If you’re already jonesing for more gritty Batman heroics, you won’t have to wait for the eventual home video release of The Dark Knight Rises to get your fix: The folks at Warner Premiere have announced the September release of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, an animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s celebrated 1986 graphic novel charting the return of the retired Caped Crusader to a Gotham City in need. Bonus cool points: Peter Weller as Batman!
Miller’s Dark Knight Returns story, which earned critical acclaim and has been heralded as one of the best graphic novels of all time, joins a slew of animated features from the studio behind previous direct-to-DVD animations Superman: Doomsday and Batman: Year One and will hit DVD/Blu-ray on September 25.
This version of Bat-lore follows a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne as he comes out of retirement to battle old foe Harvey Dent/Two Face, also tangling with The Joker, local cops, and the U.S. government. Sidekick Robin pops up — in the form of a 13-year-old girl named Carrie — as does fellow DC superhero Superman, with whom Batman battles. (Christopher Nolan’s TDKR borrowed elements from Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, Batman’s retirement, beef with authorities, and arguably his fate included.)
Bonus features on the Dark Knight Returns release:
• Standard and high definition versions of the feature film
• UltraViolet™*
• Sneak Peak at Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2, the next DC Universe Animated Original Movie
• Featurette – “Her Name is Carrie … Her Role is Robin” – An all-new featurette. Experience the role of Robin, through the eyes of a female warrior.
• Featurette – “Batman and Me: The Bob Kane Story” – A documentary comprehensively chronicling the remarkable life of the creator of…
Also in Monday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, The Producers Guild launches an online jobs board. The Weinstein Company’s The Intouchables will be feted by Christopher Reeve foundation; Henry Rollins takes a role in an upcoming thriller; and remembering French filmmaker Chris Marker.
Producers Guild Launches Job Board
Guild members and employers can access the new Producers Guild Job Board online via this website. Overseen by the Producers Guild of America Website Committee, construction on the new site began in February 2012.
Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to Honor The Intouchables
Harvey Weinstein will accept the Dana Reeve HOPE Award on behalf of The Weinstein Company and directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache at New York gala November 28th. The foundation provides care to people living with paralysis and advancing research.
Henry Rollins Joins Dark Prophet
Rollins will play the role of General Adam Luther, the mastermind behind the Black Box in the thriller. Dark Prophet is an original web and TV series which follows Dai Shepherd, an extraordinarily gifted, yet rebellious music student with time-traveling abilities who discovers that government intelligence agency, Black Box, has a catastrophic secret embedded in song patterns–Dai is the key to saving the world as we know it.
Around the ‘net…
Colorado Shooting Victims Wear Batman T-Shirts to Court Hearing
Victims, friends and family were led into the courtroom before the hearing. Cameras weren’t allowed inside. “He attacked us out of cowardice, but we will attack back in strength,” one person who was in the theater during the tragedy said. THR reports.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio to be Animated
ShadowMachine will produce the stop-motion animated movie that is being co directed by Del Toro and Gris Grimly based on the classic by Carlo Collodi. They…
There was a huge campaign on Tumblr, and I think Facebook too, asking Christian Bale to visit the victims in the Aurora shooting dressed as fucking Batman! Out of all the things the victims need, seeing Batman in their hospital doorway, even if he is carrying a bouquet of carnations, is probably not one of them. Just a guess. So thankfully, when Christian Bale did an awesome thing today by visiting the victims, he left his Batman mask in the closet.
TheDenverChannel says Christian didn’t want to turn this into a huge STUNT QUEEN situation, so he rode to the hospital in an ambulance to keep the media from finding out. Christian showed up to the hospital at around 2 this afternoon and spent around two and a half hours hanging out with several victims including Carey Rottman, who posted this picture with Christian on Facebook. Warner Bros. said that Christian went on his own and he wasn’t there representing the studio.
