Rising to Nowhere

The Dark Knight rises works.  It effectively draws a curtain on Christopher Nolan's hugely popular trio of Batman movies.  Confident & assured like all of Nolan's work, it is an entertaining if draining three hours in theaters.  Afterward is where all the problems begin.  The film not only fails to cohere in your imagination but falls apart rather spectacularly.  The area of disappointment (there are many) I am most interested is Nolan abandoning his take on the eternality of comics.  With it's very title, Nolan's Batman Begins announces that we are seeing only the very start of a long story.  Commissioner Gordan's escalation speech in Begins lays out the comic's fans idea that Batman himself transforms the mob thugs & street criminals of Gotham into a Ghoulish rogues galleries of Riddlers, Penguins & Jokers.  In Dark Knight, the captured Joker taunts Batman with how they are "destined to do this forever".  Batman's code won't allow him to kill the Joker who finds our Caped Crusader to fun to kill.  Nolan is playing around with the endless nature of comics, how Batman will battle The Joker over & over again.

So, imagine my surprise when The Dark Knight Rises opens with Batman 8 years retired (Hands raised for who thought that was what was going to happen at the end of Dark Knight? Yeah, I thought so) and Gotham at peace due to the Patriot actish Dent Act.  Wait, I thought Gotham's cops were hopelessly corrupt from Begins & Dark Knight?  I guess not.  They just needed a tougher civil code.  Who knew?  It's a disappointment that Nolan has gone here.  It diminishes the cleverness of the first films and frankly, makes Batman seem rather ridiculous.  All Gotham needed was some tougher laws passed.  I thought it needed a symbol to rally itself or at least someone to stop random acts of major violence.   

Nolan allows for the possibility of a new Batman  at TDKR's end but it can't help but feel a little hollow by then.  The film is awash is happy endings and not tantalizing new possibilities.  Those tantalizing possibilities are what makes comics so much fun.  Nolan seems to have forgotten that.

Nothing In Common But...

One of my favority things is to take two very different pieces of media and look at them for their similarties rather than their differences. This rather lazy moring the wife & I watched 'Anchorman' & 'Out of Africa'. You know what? They have nothing in common from an aesthetic standpoint. Tonally you couldn't find two American movies more different but they do have one big thing in common thematically. They are both female empowerment films. Strong woman who make it in a man's world and bend independent rather childish men to their will. Just an odd little thought for the day.

All Hail Apatow!

Judd Apatow's 'Knocked Up' is the rarest kind of summer movie, a huge
hit that actually deserves to be one. Very funny & very warm, it's
a worthy follow-up to his last summer sleeper 'The 40-year Old Virgin', probably my favorite film of the last few years. As good as Apatow's latest is, I don't quite think it's up to Virgin's level. Seth Rogan's Ben is great but he isn't the original comic creation that Steve Carrol's Andy was. A bigger problem is the weakness of Katherine Hegel's character. It stretches a whole lot of credibility
that this gorgeous E! anchor would sleep with Ben, let alone keep his
child & try to strike up a relationship with him. The film's great
performances & good humor get you over the hump but it would be
nice to have a few more scenes with Hegel & the amazing Leslie Mann to flesh out our leading lady little more fully. Still, a minor compliant against an otherwise terrific movie.

The Pop Culture Moment of the Year

Everyone saw it. Everyone argued about. Now, everyone is starting the
parodies. The final few moments of 'The Sopranos' was one of those
sublime cultural moments that come along all to infrequently. The brilliantly maddening final scene most reminds me of late era Stanley Kubrick (ahh, if only the 'Eyes Wide Shut' orgy scene had been scored to REO Speedwagon) in it's cool distanced quality as if we are watching the frame through another frame. It was in almost every way the perfect ending. The myriad of fan endings (Tony whacked, Meadow whacked, Tony turns rat) were all too limited, a final page on a show that has never shown any instance in neat & tidy closure. Believe me, if Tony had gotten shot in that diner, no one would be talking about 'The Sopranos' finale two weeks later.

Can You Spell Potato?

Mitt Romney's recent remark that his favorite book is Battlefield Earth will henceforth replace Dan Quayle's claim that Ferris Bueller's Day Off was his favorite movie as the most mind-boggling stupid answer a politician could give to the silly 'what's your favorite blah-blah' question.

Always nice to have a new benchmark.

I Think Your Engine Block Is Cracked

I'm a little late on this one (still getting used to the whole blog thing) but I have come to bury, if not quite mourn, Tim Minear's Drive. Minear's show about an illegal cross-country road race was pulled from the Fox line-up after only four episodes which is a depressingly familiar for fans of Minear.  This is the fourth Minear run show that Fox has cancelled in the last five years. Minear made his reputation on Joss Whedon's red-headed stepchild vampire show, Angel and then solidified it with helping Whedon guide his brilliant if short-lived space western Firefly to the little screen.

Minear has now had three shows (Wonderfalls, The Inside & Drive) outside of the JossWhedon orbit and unfortunately, each show has not only died a quick death but all have had diminishing creative returns as well. Wonderfalls was like Pinkberry, sweet yet tart. This little show about a misanthropic shop girl, talking nicknacks & a benign universe in need of a little tweaking had a pleasantly comforting worldview, at once sarcastic yet surprisingly warm. Minear followed it with The Inside,which was a solid detective procedural but nothing more. Trapped in the morbund serial-killer genre, this show was well-executed but suffered from a fatal lack on any reason to exist except to fill a timeslot, no matter how briefly that was.

Drive was going to be Minear's big-time show. He had Firefly star Nathan Fillion (great as expected) in the lead and Fox was finally behind one of his shows with TV ads & billboards everywhere. Yet, the premiere was a distant fourth in audience and the show never picked up viewers from there. Why? Well, the main issue was that the premise itself reeked of desperation, an attempt to do for The Amazing Race what Lost did for Survivor. The weakness of the premise doomed the show but it's execution is what was most alarming. Cheap characters (AWOL & his wife), awful dialogue ("Hey Homes") and a noticeable lack of dramatic momentum, Drive was, in short, a mediocre television show.

Minear is clearly a talent but he may need Whedon more than I suspected. The one thing he definitely needs (which Whedon had in shapes) is some passion. The next time out, Minear may want to worry less about coming up with a marketable premise than coming up with a good one.