In this episode, we talked about our vacations. Due to recording constraints we couldn’t play any audio, but we read feedback from Tim, Sake Steve (sorry, don’t know your link, man), Kaosu (he recommended 2 Girls 1 Finger), Noobchan, and an FU from Kez. There was also a stump from Kaosu.
Dowell and I are taking our summer vacation. He is in Hong Kong while I will be visiting multiple states in the good ole US of A. See you in a week or two.
You're Batman! You don't know how to avoid an obstacle in the road?!: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadWe talked about communistic SF, Coinstar, review of Batman Begins, and content from Lord Kaosu and Noobchan.
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We’re recording early, so there will be no live stream this week. Thank you for your understanding.
In this episode, we talked about Aloha’s big announcement, hating on the MMD, fantasy football, when we first got on the Internet, and other crap from the 90’s. Lord K sent in a question about languages.
This was sent in by Tim. There are definitely some (ok, at least one) spoilers, so read at your own risk.
The Dark Knight Movie review….my take
I’ve got to say I walked in to The Dark Knight Returns with some trepidation. I had heard that Michael Caine described this film as the greatest movie he’d ever seen. I don’t know if Caine actually said that, but along with the critical hype leading up to the movie I was both skeptical and prepared to be exhilarated beyond belief by my impending experience. So after the credits rolled I was fairly dumbfounded.
Not only did I not feel like I had witnessed greatness, I realized I had much more fun watching movies like Snatch, O Brother Where Art Thou? and Charlie’s Angels. I had witnessed better performances in The Unforgiven, Miller’s Crossing and Narc. I had seen better action in Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Killer and The Hulk. Not only did I not think this was the best summer movie this year, I didn’t think it was the best Batman movie that’s been made. And I’ll tell you why.
The movie should have been called The Joker. It’s a smashing performance by Heath Ledger, I mean, he’s that character and no matter how hard you look you can’t find him behind that make up. There’s a part of me that thinks Chris Nolan was justified as an artist to recognize something great was happening during his film and to go with it. The other part of me is furious that the reason we were there, to see Batman and the story, took a major hit.
Batman is an afterthought in this film. His alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, actually has better dialogue, more face time and more charisma than the hero he pretends to be. This is an anathema to the character itself. Not only that, The Batman is held up as a symbol of hope and strength of a better tomorrow. That’s Superman, that’s not Batman. Batman fights violence with violence, instills fear, intimidates. He does so because he saw his parents murdered in front of him but the same stupid random act of violence the Joker reigns all hell with in this movie.
And Batman’s hatred of random acts of violence including murder just isn’t there. Instead he mopes and worries, talks about quitting. He’s genius and yet for the entire movie we see him led around by the nose by the Joker, who apparently can set aside his random insanity to think 26 steps ahead for every situation. In fact, Batman has to invoke the Deus Ex Machina, the ‘cell-phone’ sonar tracking system to find the Joker and stop him. And please, for those that hate the first Batman movie for the Joker shooting down the Bat Jet with a ‘pop-gun’ let’s talk about the unbelievable suspension of belief you need to have one man monitor cell-phone calls from an entire city the size of Chicago.
As others have referenced how this movie is so much better than the Keeton/Nicholson Batman movie, I like to say this. That movie let Batman be the story. Nicholson let Keeton do his thing with the character. Ledger might as well of kicked Christian Bale in the nuts before each scene as he provided no room for anyone but himself in what ever scene he was in. The original Batman movie had a coherent story that didn’t throw a series of events together bridged by one morality play after another. Jesus, I don’t read a Batman comic or see a Batman movie to contemplate Kafka or Guantanemo Bay. I go to see him frighten the shit out of bullies, criminals and psychopaths. So after The Dark Knight Returns I guess The Watchmen can just stay on home.
I created a Moon Masters chat room that is a free for all. You can find it over at www.mickaloha.com/chat. You can input your name without a password. If it becomes a smashing success or more likely infiltrated by bots, I will make people sign up for it. In the interim, feel free to join in when we record live around 7:30 PM PDT. We will take questions from the room.
Did you know I have a fast upload speed? I also saved money by stopping twice as opposed to once when flying home to KY.
Evil King Macrocranios sent in some late content and Dowell and I gave him advice. We also had content from Lord Kaosu. We also congratulated K-Ko on her photos. We talked for a while. And that is about it. Enjoy.
In this episode, we discussed our new podcast awards. Please send suggestions for categories if you have any. We’ve already decided to have the category Best Podcast By Two Guys From Kentucky, One Who Lives In Palo Alto and One In Osaka. The beginning of this episode was slow, but it picked up to crappy speed by the end. Thanks to everyone who listened live.
Thanks to Diresu, Noobchan, Lord Kaosu, and Jordan for sending in content. Thanks for listening.
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