"This is how it happened. This is how the batman died."
These are the iconic words that comprise the first and last lines of the script to the popular video game Batman: Arkham Knight. In said game, the words are spoken by Jonathan Banks (a memorable alum of Breaking Bad), portraying Commissioner Gordon, one of Batman's oldest friends. With all due respect to Mr. Banks's emotionally evocative performance in the game, he wouldn't be my first choice to cast as Gordon if in some bizarre, twisted, impossible alternate universe, there were ever a movie version of Batman: Arkham Knight (perhaps produced by, say, Warner Bros. at some point in the near future). That honor I would bestow on fellow Breaking Bad alum, Bryan Cranston. He's already done a damn fine job voicing Gordon in the Batman: Year One animated feature, which I think has earned him the right to give the role physicality as well. Plus I think he could nail the combination of righteousness and anger that makes the commissioner such an effective character.
Come to think of it, with all due respect to the way Rocksteady Studios chose to start their game, I would begin the movie version a bit differently. I love starting in medias res for a game, where you want the player-controlled action to start as soon as possible, but for a film version catered to people who haven't necessarily played all the games leading up to this one, it would be nice to expand the cold open to include some backstory - after those iconic first lines, of course. And the ones that follow:
Just put some gray in that hair and we're good to go.
COMMISSIONER GORDON (VO)
Nine months ago, Joker was cremated. I pressed the button and burnt the evil bastard myself. And then... we waited. Gotham braced itself for the inevitable power struggle. But it didn't come: crime actually fell.
I can't believe it's been almost two months since my last activity on this blog, but anyone who's checked out my YouTube page recently should have a good idea of what I've been up to during that time. That's right, my Movie Scores Power Hour is now online and ready to view! Unlike my previous effort - chronicling some of the best moments in Batman: The Animated Series - this one needs only the audio to fulfill its function. The video portion, while not entirely necessary, includes provides useful information about each minute-long clip - title, year, director and composer of the movie from which it was taken, along with a piece of key art (i.e. a poster) and a screenshot or two. Below is the full video for your viewing / listening enjoyment:
Rather than go through clip by clip, as I did in my multipart companion to the Batman: TAS Power Hour, I'll just give some overall thoughts and bits of clarifying information that will hopefully make the experience more enjoyable (and thus drive up views). First, here's a leaderboard of composers who appear on the list more than once. Please keep in mind that while I think I got a great deal of the most iconic scores in film history, this was by no means meant to be an objective "best of" list - there's no such thing as a creative work that's completely separate from its creator, and my personal preferences often and proudly come to the fore throughout this hour.
John Williams - 11
Hans Zimmer - 4
Howard Shore - 4
Bernard Herrmann - 3
Jerry Goldsmith - 3
Nino Rota - 3
Elmer Bernstein - 2
Ennio Morricone - 2
James Horner - 2
Randy Edelman - 2
That's right, a whopping ELEVEN (this one goes to 11) clips from the modern day master of film music John Williams. And what's more, six of those eleven are paired with director Steven Spielberg. (No wonder two of those pairings show up in the top 10.) Fittingly, Mr. Williams is represented in the leadoff track, the opening title from the original Star Wars, for a long time my favorite movie and still my favorite film score (when taken over over the whole trilogy). My second favorite score appears all throughout this power hour as the cue to drink / introduce the next clip. I'm a sucker for a good leitmotif, and the different themes that Howard Shore crafted for the Lord of the Rings trilogy perfectly set the tone for a deep fantasy universe. In fact, three of his four appearances in this power hour are Middle Earth related, which happen to mark the halfway point.
Before we reach that milestone, however, we hear all four entries from Hans Zimmer, a composer who is as prolific as he is bombastic. The placement of Zimmer's contributions highlights the "block" structure around which I formatted this power hour. We hear from him first in the "superhero block" where his collaboration with James Newton Howard on The Dark Knight is contrasted directly with Danny Elfman's seminal theme from 1989's Batman. (The relatively short block is finished off by the Superman theme by, who else, John Williams.) Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard (the power hour's only female contributor) then start off the "epic/war movie block" with Gladiator. This block goes in chronological order going by subject matter, featuring the Roman Empire, 13th century Scotland, the American Civil War, World War I, and three entries from World War II. This block segues flawlessly into the "music you've heard in every trailer ever" block, starting with Zimmer's unforgettable Crimson Tide theme followed by Randy Edelman's ubiquitous Dragonheart (see if you don't have an "oh, THAT one!" reaction halfway through, and ending with Clint Mansell's haunting orchestral anthem (played by the Kronos Quartet, yes like the winter storm) for Requiem for a Dream. (Remember the trailer for Two Towers? Are you getting the LotR theme?)
