Summertime, and the livin' is crazy

Summer is a crazy time. On Wednesday night I got back to Maryland from Cape Cod, by way of a layover in Philadelphia. On Sunday I'm leaving again to go on a tour of my grandmothers in the Carolinas. In all this I'm trying to find time to work--to work work, mind you--and also to write.

I didn't finish my 12 Dancing Princesses story, which I'll just call "12" for now until I come up with something better. That sort of diligence didn't really seem in the spirit of the vacation I was taking, but I'll keep at it. I actually think this story will be cool when I finish it. I like it.

Over the last six weeks I've been having a Kafkaesque experience with Maryland's state health insurance plan. It's not such a great story in the telling. The upshot is that the enrollment department's game plan is apparently to tell me my paperwork is out of date and make me fill it out again, and repeat, until (I guess) I give up or die. So I am currently, technically, uninsured.

So between being out of town and knowing that I'll have to sell my kidneys if I break my arm, I haven't done much judo lately. I can console myself by watching it on the Olympics, although that itself is a strange experience--NBC, assuming nobody in America cares about judo (I guess), has left most of the feeds raw. But I can be excited, at least, by the news that an American has finally won a judo gold medal. I can also look forward to picking through NBC's three-hour feed to watch that happen.

I have now watched The Dark Knight Rises twice since I last posted about it. It was a very good movie but did not flirt with greatness like its immediate forebear did. I am satisfied. Now I can start devoting my anticipation to The Hobbit, which I hear has now been racked out to three movies. No doubt there will be more to say on that.

Bat-ticipation

The other day I re-watched Batman Begins again, having re-watched The Dark Knight not too long ago for the fourth or fifth time. I was struck again by how much better TDK was than BB. While Begins was a fun and interesting look at how one might build the Batman character in a mostly/relatively realistic world, it wasn't great. You know, not great-great. I probably enjoyed it only slightly more than Superman Returns, all told, though I'm given to understand that I'm the only person in America who thought Superman Returns was any good. Begins was weighed down by overwrought dialogue and scenes that mostly read as the-scene-where-we-establish so-and-so, followed by the-scene-where-now-this-happens. TDK was really just a higher caliber of film. I'm also repeatedly surprised by how detachable it is from its predecessor. The actors are (mostly) the same but look at the city, the tone, the plot threads. It's like the movies are from two closely related but distinct continuities. Is there anything that happens in Begins that you need to know about to follow TDK? Posterity might forget that TDK was a sequel.

Anyway, watching this was part of a lead-up to The Dark Knight Rises. I've resolved to see it on Friday because I've spoiled myself enough for it already and I don't think I'll be able to go one day after it's come out without finding out every damn thing that happens simply by being on the internet. I expect every dimrod and nimwit who went to a midnight showing will wake up Friday afternoon and plaster the internet with OMG BATMAN DIES FROM A BOMB THAT EXPLODES IF HE LETS GO OF IT AND SO HE SWIMS IT TO THE BOTTOM OF GOTHAM HARBOR WITH IT DON'T SPOIL THIS ANYONE!!!?

That is my fear.

One story that I don't worry is going to give me unwanted insight into Rises is this nonsense about Bane representing or corresponding to Bain Capital. Some Democrat tried to draw comparisons between the two because Bane and Bain are homophones and wouldn't it be great if that meant something? Then Rush Limbaugh decided to weigh in, or hit back, or whatever it is he does these days. What baffles me is how he can think the Dark Knight franchise is carrying water for the Obama campaign, when if he couldn't read a neocon allegory into The Dark Knight he just wasn't trying. Maybe that's the answer. And not to brag but I thought of the whole Bain/Bane connection several months ago and decided not to mention it to anyone because it was stupid.

The tickets are purchased. Tomorrow I will go and see this movie with my girlfriend and then eat a delicious hamburger, probably while we gaze devastatedly across the table at each other pondering how Christopher Nolan pulverized the last of our faith in the human race.

Bat-servations

This started as a reply to a comment on my last post, but it just kept getting longer in the conception.

Having seen The Avengers, I saw the latest trailer for The Dark Knight Rises as well. So, let's talk about that.

Okay. Batman Begins was surprisingly good. The Dark Knight was surprisingly better. If The Dark Knight Rises is as much better than The Dark Knight as The Dark Knight was than Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan may actually become a god.

Do I give TDK too much credit? I really don't think I do. Begins may have been the best Batman movie to date, when it came out, but TDK actually transcended. It gave people new ways to see the world, which I think is a big part of what art is for. The Joker's makeup and Glasgow smile became new shorthand for a modern kind of evil.*

All that to say that I am braced for disappointment by TDKR, because there's a lot more room to go down than up. It may do me good to lower my expectations, anyway.

But what about the trailer? Well, the hopes and fears it provokes in me can be sorted by character.

Batman: I think I've guessed how this movie will go down, but I hope to be surprised along the way. For now, I'm glad that the movie's marketing has gotten ahead of the "Batman dies" thing. That is, a lot of people are thinking it. If we did die in this movie, it would be an easy mistake to underestimate fans' intelligence and studiously avoid mentioning the possibility, so that it would come as a "surprise." Instead, the trailer is full of "maybe."

Bane: It's hard to tell where they're taking this guy. He's got some sort of xenomorph thing going on with his face. When they put a bag on Cillian Murphy's head and called him "Scarecrow," it made sense to me, but whatever they've put on Tom Hardy's face is harder to believe than the leather fetish/luchador mask in the comics. He's clearly got it in for Batman personally, and that's about all I can tell.

Catwoman: I've always worried about what they would do with her, because she's an easy character to make ridiculous. The workplace romance she has going with Batman will be a hard sell after what happened in TDK. Most of all I'm just afraid that she'll fall victim to what I call Julia Roberts syndrome: the belief that when the camera is pointed at an attractive woman, nothing interesting can go on for fear of distracting the audience. On the other hand, in what little we see of her in the trailer, I'm almost worried that she'll be--dare I say?--under-sexualized, a failing I had not thought Catwoman even eligible for. In what is surely, granted, an emotionally climactic scene, she seems so darn sincere. This from a character whose persona normally says, "Come play with fire." 

John Blake: Who the hell is Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing? I'm as glad to see him in this movie as the next guy, but what is he doing? If nothing else, he's promising that the movie will have more plot than I can extrapolate from a teaser trailer and Wikipedia.

* To be clear, I think photoshopping it onto a politician's face is a vicious and puerile way to make a point. If we must be so crass, though, the toothbrush mustache was overdue for retirement. The point is that it speaks to the penetration of the image.