Well, this was a completely amazing thing of Christian Bale to do and makes me feel all warm in the chest area, and I usually only get that feeling when my laptop overheats on my chest while I’m watching porn. I know some of us are fans of Christian’s bitchy on-set meltdowns, so don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be back to screaming his tonsil skin off at an assistant director by this time… Wait, what time is it? Oh yeah, he’s probably back on the set and screaming ”OH GOOOOOOOD FOR YOU“ at an assistant director right now. A crazy with a heart, that Christian.
A caped crusader. A city wiped clean of criminals. A madman with a doomsday device who terrorizes the populace until average citizen heroes step forward to help save the day. Batman? Nope! On the heels of The Dark Knight Rises, Movieline takes a look back at 1999’s Mystery Men, new to Blu-ray, in the latest installment of Inessential Essentials.
The film: Mystery Men (1999)
Why It’s an Inessential Essential: Based on characters by comics creator Bob Burden, Mystery Men is an anomalously charming and amiably goofy superhero film. The film is very much a product of the creative chaos that ensued after Hollywood executives realized comic book properties like Batman could make a mint at the box office. But with many more duds than hits on their hands, execs were apparently clueless about what they should adapt and how to do it. It’s not only strange that a movie with characters as alienating-ly campy as the ones in Mystery Men ever got made — it’s even freakier to note that the film is actually pretty funny. So while mass audiences didn’t know what to make of the film when it was initially released, the film can now be enjoyed as a more than welcome antidote to the recent trend of self-serious but mostly drab superhero films.
Mystery Men was co-produced by Dark Horse Comics publisher and creator Michael Richardson, the man responsible for turning such comic book properties as Tank Girl (1995) and The Mask (1994) into half-baked films. It was directed by Kinka Usher, making a big leap from being the assistant camera operator on such films as the 1987 Kato Kaelin vehicle Beach Fever (Usher would not go on to direct any other movies after Mystery Men, not even short films). Usher clearly directed…
Full Story »The Batman brand is in the toilet at the outset of The Dark Knight Rises, the third and most self-consciously ornate pillar of Christopher Nolan’s caped crusader resurrection trilogy. The four years since The Dark Knight have passed as eight within the city state of Gotham — one of the neater doublings in a movie inlaid with prismatic tiling — and even the mayor condemns Batman as “a murderous thug.”
The late Harvey Dent, by contrast, has been canonized as a civic hero; something called the “Dent Act” has ushered in an era of safe streets and soft despotism. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), meanwhile, is still heartbroken over the murder of Rachel Dawes and said to be peeing in Mason jars and polishing his curly fingernails in some shuttered wing of Wayne Manor. As a memorial for Dent drones and tinkles smugly on, the movie’s animating question flickers across Commissioner Gordon’s (Gary Oldman) face: Batman died for this?
The this at the heart of The Dark Knight Rises is a city whose predicament is conceived broadly enough to accommodate any number of thematic readings, but too hedged to explore any one of them well. In winding up at casual cross-purposes, the film’s perspective on governing power structures and mass psychology (to name only two) feel like Nolan playing ideological peek-a-boo. Despite heavy provocation, it’s a movie that can only supply embarrassment to those who look beyond the gleaming chaos and heroic suffering for meaning. What it amounts to is a frantic set of distractions from an uncommonly thrilling ride on the old Gotham express.
Bruce Wayne’s first warning of what’s to come, and what’s happening beyond the manor gates — the Catwoman in the coalmine — arrives in the figure of a burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway,…
Full Story »
The Dark Knight Rises director heaped praise on actress Anne Hathaway ahead of the final Batman installment, which opens July 20th. He said Hathaway performed so well as the human-feline-vixen that she deserves her own spin-off movie. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the British-born filmmaker will spearhead a Catwoman enterprise himself.