I haven't seen Hans Zimmer's score for Inception (his second collaboration with Christopher Nolan on this power hour) show up in any trailers yet; even though it definitely has the proper triumphant epic tense feel, it might just be too recognizable on its own. As we head towards the halfway point, I tried to stick with the triumphant theme, grouping a couple of inspiring sports movies (the third sports-related film, the unmistakable and used-everywhere Chariots of Fire, earned a spot in the top 10) with a couple of inspiring John Williams scores based on space (including the second track from a Star Wars film). The halfway point is marked by repeats, as we see the second appearance of The Godfather - the haunting opening waltz is easily a top 10 track, but the melodious love theme is a distinct motif that also merits consideration. (Andy Williams's version also serves as a warning not to attempt to transform movie scores into pop ballads by adding lyrics. Don't listen unless you want your impressions of this great piece of music forever shaken...)
After the aforementioned trip to Middle Earth (with a detour to Hogwarts, making it a true "fantasy block"), we get the "Hitchcock block" made up of two of the three collaborations between the master of suspense and composer Bernard Herrmann that are featured in this power hour. The first of the three - the revolutionary staccato strings from Psycho - occurs in the top 10 as it's just too genre-defining to relegate to the second half. A bit of trivia that I have to mention every time I talk about Psycho (and stop me if you've heard this before) is that Hitchcock originally wanted the shower scene to play without any music at all. But that was before Herrmann showed the director what he was cooking up.
Next, the "western block" segues into the "Italian block" - one of the two Sergio Leone-directed / Ennio Morricone-scored "spaghetti westerns" in the hour appears here, the other (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) absolutely merited top 10 honors. Then we're back into scary movie land, where John Williams also makes an appearance with the driving strings of Jaws, followed by the score John Carpenter wrote for his own movie Halloween, and Jerry Goldsmith's extensively researched inversion of a high mass for The Omen. I actually lost some sleep over editing this clip, not because I was anxious about getting it just right, but because it would get in my head and I would be too scared to drift off.
Now a few clips from here is where I made the only glaring mistake in play order that I would like to have back. I got into some noir with Chinatown (also Jerry Goldsmith) and The Third Man (same lead actors as Citizen Kane, but with a much more fun musical theme), it would make perfect sense to go right to another dark story like On the Waterfront before starting to inject some fun as we head into the final 10, but instead I broke the tension with the jaunty Adventures of Robin Hood (which, at 1938, is the oldest film on the list, beating Gone With the Wind by one year). But like the weavers of Persian rugs who purposely included an imperfection because no one should be perfect but Allah, so I will graciously endure my error.
After a track from Titanic gets us back in the excited and hopeful mood (the addition of that movie was the biggest note I received from my fiancee / executive producer upon screening the first cut for her), we enter the final stretch by getting into some more groovy tracks from the 60's (The Pink Panther), 70's (Enter the Dragon, written by Mission: Impossible! composer Lalo Schiffrin), and 80's (Ghostbusters, which I know is not technically part of the score, but if it's in the movie, it's fair game [cf. the next track MORTAL KOMBAT]). In the final five is the only track from the 2013 movie season, Pacific Rim, which I included because, although I haven't heard many of the Oscar-nominated scores, I can't imagine any of them being more fun than Ramin Djawadi's (Game of Thrones, anyone?) heroic rock anthem.
A double dose of John Williams ends the hour, including the third track from the Star Wars series and the second track from Jurassic Park. Some might question the inclusion of two tracks from the same movie when so many great scores and composers went unrepresented (an unfortunate side effect when working in a 60-song format). But first of all, it's a distinct musical theme, and second of all, I've spent hours of his life waiting in line at Universal Studios listening to this particular riff on repeat, and I couldn't think of a better backdrop for a roll of credits of any kind.
So there you have it: a few words to supplement a few of my favorite movie scores of all time, arranged in a fun and interesting way. Watch it a few times and then tell all your friends! Enjoy!!!
The crowning achievement of my LEGO career that spans back some 20 years is now complete. It's a lot more purple than I'd like, but until I can find three each of element number 4215982 and 4204624 on the black market (the LEGO Customer Service site lists them as "Permanently Out of Stock"), I'm afraid it'll have to stay that way. A special thanks to all the folks at LEGO Customer Service (especially Jamie, Peter, James, and Joonho with whom I corresponded) - I quite literally couldn't have done it without you.
Finally, my minifig version of the dynamic duo is ready to take on their arch-nemesis in style!
Holy Headroom, Batman!
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Way back in 2008, in conjunction with the cinematic triumph that was The Dark Knight, LEGO partnered with Warner Bros. and DC Comics (as it was then called) to bring us one of the coolest (if not the coolest) licensed LEGO sets of all time: 7888 The Tumbler: Joker's Ice Cream Surprise. Needless to say, the prize of that set was not the charming ice cream truck nor even the armored Batman minifig made to resemble the suit worn by Christian Bale in the movie, but Christopher Nolan's epic tank-like version of the Batmobile, known as the Tumbler. In all, the set included 449 pieces, was priced at $49.99, and was available in stores for just over six months.
