Category: Movies

Amish Otaku, Comics, DC, Features, Movies, Music

Bat-mania: The Batmobile Owner’s Manual

Flame on!
DK

Guest Post

“Batman, should I start the nuclear power for the Batmobile,” asks a husky voiced Robin played anonymously by one of Link Wray’s band members, The Wraymen.

“Right again, Robin,” replies Link with all of the cool confidence of Batman.

After all, he is Link Wray and in addition to writing the 1960’s Batman TV show theme song, he is the progenitor of the power chord which reinivented the rock and roll landscape in the 1960’s. Link favored the method in the late 1950’s all the while on the other side of the pond in England, a man in his 20’s by the name of John Mayall was playing old blues songs note for note and the UK would begin to export such bands as the Who and Cream, who were inspired by both of these great artists, and the rest is something that has been beaten to death by every other special edition issue of Rolling Stone. Hendrix. Zeppelin. The Stones. Etc.

Anyway this is not about how you should go out and buy a Link Wray CD, though you should; it is about the Batmobile, the greatest car in pop culture history. It is better than the General Lee even, something I cannot believe I have actually come to terms with and even blows KITT out of the water. No discussion about Batman is complete without talking about the Batmobile since it is such an important part of his mythology and for someone who spent his second consecutive birthday at a car show, it becomes even more impossible to ignore. Superman flies. Batman has badass wheels. Wonder Woman has an invisible plane. Led Zeppelin had The Starship and so on a so forth.

I was kind of mulling over how to approach talking about the Batmobile since a test drive is impossible, unless you are one of the lucky chaps on Top Gear as I recently read that Warner Bros gave them a Tumbler to wring out. But just yesterday I was at Barnes and Nobles running some errands when I came across a book I could not possibly pass up: The Batmobile Owner’s Manual. Having read about it on Batmobile History dot-com, one of the greatest websites in the history of existence, the more I read about the Batmobile that was created for the book, the more I felt polarized and intrigued and it became an impulse buy, but now that I have had time to read through it I am glad I did purchase it. At $19.99 I could have bought some important graphic novel featuring some great story in the Batman canon but this just looked like fun.

Continue reading “Bat-mania: The Batmobile Owner’s Manual”

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Amish Otaku, Comics, DC, Features, Movies, Music

Bat-mania: Batman Soundtrack

LP Promo!
Warner Bros

Guest Post

This is a little late, I know. But what you have here is the first ever AO review of a movie soundtrack, and of an LP. Yes. That is correct. LP as in long playing record album, the kind you find at Goodwill except that this is not a beat to death copy of Perry Como Christmas or one of 50 random Lawrence Welk albums.

You all must think that I am an extreme-league Bat-fan to have hunted down the Batman Soundtrack on LP, but for those of you out of touch with collecting vinyl these days, they are not all too hard to find, in South Central Pennsylvania at least. Every second Sunday of the month, the Keystone Record Collector’s club has a trade show in Lancaster, PA. It has become something I have frequented with less consistency as my disposable income has dwindled since I started visiting the show around ten years ago, but one thing is always constant no matter how little I spend. I always come out with a pirate’s booty of loot, and much of that value comes from what has always been the core of the show for me: The $1 bins!

I am not the kind of comic-book guy type record collector who has his records kept in a humidor, sealed until I can unload them on Ebay for a killing. I actually like listening to them! And finding them in the often abused condition appear in the $1 bins normally satisfies the value quotient and a good album. Scratch free listenability is a trait uncommon, but found on very rare occasions in these mysterious treasure troves. The Batman Soundtrack is the rare Jack of all trades, since I found it for a buck, it plays sublimely and cleanly on my mid 1960’s GE Trimline turntable, and its a horrifically entertaining listen. It actually made its value back at being Tim Burton Batman memorabilia but the extra pluses are always welcome. Additionally, it complements my John William’s ’78 Superman LP very nicely.

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Amish Otaku, DC, Features, Movies

Bat-mania: Batman Returns

Guest Post

Returns. From what? Taking that big fat check from the first movie to the Batbank with the Joker in tow and laughing the whole way of course. The Dark Knight has some new duds, a sewer-cruiser and a different house! Even Gotham is different! How does the less well received allegedly darker Burton sequel fare today?

Not so well. I wasn’t completely sold on it when I was a kid though either. It is true that I was really obsessed with it but it just never settled well with me for some reason. Though Batman mindlessly kills numerous of the Red Triangle Circus gang and the story centers around the attempted murder of numerous children, I did not find it as dark as Tim Burton’s original. I found it a little campy in fact, thanks to lines like “Thanks for the saving the day again Batman,” “I’m sorry I uh,” “It’s that mysterious penguin-person, no don’t hurt me,” but thankfully nowhere near as much as the rave inspired, nipple-clad Batblunders that followed it. Continue reading “Bat-mania: Batman Returns”

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Amish Otaku, DC, Features, Movies

Bat-mania: Batman Begins

Guest Post

While I have already declared my devotion to Tim Burton’s Batman, it was not that movie that specifically recharged my Bat-mania; it was my most recent viewing of Batman Begins, not any of the others, not even my initial screening. I don’t remember much during my first viewing of Begins, but I still enjoyed it the first time around.

