Belated Review: "The Dark Knight Rises"

Though it's normally best to get straight to the point with reviews The Dark Knight Rises (hereafter refered to as TDKR) presents something of a quandary. How do you jump right in to speaking about this particular film when Christopher Nolan's last Batman film has so long ceased being "just a movie". So we begin with a three part preface... 

What?!? Nolan can blow seven reels of a non-origin Batman film before Bruce suits up and you object to me blathering on for three paragraphs before I review the movie? Double standards!

First, I believe that Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as Catwoman is one of the greatest performances of the 1990s, the very definition of what an actor can do when they understand their auteur's vision, get the heightened play of specific entertainment genres, and are capable of imaginative stylization. It pissed me right off that people tried to pretend that no one before Heath Ledger had ever delivered Oscar worthy work within the comic book genre. So Batman Returns is my favorite Batman movie (yes, I know it has flaws. Shut up) and I entered the movie naturally resistant to Anne Hathaway's Catwoman.

Second, I saw the movie alone on Saturday, the morning after it opened. I failed to convince any of my friends to go with me and wasted my second ticket. To my great shame even though I think it's stupid to let fear change your routines (I was on a plane exactly a week after 9/11 as scheduled) I did briefly find myself thinking about where the exits were* against my will and flinched at the frequent gun battles in the movie. When I returned from the movie a friend snarkily asked me "So was is worth risking your life?" and I wanted to punch him. In a non violent way. See, every movie is worth risking your life for because movies are totally safe. Movies do not kill people, people do. People with access to firearms especially which is a lot of people given our nation's embarrassingly pro-tragedy gun laws.

*I'm super happy to report that I've been to the movies twice after this and never once thought of this.

This is a LOT of baggage to take into a movie already. I get that. And then there's the small matter of my teflon resistance to understanding the genius of Chris Nolan and residual frustration with fanboy culture that demands that I do. I was discussing the push and pull between mandated blockbuster movie culture and blogging demands last week with Rob, a reader, on facebook who paid me the nicest compliment:

I like the balance you strike. Sorta: this is here, can't ignore it, we're all gonna see it, Christian Bale is gonna sound funny, and we move on.

Rob nailed it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hee. And we move on... finally, to the [spoiler heavy] review. 

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Two Animated Films I'm Excited About (Will Oscar Be, Too?)

This year I had made a silent goal to myself to talk about animated films more often at The Film Experience since I sometimes really enjoy them even if I don't say so and you definitely enjoy them but we tend to not cover them. So far so getting better. Here are two films I'm looking forward to that I didn't even realize I was excited for because I almost forgot they existed.

1. Me and My Shadow (2014) 
This upcoming effort released a teaser poster a few days ago and has a cute concept. It will reportedly be a blending of traditional animation and CG animation with the traditional being the shadow world and the CG being for the "real" world. From the official synopsis...

Stan (Bill Hader), our hero's shadow, yearns for a more exciting life but happens to be stuck with Stanley Grubb (Josh Gad), a timid guy with an extreme aversion to adventure. When a crime in the shadow world puts both of their lives in danger, Stan is forced to take control of Stanley...

 My mind immediately lept to Steve Martin's body controlled by Lily Tomlin's spirit in All of Me (1984) and Linguini's body going all marionette for Remy in Ratatouille (2007) so the concept is just rich for potentially golden physical slapstick and awkward charm. Not that it's easy to be as good as either of those pictures!

More after the jump including Oscar potential...

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Kiki's Melancholia (& Other Saturn Triumphs)

Though I haven't yet seen any photographs of the Saturn Award event, held in Burbank this week and the last of the 2011 Film Awards -- arriving even later than the MTV Awards each year  -- we must rush to congratulate the one and only Kiki for her Best Actress win for Lars von Trier's apocalyptic arthouse amazement Melancholia. You may recall we also honored her right here in our Best Actress list. The Saturn Awards don't have anything like a prestigious reputation (often a problem with awards organizations voted on by fans) but they do have a long history (38 years!) which counts for something and you have to hand it to them this year that they're the only large non-critics awards group to honor Kirsten Dunst for her indelible embodiment of Planet Sized Depression though she did win the top Actress prize at a few film festivals (including the very definition of Prestige Reputation: the Cannes Film Festival) and was also honored by two critics orgs one minor and one major: Kansas Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics. 

A complete list of winners after the jump but if you're too lazy to click, please note that they seemed to love Super 8 best even though it didn't win any of their four Best Picture prizes. Wins and commentary if you...

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Always Be My Linky

AV Club two new roles for Mariah Carey as an American Idol judge and returning in front of Lee Daniels camera (they worked together on Precious, remember?) in The Butler which already has a very starry cast
My New Plaid Pants a remake of With a Friend Like Harry? Like JA I'm shocked this hasn't already happened. Sergi Lopez was so good in that!
Towleroad Lady Gaga's makes her acting debut in Machete Kills 
SubAtomicCowboy ...reminds us that that's not technically true.

Hollywood Elsewhere a Marilyn Monroe intervention
Movie|Line has theories on the Robert Pattinson & Kristen Stewart breakup. Interesting though the accompanying opinion/absurdity that 'Kristen Stewart could be the next Jodie Foster' negates my ability to take it seriously.
/Film Battle Royale for the CW as a TV series. From the Dept of Truly Hilariously Terrible Ideas 
Hollywood.com Revenge returns on September 30th. Start the countdown 

Na na na na na na NA na na na na BAT LINKS ♫
Dancer a Day "You're so Bane. You probably think this song is about you." 
We Got This Covered "Imagine the Fire" a lengthy interconnected essay on The Dark Knight Rises.
Natasha VC Christopher Nolan has a little Cousin Matthew in him, huh?
Forbes on The Dark Knight's political conservativism.
Digital Spy Anne Hathaway on the possibility of a Catwoman spin off. Given that she doesn't want to do it without Chris Nolan it's never going to happen (see also La Pfeiffer's stance in the 90s about Catwoman IF it was with Tim Burton)

Hollywood's Current Hierarchy (According to Vulture)

Recently we discussed Forbes list of the highest paid actresses of the last year but money alone paints a crap portrait about what matters in the movies. Vulture recently released a list of the Top 100 Valuable Stars and weighed numerous factors like Oscar pull, box office, and media interest of various kinds. It's the kind of list that Premiere and Entertainment Weekly used to do in ye olden times, a list with more to say than just "hey, we need more page views, click on me 100 times for random photos with two sentence capsules!").

Since there's way too much to say about a list of 100 for a blog post, let's recap their Actressy stance within the top 100, only 30% of that list (sigh), starting with the undisputed queens...

Queen of Action.
Queen of Everything.
Queen of "America's Sweethearts".

27 more actresses (and commentary) after the jump

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