At that time in my life, a very different person must have occupied the skin-bag of my body, because that's the only explanation for why I don't have no fewer than three copies of this set at home; one fully assembled on my shelf, one scavenged for spare parts, and one mint-in-box, calmly appreciating to 15 times its original market price. (Set 7888 is currently going for $800 on Amazon and even more than that on eBay.) I don't know if that past person was not yet a fully fledged AFOL, or if he just didn't think of a LEGO set as a worthwhile investment. But either way, I've had to live with the disappointment of not having that set every day for the last four years.
This year, to coincide with The Dark Knight Rises, LEGO, DC, and Warner Bros. came out with a new movie-themed set: 76001 The Bat vs. Bane: Tumbler Chase. While both sets include a LEGO Tumbler, the model in 7888 compares to the model in 76001 like the full-sized drivable version compares to the miniature prop scale model used for effects shots. I mean, the new Tumbler (with the lame camo color scheme) barely has enough internal space to fit the Bane minifig, let alone Batman with his oversized cowl. Last month, I spent some time with 76001, including swapping out the brown and tan pieces for black ones and making some custom alterations, which got me thinking: why couldn't I try to re-create the Tumbler from 7888 using my own resources and the ones LEGO makes available to me?
If I were to go about realizing this mammoth undertaking, the first step would be to determine which pieces I need. LEGO Customer Service graciously lets you download PDFs of any set for which you know the number, so it's easy to get my hands on the design specifications. However, the complete inventory on the last page of the instructions includes all the pieces necessary to build the incidental ice cream truck as well as the coveted Tumbler - which means, if I want an accurate count, I'd have to go through the instructions step-by-step and mark which pieces are used. This becomes a little tricky because this set was made before the LEGO Revolution, where every step has a little box showing you which pieces are required for that step. I'd have to compare each picture to the step that came before it and see what has changed, which is no small task given the medium-quality scans provided on the website.
After this somewhat labor intensive process of making my own inventory, the next step is to figure out how I can get my hands on these pieces. Most of them can come from my own personal stock of LEGO bricks (albeit not all of them in exactly the right color) and for the pieces that I don't possess, there's the LEGO Shop's Pick A Brick feature. All you have to do is type in the Element ID (the six or seven digit number accompanying each piece in the instruction's inventory) and the search engine will give you the price and the option to buy it. There's a way to circumvent some of the rare bricks that don't exist in Pick A Brick by using the Design ID, a shorter number that refers to the same type of brick but in a different color. To find that number, which is not listed in the instructions, I can use the more detailed inventory provided on the truly amazing Brickset site. Clicking on the "Parts" tab brings up a visual inventory where every brick has a link to every other color and every other LEGO set in which that brick is available. Is there nothing the internet can't provide to us obsessive AFOL's?
But hang on... there are still some pieces that just plain aren't available in ANY color from Pick A Brick, including the piece you need for the VERY FIRST STEP of building the LEGO Tumbler from 7888. I must admit that I was about to despair the prospect of ever completing this project... until I noticed a link to the LEGO Customer Service replacement parts page. This hidden feature requires you to make a list of every brick you want, send it to LEGO, and wait for a personalized invoice from a real-life customer service representative telling you how much those bricks will cost. Then the only way to actually place your order is to call in and give your credit card number to a real person. It's more expensive than Pick A Brick, but it's much faster (since each order doesn't have to clear customs on its way from the warehouse in Poland where they all originate) and includes a much wider variety of available pieces.
The gang waits for the last shipment from Wayne Enterprises.
If you haven't been able to tell, I've already gone through the steps outlined above. I received my replacement parts order and my Pick A Brick shipment is en route to Los Angeles, according to the LEGO tracking site. But I can't wait and have to get started, whether or not I have the wheel wells or the front tires...
The first discrepancy between the instructions and my raw materials came in step 8, which calls for black 1x10 technic bricks, but I only have them in medium stone gray. So what if the very front of the vehicle is a different color than it should be? It will only set the tone for how the rest of it will look... On step 11, I actually had to replace some dark stone gray pieces with black ones, which will be totally unnoticeable. Then on step 16, some of the big plates in the cockpit that are supposed to be yellow will have to be substituted with red. You know, Batman's original costume was supposed to be red-tinted, but they decided it would look too much like Superman. We can just say this change is an homage to Batman's history. Plus, with the replacement red plates and light green 1x8 bricks, the cockpit is getting a decisive Robin-esque flair, which is appropriate, cuz he'll be riding shotgun most of the time.
Step 26 is the first spot where I needed to use a piece from the Pick A Brick order. Having to wait 13-18 business days after they receive your order is a real buzzkill, but my spirits were lifted at Step 28 when I used the last of the replacement gray 1x2 roof tiles. I'll be free to use the black ones that are called for in the instructions for the rest of the build. Ditto on step 31 for the dark stone gray lamp holders. The first real hard choice came in the next step, where I have to decide what to do with a brown 1x4 roof tile that has to be right up front. The instructions call for six, and I only have two black ones and two dark gray ones, so the rest have to be an out of place earth tone. I've tried to hide it behind the front tires, but until the Pick A Brick package arrives, I won't know how successful that strategy will look.
