Showing 1 - 10 of 246 posts found matching: batman

143/2309. Violent Night (2022)
Santa Claus as reluctant action movie star in a film that is exactly what it promises to be. The script is a little rough around the edges, many of the camera shots are too tight, and most of the "actors" were clearly stunt people. But those were largely features, not bugs. If you want to see Santa Claus killing very bad people with a sledgehammer, then this is certainly that.

144/2310. Merry Little Batman (2023)
This Christmas-adjacent movie about Batman's very young son trying to replace his crime-fighting father leans heavily on 1960s animation aesthetics and feels about twice as long as it needs to be. I like the weirdness of the tone and style, but it reached me much too late in life -- and after far too many murderous psychotic Joker stories -- for me to find it endearing.

145/2311. Platinum Blonde (1931)
Frank Capra is the director, but this isn't quite as treacle as the films he would become better known for. It's the old story of opposites attracting and worlds colliding, but it's not very deep and the "happy" ending is an amicable divorce. I didn't care for it.

And that brings us to the last of the 145 movies I watched in 2023. At final count, Glenda Farrell, star of the "Torchy Blane" movie series, was the actor most often on my screen (6 times). The next closest was Jimmy Stewart (4 times in 2024, 23 times since I started tracking in 2012). I'd certainly watch more of both of them.

I'm already 17 new-to-me movies into 2024, which puts me on a pace to exceed my annual goal of 150. Will I get there? Only time will tell.

More to come.

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[The Internet ate my original post here, which was a very long complaint about the movie The Flash. I'm not going to try to recreate it. The important takeaways were that that A) it has Batman in it, and B) it sucks.]

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Who says Batman doesn't use guns?

This is not the first time I've posted a panel from Detective Comics #78 (1943), and I doubt it will be the last.

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I've been going through an ELO phase lately, collecting all of their studio albums. (Judge me if you want to, but you can do a lot worse than ELO.) And that led me to this animation that used tracks from ELO's 1981 album Time as an unauthorized soundtrack.

Don't blink, or you might miss Batman and Robin!


youtu.be/-840keiiFDE?si=5m6GVCx8y04l6uQn

Believe it or not, that animation was originally created 40 years ago by university students for a 1983 Japanese science fiction convention DAICON IV. I'd say it stands up about as well as ELO's music does, which is to say "Very Well."

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Oops. I completely forgot that on this past Saturday, I meant to post about Batman Day 2023. Sorry. That was my bad. If I didn't mention it, how would you know you were supposed to celebrate by buying something with Batman's face on it?

What better way for a corporation worth nearly $30 billion to commemorate their own for-profit intellectual property (that they acquired in a 1967 buy-out of National Periodical Publications) than via an annual event (created and promoted by Warner Bros) in which you give them more money? Billionaire Bruce Wayne would indubitably agree. That's how Christmas started, too.

If you missed out on Saturday, it's not too late. Your Local Comic Shop may still have copies of the three "Batman Day" branded reprint comic books DC sold to retailers to give away as door-busting loss leaders for their event. Or, if you prefer, you could go online, where the "free" comics are currently selling for... checks ebay.com... $8. Seems fair. Even scalpers have to put bread on their table.

But let's face it, you're not going to a comic shop. Batman may be DC's best selling comic book, but that's still only a few million dollars a year. The real money comes from the Batman television and movie fans who haven't touched a comic book in decades. That's why Warner Bros has curated a selection of DVDs, t-shirts, coffee mugs, action figures, posters, LEGOs, bedsheets, party supplies, cocktail guides, car seats, toasters, and much, much more on their officially licensed "Long Live The Bat" store at Amazon.com. Huh. I didn't know I needed a toaster that burnt the bat signal into slices of bread, but I guess, yeah, maybe I do.

Show off your love of Batman; make rich corporations richer. It's a win-win. I'm just sorry I didn't mention it sooner.

