“But you didn’t hear it from me,” he told the crowd during the Warner Bros. “Book of Eli” panel. It’ll be for a 2011 release.
The convention center’s roof will land somewhere in La Jolla later this afternoon. Christopher Nolan is fuming somewhere.
Tag: Batman
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Comic-Con on the way
Like the rest of the web geek world, I guess, I’m gearing up for this year’s San Diego Comic Con International, which begins with preview night on Wednesday.All eyes, of course, are on Thursday’s slew of events, a treasure trove of goodies that made for a ton of Sophie’s choices when putting together my personal schedule. I’ll definitely be at the Disney panel, with glimpses of Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” in 3D and a taste of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” among other things. Speaking of 3D, perhaps the most anticipated panel will be James Camerons “Avatar” event. I’m definitely looking forward to that, but the likely crowd of humanity that will be doing same? Not so much. Trying to wrangle some VIP consideration as we speak.
The Peter Jackson-produced “District 9” isn’t as high on my to-do list as most, but I’ll probably park it for Paramount’s “Iron Man 2” Panel on Saturday. The film just wrapped a 72-day shoot over the weekend, by the way. Warner Bros. also has a panel, on Friday, but Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” is the only thing that has me interested there. Focus Features also plans a considerable presence with “Coraline” (the Blu-ray and DVD of which hits shelves tomorrow) and “9.”
Oh, and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.” I suppose I should check that out.
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WEEKLY WRAP: Bombshell upon bombshell
Weird, unsettling week, this. Here’s how it went down:• In the week’s biggest movie news, the Academy threw us all for a loop by announcing a 10-nominee slate for the Best Picture category.
• But even that shock was dwarfed in scale by the stunning news of Michael Jackson’s passing.
• And in a rather bleak week for losing talent, we also said goodbye to Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.
• On a happier note, we laid eyes on two of our most eagerly awaited films of the year — “Public Enemies” and “Antichrist” — and liked what we saw.
• AMPAS continues its tinkering, this time in the Best Original Song category.
• The “Transformers” sequel opened to critical scorn even accusations of racism, but is the film totally indefensible?
• With “The Hurt Locker” finally going public today, we caught up with the film’s breakout star Jeremy Renner.
• We revealed our age by celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton’s “Batman.”
• Continuing the reflective mood, this week’s list considered the greatest directorial debuts of the decade.
• Speaking of debuts, “The Proposal” gave Sandra Bullock the biggest of her career.
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Original ‘Batman’ producer looks back
On Tuesday we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton’s “Batman” around these parts with a personal retrospective. There are a number of similar remembrances around the web, many of them linked in that entry, but one guy who really deserves a “huzzah” this week is film producer, pop culture professor and all around comic book geek Michael Uslan.Uslan, as he notes in this interview piece with Batman On Film’s Bill Ramey, is actually celebrating his 30th anniversary where “Batman” is considered this year. After all, he toiled through the Hollywood system to see his vision of the character to the screen for 10 years before anyone would take him, and the Caped Crusader, seriously.
20 years later, of course, the rest is history. Uslan exchanges a number of anecdotes with Ramey, specifically the marketing frenzy around the film that would really only be topped by “The Dark Knight” 19 years later. One memory in particular, an intersection of commerce and political struggle, was particularly amazing, I thought.
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Aronofsky at Edinburgh
As someone who prefers watching movies to listening to others talk about them, I probably haven’t attended as many of the In Person Q&A sessions at this year’s Edinburgh festival as I should have. Sam Mendes lost out in my priority scale to “The Red Shoes,” while the likes of Bill Forsyth and Brenda Blethyn (whose award-caliber work in “London River” I discussed yesterday) passed me by.I did, however, catch Darren Aronofsky’s career discussion earlier this week, and a most entertaining couple of hours it was. It wasn’t quite clear why Aronofsky was at the festival, given that he had nothing new to present – perhaps he also simply fancied a chance to kick back and watch a few movies in a picturesque town. (Earlier in the day, I had found myself seated behind him at the “Antichrist” screening – he didn’t look quite as impressed as I was.)
