department, providing one of the freshest and most compelling comic book stories ever told in either of the two major comic book publishers. Essentially the story of the ordinary men and women stuck in the superhero world of Batman, it’s a genuine comic book classic.

Taking a shot at the Batman…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, Christopher Nolan, Corrigan, Corrigan 2, Corrigan II, Crispin Allen, dc comics, Dead Robin, Doctor Alchemy, ed brubaker, freaks, GCPD, gotham, gotham central, gotham city, Gotham City Police Department, greg rucka, infinite crisis, Kano, michael lark, Night of Vengeance, On the Freak Beat, Police, robin, The Dark Knight, War Crimes | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Batman – Mask of the Phantasm

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Darren

There is a legitimate argument to be made that Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is the best Batman movie produced prior to Christopher Nolan taking over the film franchise. While I narrowly prefer Batman Returns, it’s hard to deny that this animated take on the character from the creator behind Batman: The Animated Series isn’t a superb exploration of the Caped Crusader and his world. Kevin Conroy is still, after all these years, my favourite actor to play Batman, and I can’t help but feel like the movie deserves a lavish re-release to celebrate the pending release of The Dark Knight Rises.

You’d have to finally go batty to do this in the long-term…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: alfred pennyworth, Andrea, batman, Bruce, bruce wayne, Christopher Nolan, danny elfman, Dark Knight Rises, Dick Sprang, film, frank miller, gotham, gotham city, Harley Quinn, joker, kevin conroy, Movie, non-review review, Phantasm, review, Shirley Walker, tim burton | 2 Comments »

Tony Daniel’s Run on Batman – Battle for the Cowl, Life After Death & Eye of the Beholder (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Darren

Tony Daniel’s Batman is a decently entertaining book, one that has clearly been put together with a great deal of skill and care by an artist and writer who seems to be not only enjoying himself, but keen to learn on the job. Handed the unenviable task of writing Battle for the Cowl, the three-issue miniseries designed to link Grant Morrison’s Batman run to his Batman & Robin run, Daniel was given an assignment that would make even a seasoned writer blush with uncertainty – tasked with writing connective tissue between two densely-layered Grant Morrison series, it’s hard to imagine a writer who would have managed anything that much better than the somewhat limp mess that Daniel produced. Still, DC was keen enough to grant the artist not only on-going art chores on the Batman series (rapidly approaching its seven-hundredth issue), but also to let him write it. While it’s hardly the most iconic or memorable tenure on a Batman-related title, it does have a number of charming and somewhat redeeming features. The most impressive one is that Daniel seems willing to learn and to improve as he goes.

Some men just want to see the world burn…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman & robin, batman r.i.p., batman: battle for the cowl, batman: eye of the beholder, batman: life after death, battle for the cowl, Daniel, eye of the beholder, grant morrison, Hugo Strange, Jason Todd, morrison, riddler, robin, tony daniel, walt simonson | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated: The Deluxe Edition (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Darren

Criminals used to be afraid because they didn’t know where Batman was. Things are different now. Thanks to Batman Incorporated, I can tell you exactly where Batman is. Batman is everywhere.

– Bruce Wayne, Batman Incorporated #6

I’ll admit to warming to Grant Morrison’s gigantic Batman epic. Sure, I don’t think it ranks with All-Star Superman or New X-Men or even Seven Soldiers as the very best of the writer’s mainstream work. It’s still immensely fun comics. I’ll concede that I’m still only lukewarm on his initial continuity-heavy Batman run, but the combination of his Batman & Robin and his Return of Bruce Wayne were some of the most entertaining comics produced by a major comic book company in the past few years. (Certainly the only other mainstream book that could match Morrison’s energy was Paul Cornell’s severely underrated Action Comics run.) While Batman Incorporated never quite reaches those same pulpy highs, it is a massively entertaining and very astute pulp narrative featuring one of the most enduring pop culture creations of the twentieth century.

Batman and his Amazing Friends…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Action Comics, batman, Batman Incorporated, Batwoman, Beware the Batman, bruce wayne, Christopher Nolan, crime, Dark Knight Rises, dc comics, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, Hong Kong, joker, Kuala Lumpur, Leviathan, Lucius Fox, Melbourne, morrison, Oracle, Paul Cornell, ra's al ghul, robin, The Brave and the Bold, Tim Drake | 2 Comments »

Batman: Ego (and Other Tails) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Darren

“It’s at times like this…. In the cold… in the dark… I feel that I’m losing my way.”

– Batman’s opening monologue, Ego

Few modern comic book artists and writers are as respected as Darwyn Cooke. The illustrator began his career on Batman: The Animated Series, and then expanded out into the comic books that inspired it. He’s worked on any number of iconic projects, including the miniseries New Frontier and the adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker books. This summer, he’s a major part of DC’s Before Watchmen initiative, writing Silk Spectre and writing and illustrating The Minutemen. Batman: Ego and Other Tails collects the bulk of the writer/illustrator’s work on the Caped Crusader, with Selina’s Big Score included for good measure. In his introduction, the writer confesses that the story was”an earnest yet flawed first effort”, and it seems like he’s being remarkably fair.

He’s created a monster!

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman: the animated series, Bruce, caped crusader, Christopher Nolan, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, darwyn cooke, death, frank miller, grant morrison, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, joker, Kurt Cobain, new frontier | Leave a comment »

The Dark Knight Rises 101: Or, Tell Me About Bane…

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Darren

Read our in-depth review of the film here.

To help get everybody in the mood for The Dark Knight Rises later this month, I thought it might be worth taking a look at the third film in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, the sequel to both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bane, batman, batman begins, Batman: Knightfall, Bruce, bruce wayne, caped crusader, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, dark knight, Dark Knight Rises, Dark Knight [Blu-ray], DarkKnight Rises, Knightfall, nolan, ra's al ghul, superman: the animated series | 12 Comments »

Batman: Broken City (Review)

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Darren

I can’t help but feel like Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso were massively unfortunate when they were asked to write Batman: Broken City. The story was placed immediately following the breakout sales sensation that was Hush, a massive blockbuster epic written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Jim Lee, offering a whistlestop tour of Batman’s iconic selection of villains. Azzarello and Risso inherited the title from them with considerable hype. These were, after all, the two creators of the celebrated neo-noir comic book 100 Bullets, so they’d work their magic on the title, right? More than that, though, their arc seemed to consciously play up its similarities to Hush, revolving around Batman’s attempts to solve a central mystery while taking a trip through his rogues gallery. Understandably, fans and critics were taken by surprise when they got a seedy detective vibe instead of an action epic. I can’t help but wonder if time has been kind to this six-issue storyline.