The Geek Chorus #5: The Uncomfortable Truth About Bat-Nipples

I want to thank all of you who watched & commented on my video A Defense of Joel Schumacher. I'm quite proud of it, and I was pleasantly surprised by the overall positive reaction I received. It seems people are ready to move on and stop anchoring Mr. Schumacher's entire career to one blunder. Many people also came out as fans of the film, admitting to enjoying it for it goofiness, and that thrills me.

A lot was left out of the script, mostly for being tangential musings of different aspects of the film. I originally had a whole paragraph on Poison Ivy and a lot more to say about Batgirl. However, there was one point I left out because it was honestly such a touchy subject it would've dominated the video, and potentially made it twice as long. It's a rather uncomfortable undercurrent to the entire outrage over the film, an elephant in the room no one really wants to address. I touched on it briefly, alluding to the "slightly homophobic" hate Schumacher had received over the years, but I downplayed it because I had no time to go into detail, and offhandedly accusing Batman & Robin haters of being bigots would have been absolutely the wrong approach.

Nonetheless, it's something I feel MUST be discussed at some point, if for no other reason than to just get it out in the open. I'm not here to accuse anyone of anything, only to address the more troubling subtext to how many people seem to respond to Joel Schumacher & his work.

So let's talk about Bat-Nipples.

Movie review: Rock of Ages

It appears Hollywood has finally found my Achilles' Heel. My kryptonite. My color yellow. My Aphrodite's Law (Look it up). I've mentioned in the past that I have weakness for musicals, that putting almost any movie to song can potentially earn it a pass from me. It's a gaping hole in my critical spectrum. Add to that an affection for 80's rock (but then who doesn't have one of those) ans you've got a movie I might very well be powerless.

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-man

View the video version here.

It has not been a good time to be a Spider-man fan for quite some time now. Between the comics going quite literally to hell, and Greg Weisman's excellent Spider-man TV series being replaced with a godawful Frankenstein cobbled together from various popular cartoon styles, it seems like there's nowhere left in the world where Spider-man doesn't suck.

So one would hope that The Amazing Spider-man could've been just the thing to change that trend. Sure, it's a corporately mandated cynical cash-in designed to retain the character rights from Marvel lest something as awesome as Spider-man joining the Avengers materialize, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It worked wonders for 20th Century Fox's new X-men film after all. Unfortunately, sometimes first instincts are completely right, and The Amazing Spider-man is every bit as stale, soulless, and uninspired as feared.

Movie Review: Brave

View the video version here.

If nothing else, Brave will stand as a fine example of Pixar’s willingness to try something new, or at least new to them. Once thought of as the male alternative to Disney Animation, due to their lineup of films about more generally boyish subjects, Brave finds them taking on the more traditional fairytale princess formula. It’s an unexpected & exciting move for Pixar, and under the direction of Brenda Chapman, who brought us the excellent Prince of Egypt, it had all the makings of a classic. Which is why it’s a shame it’s not a lot better. Not that it’s bad, far from it. Pixar doesn’t do BAD movies. All the same this is as perilously close to “mediocre” they’ve come since A Bug’s Life.

America to Once Again Miss the Point of Judge Dredd

I'm fond of saying that the 1995 Stallone vehicle Judge Dredd is proof that Americans are idiots, because it completely fails to grasp that the British comic it was adapting was a parody of American action films. From the looks of it, this new version hasn't learned that lesson either.

Anarchy at the Movies: Snow White & the Huntsman/Prometheus

Been falling behind lately. Here's a twofer to make up for it.

Movie Review: Prometheus

(Author's Note: My new job has me quite busy, and while it does allow me the ability to see many more new releases than I did when I was broke with nothing but time on my hands, it also makes it harder to get these made in a timely fashion. That's why I release these as written reviews ahead of time, just so you guys have SOMETHING.)

When the fuck did it become so hard for Ridley Scott to find decent writers? Seriously, since when does a guy with this kind clout end of with such shitty scripts to work with? Between this & Robin Hood, I'm beginning to think the guy doesn't even read his own movies anymore and just focuses on making them look pretty.

You see, like everything else Scott's made in the last few years, Prometheus is an absolutely gorgeous film. Beautiful set pieces, breathtaking cinematography, truly immersive especially in 3D...all of which fails to conceal the fact that the movie is just not very good. It doesn't really work as a prequel to Alien (oh yeah, spoiler alert, Prometheus is a prequel to Alien) in fact at times it feels more like a remake; a dumber yet paradoxically more ambitious remake but a remake nonetheless.