Never rub another man's rhubarb!

[thehefner]

Holy crap, but turning your TV color settings to black and white makes Tim Burton's BATMAN movie ten times more awesome than it ever was. Good call, bitemetechie!

Watching this with Mom, she put it best: "Why the hell wasn't it always like this???" It just all fits so well, especially in the scenes were you see the architecture and set design of Anton Furst'

Comments

[tragical_mirth]

[thehefner]

Oooh, how neato. Very sad that Furst committed suicide, and apparently over Beverly D'Angelo.

Keaton deserves way better. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed MULTIPLICITY and his role in EXTREME MEASURES was easily the only worthwhile thing about that film, but still, where's the dynamo who played Beetlejuice?

Y'know, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is one of my all-time favorite films, but I haven't seen it in years. Now I'm curious and fearful of what I'll notice in Basinger's performance that I missed. During BATMAN, I was thinking, "Man, much like Michelle Pfeiffer in SCARFACE onward, maybe Kim got more talented (and for that matter, hotter) as time went on?" Mmmmaybe not. But even so, man, nothing for Crowe or Pearce?! A crime!

[nectarousness]

"Never before has heartwrenching homicidal angst been so smoooooth."

That and my mind makes me picture Harvey drinking Colt 45.

[thehefner]

BLAM BLAM.

"Twin .45s. Works every time."

Very interesting take on the matter....

[lillaluv]

I'll have to try it out like that...

For me, Nolan's Batman movies are by far the best....Burton is a director that is by far too stylistically inclined to delve into someone else's world and let it speak for itself. Instead, he made such an effort to mold it and merge it with his own asthetic. Burton is one of the few directors who's work is instatnly recognizable not only to people that study and obsess with film, but the layman as well. It doesn't make for a good director for an already established mileau.

And then there's the cartoonishness of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin....I perfer the graphic novel approach, thanks.

But it should be an interesting stylistic approach to watch them as suggested. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Very interesting take on the matter....

[thehefner]

Have you seen the animated series? Ever since I rewatched it last year, I've come to the conclusion that the very best Batman movie ever made, better than even the Nolan ones, is BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM. Here's why, if you're so inclined.

[box_in_the_box]

To be fair, Robert Wuhl is full of fail in everything that he does, so it makes sense that his character would spend his time sniffing Vicki Vale's panties.

One of the biggest problems with Superman-as-archetype is that it seems to have cemented certain ideas about superheroes' girlfriends, which is why we have so many fifth-rate Lois Lane knockoffs, both in the comics and in other media.

It's clear that Burton's sympathies kind of lie with the Gothic clown, rather than with the stern-faced Man in Black trying to bring him down (anyone surprised by this has never seen another Burton film EVER), but what's funny is that Nolan actually makes the Chaos vs. Order dynamic much more explicit, and yet, his Joker is also more openly acknowledged as horrific.

It's also worth noting that action movie morals don't really hold with the idea of recurring villains, which is why most superhero films end with the bad guys dying at the end, even though that's an incredibly bad practice for a franchise.

[thehefner]

Makes sense. At the risk of summoning him by invoking him name, where he hell has Whul been since ARLISS (fuck the dollar signs)? *googles* Apparently doing... one-man shows? Oh god help my art form...

It's kind of strange to me, as I could easily see Burton's sympathy being with Batman too, with a bit of tweaking to Batman's character. The lonely weirdo dressing up in black to live out his fantasies, there's some rich potential for Burton sympathies there. That said, thank god he never made that movie. Bad enough we have DeVito's Penguin to contend with.

Which is funny to consider, as the 80's were the golden era of sequelitis, were they not? For a movie that was so utterly tailored around JACK JACK JACK, the fact that they wouldn't even leave the door open for his return strikes me as magnificently bone-headed.

[box_in_the_box]

What's really sad is, DeVito really is the best candidate to play the Penguin, but Burton fucking RUINED it. DeVito ALREADY played the Penguin, just not by name - ever see Other People's Money? THAT'S HIM. The entire POINT of the Penguin is that, while the Joker or Catwoman or whoever is fighting Batman, Oswald Cobblepot is fighting BRUCE WAYNE. He's the nouveau-riche asshole who represents everything wrong with rich businessmen, just as much as Bruce Wayne is The Good Rich Businessman.

[thehefner]

I will make it a point to finally check out OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY with this in mind, because that's a rather intriguing portrait you paint. Me, I've always been fond of the Penguin who's an eloquent, theatrical type who plays being the gentleman's gentleman but is really a vicious little bastard. My point is, I love Paul Williams III.

[jcsbimp]

Burton seemed at that time to be making his female protagonists give out odd little yelps. Take note of some of the sounds that come out of Geena Davis's mouth in "Beetlejuice". Just an affectation of that particular director in that particular period, sort of like Baz Luhrman's tendency to make his male protagonists bawl like babies ("Moulin Rouge", "Romeo+Juliet").

[thehefner]

Oh god, Geena totally did, didn't she? Or maybe that's just the effect Michael Keaton has on women. I don't even want to consider the implications.