Evidently I'M Batman
I had planned a few in-depth movie reviews, but then I went to a drag show and now we've started the Parade of Homes, so I have one in-depth review and a couple of half-assed ones (fuck it. Waited too long and forgot what I wanted to say).
As the perfect lead-in to my first review, I have a perfect story. It's like my life is writing a blog post for me.
Our tale begins way back at the end of June. Tery and I were just starting to get ready for bed when we noticed Logan in the bedroom doorway with something in his mouth. I could make out wings, so I thought it was a Miller moth. However it seemed to be buzzing very loudly, and I've never heard moths buzz.
I got a little closer, and saw that it wasn't a moth but a bat. A BAT. He had one wing in his teeth and the other was fluttering furiously. Of course I was afraid of rabies, so I startled Logan to let it go, which he did.
But now we had a BAT flying around our house. It was almost 10 pm so I knew Animal Control would be closed from long experience trying to deal with Tracey's barking dogs after hours. Both pest control places I called said they'd be happy to come out first thing in the morning, to which I LOL'ed; no way were we sleeping with a BAT circling our heads.
We were on our own (I was a bit relieved, as we have nothing in the budget to pay a bat removal specialist). So we headed to the store thinking we'd just get one of those big handheld fishing nets to catch it. Target had only a small $20 foldable one (too small and too much to spend). We figured Walmart had to carry them, but found an even smaller one as our only option. Only $5 or so, so we settled.
We got back home and found him clinging to the highest, farthest corner of our vaulted ceiling. I attached our pathetic little net to a feather duster pole and poked at it.
Notice the cold, steely glint of determination in my eyes. Grrgoyl: Vampire Hunter
I succeeded only in scaring it into flying, and what followed was a terrifying but comical 15 minutes or so of the little guy strafing us up in the loft area while we tried catching him in mid-air while shrieking like schoolgirls. We even managed to get him on the ground a few times, but then were so freaked out we froze and missed our chance. Try as we might, we couldn't herd him downstairs where we had left the balcony door open for him.
He tired eventually and retreated back to the far corner of the wall. I very slowly and carefully got the net over him and gently dragged him towards me, trapping him between the net and a piece of cardboard (like when you scoop a spider up with a cup and a piece of paper).
We hustled him out the door, where he gratefully flew into the night. Whew. (Logan spent the rest of the night and much of the following day searching for his prey. I think he was very put out we stole it from him)
I see them now, when I come home just before dawn from work, streaking back and forth between the trees, bunches of them (won't say hundreds, just a bunch). But our adventure didn't end here.
Fast forward to the middle of August, in the middle of the day, as I worked on the computer. I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked up to see a bird swooping around the living room. Except not a bird....(say it with me now). A BAT. Really??
Bigger and fatter
I kept my cool much better this time, even though I was home alone. I calmly went and fetched the net, still attached to the pole, and took a few swipes at it. Still just as futile, and I didn't want to miss too much work, so I figured I'd open the door for it (plan A) or wait for it to get tired and stop moving again (plan B).
Fortunately suddenly the cats noticed him, and were organizing an attack when he just flew straight out the open door on his own. Whew.
That brings us to last week. No, seriously. I had woken up when the cats started fighting, as usual about an hour before I actually had to get up. I heard a faint metallic noise, like a fly bouncing on the window. I didn't think much of it, and slowly drifted back to sleep, hearing it every few minutes.
At some point Mitten curled up behind my head on the pillow. Suddenly I felt her jerk into action, and realized she was very interested in the shoulder bag hanging from the laundry bin next to the bed. More specifically, about a foot from my head.
I absolutely didn't want to do it, but I poked the bag, and instantly heard the buzzing. I shifted it a little, and saw the BAT hanging out on the inner side of the strap. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.
A FOOT from my FACE
I leaped out of bed (obvs), frantically woke Tery up, and brought her into the bedroom. NOW Logan appeared and wanted to get at the bag. My hero.
Again, Tery cowered in the corner while I slowly wrapped a zip-up sweatshirt around the bag as a net, hurriedly running it out to the balcony. The little guy had just started crawling out of an opening as I got there, and again he happily flew away as soon as we got outside.