I had to stop at step 3 of instruction booklet 2 which calls for covering up a Pick A Brick piece that has not yet arrived. So I pause now to wait outside for the mailman and will post an update when the whole thing is done.
The holiday season is the time for toy companies to let it all hang out and put their most impressive wares on display in hope that excited children will convince their parents to buy them. Which is why it's curious that LEGO's new set based on this summer's blockbuster hit The Dark Knight Rises wasn't available until January. Luckily for us AFOLs (Adult Fans Of LEGO) the season of treating yourself is year-round. So yesterday I went to my local LEGO store, redeemed by $5 credit for being a member of the VIP club, and purchased The Bat vs. Bane: Tumbler Chase.
"We take Gotham from the corrupt... and
give it back to you... the people."
The set itself is a good example of the excellence that modern LEGO products generally exhibit. It's got two vehicles: a camo Tumbler that pales in comparison to the discontinued set from 2008, and the movie's unimaginatively-titled The Bat, from which I later cannibalized many of the core pieces in order to make a black version of the Tumbler... but not before re-creating select scenes from the movies (pictured). The Tumbler's coolest feature is a bank of concealed missiles, but in a triumph of convenience over authenticity, they gave it a front central axle - the two front wheels in the actual movie version were somewhat illogically free-standing. It's also got precious little headroom - I had to alter the design a bit for the black version in order to accomodate Batman's headgear. The Bat, despite its scaled-down size, surprisingly had room for two LEGO minifigs inside.I was however confused at the maneuverability of the front propeller-thingies. With three separate ball and socket joints, they appear more like robot arms than... come to think of it, what are those things there for in the first place?
But it's the TDKR-inspired minifigs that really give the set its personality. They brought back the movie-themed Batman from the aforementioned 2008 set, and it's always nice to add another Batman cape to my collection - this new one brings my total to three black, one blue. I don't know why the prepackaged Bane figure is wearing a solitary Michael Jackson glove, but I replaced his torso with a furry jacket reminiscent of the one he wears in the film. I also took Commissioner Gordon's head off the SWAT uniform, put it on Bruce Wayne's suit from last year's Batcave set, and gave him gray hair so that he better resembles the character from the 1992 Animated Series.
"My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange minifigs."
To complete the experience, I of course put on my copy of TDKR on BluRay while building. Seeing the film for the third time, the first from the comfort of my own home, I was inspired to make a list of the things that bothered me about it. Not that I didn't like the movie as a whole; it just left a lot to be desired in the whole logic/creating a compelling version of the Batman universe departments. Since, according to Jim Gordon, we shouldn't believe in coincidence, there must be some cosmic significance behind the fact that this video from CinemaSins came out the very same day. They mention four of my biggest grievances among their 73 movie sins, so I won't waste precious space on the blogosphere except to innumerate them:
Sin #8: How does Officer Blake figure out Batman's secret identity just by looking at him? Even Dick Grayson had to be told, and he lived in Wayne Manor for gosh knows how many months before becoming Robin.
Sin #14: Alfred's false exposition about Bane. The folks at CinemaSins were confused that Alfred even knew all that information to begin with but I don't think it's unreasonable that he could come up with it given a couple hours on the Batcomputer. What upsets me is that everything he says turns out to be a lie. And it's the worst kind of lie that can be told in a movie based on a previously established and well-loved canon: information that is true in ALL OTHER VERSIONS OF THE STORY, but which is revealed to be nothing but a red-herring in this universe.
It only comes in black if you make a few custom modifications...
Sin #23: The stock market fraud that leaves Bruce Wayne penniless. While examining the evidence, Lucius Fox remarks, "Long term we may be able to prove fraud." Meanwhile, short term, what in the name of Dow Jones are the police and the SEC doing with the VIDEO FOOTAGE of Bane breaking in and HACKING INTO THE ONLINE TRADING DESK??? I doubt they could have confused the masked mercenary for Bruce Wayne inputting his actual thumbprint...
Sin #64: Bane and Talia's backstory reveal. I haven't actually read any of the Batman comics, but isn't Batman supposed to meet and bond with Talia before he even meets Ra's al Ghul and finds out she's his daughter? Even if you want to keep it so he trained with Ra's and the League of Shadows (or Society of Shadows or League of Assassins, depending on your continuity), you can still have him meet Talia as an ally without knowing her connection to Ra's. It's similar to what happened with Venom in Spiderman 3: wasting one of the deepest and most influential characters by relegating her to the last 30 seconds of the movie.
The Bane voice takes up three sins (#1, #25, #42), and while its campy indecipherable tone definitely goes a long way in dragging down the credibility of this movie, I don't even know if he's the worst offender in the unable-to-be-understood department. Of course there's the famous bat-voice, and Marion Cotillard's accent shouldn't win any prizes for clarity. But I think Commissioner Gordon might take the cake with his emotionally guttural raspy growl. Effective thought it may be, it's inexcusable that a character who's not wearing a mask should have a three-minute scene of dialogue where the only words you can understand are "filth" and "friend like I did."
