1) Zoe Saldana to play Nina Simone: [link]

Hmm. I like Saldana, but she feel too waifish to play Simone.

2) Robert Pattison will play T.E Lawrence in Werner Herzog's Gertrude Bell project (Naomi Watts to play the title role): [link]

The notion of Herzog giving relationship advice to RPats cracks me the hell up.

3) Went to see Beasts of the Southern Wild yesterday. What an extraordinary film. I'm still thinking about it.

Late to the party but Emmett and I finally saw TDKR last night (in IMAX). Damn, that was expensive, but it was the right choice. All future viewings will seem Less Epic.

I've also gone back and read all the white font, so I'm finally up to date in this thread.

Re: Jess' qualms about the politics. I thought the politics in the story were a bit incoherent, but if anything there was a pro-Occupy slant tempered by "And that's how you get ants the French Revolution."

Like several others, I was completely surprised by the Talia reveal. And dag, I read the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neill Ras stories when they originally came out in the early seventies. Those were my earliest Batman comics/exposure (aside from Adam West).

This was my formative Batman storyline.

But I didn't feel stupid about not getting it because I was just wrapped up in the story, and they kept deviating from canon in lots of places.

My Places Of Quibble:

1) Five months to not only recover from a broken back but get back into fighting shape? Because a dude in prison punched you in the vertebrae and hung you from a rope? Then you go climb a wall and do a deadfall of 30 some feet that should displace your back several times over? I kept thinking, "Well Lucius will apparently have some nano-back-fixing app that will need to be injected...

2) Nuclear bomb was still too close and the fallout should've killed everybody in Gotham within the year from radiation poisoning.

The one thing I learned form our attempted "Spiral" rewrite was just how freakin' hard it is to get all the plot points, exposition, season-arc and character beats aligned.

So I was extremely impressed with the script/story that managed to incorporate huge chunks of the extensive No Man's Land, Knightfall and Ras Al Ghul stories, reference and integrate the first two movies into a coherent trilogy, advance the character arcs of Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Jim Gordon, AND give complete character arcs for four new characters in Selina, Blake, Bane and Talia. All while telling the story of this particular movie.

Seriously, that's incredible.

At some point in the movie I realized that I wasn't watching the Bruce Wayne from the comics but rather a very specific Bruce Wayne that exists in this trilogy. That while Nolan obviously knew his batlore and drew on it heavily and to great effect, that Bale's performance and this story were their own thing. And that was good. It had a little more emotional heft for me thinking about this Bruce taking an 8 year hiatus, having wrecked knees, and grieving for Rachel so fully and willing to die for Gotham, and walk away from the mission.

All things that comics Batman probably wouldn't do.

Concur with all the assessments of the acting in the movie. JGL - heart of the story. Loved his working class accent and hard-earned hopefulness. Loved Hathaway's Catwoman who was both of the comics and not. Though as ita notes, she didn't reference earlier performances of the character. Hardy was SO menacing and powerful. Caine and Oldman were excellent, as we would expect and given some great, complex scenes to play. But mostly I was taken by Bale's performance in this. The sadness in it. The humanity.

I'm amused by people who say that the healed broken back is an issue for them, because NO CARTILAGE IN KNEES AND STUFF. Not that there's a hierarchy of suspension of disbelief, but it's like being bothered by the aerodynamics of the plane in the opening action scene but not the science of the nuclear bomb.

"Oh, that, well, you know how comics science can be..."

But! But! Why doesn't that apply to your gripe?

(Not pointed at you, Hec--I've had both those arguments with other fans, and I found it weird, because the things I cited bothered me so much more for some reason)

But ita, he had a knee brace! Problem SOLVED.

I thought he should have maintained the limp as Bruce Wayne, but since basically everyone finds out who he is anyway, I guess it's not super-important.

On that note, anyone bothered by the fact that none of Bane's henchman immediately went on Twitter right after the back-breaking scene to post "Batman is Bruce Wayne!" It didn't especially bug me, but thinking back on it...how was that not completely public knowledge within about ten minutes?

On that note,

The same thing happened in Spider-Man 2, when Spidey's mask got ripped off (or he took it off, or something that I can't remember) on the train, and all the good people of New York opted to NOT immediately whip out their camera phones. I can suspend my disbelief for a radioactive spider bite, but NO ONE took a picture of Spidey without his mask, in a world where everyone has a camera phone?

NOPE.

The same thing happened in Spider-Man 2, when Spidey's mask got ripped off (or he took it off, or something that I can't remember) on the train, and all the good people of New York opted to NOT immediately whip out their camera phones

At least in that case, though, he wasn't wearing a tattoo on his forehead that said "I'm Peter Parker!" And Peter Parker in his everyday life isn't famous.

Whereas Bruce Wayne is almost as well known as Batman. If I suddenly found out that Batman was Michael Bloomberg, I would tell people!

If I suddenly found out that Batman was Michael Bloomberg, I would tell people!

Maybe Bane screened his henchmen for people ignorant of social media.

Man, Bane could probably post to Twitter directly from his mask dealie. That would be cool. "Blew up Gotham Stadium. If you weren't there, check YouTube in about 30 seconds." "Did 10,000 sit-ups this week. Considering an AbRoller."

"Blew up Gotham Stadium. If you weren't there, check YouTube in about 30 seconds."

@Bane Pics or it didn't happen!!!

If I suddenly found out that Batman was Michael Bloomberg, I would tell people!

Oh god, I wouldn't! People already let that guy control way too much of their lives, and that's without being physically impressed by or scared of him!

I'm sure Bane is the sort of nice guy who wouldn't take that away from his enemy. All the better to set up his eventual tragic downfall...

I'm okay with Bane's henchmen being slavishly...well, anything. He's a fucking scary guy, with an impressive exit interview and maybe an ESL understanding of terminating a position.