Tag Archive for 'The Dark Knight'

Culturology #70 - I Know What You Bookclubbed Last Summer

Welcome to Culturology's second summer of bookloving bookclub action! (And you know who knows what we bookclubbed last summer? The Onion A.V. Club, who're wasting their time with A Scanner Darkly right now, which we all know is soooooooo 2009.)

China Miéville's The City & The City

We're starting things off with a pretty awesome book this summer, I think. The City & The City came to me as a recommendation from a fiction-writing friend of mine, as a book which is blurbed as if it's a mash-up of Raymond Chandler and Franz Kafka, and actually manages to do so. And that's really what it does! I found it to be a very engrossing read (perhaps more like Chandler in this way than Kafka), the sort of novel which just thrives within its genre--a detective story--to keep the plot moving, but then contains such interesting scenery. I reckon that Neal will agree about this too, since it seems like it took him all of two days to read this one. There's, I think, a fairly large number of things to discuss out of this book, so I think I'm, as a start, going to just focus on one aspect for now, and see what comes up from there: genre.

Though this book is definitely a police story at heart, it straddles this fascinating line between fantasy and sci-fi as well. Put as simply as I can, the story takes place in a city, or rather, two cities which overlap each other, Besźel and Ul Qoma, which is/are somewhere past the Balkans. Although the two cities are separate city-states, they occupy the same geographic location, they are "grosstopically" right on top of each other. Some districts are all one city or the other, but many areas "crosshatch," where the two cities co-exist, their citizens being well-trained from childhood to ignore ("unsee") the other city. The origin of this is referred to as "the Cleaving," an excellent usage of language by Miéville, as "to cleave," awesomely, means both to split, and from a separate origin, to come together (this polysemy was also beautifully utilized by the poet Li-Young Lee in his amazing poem "The Cleaving"). Monitoring transgressions by either set of citizens across these invisible borders is the mysterious force of Breach.

Breach is the more obviously sci-fi element of the story, as they wield powers which are above and beyond those held by either individual city. They're revealed to be human, in many ways, by the end of the story, but even then their technologies and observation abilities are one of the points that stretches C & C beyond just being rather realistic fantasy. The other main source for fantasy-esque elements is the possible third city of Orciny, which according to legend, exists in the cracks between the two cities, and the never-satisfyingly-explained archaeological dig in Ul Qoma that produces a mish-mash of artifacts reminiscent of an ancient culture right out of H.P. Lovecraft (though the Lovecraftian elements fizzle away very satisfyingly before any real horror elements enter the novel).

There's been a recent spate, in the last couple of years, of authors mashing genres up with detective stories, to rather satisfying results (e.g. The Big Lebowski, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (not surprisingly also, apparently, in development as a movie by the Coen brothers), Inherent Vice). I think why it works so well, and this is certainly true of The City & The City, is that the detective novel allows for both a brisk, exciting, pulpy plot but also extensive world building. The cop, Inspector Borlú, needs a city to move around in, and since he observes with such a careful eye, the reader gets a very acute observation of the alternative reality he lives in. Here I see where both this book and a lot of these genre-benders owe a lot to the rise of respect within literary circles for comics and graphic novels in the last 20-30 years.

Certainly, world-building as a concept has been around since the novel came to being (Eliot's Middlemarch, for instance, is an amazing microcosmic work), but in (traditional) novels, the impetus has been one of realism, where the world represented is supposed to match the actual world within which it is written (Middlemarch, seems to me, is pretty much exactly what life must have been like for people like that in a time and place like that). But the kind of world/universe building in comics, which seeks to create self-consistent alternate realities that don't necessarily need to have anything to do with the actual world (this is why I think The Dark Knight was such a step backwards for comic book movies, its whole Gotham-is-Chicago method takes a massive step backwards in terms of world-building, since it hinges on actualism instead of self-consistent realism (though perhaps it needed to, since Schumacher took Gotham to such campy places in his movies)).

But The City & The City succeeds so well as a novel, that although at various points I did find myself thinking that it could be really well done as either a movie or a graphic novel, I think, in the end, that it's better off without any visual representation. This way, it's up to the reader to build and interpret the wild cross-hatching streets and the two city's different architectures, fashions, and mores. There would definitely be fun ways to show and hide the two cities depending on where Borlú is, but the book itself keeps you from seeing too much, which is part of what makes the book so engrossing. The first 60 or so pages were just fun reading to me, as the police procedural took its time getting out of the gates in order to slowly sneak in exposition of the circumstances of these two cities.

And once the book really gets going, though it never loses track of its police story roots, Miéville keeps enough turns coming that it never gets stale, so that even as plot points are revealed and mysteries both pertinent to the case and cultural-historical, it still feels like there's something at stake for Borlú up through the end. Though part of me was let down by there not being a bit more Lovecraft in there, overall I came away very impressed with both the concept and execution of this one. And we're off to the races!