Front-mounted propellers or Robo-arms? YOU DECIDE!
But my number one biggest objection to the movie has to do with Bruce Wayne's pathetic obsession with Rachel. Let's start at the beginning: Why does Bruce Wayne become Batman? Because he saw his parents gunned down before his eyes at a young age, an experience that profoundly changed him, inspiring a near superhuman level of focus and drive that allowed him to become a powerful crime fighter. This experience so fundamentally changes his character that it comes to to define him more than the name and fortune he was born into. Over the course of the first two movies, Bruce falls in love with a girl who ends up dying tragically. And in the third one he gets so broken up about this that he becomes too depressed to be Batman anymore.
So let me get this straight: His heartbreak over losing the girl he likes weighs more heavily on his soul than the loss of his parents? How can this character use one instance of tragedy as an inciting incident to inspire him to greatness, but gets completely flatlined by another similar tragedy? Keeping with the pattern of his origin story, shouldn't Rachel's death have caused him to become some sort of Mega-Ultra-Batman, rather than leave him depressed and useless for the first hour and a half of the movie? This inconsistency immediately cheapens Christopher Nolan's version of the character.
You may read this and think I'm a new-Batman-hater. I'm not, I'm really not. We fanboys have the tendency to scrutinize most vehemently the things we love best, and my nitpicking of this particular movie is really just an affirmation of how devoted I am to any version of Batman that might come to be. Including LEGO Batman in the upcoming movie (voiced by Will Arnett, I'm told, which I'm extremely eager to hear). However, my custom LEGO Batman minifig remains free from all reproach as the most genuine and pure Batman ever to grace the toy shelf. Here's hoping they'll make a movie version that approaches his awesomeness one day...
I experienced something of a first this weekend after seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: I was accused of not being a Lord of the Rings fanboy. Needless to say, this description wounded me to the quick, and I don't think it's fair to question my nerdly resolve just because I thought that the first third of the film adaptation of the tale was painfully long and stuffed with far too much meaningless filler. (Also that the high frame rate was a pointless, inexcusable gimmick that has no reason to ever catch on ever.) And even though I loved Peter Jackson's first Lord of the Rings movies, I loved J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels even more. So while I would still consider myself a fanboy, I would have to qualify that by saying I'm a fanboy with extremely high standards and who's fiercely dedicated to the source material.
And while there was undoubtedly a whole lot of source material packed into this newest film, there was also a lot of superfluous action added in there that slowed down the story and pulled me (at least) out of the experience. When I first heard that The Hobbit was being split into three movies - a book which, at 255 pages, is 65 pages shorter than the shortest book in the trilogy (without the appendices, Return of the King clocks in at 311) - I didn't immediately despair. With some interesting additions from some ancillary works and a nice, fast pace, I could definitely see Jackson & Co. coming up with three enjoyable movies. That is, until I heard the running time: a butt-numbing 2 hours and 48 minutes. It was at that point that I knew we were in for no shortage of Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens-inspired extras.
One of the few scenes that actually took place in the book...
You'll recognize these types of tacked-on time-wasting story points from the first trilogy: stuff like adding in a red-herring death for Aragorn in The Two Towers. Or completely altering Faramir's character to make him exactly like Boromir. Or having Frodo and Sam get in a friendship-threatening fight for no apparent reason at a critical point in Return of the King (as if that movie wasn't long enough already). And what's up with Elrond showing up at Dunharrow to deliver Aragorn's sword to him - a sword that defines his character and which he should have had at his side since the Fellowship left Rivendell? You'd think 1,086 pages would be enough out of which to adapt three three-hour movies without adding useless filler.
But you know these Hollywood types: always having to change stuff around and add their own stamp on things, otherwise they don't feel like they're doing their jobs. And the job that Jackson and his screenwriting team did on The Hobbit gets you yawning right from the start. I remembered thinking how much I couldn't wait until all three Hobbit movies come out on DVD, so that some clever, enterprising Tolkien nerd with film editing experience could put together a fan-edit of the trilogy, ideally clocking in at just under three hours for all three movies combined, with all the treacle cut out and the story arranged in a way that could actually hold an audience's attention.
First on my list to cut would be anything involving Saruman, Radagast, and the White Council. If you need material to pad nine hours' worth of movies, the story from the appendix dealing with the Necromancer in Dol Guldur is a good place to look, but a) there's no reason to make nine hours' worth of Hobbit movies, and b) according to said appendix, that storyline took place a full 91 years before the events of The Hobbit, with Gandalf the protagonist instead of Radagast. (How do you think he acquired the key that he gives to Thorin? He took it from his father, Thrain, who was imprisoned in Dol Guldur.) And don't get me wrong, I like Radagast as a character... for all of the three pages of Fellowship in which he appears. I just didn't like the comic relief gimmick with bird shit in his beard that he became for the movie. And I know that Christopher Lee is the biggest Tolkien nerd of the entire cast, the only member of which to actually meet J.R.R. himself, but it honestly looks as if it's time for him to hang up his staff and fake-ass looking beard. I don't think he's got much left in the tank (which would be understandable at 90 years old) since he looked absolutely miserable in his scene.