As with the last time I saw Aronofsky speak, when presenting “The Wrestler” in London, the filmmaker’s interview style is largely too chatty and anecdotal to relate in writing – for the most part, I simply dropped my notepad and enjoyed the patter. The interviewer (whose name, I’m embarrassed to admit, escapes me at this moment, though I can confirm she was both gracious and very well-versed) reasoned that “The Wrestler” was still fairly fresh in the audience’s mind, so the conversation mainly flowed around Aronofsky’s first three features.
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Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ — 20 years later
There is a reason I am such an embarrassingly devoted Batman fan.It’s not because I’m a life-long comic book reader. That came later. And it’s not because I grew up watching reruns of the old ABC television series. Though I certainly did. It’s because Tim Burton’s “Batman,” released in theaters 20 years ago today, was the first movie that truly owned my anticipatory faculties as a child. It was the first film that lit my movie-going fire, a designation saved for “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “E.T.” a generation prior and perhaps “Jurassic Park” and Harrison Ford’s actioners a generation later.
In the simplest of terms, I wouldn’t be a film obsessive if it weren’t for “Batman.” I owe it so much.
For me, the film was an event not to be missed. I remember watching the commercials flood prime time television: the howling of a Batwing circling a Gothic cathedral, the quips of an actor I knew from comedy somehow tapped to play a brooding character of purpose, “Where does he get those wonderful toys?,” etc.
The Anton Furst-designed logo was everywhere, seared into immortality by any production that happened to film in Times Square in the summer of 1989, decorating untold numbers of hats and T-shirts, the winged image an absolute specter hanging over the march to June 23.
And then, finally, the release.
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Nolan out for third Batman? Who could step in?
Bill Ramey over at Batman on Film has posted a rather disconcerting report this morning regarding the status of Christopher Nolan’s involvement with a third film in the lucrative Batman franchise. The info, which is hardly concrete, comes from one of the numerous Bat-related sources Ramey has acquired over 12 years of focusing his site on the development of these films.Ramey hedges his bets and writes what we all know, that “it is far from a given” that Nolan will return for another go. But he offers a few bullet-pointed reasons from his source that certainly make a lot of sense. Among them, says Ramey’s guy, “the death of Heath Ledger rocked Mr. Nolan hard,” and the project is back to square one with a virtually non-existent story due to the initial planned inclusion of the Joker in the third film.
It has been reported that Warner Bros. has a shortlist of preferred directors to step in should Nolan decide to walk away from the director’s chair. The studio is going forward on this whether he is or not, we can all be sure of that. “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder was one of those names, but Snyder’s people told Ramey he has no interest in tackling the project (thank God). But if not Nolan, then who?
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SUNDAY CENTS: ‘X’ marks the spot
After all the hype, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” opened with a solid $87.0 million at the box office this weekend. Both “X2” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” started with over $100 million* but “Wolverine” does better the $72.6 million of Bryan Singer’s original from 2000. When a film is received as poorly as Brett Ratner’s third entry in the franchise was, it’s only natural for the follow-up to start a bit lower.Almost any franchise will prove this but the easiest example is “Batman.” Schumacher did his worst with “Batman & Robin” and unsuspecting customers shelled out $67.1 million* on opening weekend. The movie collapsed from there and it took Warner Bros. years to attempt another shot at the bat. In steps Christopher Nolan and “Batman Begins” debuted with a cautious $54.6 million. Everybody loved it, the stars aligned and “The Dark Knight” opened to $158.4 million. Obviously, there were other factors at play but look at the “Back to the Future,” “Mission: Impossible” and “The Matrix” films for further proof.
Anyway, all that is to say that $87 million isn’t really disappointing, nor is it that spectacular. “Iron Man” debuted with $98 million on this weekend last year without any previous big screen incarnations. “Wolverine” will most likely not make it to $200 million and life goes on.
Matthew McConaughey tried his luck at counter-programming and brought in $15.3 million for “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.” That’s the worst debut he’s had in the romantic comedy genre since “EdTV” in 1999 and only a tiny fraction better than “Made of Honor”’s debut last year versus Tony Stark. I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess that McConaughey’s salary was a bit larger than Patrick Dempsey’s so that return is just not good enough. I like to think that it didn’t do well because it looked awful but that wouldn’t explain “Wolverine”’s numbers.