I Know What You Bookclubbed Last Summer Schedule:

July 9th: Henry David Thoreau's Walden

July 16th: TBD

July 23rd: Gene Yuen Lang's American Born Chinese

AudioShocker Podcast #123 - Going Blue

Our favorite Al Roker memories, nealrs.tumblr.com, Inkscape, ShamWow Vince and his hooker fight entertains Walmart customers, Monsters vs. Aliens, the dubbed version of Ponyo, Showdown in Little Toyko, Bruno, Ichi the Killer was ripped off by The Dark Knight, Aleon Craft, and Neal goes blue.

A Podcast with Ross and Nick #8 - Profane Aliens Love Libraries

INDECENT PROPOSAL part 3 has arrived! In this penultimate chapter, Ross Campbell and Nick Marino talk about Jingle All the Way, Hollow Man, Total Recall, and The Dark Knight. Then the debate opens - is there a film series where the third film is just as good or better than the previous two films? Threequels that make the cut include Gamora 3, Naked Gun 33 1/3, The Chronicles of Riddick, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Rocky 3, and Alien 3. Then Ross geeks out on the plots of Alien and Alien 3 (but not Aliens). Then the guys discuss Ross' upcoming Shadoweyes comic book, talking about YA books, all ages content, and profanity. And after the end theme, the guys talk about comics in libraries and, specifically, which of Ross' books can be found (hint: it's Water Baby).

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The Top 9 Biggest Superhero Movie Mistakes of the Past Ten Years

Well, well, well! Looks like last week's Top 9 list made the rounds over on IMDB and Superhero Hype!, and WOW did people hate it. Regardless, I still stand by it. And I think this week's ranting countdown is even better!

9. Jessica Alba's blue eyes in 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I actually love this film, to the chagrin of many superhero movie enthusiasts on the Internet. But one thing nearly ruined the movie for me - Jessica Alba's fake blue eyes. Aside from the fact that the first Fantastic Four film featured Alba's far more subtle peepers, her new contacts were an unreal shade of disturbing (and distracting) blue. Still, they could never be as distracting as...

8. Christian Bale's husky voice in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I don't care for the new Batman movies, but I do recognize how much they satisfy their audience. Still, there's one negative thing that most fans agree on: Bale's Batman voice is ridiculous. His husky, throaty whisper is enough to make me crack up during even the most serious and thrilling scenes. But even though Bale's Batman needs a little vocal work, he's still light years ahead of...

7. Ben Affleck starring as Matt Murdock in Daredevil. There was just something supremely wrong with Matt Damon's boy toy taking the lead role in Daredevil. He was stiff, he didn't look the part, and his bad acting destroyed any chance of a redeeming sequel. Instead, it gave us an ever crappier spinoff movie because apparently...

6. Someone thought it was a good idea to make an Elektra solo film. Elektra Natchios was played by Jennifer Garner in a skimpy Spandex outfit. I assume that's the only reason why this horrid Daredevil spinoff got the green light, because the rest of the movie is shit. Still, a solo Elektra movie could never be as bad as...

5. A Catwoman film removed from everything Batman. Warner Bros. decided to make Catwoman a legacy character and remove her feline ferocity from the Batman franchise with Halle Berry's Catwoman solo film. Don't get me wrong - Catwoman is a great character. But taking her out of the Batman universe is a slap in the face to loyal Batman fans and a confusing turn of events for the general public. Unfortunately, this wasn't the only superhero flub perpetrated by...

4. Halle Berry. That's right. Not only did this actress crap on Catwoman, she took a dump on Storm too (in three consecutive X-Men films!). That's four awful superhero performances in one decade. Why, Halle? WHY??? At least she wasn't cast in...

3. The obnoxious musical number featured in Spider-Man 3. I truly enjoyed the beginning of Spider-Man 3... until I realized that I was watching a Spider-Man movie and not a romantic comedy about three friends caught in a love triangle. Upon realizing how lame that was, Sam Raimi delivered the killing blow - a Toby Maguire song and dance number. Something inside me died that day. The decision to include this musical interlude is only eclipsed by the misguided decision to make...

2. Superman Returns as a sequel. Now this is supremely hypocritical on my part because I've never seen the film. But did I even need to? It's a sequel to Superman II... a movie I didn't even like that was made over 25 years ago!!! To make matters worse, Bryan Singer ditched the X-Men franchise to make this film, which leads us to...

1. X-Men: The Last Stand. The whole movie. One. Big. Mistake.

More: The Top 9 DC Comics Movies Warner Bros. Should Be Making Right Now.

Why the Top 9? Because 10 is too many and 9 is better. 3 X 3 = Awesome. Now that’s what I call math.

