I *finally* got to see The Dark Knight yesterday–Amy and I wanted to go together, but the first couple of IMAX weekends sold out immediately and we couldn’t go during the week as she’s been working swing shift lately. The anticipation has been driving me a little…batty, you might say. That is, if you were into bad puns, which I am totally not.
What I AM totally into is Batman, if you’re just joining us. Comic books, movies, soundtracks, games–you name it, and I’ve probably swung into a room shouting ‘I’M BATMAN’ while doing it. Hell, one of my college assignments was to write a ‘virtual pet’ program, and I made myself a virtual pet Batman. I am at a level of geekery that makes most normal people physically ill.
Unlike most people, I really loved Batman Forever–yes, it was campy, but I think both Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey are the bee’s knees, and Val Kilmer made one damn hot Batman. The Batman Forever soundtrack was also the very first CD I bought, and feel free to mock me, but it introduced me to some artists who remain favorites to this day, like Nick Cave and The Flaming Lips.
It was unfortunate that Batman & Robin was such a turd–I never expected great shakes out of George Clooney as Batman, but Batman & Robin introduced me to a whole level of suck I didn’t even know *existed*. I still listened to the soundtrack often, though, and was a little disappointed that the second Pumpkins song didn’t get the love I felt it deserved.
The Dark Knight was worth every second of anticipation, although I was more than a little disappointed that I ended up sitting next to The Most Annoying Man On Earth. Even though I am apparently shaped like a Mr Potato Head, I manage to fit within the confines of my seat easily. TMAMOE, on the other hand, although quite slender, couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that my sides were NOT where his elbows belonged. Every single time he shifted in his seat, I got jabbed. And he was a shifter. A SMELLY shifter. Wait, strike that. A smelly, TALKATIVE shifter. Wait, one more time. A smelly, talkative shifter, with the smallest bladder known to man. There we go. TMAMOE thought it was very important to have full-on conversations during the movie with the person on his right, jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, all the while invading my personal space, aka the seat I paid a ridiculous amount of service charges to park my ass in. When he was not talking, he was moving up and down the aisle, in and out of the theater. No less than six times did he cruise up and down the aisle during a two and a half hour movie. This is why I am not allowed to pick theater seats or a place in a bar or a place to stand during a concert–it’s almost I’m drawn to the places where I’ll be most annoyed. Seriously, who goes to a movie to talk through the whole goddamn thing? Wait until it comes out on DVD, you asshole!
Aside from wanting to slap TMAMOE until I was too exhausted to slap any further, I thorougly enjoyed every minute of The Dark Knight. I loved watching it on a ridiculously huge screen. I loved recognizing Gotham as being Chicago. I loved seeing the bridges and being reminded of my Batman Begins story*. I loved that the people involved are clearly Batman fans and have pulled from the comics for the movie, particularly ‘The Long Halloween’. I loved geeking out in the theater with a bunch of people who are just as clearly nutty about Batman as I am. I love that this Batman resurgence has kept him as a loner vigilante instead of sanctioned watchdog; Batman is best when he’s outside the law.
AWESOME. I may have to see it again before it leaves the theater. And again at the drive-in. And then six more times when it hits the cheapy theater in Federal Way.
*I went to Chicago with starladear13 in 2004, and ended up having to catch the train home to Kenosha. I checked the train schedule and realized that my train was leaving an hour earlier than I’d thought (uh-oh!) and left immediately to walk to the train station, figuring I’d make it there with 10 minutes to spare. To get to the train station, I needed to cross the river. As I approached the bridge, a man wearing the bright yellow and orange jacket of a traffic director told me that the bridge was closed. Cursing, I turned around and walked around the block to cross at a different bridge. At this bridge they had more than 100 people stopped from crossing. “Don’t worry folks, we’ll be re-opening the bridge in 15 or 20 minutes, we have it closed for your safety.” “For our safety” meant they were shooting something for Batman with a helicopter that was flying low over the bridges and didn’t want any people in the shot. Well that would have been fine if my train weren’t leaving in ten minutes and the next one was FOUR HOURS LATER. The crowd started getting unruly. One man said “What are you going to do if we go across? Shoot all of us?” and another one said “They can’t stop all of us. Let’s go!” So as a big unruly mob with a helicopter buzzing over our heads we ran over the bridge. One of the guards was calling frantically on her walkie-talkie for the police, which only made me run faster. Sirens started up behind us, but I was almost across…just a few more steps…Several people were being stopped by police, but I managed to duck into the train station and hopped on my train just before it pulled out. So now, like most of my co-workers at the time, I now had a ‘running from the police’ story. Only mine didn’t involve drugs.