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Gaiman: Cast David Bowie as the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight Returns’
I forgot to mention this in the item below regarding that Wired piece featuring Neil Gaiman and the current goings-on in the comic world. The subject of “unfilmable” comics came up, with “Watchmen” having landed in March and Gaiman’s own “Sandman” at the top of such a list for some fans.
Regarding Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” — which has, as always, been bandied about as a potential film project in the wake of “The Dark Knight,” some have speculated for “Watchmen” helmer Sack Snyder — Gaiman notes, in passing, a fascinating casting proposition that would frankly be kind of awesome:
I was reading photostats of Watchmen that Alan would hand me months before they hit the stands, and I would puzzle over everything, putting it all together in my head. That’s a different thing than Dark Knight Returns, where the details of the story are more malleable and simple. Batman comes out of retirement. Cute Robin arrives on the scene. Joker kills himself. Is Batman dead or not? He’s not. There’s not much to unpack. If someone cast David Bowie, as he is now, as the Joker, I think The Dark Knight Returns is doable.
Alright, someone, somewhere. Let’s make this happen. (Although Tim Curry would probably be better.)
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Neil Gaiman pens a love letter send-off to the Caped Crusader
I don’t know how many readers became regulars as a result of last year’s “Dark Knight” awards march, but I do know there are quite a few who share my enthusiasm for comics and Batman comics in particular. This post is certainly aimed at that crowd, but anyone eager to get their hands on a great story, in any medium, this is for you, too.With the 70th anniversary of the character coming next month, author, screenwriter and comics scribe Neil Gaiman has been charged with writing up the final chapter of Batman’s existence in the books as we’ve known them throughout that history. “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” is his “love letter” to the Bat, fashioned after Alan Moore’s similar send-off to Superman 20 years ago: “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”
Wired recently posted an in-depth interview with Gaiman, already high off the successful adaptation of his novel “Coraline” this year, and you get some great insight into his off-the-wall graphic denouement, which culminates with a sequence at once touching and unsettling, an homage of sorts to the finale of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Asked whether the character has lived in his heart for a while, given the deep attention and appreciation for his history in just two swift volumes, Gaiman had this to say:
When I was 5, I was in a car with my dad and he mentioned that there was this Batman TV show in America about a man who dressed up in a costume and fought crime. The only bat I ever knew was a cricket bat, so what I thought he looked like was rather odd, based on that. Months later, the series hit the U.K., and I remember watching and being affected by it. Really worrying, genuinely worrying, on a deep primal level, “Will he be OK?” That is the way it was with every deathtrap. If I missed the end of an episode, I’d get my friends to tell me he was OK.
Because of the Batman TV show, my dad picked up Smash! comics for me, which reprinted a Batman cartoon strip, which were much more about continuity than the television program. Those were my gateway drugs into Batman. Even when batman went twee in the ’60s, Neal Adams reinvented him as a long-eared, shadowy character. And when I was in my 20s, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns came out and I found myself writing my first piece of academic criticism on it.
I wanted my comic to contain all of that, from the story to the art. I wanted it to have that love in there. I wanted to write the last Batman with honor and love.
If you haven’t read these two books, I encourage you to do so, even if you aren’t up to snuff on what’s going on in the series at the moment. It reads as an independent study of the Dark Knight’s final hour. You can find “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” in the pages of “Batman” (#686) and “Detective Comics” (#853). And catch the rest of that Wired interview here.
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‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ video game trailer featuring Bane
Okay, I can’t friggin’ WAIT to play this thing. You might recall the original trailer from January, but this shorter look at one of the plot points has the Bat fan within giddy as hell:
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Self-promotion
For those interested, I reviewed the trade paperback Batman arc “Heart of Hush” for Bill Ramey, a.k.a. “Jett,” over at Batman-on-Film. Reviewing comic books. There’s a first for everything, I guess.