AFI 100 Years 100 Movies Podcast #11 - Silence of the Third Kind

AFI Movies Podcast

The Manchurian Candidate, Network, Silence of the Lambs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Cabaret are next up as Conrad and Nick countdown the American Film Institutes' 100 Years... 100 Movies list and hit on related topics like My Bloody Valentine in 3D, IMAX movies, The Dark Knight, Pauly Shore, Eric Stoltz, William Holden, Liza Minelli, Big Fish, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Sidney Lumet, Tom Harris, Barbarella, and more.

Hilarious Comic Strips Sum Up Superhero Movies in Five Panels

I rarely ever link blog, but for these superhero movie re-cut comics it must be done:

The Dark Knight re-cut comic

AudioShocker Podcast #58 - Ross Campbell Talks Wet Moon 4

Ross Campbell is afraid that his comics career might be drowned in evil just like Wet Moon 4, while Nick thinks that Ross should reinvigorate the franchise with Ultimate Wet Moon (though Ross would prefer a more classic Wet Moon 2099 revamp instead). Then, after the end theme, Ross shares his feelings on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (and we promise it ain't pretty).

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Culturology 004 - Dick Cheney, We Forgive You

So this week I’d finally look ahead to the future, and talk about something that I’m sure no one else, anywhere, ever, has yet talked about: the title of the new James Bond picture, Quantum of Solace. Or, it’s one of those things that it seems like everyone, just everyone has an opinion about, so I want to go ahead and record my view of the matter here at Culturology for posterity’s and history’s sake. My stance? Eh, it’s really not that bad. It seems like the discussion (as most discussions) breaks down into a simple set of pros and cons.

The pros:

1) It’s unique. I reckon that the title (and off the bat here, albeit parenthetically, I’d like to mention that the fact that it’s an actual title of an actual Ian Fleming story is pretty much completely unimportant) was picked as much for its sound as anything else. Kind of quasi-scientific but thoroughly open-ended. I suppose the expanded title would be something like A Discrete, Sub-Microscopic Amount of Solace. I’ve occasionally heard people complaining that the title doesn’t make any sense, but that really isn’t the case.

2) The notion of solace being right there in the title reminds the viewer that Daniel Craig’s James Bond is a different kind of Bond. Is a quantum of solace all the comfort and peace he’s going to get? Or how much he already has? Or how much he’s looking for? The Pierce Brosnan Bond movies came to be in the decadent mid-to-late ‘90s and, as such, were prone to the same kind of ridiculousness that ruined the Kilmer and Clooney Batman movies (though I generally think that Batman & Robin was so ridiculous that it’s worth keeping around, especially as Exhibit A in my on-going argument that the mid-to-late ‘90s was one of the most decadent and culturally destructive time-periods in American history), as awful titles like Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World is Not Enough demonstrate. Pierce Brosnan was a cardboard cut-out; Daniel Craig is not.

Continue reading 'Culturology 004 - Dick Cheney, We Forgive You'

The Top 9 Things That Suck About Modern Movies

I don't like to complain about somebody else's work, especially when I'm not already a creator of the thing I'm trashing. But I'll make an exception for modern movies. I'm talking about stuff like The Dark Knight and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. To be safe, let's say that these following 9 suck factors apply to most movies of the mid-to-late '00s.

9. The comedy scripts are really dumb and the drama scripts are way too serious.

8. Everything is "dark" all the time. What the fuck does that even mean?

7. Almost every big budget action movie is now a psychological thriller.

6. Catch phrases and reoccurring gags, while formerly being kickass or fun, are now just annoying.

5. Three names that tell me a movie could be better with different actors: Gyllenhaal, Ferrell, and Bale.

4. Do youth always have to be corrupted as their elders reveal a shocking hidden secret?

3. CG in live action films, while having the ability to be excellent, is overused and tends to look like shit.

2. 90 minutes is all I need. If your movie is over 120 minutes, chances are it sucks. A lot.

1. Getting nominated for an Oscar basically means that I will not enjoy watching your movie.

Of course, this doesn't apply to everything. Some superhero films (notably Iron Man and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer) have been excellent. And animated films have been solid (I'm looking at you, Kung Fu Panda).

More: The Top 9 New Marvel Films Starring Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury!

Why the Top 9? Because 10 is too many and 9 is better. 3 X 3 = Awesome. Now that’s what I call math.

AudioShocker Podcast #40 - Strange Dark Avatar

In no particular order we talk about The Dark Knight, Avatar: The Last Airbender Book 3 Chapters 16-21 including Sozin's Comet, The Strangers, Black Milk, Beatcast 001 Windrider by Nik Furious, Jay Faerber's Urban Myths, Afua Richardson, Marvel Adventures the Avengers #26, Watchmen movie, Warner Premiere's Motion Comics Watchmen #1, Sia, and more.