Did you see the relevant macro I posted today? 😀
I DIIIIIIIID. 😀
I love those Smashing Pumpkins songs from the Batman and Robin soundtrack…I’ve put both on a mix before…it was a tad disorienting to hear it in a trailer for something else…I knew instantly that I _knew_ it, but it took me a bit before I could actually identify it…and the couple of seconds in between drove me crazy…
I thought Batman and Robin was campy fun when I saw it in the theater…not sure how I’d feel about it if I saw it now though…I never saw Batman Forever, though I know I picked up the soundtrack cheap at some point…I don’t think I ever saw the Batman with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman either…I do remember seeing the first one out at Market Square the summer before seventh grade though…but as far as the Batman and Robin soundtrack goes, I really lovelovelove that Underworld song “Moaner”…
that was a hilarious story about TMAMOE…I would be driven up a wall…and I guess we can never go to an event together, because no matter what I seem to attract irritating people near me, too…maybe we’d cancel each other out!…
funny story about catching the train!…I’ve actually missed the last train back to Kenosha once :(…that’s a story for another day, though…
I liked Batman Forever because it was a LITTLE campy. I love camp, but Batman & Robin was way too much for even me–the whole movie was ‘Hey, this thing is a big f’ing joke, the source material is a big f’ing joke, and it’s a big f’ing joke how much money they’re paying all of us to make this big f’ing joke’…but I’m a little obnoxiously Batman sensitive.
Moaner is a good song! I also really like the Soul Coughing song.
It seems like the train to Kenosha should operate longer hours–I would’ve taken the train back and forth more often if it was a better/more convenient option. What happened when you missed the last train?
back in September 2001 I was down in Chicago to see a Nick Cave show…(I had also taken the train down to see Sigur Ros the night before)…met up with my friend Danielle, and we go to the Chicago Theatre to learn that it was postponed because of 9/11…hung out at her apartment for a while, and it took forever to take the Blue Line back downtown because they were doing work on the tracks…I’m booking it to the train station, and barely make it on time…only I went to the wrong track…and by the time I figured it out and went to the right one, the train was already pulling away…
thankfully I had been to my friend’s apartment earlier that day…so I made my way back there…she slept through the doorbell…she also lived on the third floor…I was panicking because I had nowhere else to go and wasn’t sure what the heck to do…I couldn’t just sleep out on her porch…her landlord or whoever was awake on the first floor and answered the door, but I don’t think he spoke English very well…I was trying to explain while also crying from stress…my friend’s roommate (who I also luckily met earlier in the day) thankfully came home then, so I was able to stay at my friend’s place…I had to get up in only a few hours to catch the morning train, but thankfully that worked out…but on top of all that stress, I was also having my period pretty heavily and it went through my clothes and I had nothing to change into and hopefully no one noticed…
somehow I went home, slept a bit, and then drove up to Milwaukee and did a 10K AIDS Walk…crazy!…
I don’t understand why more trains don’t come all the way back to Kenosha…don’t know if it has something to do with getting trains back down to Chicago by a certain time or something…this past weekend was the first time I recall experiencing delays (due to Ravinia) and things probably would have been _really_ thrown off if all of those trains had to come all the way up to Kenosha before going back…I really hope the plans to extend the line up to Milwaukee go through, because that would be really awesome and might help get the trains stopping at Kenosha more regularly…I take the inconvenience though, because it’s worth it for me to avoid driving and parking and tolls…
but on top of all that stress, I was also having my period pretty heavily and it went through my clothes and I had nothing to change into and hopefully no one noticed…
Oh man, that’s the worst. 🙁
Also, you should see Batman Returns–I love Danny DeVito as the Penguin. Although the current Batman run is shaping up to be my favorite, I thought Batman Returns was very well-done.
Dude….duuuuuude, me and the bf were talking about how much the one with george clooney sucked so very badly with the poison ivy and the riddler and the tommy lee jones overacting.
But a bitchin’ soundtrack. srsly.
Whoa, whoa, those are two different movies. Batman Forever is Val Kilmer as Batman, with Jim Carrey as the Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face. Batman & Robin is George Clooney as Batman, Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, Arnold Schwartzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and Jeep Swenson as Bane.
oh, I just got pwned ;x I am not worthy! <3
Man…this is also why I do not go to the theater unless I absolutely have to see something right that minute.
