Joe Rauch

heyoscarwilde: The world is a vampire… Smashing Pumpkins circa...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 20:08:39 -0400

The world is a vampire…

Smashing Pumpkins circa 1993 :: via Mark Benney

Billy Corgan looks very strange with hair.

Four quick thoughts on Looper

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 20:07:00 -0400

Being totally slow to bat, here are some quick thoughts on Looper. I’m still fully in love with anything Rian Johnson and JGL do:

1) I think we need to see more “futuristic” sci-fi movies like this. I’d totally file this under a realistic portrayal of the future a la 2001, based on the information we have currently. Both say a lot about the time those respective films were made in. Rian Johnson’s 2040 is a grungy world of haves and have-nots (I also thought what social commentary did exist in the movie was far more subtle and well-done than Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises could have ever hoped for, but another argument for another time). The last 30 years haven’t been kind to the country in Looper, and it shows. In 2001, you see the optimism and hope for a future where space travel is not just a reality, but people can use the videophone on a space station to call home for Pete’s sake. Totally a product of the 1960’s. Looper’s a far more cynical film about the state, and overall direction, of the country.

2) I want to give Paul Dano a hug. Really, he seems to gravitate towards such damaged, deranged, and/or helpless characters. Fantastic actor, and was thrilled to see him in this movie, but as soon as he showed his face, I knew he was either dying a grisly death, or, well, dying a grisly death.

3) I realize with the gangster “Gat Men” they were going for a very Old West, black hat kind of aesthetic. So much of the movie is a love letter to Americana with those kinds of touches. But I really thought this was something they missed on. They all totally looked like Hasidic Jews. Swear to Yahweh, my first thought was “Wow, this seems a little Anti-Semitic.”

Then the Old West thing clicked…but still….

4) Piper Perabo has clearly crossed into the “I need to do nudity as a way to restart my career” phase, what with her CIA-agent in parking lots USA drama.

themarvelageofcomics: Here’s the first page to DAREDEVIL #191...

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:44:03 -0400

themarvelageofcomics:

Here’s the first page to DAREDEVIL #191 by Frank Miller and Terry Austin.

Really when Frank Miller had his fastball. Just astoundingly good.

themarvelageofcomics: The best news story ever. From...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 11:37:40 -0400

themarvelageofcomics:

The best news story ever. From 1951.

Awesome or terrible.

Very small indeed.

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 14:37:55 -0400

Very small indeed.

themarvelageofcomics: Cover pencils by Mike Zeck for AMAZING...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 14:36:08 -0400

themarvelageofcomics:

Cover pencils by Mike Zeck for AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #294, along with the published cover.

dcu: So true. (wish I had a source for this)

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 14:34:41 -0400

dcu:

So true.

(wish I had a source for this)

mattasticfour: HIGHLY sensitive Fantastic Four #17 What in...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:44:45 -0400

mattasticfour:

HIGHLY sensitive

Fantastic Four #17

What in God’s name is Reed wearing?

dcu: How The Dark Knight Rises should have ended. That’s...

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:26:36 -0400

dcu:

How The Dark Knight Rises should have ended.

That’s either Batman’s finest or worst moment. I can’t decide which.

Kathryn Immonen on Sif and her Journey Into Mystery

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:19:01 -0400

"We talked at length as far as what her story could be, and it came down to a single question: What does she want? For Sif, what she wants above all is to be a better warrior. How far would she go for that? She makes some terrible decisions and puts a lot of people in peril."
"One of the really interesting things about Sif to me is that she's defined by absence, with her lover, Thor, and brother, Heimdall, always away from her."
"There will be familiar faces showing up, but none I think anybody would expect."
"What's most interesting to me about the Asgardians is the inevitability of them. So much of their conflict is internalized because they don't have alter egos. They're also almost more human because of that."
"Sif is not just a warrior. We've often seen her leading the charge, but I don't feel like we've ever seen her in charge. Bear with me, but she's kind of like my dog. He's very committed to his pack, but never looks back because he assumes everybody else is as committed as he is. Sif is the same way"
"I see a similarity between Sif and Loki because neither of them can ever be Thor. I think that has more effect on her then she'll admit. She's been told she's capable of anything, but at the end of the day, she will never be Thor. It's a matter of finding out how to be enough anyway."
“Sif has been an important but ancillary character and I think there’s a lot of her that has yet to be explored.”
"It would be disingenuous of me to say what Kieron did wasn't daunting. I loved his approach. Having said that, my fervent hope is to follow the same spirit of adventure, but there is not a 23-issue arc currently planned out."
"Sif is an action hero. Loki is not. They're fundamentally different. I don't use the talking to get to the fighting, I use the fighting to get to the talking."
[Kathryn will be exploring the relationship between Sif and Heimdall in more detail than in the past.]
Sif will be battling "lots of monsters" and falling in with "a group of fellow warriors with a different outlook on what's right and proper...they're a little out of touch."

