Monday, April 27, 2009
Would you like bat-tea, bat-coffee, or sala-bat?
While trolling around the Internets, I found out that a friend of this blog (and my buddy Ivan's sister) is getting married. And not only that, she's having the ceremony in the (haunted) chapel at Paco Park.All this is just a way for me to post this exchange from Joey de Leon's classic musical, Alyas Batman en Robin, between Joey's Batman and Dawn Zulueta's intrepid reporter:
Reporter: "Batman, pwede ba kitang ma-interview?"
Batman: "Sure. Magkita na lang tayo mamayang gabi sa PPC."
Reporter: "PPC? Baka CCP, Cultural Center of the Philippines?"
Batman: "Hinde, PPC--Paco Park Cemetery."
Now that was a great Batman movie, right up there with The Dark Knight. Rene Requiestas played The Joker. Panchito, whose character is usually named Tiyo Paeng in Joey de Leon movies, plays the penguin. But not just any penguin: in this one, he's Tiyo Paenguin.
Labels: comic books, hehehe, movies
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Man Who Laughs
The image of the Joker, Batman's arch-nemesis (not the maverick Filipino senator/Pipol's Dragon), was based by Bob Kane on a photo of actor Conrad Veidt from the film The Man Who Laughs. The film was an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, which is, oddly enough, described by Wikipedia as one of Hugo's more obscure works.
This iconic image from "Batman: The Killing Joke", Alan Moore's twisted one-shot about the psychotic clown, was drawn by artist Brian Bolland, who cited the film for his inspiration for the Joker's look. In 2005, "Batman: The Man Who Laughs", another classic Joker one-shot akin to "The Killing Joke", was released.
Labels: comic books
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Bats
The Dark Knight was awesome, but you knew that already. Some thoughts (spoiler alert):- The filmmakers mined the best Batman books for the treatments and the events during the movie. Just like Batman Begins (which borrowed very liberally from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and Jeph Loeb's Batman: The Long Halloween), this one was inspired by Allan Moore's The Killing Joke (for Joker's pathos) and the Harvey Dent sub-story from The Long Halloween. News program debates about the Batman was reminiscent of the similar arguments in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.
- Loved the focus on Harvey Dent, who had always been Batman's conscience in the mythos (prior to becoming Two-Face). Come to think of it, in the Batman universe, the most well-told origin stories have been those of Batman, Two-Face, and Catwoman. Allan Moore tried telling Joker's origin in The Killing Joke, but it wasn't particularly memorable, because a lot of things happened in that story that provided starker imagery.
- The movie was a little too long. Two-Face, for example, showed up in the last act, and a resolution had to be pigeonholed over the remaining screen time. Why not just save it for the next movie?
- Everyone knew that Maggie Gylenhaal is a much better actress than Katie Holmes, but by God, the difference was so stark. You actually care about Rachel Dawes in this movie.
- Everyone's praising Heath Ledger's performance, but I thought it was just alright. I dunno, I think the creepiness came with the film's treatment of the character.
- I wonder what's next for the franchise. The easiest villain to write into the movies would be Catwoman, as the presence of Selena Kyle would make perfect sense after Rachel Dawes' death. What I'd really like to see though, would be Robin. Robin's origin hasn't really been told all that well, not even in the comics; there hasn't been much of an explanation why Batman would allow a teenager to join him in potentially fatal activities. There have been, however, interesting treatments of the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson* and Batman and Robin**.
* - In the Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon wrote:
It was obvious that Batman was not intended, consciously or unconsciously, to play Robin's corrupter; he was meant to stand in for his father, and by extension for the absent, indifferent, vanishing fathers of comic book-reading boys of America
** - In The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller's Batman got in trouble during combat before being bailed out by the new Robin, which led him into a train of thought about Grayson. Dick, he thought, was always his little monkey wrench. Robin was a natural, human extension of the Batman's array of weapons.
Labels: comic books, movies