I hate other people, but especially in theaters. >:(
I just know that my tv isn’t going to live up to the IMAX experience, so it’s worth putting up with the occasional douchebag to watch a movie on a screen six stories high. 🙂
It’s hard for me to still love Smashing Pumpkins as much as I used to when they do stupid crap with their new album.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/43795-smashing-pumpkins-to-fans-indie-stores-fuck-you
Releasing a different CD in each of the ‘major’ retailers with different bonus tracks, and not giving anyone else any bonus tracks. I understand it probably wasn’t them who crafted the idea, but the fact that they let it happen to their music is beyond me.
I really don’t care about how their deals with big boxes affects indie stores–if I want a cd, I’ll buy it from whatever store is most convenient. No, I was pissed at the ‘Smashing Pumpkins’ (I don’t really consider this iteration to be the band, either, with half the members missing) for attempting to fuck over the fans this way–releasing 5 different versions on the album drop day and re-releasing it a few months later, meaning completionists would need to buy the same damn record SIX TIMES in order to have a handful of new songs. I ranted about this at length last year. I have not bought ANY versions of Zeitgeist and I don’t intend to; I still love the old Smashing Pumpkins and I pretty much pretend the new version doesn’t exist and instead think of it as Zwan II.
Word, nothing will change how much I love old smashing pumpkins, disarm was one of the first songs I learned on my guitar 😀
I want to go listen to Siamese Dream now. That was such a good album. 🙂
when i saw the Watchmen trailer and heard that song, i squeed as well. i LOVE that song. especially the version on the Watchmen trailer. 😀
The Dark Knight RULES. 😀
TMAMOE probably saved my life–if I wasn’t totally irritated by him, I might have died of pleasure.
I watched MTV nigh-incessantly that summer to watch the music video every opportunity I got. I’ve still got it on a VHS tape somewhere, minus the first few spazzy seconds that it took me to hit ‘record’.
Hahaha.. I was totally the same. I still remember staying up to see the the video premiere on MTV!
I was *so* disappointed when that video was not included on the dvd release of all of their videos. I would’ve greatly preferred it to the mini-movie of Try,Try,Try.
I stayed up to watch the video premiere, too! <3
You realize this dates us, right? It marks us as old enough to remember when MTV actually played music videos. 😀
Oh you callow souls. You’re not really old until you can say you remember when MTV STARTED. 😉
Pssssh. There’s no way I could remember that–it took the incessant bugging of TWO teenagers before my parents would pay for cable.
Yeah, and why isn’t it even on the Greatest Hits CD??
Oops, that was me!
My guess is that is that it has something to do with licensing/the agreement the band made with Warner Bros.
I like that SP song. I forgot about it. Actually, I kind of forgot about Smashing Pumpkins altogether…
I love your “breakin’ the law” story.
Seeing as how the band broke up almost a decade ago, it’s not hard to understand why you might’ve forgotten about them. They didn’t exactly make waves with the new album. 🙂
Was it a decade ago? Good god.
I was never as into them as the rest of my friends. But I loved that song Zero and wore the shirt like 3 days a week.
I think I *still* have my ZERO shirt and a pair of ill-conceived silver pants laying around somewhere.
They weren’t ill conceived at the time, though.
i think I have my zero shirt in a box in my storage unit as well.
God we were cool.
They were on *my* hips and thighs. 😉
We were the COOLEST.
these kids today in their skinny jeans and neon, they don’t know what the fuck is up at all.
And their hypercolor–our generation PIONEERED wearing hypercolor and realizing the horror of colored pit stains. Those copy-catting bastards!
I find it sliiightly scary that all the fashions of 2nd grade are finding their way back to “hip”.
I mean, I see people wearing sweatshirts without hoods. The horror!
And mullets. Oh lord, mullets.
I’ve seen people with honest-to-god rattails. It shook me to my core. What, we didn’t figure out how stupid it looked the first time around?
Me, too. And some of them were even not on total, complete hipsters. I think they were on guys that are our age who saw them and thought “oh yes! My favorite haircut in style again!” and prompted to cut off their shaggy last year style, except that little piece in the back.
But you know it won’t last, even Joey from NKOTB had to cut his eventually.
Let’s get slap bracelets, jelly shoes, and tie our t-shirts up on one side and OWN THIS TOWN together!
I’m soo down.
Can we find some Jolt Cola?
Perhaps a bigger fan than you:
tumbler
That is *seriously* cool, but all in all, I prefer the Batmobile to the Tumbler.
Bigger fan? Maaaaaaaaaybe. Bigger wallet? No question about that one!
If I had the means, I’d be driving around a Batmobile. 😀