So as not to reveal any DKR spoilers, I will let slip only this detail:

Alfred is a Buffista spirit baby - he drinks Fernet.

Jessica,

did you like the film?

I'm still mulling it over. As a piece of filmmaking, it's incredible. But the more I sit with it, the more I find the movie's politics really disturbing.

This Gotham is WAY more explicitly NYC than in the previous two movies, where it looked more or less like Chicago. In this one they did a lot of on-location shooting here, and didn't bother to do any set-dressing, so there are NYC subway entrances, and newspaper boxes with the NY Post in them, and the trash cans look like the ones outside my office, and all the buildings in "downtown Gotham" are real buildings in downtown Manhattan. They also say "Gotham" instead of "Gotham City" which isn't a huge difference except that one is the city where Batman lives and the other is NYC's nickname. And so on. And that made it very difficult for me personally to take this as pure fiction and not political commentary, especially given what I know about how Nolan wanted to shoot certain scenes.

So. I'm conflicted. I want to like it, but I'm not sure I can.

Oh, and to answer a question posed upthread, Bane is quite intelligible. You have to pay attention, but he enunciates very clearly from behind the mask.

Speaking of masks...? I realize this is old news, but I was just reading American Gods, which of course made me think of the Avengers, and I didn't know there's a mythology thing about Loki's mouth being sewn shut, but apparently that is, so maybe there was something about that in the gagging?

there's a mythology thing about Loki's mouth being sewn shut, but apparently that is, so maybe there was something about that in the gagging?

I wondered about that, too, Jesse, but I haven't seen anything about sources of inspiration for the muzzle.

Oh yeah, muzzle not gag.

Was it the Fenris Wolf that got muzzled, and bit off someone's hand in the process?

There was some stuff on Tumblr about the overwhelming goal being to shut Loki up (which culminated in the literal gag), and that having been a constant through both Thor (since childhood) and Avengers), but it was written from or by enough of a woobie-Loki place that I did not give it due credence. I felt bombarded, and wasn't able to isolated it and evaluate it fairly.

Needless to say googling to find that again was very...edifying.

But I couldn't find the precise thing I'd rolled my eyes at the first time. No idea if it stands by itself if you don't want to fellate Tom Hiddleston.

Why does Opera agree that fellatio is fine, but fellate does not exist? Seriously? Wordnik is good with it, but offers no timeline information. Is there a place that consistently gives timeline information? I just go to Wordnik and see if I get a hit from Webster's 1913, because that's the only source whose date I know, because der.

I didn't know there's a mythology thing about Loki's mouth being sewn shut

I don't know either, but one of my favourite Avengers fic to date deals with this very act being Loki's punishment upon his return to Asgard. It's short, brutal, and terrifically-written: [link]