Becoming more interested in this, despite losing what has been an unbelieveable run by Gillen and what will likely go down as one of the definitive takes on Loki. More female leads is a definite plus, and Sif is the kind of character who has plenty of depth to explore that others have largely left fallow.

dcu: RIP Joe Kubert A legend who worked until the very...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 18:56:52 -0400

dcu:

RIP Joe Kubert

A legend who worked until the very end.

Terrible news. A life well lived Joe Kubert.

dangerguerrero: [dying] Pretty much.

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 08:40:40 -0400

dangerguerrero:

[dying]

Pretty much.

g1988: Dave Perillo brings a little NY to…NY. Crazy 4 Cult 6 in...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:50:36 -0400

g1988:

Dave Perillo brings a little NY to…NY.

Crazy 4 Cult 6 in New York.

I can dig it.

battyfornolanverse: snarkinthewater: 12 Gotham newspaper...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:28:12 -0400

battyfornolanverse:

snarkinthewater:

12 Gotham newspaper headlines during ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.

hahahaha

Yeah, pretty much sums up the movie.

comicsalliance: Duet On ‘Solo, Part One: Tim Sale By Sean...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:27:22 -0400

comicsalliance:

Duet On ‘Solo, Part One: Tim Sale

By Sean Witzke and Matt Seneca

Published between 2004 and 2006, Solo was a DC Comics anthology series with an innovative twist: each issue was created from the ground up by a single cartoonist and collaborators of his own choosing. Edited by DC’s head art director Mark Chiarello (Wednesday Comics, DC: The New Frontier), the series offered artists a platform to control their visions completely in the form of original stories, unfettered access to DC’s library of characters, and without regard to continuity or other publishing concerns that affect the creation of a typical DC superhero book. Although Solo spotlighted the work of such talented and popular creators as Darwyn Cooke, Tim Sale, Paul Pope and Michael Allred, the series was cancelled after just 12 issues.

Even in a time when the superhero comics were experimenting wildly with structure and style, Solo stood apart and remains one of the best and most interesting mainstream series to emerge from the early years of this century. In this first installment of Duet on Solo, writers Sean Witzke and Matt Seneca take an extremely close look at the first issue of Solo, created by Tim Sale.

Read more.

The Greatest Comic in the World (This Week)

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:16:00 -0400

Apologies to Matt Fraction and David Aja — because I loved the new Hawkeye series that launched this week — but my favorite book of the week, by far, is Fraction’s Defenders #9.

The series when it launched late last year to great fanfare promised answering big questions and having a big cosmic romp through the Marvel universe. The results out of the gate were….eh….

Fraction took the slow play approach, taking his time setting up just what in the world these B-list Marvel heroes (Iron Fist, Red She-Hulk, Namor, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Strange) are up against. The first five issues were, honestly, terribly slow. But the set-up has been worth the payoff the last few issues. The team has gone from very nebulous origins to hopping through the Marvel’s universes in time and space.

In Issue 9, they land squarely in Jim Steranko’s iconic 1960’s Nick Fury, Agent of Shield universe. Both Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton’s art really captures the spirit of those landmark Steranko books, while still retaining the look of the series so far.

Definitely check it out.