This was getting ridiculous. We had assumed Logan caught the first one and brought it in, but the second two had infiltrated fairly deep into the house without either cat noticing. So we thought they were getting into the house on their own. The only likely place was the attic, the door of which is in the bedroom (I use the word "door" loosely: it's a heavy piece of wood that's held in place by a rickety bit of molding, with plenty of bat-size gaps at the edges). I taped up the corners and called the HOA.
Who said we weren't the first to call, and it wasn't their problem unless there was a hole in the exterior of the building (which I think logically there'd have to be; they aren't teleporting in). But could we look around and determine how they were getting in and call back?
Grr. I lifted the edge of the wood reluctantly, and was going to poke my head up when I got an image in my mind of a swarm of bats circling up there and chickened out.
Then I called Animal Control, remembering it was now business hours. They sent out a quiet sheepish man with a lisp who for some reason wasn't allowed to so much as climb a ladder, so I don't know why he wasted the gas. He did tell us that a flying bat is a healthy bat, it's the ones on the ground you need to worry about (that's a relief), and that they can crawl through even very small rips in your screens. He gave us the number to the Urban Wildlife Rescue League, an organization Tery has dealt with often at the hospital -- two nonprofit and hectically overworked individuals who take weeks to return phone calls.
There might not even be any more bats up there, but I'm not encouraged by the fact that, unlike wasps, they don't go away in winter, not while they have such sweet digs. We would like to get our Xmas stuff down at some point. MyFriendDeb, an enormous nature lover, will happily check for us if we can ever coordinate it. She's dying to see some bats. Me, I've seen enough to last a lifetime. And now every single day I check the corners of the ceiling and that bag for a tiny furry body.
I'm adding a BAT! tag, just in case.
(note: if my pictures look odd or different, it's because Photobucket is being a royal asshat these past two days and I gave up and used the LJ Gallery tool for the first time! How ironic, considering I've decided to let my account lapse to a free version, which will probably give me less photo storage space.)
If you haven't guessed, this is the perfect segue into The Dark Knight Rises.
First, my Dark Knight Rises story. For obvious reasons, I sure am glad I skipped the midnight premiere (hint: I live in Aurora, CO), but I still wanted to see it eventually, despite MyFriendGerry disliking it and MyFriendRyan warning of a nearly 3-hour runtime.
I went to a Monday matinee, only about ten of us in the theater, lovely. I sat all the way in the very last row smack in the middle, perfect. But halfway through the trailers, I became aware of a faint need to pee. Not urgent at all, but my mind kept flashing Ryan's text: Nearly 3 hours long. Nearly 3 hours long. Nearly 3 hours long. Fuck me.
Of course I had no idea how many trailers were left, and I didn't want to miss what was sure to be an exciting beginning, so I sat. Answer: 3-4 trailers (bad call; plenty of time to go), but the beginning was certainly worth the wait.
As soon as the first mini-climax gave way to the main plot, which seemed determined to take its own sweet time getting going, my need was un-ignorable and I had to GO. So I dashed out to the lobby, but couldn't help wondering if I was setting off anyone's red flags by doing so (in light of the sequence of events at the shooting). At least I was neither dressed in black nor carrying an enormous duffel bag.
Ahhh. I returned to my seat having missed perhaps five assumedly nonessential minutes. However, the problem with bladders is they eventually fill again, even if one doesn't drink a 2-gallon soda (or anything at all) during the movie. So by the final climax, Nature was calling yet again, but there was no way I was missing the end -- even knowing Christopher Nolan's fondness of 30-minute climaxes. By the time the credits rolled I was up to my eyeballs in pee (or so it felt), and consequently most of the finer plot resolutions were kind of a blur. But since I will almost definitely buy the Blu-Ray I wasn't too worried.
So, with potty tales out of the way, the movie:
Yes, it is nearly three hours long, which seems a bit gratuitous and surely some editing was possible, though I couldn't tell you of what thinking back.
First, the cast. All the surviving characters from the previous film, plus a few from Nolan's stable who had been in Inception: like Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Marion Cotillard. Also bringing back the thoroughly edible Cillian Murphy as Dr. Crane from Batman Begins (I literally almost stood and cheered), and adding Anne Hathaway as a fairly impressive Catwoman.
