By Drew Grant 8/22/12 6:03pm

Street Art

8 Photos

batman2

The Villains That Gotham Deserve? Street Art Questions Validity of Superheroes


Every summer, studios seem to come out with another gritty reboot of a comic book classic that serves only to remind us how messed up these masked vigilantes actually are. Batman is a Howard Hughes-esque psycho with a martyr complex and an uncanny ability to cause so much damage to Gotham’s infrastructure that it’s not even worth the price of catching the bad guys; Spider-Man is a brooding, emo geek with an infected hand; Wolverine is an alcoholic with anti-social tendencies, and Tony Stark is just an alcoholic.

As Alan Moore once famously cribbed from Roman poet Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? Today, SVA grad Skye Greenfield is papering the Lower East Side with Wanted posters for superheroes that go one step further, accusing our childhood heroes of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Read More

By Rex Reed 7/18/12 11:02am

movies

Bale in The Dark Knight Rises.

Batman Goes Sploosh!: The Dark Knight Socks Us in the Gut As We Hunch Over in Pain

“Get with the program!” scolds another letter from a brainwashed fan of the Batman-as-seen-through-the-pretentiousness-of-the-Christopher-Nolan trilogy, “You are a dinosaur!” He’s probably right, and I probably would—if I could only make one lick of sense out of what this nonsense is all about. Silly pop-culture comic book cinema about grown men in rubber masks and Styrofoam jock straps is bad enough, but incomprehensible gibberish to boot is just plain unacceptable. Halfheartedly, I give The Dark Knight Rises—the third and final Batflick in the Nolan trilogy—one star for eardrum-busting sound effects and glaucoma-inducing computerized images in blinding Imax, but talk about stretching things. That’s all most immature audiences require for their hard-earned money these days. The rest of it should not be reviewed by anyone over the age of 12.

As caped crusaders go, I prefer Superman, Spider Man and, above all, Captain Marvel, who has been criminally ignored by the movies so far. (Can’t you just see Michael Fassbender staring into the camera hissing “Shazam!”?) And as Batman goes, I had a lot more fun when he was fighting off Catwoman and The Joker at the Saturday afternoon double features of my youth in his campy bat cave with his jailbait roommate Robin. Drat! Christopher Nolan sent Bruce Wayne to a shrink and Batman lost his mojo. I like one caption writer’s description of the Batman epics as “car porn for geeks and gearheads.” But that doesn’t make The Dark Knight Rises any better. Trash is trash, but when it costs an estimated $250 million (bat food compared to The Amazing Spider-Man’s $137 million), the charges turn criminal and someone should subject the garbage man to a citizen’s arrest. Read More

By The Editors 7/18/12 8:00am

Opening Shot

Bat-berg. (Peter Lettre)

Long Days, Dark Knights

Everyone in Gotham City is lining up to see the third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. It officially opens at midnight on Thursday—well, technically Friday—but tickets have been soldout since January. Why is all of New York agog over watching The Caped Crusader fight some relatively obscure villain from the D.C. universe?

Michael Bloomberg, of course. Read More

By Drew Grant 7/12/12 12:10pm

Viral Marketing

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The Gotham Observer: Batman’s City Gets the Newspaper It Deserves

When picking publications to model your fictitious newspaper on, we obviously have a bias. Still, it’s nice to see that the Warner Bros.’ viral marketing team agreed with us, as their late-June campaign for The Dark Knight Rises included clues to unlock the Gotham Observer, a newspaper that bears resemblance to our own organization in title only.

(We would never lead with a cover story on a ‘Festivity Day’…even if it was in honor of a fallen district attorney. Or if we did, we’d make the led much snappier.)

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By Drew Grant 6/19/12 10:13pm

The Dark Knight Rises

Video

The sound of a million geeks screaming (Warner Bros.)

Another Day, Another The Dark Knight Rises Trailer (Video)

Since the tickets sold out in January for the July 20th premiere of Christopher Nolan’s third Batman installment, Warner Bros. probably doesn’t have to hype The Dark Knight Rises any more. We mean, obviously they will spend a billion more dollars on advertising and marketing tie-ins, but for once we’d like to see a big blockbuster just completely stop all promotions one month before it hits theaters.

Although that would probably lead Copyranter or someone at Ad Age to claim this as the most ingenious viral marketing stunt ever. And then everyone would do it. And then movie trailer editors and distributors would be out of business in months. We need this hundredth The Dark Knight Rises trailer. For the good of Gotham, and all its residents. Read More

By Drew Grant 1/11/12 1:50pm

The Dark Knight Rises

How much would you pay to see justice served?

Midnight Tickets for The Dark Knight Rises Sell Out Six Months in Advance, Already Going for $100 on Craigslist

Sorry fan boys (and girls!): If you want to see the third installment in Christopher Nolan‘s gritty Batman reboot, you’re going to have to wait until after opening night. The midnight screenings for the July 19th premiere of The Dark Knight Rises have already sold out in select cities. How is that possible, you ask, since the movie is still six months away? And how much are greedy Craigslist scalpers already charging for their coveted golden tickets online? Read More

By Drew Grant 10/18/11 6:24pm

Occupy Wall Street

Batman versus Anonymous

Would Batman Protect the 99 %?

It just keeps rolling in today: first MTV decided that when seven strangers get together and stop being polite and start being real, at least one of them should be protesting in Zuccotti Park. Now a tipster “involved in the production” of Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises has leaked to The LA Times that Liberty Plaza would be a great backdrop in Gotham.

But are these the smelly hippies that are city deserves? Would the Batman tolerate the General Assembly? Let’s discuss! Read More