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Mark Evanier, who has written a few comic books in his day, recently posted on his website, newsfromme.com, a YouTube of a Japanese take on Neal Hefti's familiar Batman television theme. Since I don't have time today to come up with anything better, I'm reposting it here.


youtu.be/N947b4GF4Ag?si=1rdgeztzi3zbBBTg

Enjoy!

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This Batman and Football month has been a little light on the Batman so far. That shouldn't come as a big surprise. They literally don't make Batman comics like they used to.

These days, the trend is to focus more on the incredible wealth, the impossible physical feats, the extended family of once-were-Robins, and the acrobatic sex with bondage-geared Catwoman (and her whip). Think of it as Batman for a prurient HBO audience.

I like my Batman to lean a little more on the cerebral side, with a heavy dose of "Detective" in my comics. He's genuinely determined to make the world a better place through his force of will, and for him that means solving crimes that the police can't.

The fact that he dresses like a bat professionally should be treated like a personality quirk grown from a damaged childhood, tolerated by others because of Batman's great genius. (Consider that Scotland Yard never built a Sherlock Holmes signal.)

While it increasingly seems that "my" Batman belongs to the past, I can live with that. I'm sure everyone's favorite characters are the ones they grew up with. I hope I'm wrong, and one day a better Batman will come along, but in the meantime, we've always got yesterday.


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The 18th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month got off to an inauspicious start last night when my cable provider Spectrum unexpectedly dropped ESPN from its lineup without warning just as Florida was preparing to kick off the season against Utah.

Apparently Disney wants Spectrum to pay a boatload for the privilege of sharing the same content you can get directly through a subscription to Disney+, and negotiations have stalemated as Spectrum rightly fears trying to pass that charge along to their subscribers like me, who are already paying $110 a month for a package that somehow no longer includes ESPN or ESPN2 or the SEC Network (or Disney or FX or nearly a score of others I can't say as I watch much).

I assume this tactic is intended to make me call Spectrum and demand they raise my rates to get ESPN back. Given that Disney and the other Hollywood producers don't seem very interested in paying writers or actors to create other content — today marks day 122 of the WGA strike and day 49 of the SAG strike — they rightly recognize that live sports is currently (and perhaps for perpetuity in the age of AI) their most valuable commodity.

While I respect Disney's right to try to negotiate for Spectrum's 15 million subscribers, I'm not particularly happy about becoming a pawn in these hardline tactics or the timing of all of this coming at the dawn of football season, especially since for the foreseeable future, it looks like I'll have to leave my house if I want to watch Monday Night Football or a wide selection of college games. It sure seems like Hollywood doesn't really care who they inconvenience in their quest for the biggest possible buck, and that just plain sucks. I won't forget this. As my father always says, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.

And Gators... Gators lose 11-24, according to my local evening news. So it's not all bad. The University of Florida football team losing is a good start to any season.

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From the Sweetest of Hobbies Department:

The USDA estimates there were 125,000 beekeepers in the US in 2020. But how many of them are training bees to fight crime?
Peacemaker Tries Hard #2, August 2023

For the second time in two issues, readers of the James Gunn-influenced Peacemaker Tries Hard comic book are treated to a brief vignette featuring Peacemaker's parole agent, some beekeeper named *checks notes* Richard Raleigh.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time the Red Bee has ever actually been shown in an apiary, which is kind of weird when you think about it. I mean, how often have we seen Batman in a cave full of bats or Wonder Woman on an island of women? Better late than never, I guess.

He's still not in costume, so there are no doubt plenty of readers wondering what this old man is doing in a Peacemaker comic. All I can say is that they are in for a treat in the next issue.

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As previously mentioned, I recently had to replace my telephone. A new device calls for new backgrounds, and these are what I am using for my locked/unlocked screens respectively:

World's Finest: José Luis García-López Batman and Robin

 
World's Finest: Doc Shaner Superman

For the record, Batman & Robin are by José Luis García-López, and Superman is by Evan "Doc" Shaner. Together, they make the World's Finest pair of Pixel 7 phone backgrounds!

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To be continued...

 

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