Random Writing #11 - One Sentence

I closed the cover on my copy of "The Call of the Wild" and turned to look thoughtfully at the dog curled up next to me on the couch.

Batcrap Crazy

It was announced a few days ago that Ben Affleck would don the cape and cowl of Batman for an upcoming Superman/Batman joint picture. And by now if you hadn't already heard that, you're probably groaning as much of the internet seemed to do. He was already being compared to Clooney as being the worst Batman ever.

 

My personal thought upon hearing it was.... meh.

 

Here's the thing. There's no such thing as a bad Batman. What there are are bad Batman movies. Clooney wasn't bad as Batman. He just happened to star in a terrible movie as the main character. The reason there can't really be a bad Batman (from among a list of A-listers) is that you don't actually cast Batman. Batman is a idea. A philosophy. Something beyond human even as the most human of all superheroes. He's a cape and a cowl. A badass motherfucker without identity. He's nobody and everybody. He is justice.

 

What you cast is Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is a playboy. A ladies' man. A rich little asshole. He is all the things you are not. But he is a man. One that is easily played for minimal screen time by any playboy rich little prick actor. Is Affleck still a bad choice? In an article I read asking for suggestions of a better Batman in the comments section, not one person at the time had actually suggested anybody. Haters gonna hate, apparently. That being said, Matt Damon as Robin jokes were hardly avoidable.

 

Now I'm not exactly defending this decision. As I said, my initial reaction was simply "meh." I couldn't care less who puts on a mask and talks in a grumbly voice not his own. That's why it's called acting. No, to be honest this Superman/Batman flick is going to suck not because of casting but because Superman movies suck.

 

Superman is a super man. He is the superman. His only weakness is a rock from a destroyed planet. He can shoot lasers from his eyes, he can blow freezing wind from his mouth, he can swallow a bomb, stop bullets, fly, create a time travel vortex, has x-ray telescopic microscopic thermal vision, throw mountains, withstand the sun, and basically be indestructible. This is not a believable character that the masses can empathize with.

 

Superman exists in a different world than Batman. Same universe, different world. Superman exists in a bright sunshiny world where a megalomaniac wants to steal candy from a baby. Batman exists in that penumbra between light and dark that tears at us all. He is that psychological fight within. Superman is hope. Batman is the antithesis of that: reality. He is dark, edgy, full of hate and self loathing and redemption. Superman is a boyscout in Candyland. These two worlds simply do not mesh. That is why I have no enthusiasm for this project. It will at best be a jarring account of two different worlds. At worst it will be a homogenous blob of character anti-development.

Dream #9 - This Dude Walks Into a Bar...

I pushed open the saloon doors silhouetted against the overexposed street and walked into the bar flooded with white light through high French windows. I walked up to the bar which was actually a large wooden table gouged through years of use. I laid my hands on the table, bending slightly at the waist. "Whiskey," I said.

 

The bartender, an average looking man from the back with a growing bald spot, stood by a window, wiping a glass with a towel and mumbled a response. He didn't turn.

 

I opened my wallet and flipped through a twenty, a ten, a five and the rent cheque I hadn't yet delivered to my rental agency. [These things actually happened to be in my wallet at the time]. I fingered the five with no expectations of a whiskey costing more than that. With no further response from the bartender, I stepped around the table and sidled up beside him.

 

Again he mumbled something.

 

"What?" I asked.

 

He turned his head, tilted to look up at me, green eyes like glass. "Pull out the ten."

 

"What?" I repeated. "It can't cost more than -"

 

His eyes swept away from mine across the room. "Look around. Pull out the ten."

 

I turned to take in the room, bright, white and cozy despite a certain sterility to it. Without seeming to fasten my gaze on anything in particular, I swept the room before turning back on the bartender. In my glance I had noticed that the room was filled with two dozen attractive young women all sitting alone at small pinewood tables, each engaged in solo activities from reading to examining laptops to playing solitaire, a glass of beer or cocktail or steaming cappuccino within easy reach. Even with my feeble sweeping gaze I picked out at least one attribute on each woman that attracted me. One in particular stood out, a leggy girl in a plaid skirt and white blouse with flowing long auburn hair and glasses delicately perched mid nose reading a red hardcover.

 

I looked the bartender in the eye and he nodded. I pulled out the ten without looking and handed it over. He looked at me expectantly, waiting for my second drink order. I turned again to survey the room, to find the most attractive woman and define her drink of choice that I might better my chances.

 

Lightning crashed somewhere very nearby.

