A good beginning for the bat
Saw batman begins last night.
It was really quite good, for the most part.
The film starts fairly slowly - it could do with some serious pacing work. It takes about an hour for bruce to even get to the start of thinking about being batman. The flashbacks, while fairly well done, could have been cut together more tightly and with less repeating themselves. And the sequence with Ra's Al ghul at the start is somewhat longer than it needs to be.
There are also a couple of bits of just stupidity in the plot in scientific terms. The bad guys have a huge weapon-thingy that can, from a distance of a hundred feet and without being particularly pointed in its direction, flash to steam a couple of hundred thousand liters of water in about a second.
And they have a fight on top of it. I suspect someone on the crew should have pointed out that, you know, blood is basically water. Seems like the sort of device not to be near when it is switched on.
But these things aside, it is a very cool film, although perhaps not for the real batman comics fanboy, because the origin story is in several respects just wrong, more than in the Michael Keaton version and the comics. Although in many ways it is a better story.
But it wins on style by a hefty margin. I give it about, oh, 4 or 4.5 stars. I really liked it, even with its flaws. Although I thought Katie holmes was a bit bad in it - she could have been any random cute girl off the street for the quality of acting in it. I hope they do some sequels, and we can all just pretend the terrible batman and robin and batman returns and so on never existed.
Also, while going to sydney for the morning as a really expensive courier, I read a bunch of 'the eyre affair' which several of you have read. I can see why you liked it - I'm really enjoying it and I have no real comprehension, I suspect, of some of the jokes. I mean, I *recognise* these characters and books, but having never read them or anything I suspect some of the coolness is lost on me.
Anyway, I sleep now.
It was really quite good, for the most part.
The film starts fairly slowly - it could do with some serious pacing work. It takes about an hour for bruce to even get to the start of thinking about being batman. The flashbacks, while fairly well done, could have been cut together more tightly and with less repeating themselves. And the sequence with Ra's Al ghul at the start is somewhat longer than it needs to be.
There are also a couple of bits of just stupidity in the plot in scientific terms. The bad guys have a huge weapon-thingy that can, from a distance of a hundred feet and without being particularly pointed in its direction, flash to steam a couple of hundred thousand liters of water in about a second.
And they have a fight on top of it. I suspect someone on the crew should have pointed out that, you know, blood is basically water. Seems like the sort of device not to be near when it is switched on.
But these things aside, it is a very cool film, although perhaps not for the real batman comics fanboy, because the origin story is in several respects just wrong, more than in the Michael Keaton version and the comics. Although in many ways it is a better story.
But it wins on style by a hefty margin. I give it about, oh, 4 or 4.5 stars. I really liked it, even with its flaws. Although I thought Katie holmes was a bit bad in it - she could have been any random cute girl off the street for the quality of acting in it. I hope they do some sequels, and we can all just pretend the terrible batman and robin and batman returns and so on never existed.
Also, while going to sydney for the morning as a really expensive courier, I read a bunch of 'the eyre affair' which several of you have read. I can see why you liked it - I'm really enjoying it and I have no real comprehension, I suspect, of some of the jokes. I mean, I *recognise* these characters and books, but having never read them or anything I suspect some of the coolness is lost on me.
Anyway, I sleep now.