I had forgotten the movie was allegedly an anti-Occupy story (I read one online rumor that James Holmes was a disgruntled protestor, as motive for his killing spree) -- well, there ain't no allegedly about it. It is very much about the 99%, with Catwoman saying to Bruce Wayne "Why you thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us," or my favorite, as Bane storms the New York (sorry, Gotham) Stock Exchange and a trader tells him "There's no money here to steal," and he responds amusedly "Then why are you people here?" There's a scene of Bane's men dragging a socialite in a fur wrap out into the street, and then later in the film Dr. Crane presides over a kangaroo court trying the 1%, a scenario that would make any Occupier drool.
"Death or exile?" Are you an option, sir?
The problem is that Bruce Wayne is very firmly in the 1%, if not the 0.1%, which makes Occupy the bad guy by default (I was struck by a scene after Bruce has a falling-out with Alfred, and Alfred leaves him. He arrives home only to realize he's locked out because he's never had to carry house keys before. Imagine, being so rich you don't have to carry house keys. That blew my mind).
Except it's not really about Occupy as much as an impossibly elaborate scheme to destroy Batman and Gotham, to finish the work of Raza Gul (sp?) Occupy was a distraction. And like The Joker's devilish machinations, it's all pretty twisty and confusing until the last act (by which, you'll recall, I cared more about the restroom than unraveling Nolan's convoluted web of a plot).
Speaking of The Joker, not only is the movie missing any mention of him (I'd say "glaringly," except I honestly didn't notice until I read a review afterwards), but Bane is kind of a piss poor followup act. Murky motives aside, he's personally rather off-putting, with his Vader-like rebreather mask (still not entirely clear of its purpose) and smirky, robotic voice that reminded my friend Gerry of the animatronic Abe Lincoln in the Hall of Presidents (and, I would add, a touch of Mike Myers' most bizarre character, Goldmember). So yeah, I think Heath Ledger's title of most memorable Batman movie villain is safe.
Bane's origin story is tied into Batman's, by virtue of both being disciples of Raza Gul. Bruce learns about it when he's thrown into the Eastern European prison that Bane spent untold years in -- as well as another character, in an unexpected twist that I won't betray, but I loved it and look forward to revisiting it on DVD, when I can pee at my leisure and focus on the story better.
This might seem truncated, but I can't go through a 3-hour movie scene by scene, nor do you probably want me to. Definitely not as strong as the previous two, but still a worthy addition to the set. They seem to have left the possibility of a fourth open, but I think this will be Nolan's last. 3.5 out of 5
As the perfect lead-in to my first review, I have a perfect story. It's like my life is writing a blog post for me.
Our tale begins way back at the end of June. Tery and I were just starting to get ready for bed when we noticed Logan in the bedroom doorway with something in his mouth. I could make out wings, so I thought it was a Miller moth. However it seemed to be buzzing very loudly, and I've never heard moths buzz.
I got a little closer, and saw that it wasn't a moth but a bat. A BAT. He had one wing in his teeth and the other was fluttering furiously. Of course I was afraid of rabies, so I startled Logan to let it go, which he did.
But now we had a BAT flying around our house. It was almost 10 pm so I knew Animal Control would be closed from long experience trying to deal with Tracey's barking dogs after hours. Both pest control places I called said they'd be happy to come out first thing in the morning, to which I LOL'ed; no way were we sleeping with a BAT circling our heads.
We were on our own (I was a bit relieved, as we have nothing in the budget to pay a bat removal specialist). So we headed to the store thinking we'd just get one of those big handheld fishing nets to catch it. Target had only a small $20 foldable one (too small and too much to spend). We figured Walmart had to carry them, but found an even smaller one as our only option. Only $5 or so, so we settled.
We got back home and found him clinging to the highest, farthest corner of our vaulted ceiling. I attached our pathetic little net to a feather duster pole and poked at it.
Notice the cold, steely glint of determination in my eyes. Grrgoyl: Vampire Hunter
I succeeded only in scaring it into flying, and what followed was a terrifying but comical 15 minutes or so of the little guy strafing us up in the loft area while we tried catching him in mid-air while shrieking like schoolgirls. We even managed to get him on the ground a few times, but then were so freaked out we froze and missed our chance. Try as we might, we couldn't herd him downstairs where we had left the balcony door open for him.
He tired eventually and retreated back to the far corner of the wall. I very slowly and carefully got the net over him and gently dragged him towards me, trapping him between the net and a piece of cardboard (like when you scoop a spider up with a cup and a piece of paper).