"Radagast the Brown. Radagast the bird-tamer. Radagast the simple.
Radagast the fool." - Saruman's description of the character in Fellowship.
Notice how my list of things to cut didn't start with the trudging prologue introducing the plight of the Dwarven city Erebor, which feels like it takes up an hour before the real action even starts. In fact if I had my choice, I would keep some of those images, but I'd move them to a little later on. The movie would start where the book starts, with Bilbo's narration explaining what Hobbit life is like. (This means we'd have to cut Elijah Wood's cameo as Frodo, because why the hell would Bilbo need to explain the inner workings of a Hobbit hole to someone who spent his whole damn life living in one?) No, I would intercut the visuals of the prologue with the Dwarves' song they sing by the fireplace. (Howard Shore's haunting melody, incidentally, and the leitmotif it becomes, is still in my head, three days later.) That song has a full ten verses in the book, only two of which appear in the movie. If that sequence was extended a little bit and beefed up visually, kind of like an epic music video, it would set up the Dwarves while also giving us some more nice music.
I would have also liked to see the elimination of Azog the Defiler except in flashbacks (his character, after all, died more than 150 years before The Hobbit took place), the stone giants (although they did appear in the book, for about a sentence's worth of time), and about three feet off the Goblin King's scrotum-chin (maybe it was just the high frame rate, but I swear I could discern at least one testicle floating around in there). But with two more of these epic mistakes coming down the pipeline, it's silly to agonize over each one. So until we finally get to see that fan-edit, I will do what I always do with a piece of entertainment I desperately wanted to like more than I actually did: I'll accept the good parts, and mentally replace the bad parts with what I would have liked to see. This doesn't always provide me with a crystal-clear view of the actual movie, but I sure do leave the theater feeling a lot happier...
...the emotions swirling through my head right now, just over six hours since the credits rolled on The Dark Knight Rises, the thrilling conclusion of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. I managed to remain spoiler free through the entire lead-up to the film's release - I limited my exposure to hard-to-avoid billboards and posters (see right, also my phone background), and the only line from the trailer I happened to hear through shut eyes and covered-up ears was, "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne," which is the title of the first track in Hans Zimmer's striking soundtrack album. Although, for my money, Michael Shannon does a much more convincing reading of that same line in Take Shelter...
I'm convinced that shielding myself from the trailers enhanced my enjoyment of the movie, particularly after saturating my brain with trailers for The Dark Knight in the months before that came out in 2008. I mean, I watched the regular trailer, the trailer juxtaposed with scenes from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, even the trailer reenacted with LEGO. I knew every beat from the trailer so well that when I eventually saw the movie, I was basically just waiting for those scenes to happen. Like, instead of being absorbed by the brilliantly-planned and executed car chase, I was just thinking, Oh, here's where they're gonna flip that truck. It kind of pulled me out of the experience, which I didn't want to happen with the finale.
Whether or not my little spoiler-free experiment contributed to my perceptions of the movie, I have to believe that it made a positive impact. I left the theater last night thoroughly satisfied - with the portrayal of the characters, with the treatment of the Bat-mythology, and with the narrative structure in general, even though it did fall into the greedy trap of trying to squeeze too many plot points and/or amusing bits into the already-bloated running time. In my mind it didn't measure up to The Dark Knight (how can you top a Batman movie that features The Joker?), but I could tell instantly that #TDKR is a movie I will be happy to see again many times in the future.
Needless to say, I've been kept busy with all the craziness leading up to this much-anticipated event in Batman's media history (you can check out my live-tweeting of both previous movies) - not to mention LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, another Bat-related pastime that's been keeping me pretty occupied. Through all this, I've still been keeping up with baseball, although my interest has turned rather internal since the All-Star Game. While a half-season's worth of stats does not provide a terribly large sample size, the halfway point of a season is a good milestone to pause and take a snapshot and see how each team is faring. I've praised ESPN's fantasy point system so much that I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the fact that points are already calculated has helped make the half-season evaluation process infinitely more manageable.
Unfortunately, the baseball world did not pause for me while I was holed up in my cave putting together my reports. But I'm pretty much done now and just about ready to launch back into the In-Depth Analyses I love so well. But for now, go to your local theater (IMAX preferably) and check out The Dark Knight Rises as soon as possible... because I can only resist talking about all the spoilers for so long!
Well, we're back from a glorious 2011 Holiday Season, one that wrapped up the last year before the coming consciousness shift of 2012. With the baseball season over, action shifts to offseason trades, new contracts for free agents, and exchange of arbitration figures. Very little is happening in my Batman world since beating Arkham City - I'm going to remain spoiler-free and skip the 6-minute preview of Dark Knight Rises, and I hardly think the New Years Eve marathon of the 1960s Adam West TV series should garner much coverage on the blagosphere. To occupy this dark cold time of the year, I have been engaging in the creation of two sortable databases that cover the two new subjects of this blog.