Dream #8 - Batnap

He watched crouched atop a disintegrating gargoyle as the clouds slid along through the circle of light in the sky. The white haired man in the brown trenchcoat stood down in front him beside the searchlight with his arms clutched behind his back. He rose his arms to the side and glided silently down and landed behind the man. "What is it, Jim?"

"Jesus!" said Commissioner Gordon. "Would you stop doing that, Batman?"

"Sorry. It's kind of my thing..."

"Yes, well... The Joker's escaped again. I don't always agree with your ways, Batman, but one of these days you really aught to just kill him. You'd save more lives in the long run." Commissioner Gordon propped his glasses back up on his bulbous nose using his index finger.

"I can't, Jim. It's just not in me. I pledged to protect this city from vermin like Joker, like the scum that killed my... It's just not in me."

Jim missed the clue. "You dressed like a bat and you call him the vermin. Well you might change your tune after this one. He's escaped and kidnapped Warden O'Malley's daughter. She's only four. It's her birthday."

"Hmm." Batman looked pensive. Suddenly he darted forward and launched himself off the top of the police headquarters, swooping down through the silhouettes and neon signs of Gotham and landing in the seat of the Batmobile.

Gordon watched him go with arms folded across his chest. "There goes the craziest one of them all. I'm just glad he's on our side."

"Alfred, I need a location on the Joker. What have you got?"

"Let me look into it, sir. Hmm. Triangulating... Yes, there. It seems the Joker's henchmen have been sighted heading in the direction of St. Bartholomew's Church on Westmount Hill. Why a church, sir?"

"Who knows Alfred? Because he's crazy."

"Seems legit. Isn't that what the kids say these days?"

"Alfred..."

"Go get him, sir."

Batman pulled up to St. Bartholomew's Church and kept on going because the Batmobile is jet powered and jet powered cars don't stop on a dime. So he got out where it did stop and walked up to the doors of the church. It's belfry loomed dark overhead, topped with a cross that Bruce Wayne could never bring himself to repent to.

"Welcome, Bats! Hope you didn't have too much trouble finding the place!" came a jittery voice. "We're going to have a blast. But first you have to collect all the party favours. HAHAHAHA! There are three little things we need to clear up."

[editor's note: Party favour one couldn't be remembered.]

Batman fired his Batgrapple gun up through the tower and let it reel him up through the dank, crooked stairwell. Joker hung from the roof pillar by one hand and an anchored foot. The other foot and hand with a detonator in it hung out over the darkness below. The little girl was strapped to the bell with a bomb strapped to her.

"Let her go, Joker. You won't get away with this."

"How often have you said that and I listened? AHAHAHAH!"

"How often have you ignored me and not gotten away with it?"

"Touche! I think I need an adult! HAHAHA!"

"I think you need a doctor." Batman whipped out a Batarang and knocked Joker off his perch. Instantly he jumped and sliced the ropes from around the girl, tossed the bomb under the bell and sliced the rope holding the bell with another Batarang. The bell crashed to the ground with a resounding blast as the bomb went off inside it. Batman continued his forward momentum and tried to grab the Joker as he hurtled toward the ground.

"Nice try, Batbrain, but I've got a few tricks up my sleeve!" Joker spread his arms and showed off his bat-like wings. "Catch me later! AHAHAHAH!" He flew off into the dark.

Batman landed safely on the ground and walked the girl to the Batmobile, locking her inside. "You'll be safe here."

"Mama?"

Batman sighed. "No, kid, I'm not your mama. I'm going after the Joker." He turned in the direction of a hollow cackle coming from further up the hill. The moon hung low on the horizon partially obscured by the silhouetted spires of wealthy mansions. Batman began climbing the twilight blue-grey pedestals to the top of the hill, leaping the shale rooftops along the way. He spotted the Joker near the top facing away from him. He crept up silently from behind and grabbed the Joker in a choke hold. He held him out over the edge of the rooftop into a poorly lit orangish apartment hallway that had a stack of Yellow Pages five feet high leaning against the wall. (Hey, this is a dream, remember. I don't claim to make sense of it).

 

"Glad you could make it, Bats!" the Joker sputtered. "Going to kill me know? Don't let me down! CHCHCHCH!"

 

"I'm not going to kill you. Then I'd be no better than you."

 

"You really should, you know. You're Bat-shit-crazy-man! HCHCHCHC! It's a world of chaos and only you cling to some misguided belief that you're the only one that doesn't get the joke."

 

"I try to make the world a better place by..."

 

"Ah, shut your pie hole. We've been through this a million times."

 

"One thing, Joker, before I turn you in. You said there were three party favours. I only counted two. What else do you have up your sleeve?"