“Anne is incredibly precise and articulate about the psychology of the character. She’s really built it from the ground up, it’s just a delight to watch her perform,” he said to Access Hollywood as reported via The Guardian. “The thing she does in those heels is not to be taken lightly. She’s an incredible character and we’re very excited to see her and hopefully we’ll leave people wanting more.” But as far as Gotham, Batman and the like are concerned, Nolan said he’s ready to do something else. “I’m done. I’ve told our story and I’m moving on [but] I certainly think she deserves it – she’s incredible.”
Anne Hathaway’s character revises Michelle Pfeiffer’s version from 1992’s Batman Returns in which she plays Selina Kyle. The Dark Knight Rises is the third and final installment of Nolan’s Batman series which opened in 2005 with Batman Begins. The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale as Batman as well as Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman. Newcomers include Hathaway as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Tom Hardy as the villain Bane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a Gotham policeman. The film takes place eight years after where The Dark Knight left off.
[Source: The Guardian]
With two weeks to go until Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters, Warner Bros. has made available nearly 50 pages of detailed production notes online that offer behind-the-scenes tidbits on character, plot, costume design, the crazy practical stunts Nolan & Co. pulled off, Batman’s new toys, and some of the new faces joining the trilogy. The question is, how much do you want to know? (Bonus: Get the new IMAX poster after the jump!)
Given TDKR’s set-up — it takes place eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, with Batman in semi-retirement/hiding — and the two new adversaries joining Bruce Wayne/Batman straight from the pages of the comics (i.e. supervillain Bane and super-minx Selina Kyle/Catwoman), some of this is already familiar to Bat-fans. And while the production note dossier includes only a few semi-spoilery details on certain scenes and characters, unless you’re committed to going into TDKR with as pure and spoiler-free a mind as possible, the doc is fairly safe to peruse, and chock full of geeky details.
The bigger discoveries here concern the supporting characters in Batman/Bruce Wayne’s life, including Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and new characters Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and Gotham City police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Below, read a few select passages and get the pretty new TDKR IMAX poster:
[BEWARE SPOILERS! WHO KNOWS WHAT YOUR VIRGIN BAT-EYES WILL DISCOVER!]
On Gordon, who’s now wrestled with Batman’s secret for eight years:
“Gary Oldman returns to the role of Gotham City’s top cop, Commissioner Gordon, who withheld the truth of Harvey Dent’s demise at great personal cost. ‘He respects Batman’s sacrifice, but allowing the citizens of Gotham to be fed
…
Full Story »The final trailer for Christopher Nolan’s July Bat-sequel The Dark Knight Rises is now available for your viewing pleasure (see it in theaters attached to The Avengers this Friday), and something rose, all right: My nerd boner. Yours will too when you watch Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway & Co. in the eerily somber third trailer, then join me in running down all the juicy sights and not-so-muffled sounds and breathtaking moments glimpsed within.
First, WATCH:
Now, WATCH AGAIN!
You know you want to. (Warning: Spoiler territory follows.)
Kudos to Warner Bros. and Nolan because, relatively speaking, this trailer feels fairly light on spoilers. We get peeks at some seemingly crucial scenes — um, that well, for starters. And the gorgeous, strangely poetic shot of the two bridges exploding in tandem, likely part of the assault on Gotham City as hinted at in TDKR’s earlier wave of Bane-themed viral marketing.
And while it gives little away in terms of plot and just how some of the new characters fit into the mix, we get enticing looks at newcomers like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose Gotham cop character has yet to be officially detailed. Here he and Hathaway seem like equals flitting around in Bruce Wayne’s secret circle of friends and frenemies, even if we don’t know exactly how they know each other or the nature of their respective relationships to the Bat.
Then there’s Hardy’s Bane. Folks say his Bane growl sounds more pronounced, but I had to replay the trailer twice to get his “Gotham’s reckoning” line straight. Still: How absolutely hulking and terrifying he is! Who could ever forget that’s Hardy hidden underneath that mask and weird strappy leathers and bald…
Full Story »
