The official Batman Begins site and Entertainment Weekly give us our first look at the new Dark Knight. Hmm…this seems ok. I’d prefer longer ears and less of a hockey-pad feel to his shoulders and knees, but it’s hard to say anything more until we see Bats move around.
Category: Comics
Requiem for Rorschach.
Darren Aronofsky on The Watchmen?! Ooh, that’s a great directing pick. One would think Aronofsky would give Alan Moore’s magnum opus a much more faithful treatment than Hollywood delivered with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or even From Hell. But, given Aronofsky’s track record on Ronin, Batman: Year One, and The Fountain, I’m not going to start holding my breath quite yet.
Earth-Pig Dead.
“One of the most ambitious literary projects of the last 25 years came to an end this March and you probably don’t even know its name: Cerebus. It’s a comic-book series about a talking aardvark, whose creator seems to have slowly gone insane somewhere over the course of its 6,000 pages. But it is also something of a masterpiece.” By way of LinkMachineGo (and something I missed when it was published last month), the Village Voice says goodbye to Cerebus. I read the last issue a few weeks ago and thought the series ended, as expected given Sim‘s preoccupations lately, with a colossal thud. Still, when Cerebus was good, it was really, really good. Congrats on 300.
Flame On.
Paul Walker as Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the Human Torch, in FF? Well, he looks the part, I guess…I have no real sense of whether or not he can act. Meanwhile, other casting rumors has up-and-comer Christina Milian as Sue Storm/Invisible Girl. Well, um, one of these has to be wrong, since Walker and Milian don’t much look like brother and sister. I guess Naomi Watts is busy with Kong…which is too bad, ’cause she’d be perfect for this part.
The Passion of the Spider.
Sony releases the full trailer for Spiderman 2. The Doc Ock v. Spidey stuff looks swell (if a bit CGI-ish), but it seems we’re going to have to wade through inordinate amounts of Peter Parker angst to get to the good stuff. By the way, this trailer does seem to give away most of the plot, if that’s a problem for you.
Fantastic Story.
According to Latino Review, Barbershop‘s Tim Story will be directing The Fantastic Four in place of Bring it On‘s Peyton Reed. Interesting…I haven’t seen any of his movies, so I can’t really comment on the pick. Also, current casting rumors have Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing (I like it) and Tim Robbins as Dr. Doom.(Hmmm…he’d make a better Reed Richards.)
(Bat)Man about Town.
Ok, it’s just Christian Bale in a suit. Still, if you suspend belief, you’ve got the first look at Batman Begins Bruce Wayne here. In related news, the official site, in an attempt to keep the fanboy buzz happy, put up a few shots of the new Batmobile online last week. Hmm…it looks like a cross between a monster truck and the troop transport in Aliens.
Hell Hath No Fury.
Well, I’ve only read a handful of issues of the comic over the years, but I could tell Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy looks and feels just about perfect. You can’t really ask for a better Big Red than Ron Perlman here, and John Hurt always brings class to the equation. The film’s got Rasputin, both post-dead Nazi ninjas and evil blonde Nazi temptresses (a.k.a Darth Maul and Indy 3‘s Ilsa Schneider respectively), and even heavy shades of the Cthulhu mythos. What more should a fanboy desire?
And yet, perhaps it was due to a post-orals energy slump, but I found the movie kinda slow and uninvolving. The curse of any first comic movie is the origin stuff (although in Spiderman at least, that turned out to be the best part of the film), and here I thought all of the backstory and character introductions took just a little too long. Then we have Hellboy beating up Sammael the Hellhound over and over again for an hour, followed by a rather cheesy and nonsensical third act in Russia (with heavy borrowing from the Temple of Doom this time, and particularly when Agent Myers has his rosary moment…soon Kali Ma will rule the world!) I probably enjoyed Hellboy most when it was pushing the unfathomable evils of Lovecraft angle, but tuned out slightly whenever it was time to punch out another hellhound, which, sadly, was most of the movie.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on Hellboy. The acting was good all around, and, really, it’s undoubtedly going to be better than 4 out of 5 comic movies this year (Case in point: The Punisher.) Still, while I wasn’t expecting as lyrical as The Devil’s Backbone, I was expecting a popcorn film as fun as Blade II…and in that category, I thought Hellboy was somewhat wanting. Then again, it took a second go for Bryan Singer to get the X-Men popping, so perhaps Del Toro can cut to the chase in a Hellboy 2.
In the Batroom.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins gets even more star-laden with the additions of Tom Wilkinson and Rutger Hauer to Gotham City. Apparently, Wilkinson’s a crime lord, while Hauer’s scheduled to attempt a hostile takeover of Wayne Enterprises. Are we going to have enough screen time for all these folks?
Gordon is Bleeding.
Batman Begins starts production in Iceland, with the final casting announcement of Gary Oldman as Sgt. (future Commissioner) Gordon. I really liked Aaron Eckhart for this role, but Oldman should be grand, provided he doesn’t go all Professional-crazy.