 

"Just this." Another bomb detonator slid from Joker's sleeve into his palm and he pressed the red button which began to glow. Below him came the blast. A line of railway cars lurched and began to roll down the hill toward a switching yard filled with diesel cars. "Whatcha going to do, Batman? Thousands will die! Can't save us both! CHCHCHCHCH!"

 

"Neither." He let go. He couldn't hear the blasts of the exploding fuel tankers over the roar of his Batmobile.

 

The next day the little girl had her birthday party. She zoomed around the gardens of her parents house with a violet cape clasped round her neck and the tips clutched in either outstretched hand. The box it came in was from the warden's good friend, Bruce Wayne.

Random Writing #10 - Eight Words

I stood shivering in the humid July night.

Review: Norwegian Wood

Ok, I don't say this often, but I don't get it. "Norwegian Wood" is a Japanese film - yes, it's got subtitles; get over it - based on a book by the same name based on the song by the same name. Now I've always thought the Japanese were pretty sexually fucked up and to some extent this film examines that without coming to any clear conclusion beyond the fact that death, love and sex are all somehow related. Maybe my Western mind can't wrap itself around this one because it's biased. The plot seems disjointed with a number of seemingly irrelevant scenes. There's an obvious depth to it with symbolism that is apparently over my head. I'll say this though, Japan has some beautiful countryside. 2.5/5.

Review: Hanna

It occurs to me that in a lot of thrillers, the expert killer spends a lot of time running from inept thugs. "Hanna" is no exception. The twist here is that Hanna's just a kid. So it's kind of like James Bond's coming of age story. Sadly, the story plays its cards far too soon and the never quite comes of age. How much you enjoy this one depends a lot of what you expect going into it. If you're fine with a surrealistic European symbolist edge, one that expects American industrial military complex to build illogical subterranean bunkers in Morocco, have freewheeling British tourists tortured and strung out to dry in plot limbo and murder in Candyland, you're golden. If you're one of those people that's really detail oriented and can name every kind of self defence move that Jason Bourne uses, you should probably stick to, well, Bourne movies. Great score by the Chemical Brothers, though. 3/5.

Review: The Life of Pi (the movie)

When Mother Nature yells "fuck you!" at you, you should probably listen. When a Bengal tiger yells 'fuck you!" at you - repeatedly - with big, nasty, pointy teeth and the gnashing... you should probably listen. These are life lessons that Pi apparently does not digest. "The Life of Pi" is less a story about the life of Pi than the regret at the moral death of Pi. While I get that many people find this story uplifting, Pi's faith based heroics left me compassionless for him and feeling more for the tiger (in a discombobulated twist). Often the film is - to use an overused term - visually stunning. Sometimes the CGI is amazing, other times you think they subbed it out to North Korean cartoonists. Two minutes in I thought I was watching "The Lion King." By the end, the thought struck me again... if Simba had been aboard the Mignonette. The Life and Death of Richard Parker Pi gets 3.14/5. Oh, spoiler alert in there. My bad.

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is an 80's movie for the 00's (or 10's if you're going to be persnickety about it). Essentially it's white middle class kids problems with a darker edge. Like any hipster movie, it has a killer soundtrack. That "tunnel song" is "Heroes" by David Bowie, by the way. I kind of lost faith in these kids when they didn't know that and spend a year trying to find it. A year? Seriously? Haven't these kids heard of the internet? Don't they at least recognize David Bowie's voice? For Christ sake, kids, get with the times. Anyway, solidly acted with the delightful Emma Watson filling Molly Ringwald's shoes. Paul Rudd's role is pointless and should have been cut - no offence to him, he did fine in playing it. Despite it's darkness, the plot is a bit thin, playing out more like a season of "Degrassi" without all the forward momentum. The idea of infinity that lurks on the edges of the film ends with a sudden lurch at the end, like it got T-boned by a Mack truck... 3/5.

Revew: Horrible Bosses

Is it just me or are outrageous comedies more outrageous and less comedic these days? Ever since "Superbad" I just haven't laughed like I used to. I think I still have a decent sense of humour but I'm just not getting it anymore. Anyway, "Horrible Bosses" is kind of like hanging out with my high school friends if we were on the set of Jerry Springer. It has a certain charm and it's mildly amusing. You get Kevin Spacey as a psychopathic boss. Although his performance isn't weak, it's not great either. You get Jennifer Aniston as a dirty talking sex fiend. Ever suggestive of what you really want, you'll never get it here. Then there's some... douchebag as a... douchebag. Err, that's Colin Farrell. As the douchebag. Not being a douchebag. If you're a fan of "Arrested Development," you'll probably enjoy this one. But be warned: it's predictable and unimaginative. Still, as above, mildly amusing. 3 bosses out of 5.