Batman’s voice will forever be Kevin Conroy for me, so...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:57:48 -0400

Batman’s voice will forever be Kevin Conroy for me, so this just doesn’t sound right. Looks like they’ve captured the spirit of Miller’s original work though.

comicsalliance:

The First ‘The Dark Knight Returns, Pt. 1’ Animated Movie Trailer Arrives

By Caleb Goellner

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 was announced not too long ago, but fans have been looking forward to a full-fledged animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s definitive work for much longer than that. The 1997 episode of The New Batman Adventures, ”Legends of the Dark Knight,” showed that it could be done well, and subsequent nods to the tale on Batman: The Brave and the Bold only reinforced longstanding cravings for a feature. With the release of the first trailer for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, the wait is finally over… for the first half of the story, anyway. The trailer gets across the tale’s premise (an aged Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to protect Gotham against threats old and new alongside new Robin, Carrie Kelley), but principally showcases the same awesome Mutants confrontation first translated to animation in ‘97. If you’ve read the comic and seen the former animated nods, it’s like a nostalgia layer cake. Arriving on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack, DVD and download on September 25, the film features the voice talent of Peter “RoboCop” Weller as Batman, Ariel Winter as Carrie Kelley, Wade Williams as Two-Face and David Selby as Commissioner Gordon.

theavc: This is so gorgeous there’s not really anything more we...

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:50:38 -0400

theavc:

This is so gorgeous there’s not really anything more we can say about it. If you enjoy The Band, Glen Hansard, or beautiful harmonies, you will be delighted.

I’m always a sucker for good The Band covers, and I’m sure Levon Helm would approve of this.

"For 4 years, Koreans enacted increasingly stiff real-name commenting laws, first for political..."

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:41:45 -0400

“

For 4 years, Koreans enacted increasingly stiff real-name commenting laws, first for political websites in 2003, then for all websites receiving more than 300,000 viewers in 2007, and was finally tightened to 100,000 viewers a year later after online slander was cited in the suicide of a national figure. The policy, however, was ditched shortly after a Korean Communications Commission study found that it only decreased malicious comments by 0.9%. Korean sites were also inundated by hackers, presumably after valuable identities.

Further analysis by Carnegie Mellon’s Daegon Cho and Alessandro Acquisti, found that the policy actually increased the frequency of expletives in comments for some user demographics. While the policy reduced swearing and “anti-normative” behavior at the aggregate level by as much as 30%, individual users were not dismayed. “Light users”, who posted 1 or 2 comments, were most affected by the law, but “heavy” ones (11-16+ comments ) didn’t seem to mind.

”

- Surprisingly Good Evidence That Real Name Policies Fail To Improve Comments | TechCrunch (via onthemedia)

The Dark Knight Rises...kinda...a review in two perspectives

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:17:28 -0400

You’d think Dark Knight Rises reviews would be beat to death. But I think there’s room for at least one more. This time, Maria Aspan — you can find her Tumblr here — was gracious enough to provide a bit of point-counterpoint argument about the film. Maria is the devoted movie geek. I, of course, will fight the good fight for comics until the end.

And on to the review….

Joe says:

First Maria, thank you for taking the time to be a Nolan defender/apologist for a change (in a superhero movie no less). Its a bizarre world we live in. I’m sure you’re about to crush me under the weight of logic, reason and careful analysis about how the The Dark Knight Rises, well, rose to be a better movie than its two predecessors. I, of course, will rebut with ad hominem attacks and a nonsensical rant about what this movie means in comparison to Police Academy V.

Anyways, here’s the short of it. After seeing the the film yesterday, its a lumpy, uneven, gloppy thing that really needed about an hour less of total screen time. From the largest view, Nolan took the approach of just stuffing as much as humanly possible into this film, seemingly with the idea that that would make everything better. More action and explosions are better than fewer, right? Instead, it acts like a stew where all the ingredients are thrown in with the wrong proportions. Its far too expository when it doesn’t need it, and the characters make bizarre decisions while announcing them with terrible dialogue. But the movies main crimes are the result of swinging for the fences and missing badly, so some of it can be forgiven. There is a lot to like here. The action set pieces are stunning, the soundtrack is stirring and special effects are subtle enough to keep you from suspending disbelief long enough to question the absurdity of it all. And Christian Bale tones down that God awful Batman voice. So we have that going for us.

Nolan, however, makes a curious choice, I think, to tie this movie heavily to what happens in Batman Begins — a movie that came out nearly a decade ago — rather than the far more popular and impactful Dark Knight, the middle film of the trilogy. Along with his quest to say important, deep-thought things about society, it just seems bloated and a bit of a mess. Its a fun mess, but its still gloopy and sticky by the end of things.

Maria says:

I can’t believe you’re making me be the Christopher Nolan apologist. But here goes.