We hustled him out the door, where he gratefully flew into the night. Whew. (Logan spent the rest of the night and much of the following day searching for his prey. I think he was very put out we stole it from him)
I see them now, when I come home just before dawn from work, streaking back and forth between the trees, bunches of them (won't say hundreds, just a bunch). But our adventure didn't end here.
Fast forward to the middle of August, in the middle of the day, as I worked on the computer. I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked up to see a bird swooping around the living room. Except not a bird....(say it with me now). A BAT. Really??
Bigger and fatter
I kept my cool much better this time, even though I was home alone. I calmly went and fetched the net, still attached to the pole, and took a few swipes at it. Still just as futile, and I didn't want to miss too much work, so I figured I'd open the door for it (plan A) or wait for it to get tired and stop moving again (plan B).
Fortunately suddenly the cats noticed him, and were organizing an attack when he just flew straight out the open door on his own. Whew.
That brings us to last week. No, seriously. I had woken up when the cats started fighting, as usual about an hour before I actually had to get up. I heard a faint metallic noise, like a fly bouncing on the window. I didn't think much of it, and slowly drifted back to sleep, hearing it every few minutes.
At some point Mitten curled up behind my head on the pillow. Suddenly I felt her jerk into action, and realized she was very interested in the shoulder bag hanging from the laundry bin next to the bed. More specifically, about a foot from my head.
I absolutely didn't want to do it, but I poked the bag, and instantly heard the buzzing. I shifted it a little, and saw the BAT hanging out on the inner side of the strap. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.
A FOOT from my FACE
I leaped out of bed (obvs), frantically woke Tery up, and brought her into the bedroom. NOW Logan appeared and wanted to get at the bag. My hero.
Again, Tery cowered in the corner while I slowly wrapped a zip-up sweatshirt around the bag as a net, hurriedly running it out to the balcony. The little guy had just started crawling out of an opening as I got there, and again he happily flew away as soon as we got outside.
This was getting ridiculous. We had assumed Logan caught the first one and brought it in, but the second two had infiltrated fairly deep into the house without either cat noticing. So we thought they were getting into the house on their own. The only likely place was the attic, the door of which is in the bedroom (I use the word "door" loosely: it's a heavy piece of wood that's held in place by a rickety bit of molding, with plenty of bat-size gaps at the edges). I taped up the corners and called the HOA.
Who said we weren't the first to call, and it wasn't their problem unless there was a hole in the exterior of the building (which I think logically there'd have to be; they aren't teleporting in). But could we look around and determine how they were getting in and call back?
Grr. I lifted the edge of the wood reluctantly, and was going to poke my head up when I got an image in my mind of a swarm of bats circling up there and chickened out.
Then I called Animal Control, remembering it was now business hours. They sent out a quiet sheepish man with a lisp who for some reason wasn't allowed to so much as climb a ladder, so I don't know why he wasted the gas. He did tell us that a flying bat is a healthy bat, it's the ones on the ground you need to worry about (that's a relief), and that they can crawl through even very small rips in your screens. He gave us the number to the Urban Wildlife Rescue League, an organization Tery has dealt with often at the hospital -- two nonprofit and hectically overworked individuals who take weeks to return phone calls.
There might not even be any more bats up there, but I'm not encouraged by the fact that, unlike wasps, they don't go away in winter, not while they have such sweet digs. We would like to get our Xmas stuff down at some point. MyFriendDeb, an enormous nature lover, will happily check for us if we can ever coordinate it. She's dying to see some bats. Me, I've seen enough to last a lifetime. And now every single day I check the corners of the ceiling and that bag for a tiny furry body.
I'm adding a BAT! tag, just in case.
(note: if my pictures look odd or different, it's because Photobucket is being a royal asshat these past two days and I gave up and used the LJ Gallery tool for the first time! How ironic, considering I've decided to let my account lapse to a free version, which will probably give me less photo storage space.)
If you haven't guessed, this is the perfect segue into The Dark Knight Rises.
First, my Dark Knight Rises story. For obvious reasons, I sure am glad I skipped the midnight premiere (hint: I live in Aurora, CO), but I still wanted to see it eventually, despite MyFriendGerry disliking it and MyFriendRyan warning of a nearly 3-hour runtime.