The first is a comprehensive look at the 2011 baseball season, with a wealth of information for each qualifying player, including position, swp (for each team in the case of a trade or other mid-season acquisition), birthday, hometown, draft position, and school history. The other is a list of the biggest movies that came out in 2011, listed by release date, distributor, North American opening weekend gross (so we can compare movies from the beginning of the year to later releases), and production company (pending).
As is the case with most database work, there is a lot of number crunching that has to go into play before any interesting or publishable findings can come out, but here are some preliminary findings about how the major distributors did at the box office this year, in terms of opening weekend ticket sales:
1. Warmer Bros. Pictures
$623.7 million
The leader in market share for 2010 continued its dominance last year, grossing the most opening weekend ticket sales out of all the major distributors. Of course, it never hurts when your slate includes the biggest release in movie history (let alone of 2011): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 ($169.2m). The company also boasted the film with the 6th highest opening weekend sales: comedy sequel The Hangover Part II ($85.9m). (The next biggest comedy on their slate was Horrible Bosses, which missed the $30m mark by less than $2m.) Green Lantern, a movie inspired by a property from Time Warner-owned DC Entertainment (formerly DC Comics), grossed $53.2m in its opening weekend, a figure sure to be dwarfed by next year's fellow DC behemoth The Dark Knight Rises. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was good for $39.6m - who knows how many sequels that franchise will churn out. It's no wonder the film unit accounts for about 40% of parent company Time Warner's bottom line.
2. Paramount Pictures
$535.8 million
With 16 notable releases in 2011, the film distribution arm of media conglomerate Viacom (see also MTV Networks, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and the BET family) took home the silver medal. Its top-opening film - Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon - made $97.9m in its debut weekend, good for the third-highest opening of the year. A pair of Marvel Comics movies - Thor and Captain America, both foreshadowing next year's ensemble epic The Avengers - were basically locked up in a tie for second: $65.7m and $65.1m respectively. Next on their list is another three-quel, this one in the horror genre rather than an effects-driven event film (Paranormal Activity 3: $52.6m). Three animated movies featuring high profile celeb voices (Kung Fu Panda 2, Rango, and Puss in Boots) each grossed over $30m in their opening frames. Rounding out their $30m+ releases is Super 8, Paramount's second collaboration with director J.J. Abrams in the last three years.
3. Universal Pictures
$330.7 million
The studio's biggest tentpole, Fast Five, had just the 5th highest-grossing opening of the year (just edging out Hangover II with $86.2m). The only other movies on its slate that broke the $30m mark were animated Easter comedy Hop ($37.5m) and disappointing period/sci-fi actioner Cowboys & Aliens ($36.4). Bridesmaids, like Horrible Bosses before it, also missed out on the $30m milestone, but what it lacked in B.O. it made up for in breakout performances. If we consider Focus Features (also owned by Universal's parent company NBCUniversal, which is itself owned by Comcast and GE), the grand total goes up by about $36m (the imprint's biggest release of 2011 was Hanna with a mere $12.4m)... but it's not enough to move it up in the rankings, and I consciously didn't want to get too much into the corporate game on this post.
4. 20th Century Fox
$301.2 million
News Corp's film unit didn't make any real big splashes, with their two biggest releases (X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes) languishing in the mid $50m range. Rio once again proved the lucrativity of animated features with $39.2m in its opening weekend. Specialty division Fox Searchlight contributed barely $3m to the till, but it's hoping to bank big in awards season with Oscar contender The Descendants and pretentious-favorite The Tree of Life.
5. Columbia Pictures
$282.5 million
Here's where the corporate ownership game really comes into play: if we combine Columbia's take with the other banners that operate under Sony Pictures Entertainment (TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, and Sony Pictures Classics) the total goes up to $382.9m, and the conglomerate as a whole rockets up to third place on the year. Combined or not, the company's biggest grosses were Battle: Los Angeles and The Smurfs (tied with $35.6m) followed closely by old TV show remake The Green Hornet and comedy Bad Teacher. A pair of Adam Sandler comedies round out the slate (Just Go With It and Jack and Jill).
6. Walt Disney Pictures
$205 million
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($90.2m) and Cars 2 ($66.1) led the way for the Mouse House, while throwback The Muppets missed the $30m mark by less than $1m. A corporate note: if we add the $107.5 million grossed by Disney-owned Touchstone (led by Real Steel, Gnomeo & Juliet, and The Help) the Disney machine eclipses the News Corp machine.
7. Summit Entertainment
$178.5 million
Summit made basically all its income from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 ($138.1m). Its next highest release, Source Code, garnished just over 1/10th of the haul made by the vampire/werewolf tween drama. The final corporate note of this post: if this week's deal that will see Lions Gate buy Summit for $400m had occurred last year, the combined moviemaker would have grossed $244.1m between them.
