"Look on my works, ye mighty, and desp—oh who the fuck am I kidding"
Warning: Contains spoilers, or "spoilers"
1) That, had Bruce Wayne’s parents not been viciously murdered by a dusky-looking assailant, Bruce could have seen John Boorman’s Excalibur the very next week, and who knows what effect that (along with his parents not being dead) might have had on his character.
2) That if anyone ever gets around to making a biopic of Bob Guccione, they ought to definitely consider Ben Affleck to play him. Swaggering around in Gotham City billionaire mode, Affleck has a certain…je ne sais quoi. No, he doesn’t have the accent, and no, he doesn’t wear a lot of gold chains. But he’s got a lot of, well, smarm.
3) Not unrelated, maybe: That Bruce Wayne could have been in The Big Short—the building that goes down in Metropolis houses “Wayne Financial.” Hmmm.
4) That it is apparently impossible for anyone, in any part of the world, ever, to fire a machine gun without gritting his or her teeth and grimacing.
5) That cameo performer Nancy Grace has never read Baudrillard.
6) That it’s possible that cameo performer Anderson Cooper has read Baudrillard, but was unconvinced.
7) That cameo performer Andrew Sullivan has definitely read Baudrillard, and no longer cares.
8) That even holy of holies Neal deGrasse Tyson has his price.
9) That Soledad O’Brien is dead. She just has to be.
10) That Jeremy Irons has finally achieved Full Karloff.
It's comicbookgeekery, but Excalibur is playing as sort of a prelude to "The Dark Knight" tag.
Posted by: Bill Oppenheim | March 25, 2016 at 08:29 AM
"Never go full Karloff"
Posted by: Aden Jordan | March 25, 2016 at 09:59 AM
Rare groove writing, Glenn.
Concise and delicious.
Posted by: Petey | March 25, 2016 at 10:46 AM
And off-topic, but I'm considering canceling my subscription to your fine blog if we don't get some occasional Blu-Ray roundups.
It's half the reason I spend the big $$$ to get past the paywall here.
Posted by: Petey | March 25, 2016 at 10:49 AM
Anyone remember John Byrne's alternate-Earth Superman story where General Zod casually obliterates Batman with a single zap of heat vision? Good times.
Posted by: Oliver_C | March 25, 2016 at 08:40 PM
I've been wondering for decades why no one's ever tried to do a Karloff bio with Irons. Or at least a Frankenstein movie, or Arsenic and Old Lace remake.
Posted by: jbryant | March 28, 2016 at 04:43 PM
A propos of not much I wonder what you thought about the Criterion release of A Brighter Summer Day, a movie that that this blog (plus Yi Yi) made me pine to see for years. (I see that Petey made a related comment above; everyone knows why this blog has changed, but that doesn't mean we can't miss those great posts!).
Posted by: Richard Neer | March 29, 2016 at 04:04 PM
Glenn: Since we know (from the fanboys' online comments) that film critics were paid to pan Batman vs. Superman, I'm wondering how much you pocketed from Marvel? ;)
This pretty much sums up the fanboy comments (via the Captain Comics website): "A lot of critics' complaints boil down to the usual one: We don't like superhero movies. We want them to fail so that nothing is made except for two-man indie movies with oblique dialogue."
Busted!
Posted by: George | March 31, 2016 at 04:54 PM
A bio of Karloff with J. Irons has occurred to me, too!!
Great minds...
Posted by: joe | April 01, 2016 at 01:08 PM
Fanboys would totally go see a two-hander with oblique dialogue... if the two were Forge and Storm and the movie was 'Lifedeath', that is.
Posted by: Oliver_C | April 02, 2016 at 06:31 AM
Apologies for not having (yet) seen the film, but you'll have to explain the Baudrillard (whom I have read... and was likewise not convinced... though I cringe at the thought of being placed in the same basket as Andrew Sullivan) jokes... (and are the JB/BvS jokes somehow connected to JB-references in Matrix, or is that the subject for another gag...?)
Posted by: JL | April 04, 2016 at 03:25 PM
My Dinner With Karloff, starring Neal deGrasse Tyson and Jeremy Irons
Posted by: Chris Labarthe | April 25, 2016 at 08:44 PM
Just took another look at the screenshot above, and got confused. Haven't seen the movie, but from what little I've heard the idea is that they take their fight outside the city so that no one else will be harmed? And that's the city? Whether it's Metropolis or Gotham City or somewhere else, it seems to pretty goddamn tiny for a supposedly major berg. What am I missing?
Posted by: Grant L | May 26, 2016 at 10:19 PM
Two months with no new posts from Glenn. Are we to assume this blog is defunct? Or just dormant?
Posted by: George | May 27, 2016 at 05:45 PM