Ah, Pop Culture Roundup 27, Friends, the perfect cube of popular culture entertainment. This ain’t yo mama’s pop culture roundup!
We would be remiss if we didn’t update you on the Aurora shooting. Pure class act, the Dark Knight himself, Christian Bale, visited the hospital and makeshift memorials in Aurora, Colorado. The actor did this on his own time and on his own dime, not as a representative of Warner Brothers. The Huffington Post and NY Daily News has some shots of the swell, empathetic chap making the rounds with his lovely wife Sibi Blazic. Some more good news; three out of the five hospitals have decided to wipe out and/or limit medical bills for the Colorado movie theater shooting victims. The public and Warner Brothers has also chipped in to help pay the mounting medical expenses that have dipped into the millions for all of the individuals. Sometimes humanity is all right. I rise to my feet and applaud you, My People.
Artist Edel Rodriguez takes us into the making of this artful TDKR/Aurora cover for The Hollywood Reporter. I have seen some awful graphics that were recently done as a tribute for Aurora but this one is graphically striking. The lone red blood tear is a bit much but it’s still a very nice composition. I really dig how Roger Ebert has become this humanist and impomptu diplomat for our culture. He had some poignant words, opining on the tragedy for The New York Times, it’s titled, We’ve Seen This Movie Before.
Some articles and interesting reads:
- Rolling Stone: Christopher Nolan: ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Isn’t Political
- The New Inquiry: Batman Occupied
- The Huffington Post: The Dark Mythopoetics of Christopher Nolan’s Rising and Setting Knight
- Slate: Chris Nolan’s Favorite Shot, and What It Means
- GeekTyrant: Film Review by C.C. Ekeke
- Vulture: Ask a Doctor: Is Batman’s Healing Method Sound?
The Dark Knight Rises director, Christopher Nolan wrote some words about leaving the Batman canon and the holy trilogy. He wrote this heartfelt letter which is in the foreword for The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy. I think I will purchase this book, I’m such a huge fan of Nathan Crowley‘s design work from the films.
Alfred. Gordon. Lucius. Bruce . . . Wayne. Names that have come to mean so much to me. Today, I’m three weeks from saying a final good-bye to these characters and their world. It’s my son’s ninth birthday. He was born as the Tumbler was being glued together in my garage from random parts of model kits. Much time, many changes. A shift from sets where some gunplay or a helicopter were extraordinary events to working days where crowds of extras, building demolitions, or mayhem thousands of feet in the air have become familiar.
People ask if we’d always planned a trilogy. This is like being asked whether you had planned on growing up, getting married, having kids. The answer is complicated. When David and I first started cracking open Bruce’s story, we flirted with what might come after, then backed away, not wanting to look too deep into the future. I didn’t want to know everything that Bruce couldn’t; I wanted to live it with him. I told David and Jonah to put everything they knew into each film as we made it. The entire cast and crew put all they had into the first film. Nothing held back. Nothing saved for next time. They built an entire city. Then Christian and Michael and Gary and Morgan and Liam and Cillian started living in it. Christian bit off a big chunk of Bruce Wayne’s life and made it utterly compelling. He took us into a pop icon’s mind and never let us notice for an instant the fanciful nature of Bruce’s methods.
I never thought we’d do a second—how many good sequels are there? Why roll those dice? But once I knew where it would take Bruce, and when I started to see glimpses of the antagonist, it became essential. We re-assembled the team and went back to Gotham. It had changed in three years. Bigger. More real. More modern. And a new force of chaos was coming to the fore. The ultimate scary clown, as brought to terrifying life by Heath. We’d held nothing back, but there were things we hadn’t been able to do the first time out—a Batsuit with a flexible neck, shooting on Imax. And things we’d chickened out on—destroying the Batmobile, burning up the villain’s blood money to show a complete disregard for conventional motivation. We took the supposed security of a sequel as license to throw caution to the wind and headed for the darkest corners of Gotham.
I never thought we’d do a third—are there any great second sequels? But I kept wondering about the end of Bruce’s journey, and once David and I discovered it, I had to see it for myself. We had come back to what we had barely dared whisper about in those first days in my garage. We had been making a trilogy. I called everyone back together for another tour of Gotham. Four years later, it was still there. It even seemed a little cleaner, a little more polished. Wayne Manor had been rebuilt. Familiar faces were back—a little older, a little wiser . . . but not all was as it seemed.
Gotham was rotting away at its foundations. A new evil bubbling up from beneath. Bruce had thought Batman was not needed anymore, but Bruce was wrong, just as I had been wrong. The Batman had to come back. I suppose he always will.
Michael, Morgan, Gary, Cillian, Liam, Heath, Christian . . . Bale. Names that have come to mean so much to me. My time in Gotham, looking after one of the greatest and most enduring figures in pop culture, has been the most challenging and rewarding experience a filmmaker could hope for. I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental.
The infographics gurus at Pop Chart Lab have created this great print showing the network and connections of all of the Batman villains, purchase The Myriad Monikers of Gotham’s Villains.
Speaking of infographics. Do you know how many millions it costs to be The Caped Crusader? Here’s Money Supermarket with your numbers.
I know the majority of the team has been swallowed into the bowels of the imploding stadium but have you picked up your official Gotham Rogues football gear yet? I wish NIKE made these instead of the awful Under Armour, I just can’t support UA. Brilliant cross promotion though.
Are you following @BaneCapital on Twitter? BTW, I cannot stop talking like Tom Hardy’s Bane. (in a quirky, muffled Sean Connery voice) Your punishment must be more severe.
Our plan to destroy Gotham created 1200 full-time jobs, including 1014 in China.
— Bane Capital (@BaneCapital) July 18, 2012
There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. And this storm has nothing to do with increased risk of extreme weather conditions due to climate change.
— Bane Capital (@BaneCapital) July 18, 2012
Mitt was not associated with Bane Capital after 1999, even though he was listed as Chairman and Chief Explosion Officer.
— Bane Capital (@BaneCapital) July 18, 2012
The Dark Knight Rises: Bane’s Speech done by Mark Hamill‘s Joker (Impression)
Batman: Nightwing fan film.
The dropped the Man of Steel teaser that plays befor TDKR. It’s at the header with another version below.
TRAILERS and FEATURETTES
Total Recall
Drew: The Man Behind the Poster (Drew Struzan documentary)
Side by Side, this documentary investigates the history, process and workflow of both digital and photochemical film creation.
Freelancers, the son of a slain NYPD officer joins the force, where he falls in with his father’s former partner and a team of rogue cops.
The Oranges, a guy falls for the daughter of a family friend, making life just a bit awkward for himself and the family.
Jack and Diane, two teenage girls, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane’s charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack’s tough skinned heart. But when Jack discovers that Diane is moving, she pushes her away. Unable to grasp her new feelings, Diane’s emotions begin to cause unexplainable violent changes to her body. Through these awkward and insecure feelings, the two girls must struggle to turn their first love into an enduring one.
Boom, gotta run. We’ll be updating this thread on Sunday. Have a good one…
–@teemunny
