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This is going to put that boy on the map, which is good, because I've followed his career for a while.
Also, as someone who grew up on the dark, angsty justice of Batman: *incomprehensible Homer Simpson drooling*
And in retrospect, I should've put the emphasis on "someone" instead of "so glad."
EDIT: And yes, I have seen Equilibrium. However, the martial arts in this movie is keysai (sp?), which I believe is the type used in the Bourne Identity - focused around fast, strong, dirty blows.
Though I would be glad if most of the goon abuse centered around screaming thugs being sucked into dark shadows.
[ April 20, 2005, 11:50 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
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In the movie they called it gun-kata. O_o I didn't realize it was based on any one style of martial arts.
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I thought Equilibrium was really bad. It seemed to me like Bale spent the whole movie doing a pretty shoddy imitation of Keanu Reeves. I don't think he's a bad actor, though. I saw him in The Machinist recently, and he did a great job. Batman Begins looks awesome.
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Fitz - That was the point. He had never had emotions so he didn't know how to express them or understand them. Therefore he was like Keanu.
I remember him in Newsies. He was so cute! Of course Newsies is tainted by my freaky-slash loving friend. O_o
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I apologize for my lack of *swoon*. It's kinda hard to do with such a tiny clip and hardly any Bale footage. I have a midterm tomorrow, so I will enlarge and rewatch it after that.
P.S. Yes, I know it's a thirty second trailer.. I don't really feel like watching it twice in such a short amount of time.
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Ha... I've been swooning for Christian Bale since I first saw him in Empire of the Sun. Well... not exactly swooning. Admittedly, that was the first movie I had ever seen him in, and I was like ten or eleven. Newsies did draw me in though. It was the singing and the whole Artful Dodger aura about him.
Can't wait for this movie. Liam Neeson and Michael Caine, too. It's a smorgasbord of British accents. Woo hoo!!!
quote: Of course Newsies is tainted by my freaky-slash loving friend. O_o
Newsies? Never seen it, actually. But for Christian Bale slashy goodness, Velvet Goldmine is not to be topped.
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You're a Balehead and you haven't seen newsies? He SINGS in newsies!!! "Santa fe..." *swoons*
The boy just gets more and more beautiful as he ages. Who'd a thunk it? He's my very very favorite. I'm usually quite sensible and I look at my sister's fangirly reactions to many men with disdain.
But I have no control over myself where this man is concerned. It's the accent, the crooked teeth, the eyes...I love it. All of it.
I'm so excited about this movie!!
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I will be okay with Batman Begins so long as they stop butchering the villains. This is Batman's last chance as far as I'm concerned.
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Also, unlike the other movies, this film is more about Batman than it is about villains. But, I don't know if this is spoilers, most of them live (if that's what you meant by "butchering"). If you meant "deviating from comics," there's deviations in situation, but not in character. Costumes are different (more terrifying, if you ask me), and they don't all have the same background. But they're still the same people. The Ra's in this movie says stuff that the Ra's in the comics would say.
[ April 21, 2005, 10:47 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
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I read somewhere that Christian Bale has had to fake a different accent in pretty much every movie he's been in. Hmm... IMDb, maybe?
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I think my biggest disappointment was Mr. Freeze. He is my favorite villain of ANY show anywhere. And I felt he was misrepresented.
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I totally agree. What The Animated Series did with the Freeze character was amazing and dare I say heartbreaking? Before then he was a minor villain in the comics, but the cartoon serious turned him around completely.
Batman and Robin was like someone vomited neon and sequens into a film can.
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THANK YOU Book! You are my new hero! Seriously!
In TAS he was fantastic. He was complicated and tragic, never totally evil, but never good. His story was heart wrenching, and you could never really paint him as the archetypal bad guy, but he was obviously a bad guy. Still all his actions were founded in the love for his wife Nora. He wasn't a psychotic bad guy, in some cases he even worked WITH Batman when moral conflicts changed his plans.
He was FAR more complex than the Governator made him.
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Yeah, he was a grey villain. And the writers used him like any good writer will do, and used him to mirror Batman and bring up moral ambiguity. For instance, Freeze lost his wife and was horribly scarred and vowed revenge. It made him inhuman. In a way, the same thing happened to Batman.
The best Batman stories always revolve around doing this. For instance, with Two-Face, mirroring the polarized characters of Bruce Wayne and Batman and questioning which one is more real.
And for the Joker, it was about men who had turned themselves into manifestations of an idea. Order vs. chaos, deep restrictions vs. no restrictions, and brought into question the overall sanity of Batman.
I once read an essay on how the Joker is the ultimate absurd hero, believe it or not. I believed it. Just like Greek and Norse mythologies have gods that embody human traits, the Joker embodies a philosophy. Each time he does something monstrous, it's like he's saying, "Look at what I am capable of doing in this world. Look at what I have done. The rules you believe, the standards you believe are fixed and unchanging, and the virtues you worship... all of them are figments of your imagination, and at any time I can violate them as much as I can whenever I want."
I remember one comic that was seen from the point of view of the Joker. I can't remember the name... But he escaped from Arkham and hid in an alley and killed a man walking down the street for his clothes. It went like this (from memory):
quote: Here's a joke. It's a good one. You'll love it. It's a real corker.
A man leaves his home from work. He has a wife and children. Before he goes he sits down for breakfast and reads the paper. He looks at the sports, he reads the scores, he shakes his head and nods from time to time. His wife puts breakfast down. It's his favorite. Waffles and bacon.
His children come downstairs to eat. They're fighting. His wife scolds them. He tries to continue reading the paper. He scolds them out of the corner of his mouth.
He eats his breakfast. He gets his briefcase and his hat. He kisses his wife and, despite their protests, his children. He walks out the front door and gets in his car.
He drives to work and parks in the garage. He gets out and walks down the street. It is a fine day. The sun is out. The birds are singing.
Then a man in an alley grabs him and cuts his throat with the rusty top to an old soup can, and then gouges out one of his eyes with a coathanger.
He dies there, in that alley, in the dirt and the filth and the garbage, one eye staring wildly as the blood drains out of his thick fat throat onto the oil and cement, and his last moments on this earth are nothing but fear and panic and sheer utter confusion.
He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand.
He dies.
He's seen. I've shown him.
Isn't that funny? Isn't that terribly, terribly funny?
It chilled me to the bone when I read it. Things like that never leave you.
That's the Joker I'd like to see onscreen if they use him again, only not as violent (I mean, it's Pg 13, folks.)
EDIT: Sorry, did not mean to turn this into a comic geekfest.
[ April 22, 2005, 12:53 AM: Message edited by: Book ]
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
It did seem a bit sarcastic for a sec. But I think that's cuz my brain picked up the word sarcastic and applied it.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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