Who played him?

Louis Ozawa Changchien IMDB page - [link]

I like the latest Bourne well enough, but I though it took too long to get going. Still, I enjoyed watching Renner.

Most of the reviews I've seen have been at least positive, including a rather good one on KPCC in LA this morning (in which the critic noted that the Greengrass films gave him motion sickness--my brother!). Mick LaSalle, in the Chron, of course, thought it was lousy.

I'll probably go tomorrow anyway.

Maniacal laugh supercut: [link]

I went with my sister to see TDKR again (she hadn't seen it yet), and wow, do all the scenes where Bruce is in the pit getting the "child who climbed out of the pit" story have a "Ben is Glory?"/"Who's On First" quality to them the second time around.

Old Guy: There was a child who climbed out of the pit
Bruce: Yes, I know Bane!
Old Guy: Uh...yeah, the child had a protector. Anyway, back to my story.
Bruce: Bane!
Old Guy: I AM TALKING ABOUT THE CHILD YOU IDIOT STOP SAYING BANE
Bruce: So...we're still talking about Bane, then?
Old Guy: Oh for fuck's sake, I'll skip to the end - ditch the rope, climb out.
Bruce: Thanks for telling me about Bane!
Old Guy: ARGH.

I'm still hugely impressed by what a well-constructed trilogy this is. Each movie stands pretty well alone, but together they tell one MASSIVE story, which I love.

The politics are still weird, but being prepared for them this time around, I wasn't quite so squicked. I still would like to hear Nolan clarify them a bit, because I honestly can't tell if this is an incredibly offensive movie, or just an incredibly confusing one. I mean, does he really think that lobbying for the 1% to pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate is equivalent to hauling old ladies on 5th Ave out of their homes and forcing them to walk across a frozen river to their death? Or are we supposed to believe that THOSE people were all criminals to begin with, and that there's an unseen population of regular people in Gotham who are hiding terrified in their rent-stabilized apartments?

The politics are still weird, but being prepared for them this time around, I wasn't quite so squicked.

I came away feeling that the kind of anarchy we saw was being shown as a natural (if Bane-accelerated) end result of the kind of runaway class division we have today. I also did get the idea that there were a lot of people just holing up in their homes and waiting for everything to just go away. I got a major French Revolution vibe off the whole thing.

Will came up and surprised me today so we went and saw Total Recall. It was good, although I think I like the Bourne Legacy slightly more.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler but I thought it was weird that in Future Britain and Future Australia everyone had American accents.

I mean, does he really think that

I thought (having now finally seen the film) the latter. I didn't get the feeling that Bane's forces really included anyone other than his original followers and maybe the people he released from prison. I mean, I figure there'd be a few locals who'd go along with him, there's one in every crowd and such like; but for most Gothamites, I think Bane would be the guy who cancelled your holiday plans forever, then gave you war-zone level institutions, well-armed thugs of dubious discipline prowling the streets, empty shops offering only subsistence-level handouts, and a nuclear bomb possibly leaking radiation doing regular circuits of the city. Oh, and who introduced himself to Gotham by declaring war on football. Worst demagogue ever, is the point.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler

It would certainly spoil the movie for me, so I think it counts.

Finally saw it. FINALLY.

I also got a lot of French Revolution, to the point of looking for throwaway shots of knitters in the krazy kourtroom scenes. Which would've made me laugh a dark bitter laugh, but also confirmed the uncomfortable weirdness a little too literally. I have absolutely no read on what message was intended to come from it, largely because I'm confused by what message actually WAS coming from it.

The Talia thing didn't surprise me at all. I was spoiled that she was in the movie, but didn't know that she was The Child In Cave OMG PremonitionCakes -- but on the other hand I've known for, fuck, ever that she's Ra's Al Ghul's child, so. BTW, If there's Talia/Assassin's Creed crossover stuff out there, I need to know. For reasons.

Gotham absolutely fascinated. I thought it was a strange and rather amazing choice to make it so obviously NYC when it's so constantly but barely disguised in the comics -- "Gotham" is essentially a glass closet; in comics canon and the movies up until now, they've always very carefully filed off all the serial numbers -- changed maps just enough, rearranged neighborhoods, shot whole movies in Chicago. (Among other things, it's always been one of the clearest contrasts with how Marvel does things.) So I was surprised when they *didn't* change subway signs, shop signs, all the things that are there in a zillion other movies to signal "this is a hip contemporary urban shot on location in the real actual NYC movie". From every single previous Batman movie, I would've expected, I dunno, prominent shots of highway signs pointing to the tunnel to Bludhaven. This did not help AT ALL when they blew up my parents' block, and I so get the triggeriness for those of you who live there.

The Trilogy: I felt it this time, much more so than the second movie. The second one was kind of flat for me, I think partly because the Joker expectations were set so impossibly high after Ledger's death, but also because the Harvey Dent story didn't hit the emotional notes that I needed it to in my personal headcanon version. So I came away with a lot of "hey, lots of crazy explosions, but don't really need to see it again" and didn't think much about how the whole Nolanverse was coming into place underneath it all. This one fit with the first enough to carry the second along with it for me (and enough to make it more of a Harvey movie and less of a Joker movie; it's still not entirely my Harvey movie, but the centrality of that side of the plot to this one makes it all fit.)

Most of all, it's an amazing trilogy because it's a JIM FUCKING GORDON trilogy.

On Batman, and my eternal ambivalence thereon: The best thing about this for me (and I know it sounds weird, except that y'all have seen me flail on the subject for how many years now?) is how much of the movie happened without Batman. My Batman fandom at its peak is always about not-Batman: the batfam that forms around him sometimes in spite of himself, the GCPD, the city, the Gordon axis, the relationships among successive Robins and their shared... I dunno, thing that they've been through, and how wonderful and freakishly wrong it is at once. The storylines where Bats is often absent or out-of-scene (Murderer, Fugitive), or just not the most important thing that's going on (No Man's Land), are always the most interesting to me. He's more compelling the more he's a cipher, a focus for all the other characters and incidents to organize around (as a signal in the sky?) rather than an onscreen character in his own right -- and too many movie/tv versions are All About Batman to be interesting Batman stories.

(or maybe I was just glad to hear as little as possible of Bale's crappy Batvoice)

I wanted Blake to say his real name was "Richard" when he picked up his bag at the end. But there would've been audible orgasm noises if that had happened.

NO, THERE IS TOO MUCH. LET ME SUM UP.

I LESS THAN THREE THIS MOVIE even while finding it unsettling and strange. Or, much more likely, because.