You seem to be arguing that Nolan should have tied this movie more closely to The Dark Knight, instead of Batman Begins - but why? Aside from the Joker - a great performance, sure, but a character that by the end had developed implausibly supernatural powers — that movie was a mess. Hey, remember Harvey Dent, the guy whose devolution into evil is supposed to cast such a shadow over The Dark Knight Rises? I barely do, because that Two-Face plot was shoved into the final 45 minutes of an already over-long, over-stuffed movie.

I’m not arguing that Batman Begins was a better movie than TDK, but I don’t mind that Nolan chose to end his trilogy by returning to his story’s roots. I was just grateful that there was an end at all. Compare this to the Avengers and the never-ending sequelitis of that franchise - this movie let characters grow and change and die, or at least retreat into some implausible Italian cafe retirement.

Also, while TDKR is a very long movie, I was never bored during it. I’m curious what you would have cut? I probably could have done with about half as much Bane, since the character loses some of his menace with overexposure in the second half of the movie, and since he’s not the ultimate villain after all. I also probably could have lost the stock exchange sequence and most of the half-baked OWS/people’s revolution/exile by frozen river stuff. But at least during my first watch of the movie, I was never bored or looking at the time.

Two random thoughts - I was surprised how great Catwoman was as a character, especially considering this is Christopher “The hero has a love interest? Let’s kill her horribly for manpain!” Nolan. Selina Kyle wasn’t quite the main character - I think that was Joseph Gordon-Levitt- but I’d argue she was a close second, and got a full arc as a character. I know there’s been chatter about giving her a separate Catwoman movie, but her story was so prominent here that this often felt like her film.

Also, in the wake of all the Penn State/Joe Paterno/Horace Mann stuff, I kept on waiting for the priest who ran the boys’ orphanage to be revealed as some horrible predator. Maybe it’s just current events coloring my viewing of the movie, but didn’t that actor seem a little shifty and up to no good?

Joe says:

Blame the shifty priest! Of course. Well, that’s a fair approach, as generally there are only four decent people in any Batman story: Batman, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and Lucius Fox. The rest are degenerates hell bent on the eradication of Gotham for their own purposes.

In terms of cuts, I think its all over the bloated second and third acts of the movie. How many push-ups do we really need to see Bruce Wayne do in some nebulous prison pit? We get it, he’s going to climb out and save Gotham. I don’t need a half hour of that with about a half dozen failed attempts to beat me over the head with that subtext. The entire stock exchange hostage situation/chase scene seemed like it existed merely so Bane could make one quip about how stock brokers are thieves. They really couldn’t have done that from the comfort for their own underground lair? Is the Wi-Fi connection that bad down there? It led to a nice set piece chase, but it was completely unnecessary. Literally without about 45 minutes left in the film, I was checking my watch. I wanted — to borrow from another film trilogy with a bloated third movie — to get Frodo on the damn boat already. We get it, Batman’s going to sacrifice himself — or appear to — to save Gotham. No need to pile on the needless exposition. Never mind he makes Jim Gordon look like a bumbling buffoon with Batman’s big reveal to him in the tunnel. Really? A rookie cop can figure it out, but the smartest cop on the force can’t, when Batman and Bruce Wayne both disappear for 8 years?

I agree that the Dark Knight, once you take Heath Ledger’s performance out of it, is a mess. But Nolan laid the groundwork there, I think, for a much more interesting third movie with Two Face as the big bad, rather than Bane. To me, that’s a much more compelling than the story they told with Bane — who I actually like in this movie. Nolan captures more of the essence of Bane’s character here than anyone else has, even with his drunken Sean Connery voice. Yet Two Face affords a deeper exploration of some of Nolan’s running commentary on heroism and villainy in this trilogy, and how some heroes stumble and fall. Never mind that Aaron Eckhart was fantastic in the part. For all its problems, The Dark Knight felt like a Batman movie in Gotham. The Dark Knight Rises felt less “Batman-y,” if that’s even a term, and instead became this movie about big ideas and social commentary that just feels flabby.

