Eventual Gander: Batman Begins

Batman is what every Republican aspires to be. Born into wealth, but he earned it himself. His arsenal of expensive toys and gadgets (serviced by his Manservant, Alfred) is only effective when coupled with his merit. He drives an SUV, and he actually needs it! Bruce Wayne is fabulously wealth *and* helps the public, better than if his income were turned into taxes to support the corrupt government of Gotham.

And that's not to say the new movie Batman Begins is bad. Or good. It is good, excellent, even. It manages to introduce these issues of helping society without passing judgment on any but the most extreme alternatives. Perhaps this is the point of supervillains: never do Democrats and Republicans seem most aligned than when being killed in mass numbers by a poison gas.

Christian Bale's acting is as troubled as it needs to be, but not anguished to the point of melodrama. He holds himself as, during different points in the movie, a bon vivante, a dorky Princeton flunk-out, a Man-in-Black, a ninja (!!!), and lover. Michael Caine's Alfred is alternately helpful, challenging, witty, and inspiring. Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson surprised me by being in this movie. Katie Holmes, for a moment, made me not want to smack her for being engaged to Tom Cruise and this close to choosing Scientology.

There are a few minutes of comic book hokieness. Characters look at each other with horrified looks and slowly piece together the conundrum they're in and that we've recognized they're in for the past 5 minutes. The plot is summarized, the bad guys are pawns of badder guys. But overall, this is a superhero of the Oughts, as opposed to the 80's. Christopher Reeves's Superman was challenged by kryptonite and beams. Tobey Maguire's Spiderman, the first in this new era, was appropriately emo. We get the feeling that if his girlfriend (Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane) died, he would be more hurt not by her loss, but having been responsible for her loss. Pixar's The Incredibles grappled with their own humanity even as they were animated. Batman, we learn in this movie for the first time on the big screen (after 4 predecessors that ranged from watchable to featuring George Clooney's nipples), is the product of immense loss.

The directing is peccable, but quite good. My colleague, Manohla Dargis, has criticized the action shots for not being followable enough. But this is the point. The Bourne Identity did a great job of creating fight scenes where we felt like we understood what was going through Jason Bourne's head as he created convoluted fights that knocked down soldiers. He was a machine. Batman is a man. He uses fear, he uses darkness. If we were to see what he was doing in full, we would not be experiencing in even the slightest the emotional impact of his fighting.

But the focus of this movie is the script. It uses standard tricks of the summer movie. Laughs come when you expect them, for the most part. But it adds something more. Scenes that follow idioms also have deeper meanings. The first occurrence of a repeated phrase is not the most appropriate, but the least. It is later, as our knowledge of the world expands, so do our understandings of its utterances. And, in a surprisingly profound finale, Batman Begins teaches us that sometimes we have to rip down the creations of our Fathers to maintain their legacies.

(this review is in a series of reviews that consider not only the art in question, but previous thoughts about it. See also reviews of Tom Wolfe's new novel or The Finer Point of Sausage Dogs, )

Reminders of Times Past

Hold bacon before a dog and he would compose a sonnet to have a chance at the strip of pig flesh. The word "scholarship" has roughly the same effect on high schoolers. So when Duck brand duct tape offered $5000 to the couple with the best duct tape outfit to prom. This relatively modest sum (when placed against tuition), combined with an excuse to ditch social and stylistic norms, prompted hundreds to purchase what must be enough duct tape to permanently affix the moon to the earth several times over. The results can be seen here, but they strike a deep chord within me.

Memories of high school flood back to me. Social awkwardness, emo, Catcher in the Rye, all that. But the largest thing I'm taught by these pictures is: high school students are, as a general rule, either clumsy, ugly, or both.

-D"my prom date was a model"an

The Passing of an American Flash in the Pan

We Enfranchised have recently mourned the passing of a few of our own. After so many losses and so much emotional turmoil, we still found it in our hearts to ask the one questions on everyone's mind when one heard the news that Destiny's Child was breaking up: "They were still together?"

These ladies had a way of winning our hearts for the duration of the release of a single, album, or movie tie-in as was deemed appropriate and profitable by their handlers and sponsors. They teased us with titles that implied sequels never forthcoming. My peers felt this unanswered promise and dealt with the betrayal by adjusting their lexicon to incorporate the fact. Cf. my friend Tina Christakos, who insists on paying for herself by proclaiming "I'm an Independent Woman (Part 1)". What other group has started a phrase by turning their writer's block into a fantasy for a generation? Certainly no others that had lyrics about the transparency of fabric in the face of male arousal ("The club is full of ballas and their pockets full grown").

Just as Marc Antony found difficulty in trying to find bad things to say about Caesar, I fear that as I come to praise Destiny's Child, I can only bury them. So, I will end with my fondest memory that includes them: A sketch, on MadTV, of Bill Clinton hosting the oscars and instantly devolving into the sketchy stand-up meets mc that Chris Rock dreams of being. He reproaches Madonna vaguely British overhaul by reminding the audience that her coochie has had "more members all up in it than Destiny's Child."

Thanks for 2 months of memories (over the course of 6 years).