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Troubling details of Nolan’s ‘Shadow of the Bat’ revealed
I really don’t know what to say about this. I understand Christopher Nolan is a progressive artist, a guy who understands both the necessity of shunning convention and the idea that what one may expect isn’t always the best solution. He’s proven it time and again with the films in his re-booted Batman franchise, starting at the top with a story that involved a villain largely unknown to the masses. He brought in Heath Ledger in a move some thought a bit too outside-the-box, and boy were they wrong.But bringing Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher on as creative producing figures? Having the gall to cast Carrey as the Riddler again (even though I’m strangely okay with sticking to the one-major-villain-per-film paradigm)? I’d follow Nolan to the ends of the earth, but even I can’t go along with his creative reasoning here, which sounds like the whims of a mad man. I mean, I dig the title (which a lot of us saw coming). It’s a nice nod to an extinct series of books. But the rest of it…I just…
From Variety:
Warner Brothers’ Batman franchise will take a third bow in the summer of 2012.
“Shadow of the Bat,” the sequel to 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” will introduce quiz-master villain the Riddler to audiences for a third time after the character appeared in the 1960s television series and 1995’s “Batman Forever.” Funny man Jim Carrey has been tapped to reprise the role in “Shadow,” while helmers Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton, the filmmakers behind the Caped Crusader’s first theatrical franchise, have been brought on as consultants to the production, which director Christopher Nolan says will be his final take on Gotham City.
“I felt it novel to tie this third and final chapter to the character’s roots on the screen,” Nolan said. “Tim and Joel had two completely different visions of the Batman, visions that contrast vastly with my own. But I don’t feel that negates the possibility of a creative convergence. Batman is more than the ideas of one person, of one team of artists. He is the result of seven decades of pop culture influence and innovation.”
WB is eying a May 2012 release date for the film to coincide with the 73rd anniversary of Batman’s first comic book appearance in 1939.
Nolan begins shooting his latest film, “Inception,” with Leonardo DiCaprio later this year for a 2010 release.
Read the full story here. I need to go off into a corner somewhere and think hard about this.
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What if they made a ‘Dark Knight’ NES game?
Well, I’m guessing it would look something like this:
Can I just say: that’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life? You might recall my boyish reminiscence of the original “Batman” NES game a few months ago (I finally beat the Joker recently, by the way), which was fun and all, but I’d love to see the guys that cooked this thing up go all out and generate some game play.
And hey, why don’t we get some new NES games on the market anyway? I’d buy them. The best graphics in the world can’t substitute the glee I feel after 30 minutes of kicking the alien queen’s ass in “Contra,” that’s all I’m sayin’. (Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, baby.)
(Courtesy: /Film)
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Speaking of Bat fans
I have to give props to Bill Ramey, better know as “Jett,” and the hard work he’s been putting into Batman On Film for well over a decade now. This is the kind of fan Christopher Nolan and company set out to apease to a certain extent when they marched into this franchise less than 10 years removed from its own crashing and burning at the hands of Joel Schumacher. Those were choppy waters, but now the sea is calm. And Bill keeps doing his thing. Check out his 2008 year-in-review piece for all the Bat highlights of the year. It’s a nice bit of reminiscence to say the least.
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CONTEST: Win a hardcover “Art of ‘The Dark Knight’” companion book by showing off your Bat obsession!
(I meant to have this up yesterday but I totally forgot. My bad.)
Thanks everyone for participating in the “Benjamin Button” contest from Monday. I’ll be sifting through all those haiku entries to surmise a winner over the weekend. Today, however, you all have a shot at winning a copy of “The Dark Knight: Featuring Production Art and the Full Shooting Script,” one hell of a dazzling hardcover collectible that you’d better believe is on MY shelf. (Check out the Amazon page here.)
I’ve got one to giveaway, however, so let’s have another contest!
This one is going to require a little more effort on the part of the readership. Here’s your chance to show me how much of a Bat fan you really are. Send us a photo demonstrating your Bat-fanaticism — decked to the nines in Bat regalia, perhaps, or simply surrounded by all of your Bat paraphernalia. And of course, you don’t have to have some big Bat collection to prove your fandom. The more creative the better. Something that simply tells me, “Woah, this person is into the Bat.” Go all out — you only live once.
Send all entries to ktapley@incontention.com. We’ll post the winning pic here next week. Have at it!
(And check back tomorrow for our final contest of the week, featuring “WALL-E” goodies!)