"Oy, what a bellyache!" I exclaimed to myself as I left the theater. Not because of the movie: Stephen Soderbergh's The Informant! was actually pretty enjoyable at its best points. Matt Damon turned in a very effective comedic performance, despite playing a character whose intentions and motivations were more obscure than Thomas Hardy's Jude. (This was due partly to his character, Mark Whitacre's, near-psychotic nature and partly to a narrative that left the audience in the dark at key points regarding his past decisions and actions.)
No, the bellyache was due to the entire package of Red Vines and small Coke I had during the movie. (And, case you're wondering, yes, I did use a Red Vine as a straw. Delicious!)
"Darnit, Pankin, you're better than that!" I admonished myself. "Your mother works for Weight Watchers, for goodness sake. Where's your portion control?"
The truth is, I was nervously eating because my attention was split between the movie and my inner thoughts. These thoughts, as they so often do, had turned to baseball, specifically a movie about baseball that was almost directed by the same director whose work I was watching on the screen.
In case you haven't heard, this movie was Moneyball, an adaptation of Michael Lewis's bestselling novel about Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane and his new stats-based approach to player evaluation. The book chronicled the A's 2002 season, which included the fabled "Moneyball Draft," where the A's drafted - against popular wisdom - such future solid major leaguers as Nick Swisher (now with the Yankees), Joe Blanton (Phillies), and Mark Teahen (Royals, also the starting third-baseman for Team Canada in this year's World Baseball Classic).
In addition to Soderbergh, Brad Pitt was attached to star as Beane, Demitri Martin had the second lead (Paul DePodesta, Beane's right-hand man), and numerous ex-baseballers would have played themselves, recreating parts of their careers on the silver screen. But as the project neared the start of production, the studio (Sony) had issues with Soderbergh's revisions of Steven Zaillian's script (a script which also needed the approval of Major League Baseball). Soderbergh tried to offer the film to other studios, but when he received only rejections, the director was let go. With Pitt still attached, Sony hired writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Sports Night) to punch up the script. This was back in July, and imdb.com lists the movie as being "in production."
Despite my affiliation with the Oakland A's, I never read Moneyball. Or, rather, I never finished Moneyball. Part of the reason was that I read the book in 2003 - the year of its publication - while the A's were right in the midst of their fourth straight heartbreaking loss in the first round of the playoffs. This time it was against the Red Sox; the three previous years, they fell to the Twins, the Yankees, and the Yankees again. The book is basically a love letter to Billy Beane: how he's head and shoulders above other GMs in terms of intellect, light-years ahead of them in terms of insight, and that his new methods of player evaluation and development would revolutionize baseball. Meanwhile, on my television set, I watched Billy Beane's team drop three straight games to the Red Sox after taking a two-game lead and needing only one more win to clinch the series. Reading about the brilliance of the A's management while simultaneously watching the A's inability to advance in the playoffs provided too intense an emotional disconnect, causing me to hurl my copy of Moneyball across the room. I haven't opened it since.
I have, however, read the first draft of Steven Zaillian's script for the film. I enjoyed it, but then again I also recognized the name of every front office man, every relief pitcher, and every low draft pick that got even a passing reference. So despite this enjoyment, I found myself unable to put myself in the shoes of someone less obsessed with baseball than I in order to judge whether the movie would hold the average audience member's attention. It seemed likely that many of the subtleties would be lost on someone who didn't follow every game of the 2002 season (much like how many of the subtleties of The Wire are lost on people who did not grow up in Baltimore).
That's not to say that there isn't material for a compelling movie in the Moneyball story. The season in question is perfectly suited for a sports movie: handsome, charismatic, and savvy GM leads a team with an embarrassingly low payroll to an unexpectedly successful season. A season, by the way, that included a first place finish after sitting 10 games back in the standings at one point, and a magical, record-setting 20-game winning streak. I mean, the movie almost writes itself! Furthermore, Beane's off-the-field exploits - his wheeling and dealing with other GMs, his intellectual conversion to stats-based rather than gut feeling-based player evaluation, and his Jimmy McNulty-esque personal life - make for a compelling character study (and a meaty role for a two-time Oscar nominee to boot!).
The skinny on the plug-pulling was that Soderbergh's rewrite of the script included lengthy interviews with real players and other narrative jaunts unfamiliar to the genre. The studio got nervous, not wanting to disappoint their time-tested sports movie demographic and sent the Oscar-winning director packing.
Which brings us back to said director's current project, The Informant!, and my binge-marked viewing of it. Watching Soderbergh's adaptation of Mark Whitacre's story, I couldn't help but speculate as to how his particular directorial style would have enhanced Billy Beane's story. I was especially interested in Matt Damon's performance, which prompted fantasies about how an actor just as familiar with Soderbergh as Damon (Pitt and Damon both appeared in all three of Soderbergh's Ocean's # series) would have worked with the director to cultivate a portrayal of one of the most captivating figures in Major League Baseball. Finally, after all these flights of fancy, I was jolted back into reality with the recollection that the project is all but completely off the table (unless Sorkin can work magic with his pen and Pitt can find another director, one who's willing to work with a trimmed budget).
With all this going on in my head, no wonder I ate so much during the movie!
