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New Escapist Column! On “The Batman” as a Movie About Life Lived Behind Screens…

Posted on March 18, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With The Batman continuing to perform well at the box office, it seemed like an opportunity to take another look at the film.

Much has been made of how much The Batman owes to David Fincher’s se7en and Zodiac. However, the film also owes a lot to the director’s work on both Fight Club and The Social Network. At its core, The Batman is a story about masculine violence and what happens when life is lived behind a screen. The result is a film that manages to riff on some of the most interesting films of the past quarter-century, filtering them through the lens of the superhero genre and reframing them for a modern context.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: david fincher, fight club, masculinity, se7en, seven, the batman, the riddler, the social network, zodiac | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Darren

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. We’ve got a special treat for you this week, which is “Seven Soldiers Week”, so check back each day for a review of one of the Seven Soldier miniseries that Morrison put together.

Seven Soldiers of Victory is perhaps the strangest comic book “event” that we’ve ever seen. It’s essentially two issues, with a series of seven four-issue miniseries unfolding between them. The idea is that the seven books each follow one of the eponymous seven members of the superhero team destined to save the world from an evil invasion. Of course, this is a Grant Morrison story, so there’s far more to it than that, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the crossover is that (with one exception) none of the seven members of the team actually meet each other.

Seven is a magic number...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: 7, Bulleteer, Cary Bates, comic books, Comics, dc, dc comics, dc universe, Elliot Maggin, Grantmorrison, jh william iii, jh williams, Julius Schwartz, Newsboy Legion, seven, seven soldiers, seven soldiers of victory, seven unknown men of slaughter swamp, slaughter swamp, superhero | Leave a comment »

Putting a lot of Sloth into it: Sloth in se7en…

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Darren

A few months back, I watched the film se7en twice in quick succession, as I knew two people who hadn’t seen it, and thought I might join them. The film actually rewards repeated viewings, which is nice, but I couldn’t stop a particular question from popping into my mind as I watched the film again. The murders in the film, as the title implies, all follow a fairly basic theme, with each based around one of the seven deadly sins. However, I had a bit of difficulty making “sloth”stick.