I went to a Monday matinee, only about ten of us in the theater, lovely. I sat all the way in the very last row smack in the middle, perfect. But halfway through the trailers, I became aware of a faint need to pee. Not urgent at all, but my mind kept flashing Ryan's text: Nearly 3 hours long. Nearly 3 hours long. Nearly 3 hours long. Fuck me.
Of course I had no idea how many trailers were left, and I didn't want to miss what was sure to be an exciting beginning, so I sat. Answer: 3-4 trailers (bad call; plenty of time to go), but the beginning was certainly worth the wait.
As soon as the first mini-climax gave way to the main plot, which seemed determined to take its own sweet time getting going, my need was un-ignorable and I had to GO. So I dashed out to the lobby, but couldn't help wondering if I was setting off anyone's red flags by doing so (in light of the sequence of events at the shooting). At least I was neither dressed in black nor carrying an enormous duffel bag.
Ahhh. I returned to my seat having missed perhaps five assumedly nonessential minutes. However, the problem with bladders is they eventually fill again, even if one doesn't drink a 2-gallon soda (or anything at all) during the movie. So by the final climax, Nature was calling yet again, but there was no way I was missing the end -- even knowing Christopher Nolan's fondness of 30-minute climaxes. By the time the credits rolled I was up to my eyeballs in pee (or so it felt), and consequently most of the finer plot resolutions were kind of a blur. But since I will almost definitely buy the Blu-Ray I wasn't too worried.
So, with potty tales out of the way, the movie:
Yes, it is nearly three hours long, which seems a bit gratuitous and surely some editing was possible, though I couldn't tell you of what thinking back.
First, the cast. All the surviving characters from the previous film, plus a few from Nolan's stable who had been in Inception: like Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Marion Cotillard. Also bringing back the thoroughly edible Cillian Murphy as Dr. Crane from Batman Begins (I literally almost stood and cheered), and adding Anne Hathaway as a fairly impressive Catwoman.
I had forgotten the movie was allegedly an anti-Occupy story (I read one online rumor that James Holmes was a disgruntled protestor, as motive for his killing spree) -- well, there ain't no allegedly about it. It is very much about the 99%, with Catwoman saying to Bruce Wayne "Why you thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us," or my favorite, as Bane storms the New York (sorry, Gotham) Stock Exchange and a trader tells him "There's no money here to steal," and he responds amusedly "Then why are you people here?" There's a scene of Bane's men dragging a socialite in a fur wrap out into the street, and then later in the film Dr. Crane presides over a kangaroo court trying the 1%, a scenario that would make any Occupier drool.
"Death or exile?" Are you an option, sir?
The problem is that Bruce Wayne is very firmly in the 1%, if not the 0.1%, which makes Occupy the bad guy by default (I was struck by a scene after Bruce has a falling-out with Alfred, and Alfred leaves him. He arrives home only to realize he's locked out because he's never had to carry house keys before. Imagine, being so rich you don't have to carry house keys. That blew my mind).
Except it's not really about Occupy as much as an impossibly elaborate scheme to destroy Batman and Gotham, to finish the work of Raza Gul (sp?) Occupy was a distraction. And like The Joker's devilish machinations, it's all pretty twisty and confusing until the last act (by which, you'll recall, I cared more about the restroom than unraveling Nolan's convoluted web of a plot).
Speaking of The Joker, not only is the movie missing any mention of him (I'd say "glaringly," except I honestly didn't notice until I read a review afterwards), but Bane is kind of a piss poor followup act. Murky motives aside, he's personally rather off-putting, with his Vader-like rebreather mask (still not entirely clear of its purpose) and smirky, robotic voice that reminded my friend Gerry of the animatronic Abe Lincoln in the Hall of Presidents (and, I would add, a touch of Mike Myers' most bizarre character, Goldmember). So yeah, I think Heath Ledger's title of most memorable Batman movie villain is safe.
Bane's origin story is tied into Batman's, by virtue of both being disciples of Raza Gul. Bruce learns about it when he's thrown into the Eastern European prison that Bane spent untold years in -- as well as another character, in an unexpected twist that I won't betray, but I loved it and look forward to revisiting it on DVD, when I can pee at my leisure and focus on the story better.
This might seem truncated, but I can't go through a 3-hour movie scene by scene, nor do you probably want me to. Definitely not as strong as the previous two, but still a worthy addition to the set. They seem to have left the possibility of a fourth open, but I think this will be Nolan's last. 3.5 out of 5