But I’ll even go a step further. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think this trilogy is a somewhat intellectually dishonest approach to the Batman character. Assuming you don’t take the end as some kind of dream sequence for the parties involved (and I think that’s a reach), you have Batman, throughout the course of this trilogy, step back and effectively quit twice when things got too tough. In the first film, its his goal to return to Gotham and clean up the city, both street crime and the deep-seated corruption throughout the city. Doesn’t work so well though he saves Gotham from annihilation. By the second movie, he’s trying to use the existing system to effect change, by placing Harvey Dent as the hero while he retreats to the shadows. In the third film, we see that that step back is essentially a hollow victory. Street crime and mob are all but eradicated — much to my dismay losing Eric Roberts as an excellent crime boss — the broken and corrupt political system is still in place, just with more people in prison. So what does Batman do at the end? He quits, hands the keys to someone monumentally unqualified for the job after saving the city, and goes off jet-setting with his jewel thief girlfriend.

That seems less like someone fighting a cause that’s fundamental to their being, a jet setting billionaire playboy pulling the ejection handle when things get a little tough. I thought it was such a cop-out that he didn’t die at the end. That’s the only ending that really makes sense in the narrative arc that Nolan is telling in this trilogy.

I would also watch Anne Hathaway read the phone book, so I’m not the best judge on her Selina Kyle, other than to say OMG SHE WAS AWESOME. WOULD TOTALLY WATCH A JET SETTING JEWEL THIEF CATWOMAN MOVIE.

You’ve had a long-running distaste for all the capes n’ cowls superhero movies. Is this the apex? Are we seeing the top of the the mountain with the conclusion of this trilogy? Is it all downhill from here?

Maria says:

Poor Jim Gordon. I had forgotten that he didn’t actually know Batman’s true identity, and his ignorance in this film started to seem like a running gag — everyone else is in on the secret but Bruce is going to bother with a ski mask during his stealth hospital visit to poor wounded Jim?

Fundamentally, you are just way more invested in this story, this character and the “Batman-y-ness” of this movie than I am - I thought its distance from pre-ordained superhero tropes was actually a strength, whereas you seem to be arguing it was a weakness. As you point out, I am so very, very, very over the superhero movies and their slavish devotion to recreating origin stories ad nauseum - I don’t care if Bruce fundamentally wimps out by walking away from it all, because that’s what this movie convinced me he would do and should do, comics canon or whatever else be damned. From that perspective, this movie trumps Avengers and Spiderman hands down - it told a story, and it told it well, and it kept the comics elements it liked and it discarded those that it didn’t. It may have been long and bloated, but it had an editor that I’m itching to let loose on the next 18 movies in the Avengers universe.

I will make one argument for you, however - the desire to destroy Gotham and torture its citizens never really made sense to me as an overriding motivation for Bane and Talia. I mean, if your cult decides that the city has to be destroyed to restore balance to the universe, and you’re going to bomb it anyway, maybe just nuke it from a distance and be done with it? The villains seemed to expend an awful lot of time and effort and strategy and money and bloodshed for an end goal of blowing up an island, and they still got foiled at the last minute by that darn bat.

I haven’t seen Batman Begins in ages - do Ras al Ghul’s original motives or plans make any more sense there?

Joe says:

They’re more or less the same. The world must be saved by burning it down, the usual forest fire analogy. The fire destroys the forest, but it comes back in time stronger and better than ever. And you get Liam Neeson with some fabulous facial hair. So there’s that.

Its get a bit Bond villain in this one. Why not just blow it all up and call it a day? Why go through the whole charade?

Forgive me for expecting a Batman-y movie when going to see Batman. It just seems this movie had less and less to do with the character. It could have been any action movie. I’m reminded of a comment I heard from comic writer Matt Fraction on a recent panel at the local comic convention. He made the point that these characters — Batman, Superman, Iron Man, etc — only really work for certain kinds of stories. If you have, in his example, a late-term abortion story you really want to tell, well, maybe Iron Man isn’t the right venue for that.

I keep coming back to this notion that while Nolan and Co clearly had a lot to say about class warfare and society post-financial crisis, maybe a movie where the hero is a billionaire isn’t necesarily the right venue for that? And I say this as someone who has a deep and abiding love for Inception as just a wonderful reinvention of your standard heist film, and as someone who really enjoyed Memento.

Though to your point, I think by the 18th Avengers movie, even I”ll be ready for less of the capes n’ cowl crowd at the cinema. This is certainly a Golden Age for superhero movies, but there’s only so many stories with these characters that need to be told, imo.