The Final trumpet Sounds on the Red Line....

This evening on the Red Line a gorgeous young blonde haired woman sat down opposite to me wearing a pair of unlaced boots and a diaphanous white sun dress. No purse, no book bag, no IPod, I could not figure out how she paid her fare. She was utterly unencumbered.
She had a placid untroubled countenance, imagine a benign version of Paris Hilton. By the time we reached Downtown Crossing I noticed she was cradling a tiny brown kitten in her lap...and by the time we reached Park Street I was convinced she was the very Angel of Death come to ring down my final reckoning.
Truly the only other thing she had on her ghostly person was a tiny pair of safety scissors, a very surreal scene to be sure.

She had to be an angel, she sure as shit wasn't leaping over the turnstyle in that teensy little dress. She got off at Alewife, my very stop just to make it all very very Gothic indeed...I searched the platform the shades of my Honorable Ancestors were nowhere to be seen.
The Angel meanwhile disappeared up the stair still petting her tiny little kitten....no doubt to return from the Divine Altitudes from whence she came.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Batusi...

"Some Days, You Just Can't Get Rid Of A Bomb!"

Such was the dilemma for Adam West in 1966 and such was the climax of "The Dark Knight Rises" in 2012, Bruce Wayne escapes a glacially slow moving "inescapable death trap" in Anarchystan only to spent the last ten minutes of the film careening around Gotham CIty trying to defuse a "Four Megaton Nuclear Device" with an inane five month fuse.

Spoiler Alert (Weapons Research & Development Division), You can't fly a four megaton H-Bomb out to sea via Bat Helicopter and hope to spare Gotham City, blast fire radiological effects and very likely a "nuclear tsunami"as well.

My point is, that director Christopher Nolan wanted to end his Bat-Trilogy on a Wagnerian note in the worst possible way, and he succeeded beyond Warner Brother's wildest dreams. What they got was a huge box office, what we got was a hopeless game of connect the dots, from yawning plot hole to plot hole.
I mean Bane can punch holes in marble columns, but Batman smacks the bad guy in the fetish-mask a few times and the Gramsci quoting lout virtually falls to his knees in a swoon.
And DON"T get me started about Talia, the dumbest passive aggressive bimbo on Batman's A-List of super villainy, seriously her big plan to steal the Wayne Family's personal nuke and vaporize Gotham CIty???
Whaddya callit..."Operation Thunderball"??!!
The Caped Crusader has a few too many unoriginal lackwits in his very crowded rogue's gallery, he can afford a cut a few out without damaging his bottom line...
***
For all that the movie was was magnificently acted, Christian Bale is officially in Chris Reeves orbit in terms of character identification, he let nothing slip thru out the entire cycle, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hardy....superlative work down the line redeeming a hash of a script.
Oh and Ann Hathaway as Catwoman, freaking amazing...I initially disparaged the choice when I heard it, I'd like to take a moment to publicly apologize, like Bale, she let nothing slip past her for two hours and forty five minutes, her intensity and focus helped save a film with an out of control script.
No doubt even as I write this she is being bombarded with ideas for a solo Catwoman film "RESIST ANN RESIST!" I cry "Remember Halle Berry!"

In short great cast, hopeless script mired in excess....Nolan has done better work elsewhere.

Pick of the Week!

Is undoubtedly The Harvard Film Archive's revival of "The Island of Lost Souls" (1934) starring Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau, HG Wells' infamous maker of animal-human hybrids.
For years this bad baby did no circulate on the revival circuit as Paramount was uneasy with the unsubtle hints of rape, bestiality and homosexuality....1934 was clearly a tad too early to explore John Waters' territory! I must have requested it a dozen times for the olde Orson Welles Sci Fi Marathon..Well here it is at last screening on Quincy Street in the teeming heart of Harvard Square and it even includes a stellar cameo appearance by Bela Lugosi as the beastmen's nominal lawgiver.
The balloon goes up at 9:30pm Sharp be there, this is a once in a lifetime big screen screening....