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Grant Morrison’s Run on Batman & Robin – Batman Reborn, Batman vs. Robin & Batman Must Die! (Review/Retrospective)

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium. Every Wednesday this month, we’ll have a Grant Morrison related review or retrospective.

I am going to be honest. I didn’t love Grant Morrison’s tenure on Batman. It felt a bit awkward and continuity-heavy – don’t get me wrong, I appreciated his attempt to tie together just about every aspect and iteration of Batman ever, but it just felt a bit too much. Yes, Batman can be the grim avenger or the charming ladies’ man or the camp crusader or the superhero or the urban vigilante or the world’s greatest detective or a swinging icon, but – in reading Morrison’s run – it felt too awkward to make Batman all of these at the same time. Perhaps, then, it’s because Batman & Robin sets itself a more modest goal (in that it doesn’t attempt to reconcile every aspect of the character’s seventy-year history) or just because Morrison appears to be enjoying himself far more, but this second act in Grant Morrison’s epic Batman saga is a much more engaging read.

The run gets off to an explosive start…

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The Dark Knight Rises Trailer…

It’s officially on-line. The trailer of The Dark Knight Rises has, after a weekend of bootlegging, been officially released. It looks impressive, and gives us our first sense of anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle. If the theme is to reflect the recession (as much as The Dark Knight could have been said to reflect the war on terror), I imagine Selina will be quite important to the story. We’ve seen a lot of Bane, and there’s relatively little of him here. And, is that a bearded younger Bruce (back in his League of Shadows days) being told that the chant means “rise?” But enough crazy theories for now. I’ll have more of them later in the week.

In the mean time, enjoy. For more analysis, click here.

The Caped Social Crusader: The Dark Knight Rises and Batman’s History of Class Warfare…

With the leaked second trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, showing in theatres in front of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, it seems like we have a theme for the movie, something to connect Nolan’s final Batman film to the terrorism and liberty metaphor that underscored The Dark Knight. Giving our first real look at Selina Kyle, who I sense might be far more important to the film than Bane himself, despite her relative lack of exposure, it seems that the film will play into the sort of resentment and class divide forming in global society – the type of movement spawning the “Occupy Wall Street” and the “We are the 99%” campaigns. “You think this’ll last,” Selina taunts Bruce, in a scene that conjures Tim Burton’s underrated Batman Returns. “There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Cause when it hits the city you are all gonna wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

It seems like a fascinating avenue for Nolan to explore, especially given that Batman is one of the “1%”himself. Still, it’s an angle rich for exploitation and with considerable history behind it.

The Bane of the upper classes?

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The Silicon Chip Inside Her Head Gets Switched to Overload: On-Screen Mania and Off-Screen Motives….

And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?

I Don’t Like Mondays, The Boom Town Rats

I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for cheesy horror films. Not necessarily all of them, as there’s a lot of dross out there, but I have to admit that there’s nothing like a well-constructed scary movies. I was watching Scream again, this time with my gran in preparation for Halloween, and I enjoyed it yet again – I think it’s a fascinatingly clever look at the slasher genre, and a movie which is as relevent today as it was when it was released, untouched and unspoilt by the wave of inferior imitations that we’ve seen in the years since. There’s a line towards the climax of the film which got me thinking about these sorts of films, and how they’re scary. Asked to provide a motive, the killer responds, “Did we ever find out why Hannibal Lector liked to eat people? Don’t think so! See, it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive.” Is the unknowable that much scarier?

Psyche!

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Justice League International: Volume 3 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

In light of the massive DC reboot taking place next month, launching with a Geoff Johns and Jim Lee run on a new Justice League title, I thought I’d take a look back at another attempt to relaunch the Justice League, emerging from the then-recent Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Instructions, m’lord?

Keep him sedated and set course for —

For where, m’lord?

Quiet L-Ron… Don’t you know a dramatic pause when you hear one?

Set course for — Apokolips!

L-Ron and Lord Manga

The third volume of Justice League International is certainly more consistant than the one directly previous. Giffen and deMatteis are – with the exception of a final-issue tie-in to Invasion – free to tell their own story featuring their somewhat eclectic cast. The series has swung heavily in the direction of humour, with the issues increasingly becoming a collection of gags with the occasional nice set-piece rather than conventional super-hero stories with a greater-than-usual dosage of humour. Admittedly, some of the humour (and set-ups) feel a little tired and dated, but it’s still not a bad little series.

Licence to Thrill...

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First look at Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman In The Dark Knight Rises! (And Thoughts…)

The first images of Catwoman from The Dark Knight Rises have been revealed, and – as with everything about the movie – they’re stirring a considerable amount of controversy. There’s an official still below and a photo of a stunt double in action below. I have to admit though, I genuinely love it.

Click to enlarge...

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A Bluffer’s Guide to the Dark Knight Rises Rumours…

This week has been a bit of an early Christmas for movie geeks such as myself, with Warner Brothers unveiling both the teaser poster and the teaser trailer to The Dark Knight Rises, the much-anticipated closing chapter to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. When we know a bit more later in the year, I’ll dig into the movie in a bit more depth, but it occurred to me that a lot of fans on-line are throwing out concepts and references that might seem a bit foreign to the uninitiated. I can’t imagine how strange it must be for a non-comic-book-fan to hear titles like Knightfall or “Lazarus Pits” thrown into casual conversation. So I’ve put together a bluffer’s guide to all the speculation and rumours, so that you can hopefully understand a bit more of what nerdy geeks like myself are talking about when we casually reference stuff like “I will break you!” It should be stressed that all these are 100% rumour, and not meant to reflect the film, but to help understand geeky references in discussions about the film. Sort of like a handy guide to the “offside rule”in soccer or such.

Welcome to underground comcis culture...

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Discussing The Dark Knight Rises’ Teaser Trailer: Long Day’s Journey Into Knight…

The trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has been doing the rounds on-line, as Warner Brothers try to keep it under wraps. Originally supposed to premiere before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II, I reckon it’s a matter of time before the studio officially releases it on-line. When they do, I’ll post it up here, but let’s actually talk a bit about the teaser and what it tells us – especially about this instalment as opposed to the previous two entries in Nolan’s superhero franchise.

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Non-Review Review: Batman & Robin

It takes a lot to kill Batman. Just ask Bane. That character broke Batman across his knee, discarded him and claimed Gotham for his own… only to have Bruce claw his way back and reclaim the mantle. The evil New God Darkseid once decided not only to kill Batman, but to send him back to the dawn of time to live through a cycle of death and rebirth in the hopes of destroying the Caped Crusader… Batman just sorta shrugged that one off. He’s a tough nut to keep down, is that Dark Knight.

However, Joel Schumacher managed to nearly knock Batman out for the count (at least on film) with Batman & Robin, the movie which – if it didn’t kill the Batman franchise – at least put it into a coma for several years.

It's some kinda storm (it's not "snow", but it begins with "s")...

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Back to Begins: Is Nolan Bringing The Dark Knight Rises a Full Circle?

As The Dark Knight Rises draws closer and closer to filming, the rumours are just going to grow more and more intense. The latest rumour de jour (succeeding in a long line of debunked suggestions like the Riddler or Robin Williams as Hugo Strange) suggests that the League of Shadows will return to take on the Dark Knight in the final part of the trilogy, led by the daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul and her lover Bane. I was initially skeptical of the rumours, perhaps because they so neatly dove-tail back into the first film of the trilogy, Batman Begins.

The birth of Batman...

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