Let's all go to the movies~

[KingRoyal]

Women crave his bat-essence, but he denies it to them.

As tired as I am of the "Batman is actually crazy!" style of writing for the character, I would be down for a General Jack Ripper style Batman who was paranoid about his bat-essence

You can't tell me the 1970s Batman of Denny O'Neil or Steve Englehart didn't give Talia al Ghul or Silver St. Cloud a roll in the hay.

I don't think Silver St. Cloud was a villain so wouldn't be a compromise. Talia, though, pure villain through and through, can only get with Batman via deception.

[Thad]

I don't think Talia was written as a pure villain through and through in the '70s, though. Maybe not until Morrison?

Historically she was written as conflicted, loyal to her father but not entirely comfortable with the extremes he'd go to.

There are similarities between her and Catwoman -- characters who are criminals but who aren't irredeemably evil, who Batman sees the goodness in.

That's a rich vein to mine, and the reason Catwoman's been his most persistent romantic foil.

[KingRoyal]

Mostly my memory is of Morrison's run where she was portrayed as more conniving, with a genuine attraction to Batman but tempered by her very real desire to take over the League of Assassins, an organization that's counter to Batman in that it's named the League of Assassins

[Thad]

Yeah, Morrison wrote her not only as a straight-up villain, but as a character who wanted to be the Bat-villain, who was kind of offended that she ranked so far down in the hierarchy.

Dark Knight Rises made her a pure villain, too.

But I first encountered her on Batman: TAS, where she was depicted as more of a sympathetic character. And where her second appearance was written by co-creator Denny O'Neil.

[Brantly B.]

The thing that never gets called out about Catwoman is that she's doing pretty much the same thing as Batman in most versions, except her illegal activity is larceny instead of unsanctioned violence, and she's usually punching up instead of down. And that makes her the criminal villain who needs to be redeemed.

[Büge]

...with Bruce's cock

[Mongrel]

The thing that never gets called out about Catwoman is that she's doing pretty much the same thing as Batman in most versions, except her illegal activity is larceny instead of unsanctioned violence, and she's usually punching up instead of down. And that makes her the criminal villain who needs to be redeemed.

To be fair, any decent Batman writer has him punching both down AND up.

[Brantly B.]

...with Bruce's cock

I want a 200-word essay on why you decided to use "cock" there and not "wang".

[Grath]

...with Bruce's cock bat-a-wang

Fixed that for you.

[KingRoyal]

batawang

i hate all of you

[Büge]

I was going to use "dick," but, well

[beatbandito]

this seems fun and/or cute

[Mongrel]

That trailer has me more interested in seeing the movie than any other trailer in a loonnnnng time.

[Mongrel]

Oh wow, I just realized the husband is Ke Hui Quan from The Goonies & Indiana Jones! Holy shit!

[KingRoyal]

Teaser for a new Alex Garland film dropped

[Thad]

Joshua Hunt at Vulture: The King of the Geezer Teasers, an article about Randall Emmett, the shady producer who's carved out the "make a cheap-ass movie, give most of the budget to Bruce Willis to be in it for five minutes, put his face on the poster, and release it to theaters in the UAE and Vietnam and straight-to-streaming everywhere else" niche of filmmaking.

On a related note, Nathan Rabin has just kicked off A Year in the Life of Bruce Willis, a feature where he will review all seven movies Willis appeared in in 2021.

[KingRoyal]

RedLetterMedia also published a video reviewing some of these Bruce Willis films

[Thad]

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a stunningly beautiful movie that I can't really talk about without acknowledging that, y'know, it is an Arabian Nights adaptation made by a bunch of white people in 1958. There are definitely some brownface/exoticism problems. Though, that said, it was less racist than I expected; hell, it's less racist than Aladdin.

If you can get past the cultural appropriation, it's a stunning film. The production design is gorgeous, but of course the real star of the show is Ray Harryhausen. The stop-motion creature effects are quite simply some of the best ever committed to film.



It's a fun, zippy adventure movie and, above all, it's really impressive to look at.

I picked it up in the Ray Harryhausen: The Ultimate Collection Blu-Ray set a few months back, after watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms on Svengoolie and deciding I could use more Harryhausen in my life. The box set is Australian but the discs are region-free. Unfortunately there's no similar set available in the US; all the American Harryhausen sets I've seen have been some combination of more expensive, fewer films, and/or available on DVD but not Blu-Ray. It's a shame this stuff isn't easier to get.

That said, 7th Voyage appears to be streaming free with ads on Crackle and Plex.

[Mongrel]

Of course it's the most well-known Harryhausen bit, but yeah the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts is arguably still one of the toughest and most complex stop-motion sequences ever filmed. Even today, it remains impressive as all hell and back.

While 7th Voyage doesn't feature a mass battle like Argonauts does, it does have the precursor to it, where Sinbad duels a skeleton.

7th Voyage also has a rockin' soundtrack IIRC.

[Thad]

The King's Man feels like Matthew Vaughn overcorrected from the criticisms of the second movie. It's not nearly as dumb or offensive, but it's also not really any fun. It's a long, boring slog that I finished watching an hour ago and I've already mostly forgotten.