Subsequent viewings afterwards had me not so thrilled, however. As the ingredient list on your box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the following is in order of most important to least. I saw Christian Bale as a Botox faced Jon Favreau. I hated the “Super Duty” Batmobile (as one of my friends accurately described it), aka the Tumbler. I hated the cowl which had as many surfaces as a soccer ball. I did like the costume other than that. The wide yellow-less bat insignia was nice. The gauntlets serving a function was great. Cillian Murphy was incredible as the Scarecrow, while Katie Holmes was terrible. Michael Caine was perfectly cast as Alfred and who can ever argue with the great Morgan Freeman as the perennial voice of wisdom, this time in the form of Lucius Fox. Lest we not forget Liam Neesom as a mythical and powerful Ra’s Al Ghul. Despite all of the decent to great performances, my favorite was Gary Oldman who not only looked like he jumped straight off the newsstand, but played a receptive and skeptical Jim Gordon. However, the train wreck ending capping off all of the generally good acting was stupid the first time and satisfactorily chaotic for this last time. Continue reading “Bat-mania: Batman Begins”

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Amish Otaku, Comics, DC, Features, Movies

Bat-mania: Batman

Guest Post

“Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier some place else,” deadpans Jack Napier (the great Jack Nicholson) when District Attorney Harvey Dent comments on making the streets of Gotham safer and a quote that summarizes the plight of the Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 classic of the same name.

It is true that I have seen ittoo many times to count. It was one of my favorite movies when I was a little kid and my beat to Hades VHS copy somehow still has some life in it. I have most of the lines memorized to the point where they taste like McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets after you’ve eaten your 25th one in a single sitting which is essentially like dirty rubber.

Ah hah! Dirty Rubber! Just like the Michael Keaton Batsuit which in retrospect seems a little silly, on paper at least, compared to verbally advanced Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale model, which brings an intriguing question: which was the better Batman film? Batman Begins or Batman? My brother challenged me to watch them back to back. And thus was born the first official installment of Bat-Mania, in which I will try my best to provide the readers with a review of something Batman related every week until the release of the Dark Knight on July 18th. Continue reading “Bat-mania: Batman”

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Amish Otaku, Comics, Marvel, Movies

Iron Man

I finally watched Iron Man. And because of it, I am writing the AO response. It was cool. Very cool. I do not know if Tony Stark was ever that cool in the comic book since I never picked it up. My version of the Iron Man origin comes from a kiddie book on tape and accompanying storybook which also featured the origin of Victor Von Doom, aka Dr Doom.

In the brief origin I read, there was not any room for Tony to be the Bruce Wayne on steroids playboy that he apparently is, just enough space for him to get injured, get saved by the Vietnamese doctor (this was an earlier version) and blast his way out of the cave in his going-out version of the Iron Man suit. The sound effects on the audio tape were fun. And honestly, I always remember Tony Stark having that creepy Steve Buscemi/John Waters style pencil thin mustache. Definitely not so cool.

Continue reading “Iron Man”
Ahmad Chaudhary
Amish Otaku, Movies

Persepolis: Youth Amid Revolution

Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s new film about growing up in revolutionary Iran is as poignant as it is heartbreaking. The movie is lovingly crafted and remains true to Satrapi’s original vision first seen in her two-volume work of the same name, Persepolis.

The movie focuses on a young Marji as she grows up in a rapidly changing Iran in the 70s and 80s and struggles to find her identity in a country she no longer understands and in a world that has ceased to understand her.

The film is also a subtle yet urgent reminder of Iran’s modern history. We are given a firsthand account of the change from peaceful republican monarchy to the radical yet orthodox theocratic republic that we know today. Continue reading “Persepolis: Youth Amid Revolution”

Daniel Allen
Amish Otaku, Movies

The Making of Superman: The Struggle to Make a Blockbuster

Guest Post

In celebration of the May 30 re-release of the Superman Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD box set, I reread the Making of Superman, a first-person account of the construction of the original 1978 blockbuster. I picked up the beaten paperback for around 20 cents at a used book sale, and since then I’ve been surprised to find its value ranging anywhere from $10 to $40 between sellers on Amazon and Ebay.

The value only added to my intrigue. Even though I had picked up the Superman Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD set during the initial release last winter, I was sure that the Making of book would be an invaluable supplement to the movie box set, my Superman movie posters and my vinyl version of John William’s epic Superman soundtrack; I also thought it was going to be a tabloid expose on – from what I understood – only a semi-arduous shoot. Suffice to say that Petrou pulls very limited punches, if any, and relays the now only glanced-upon hardships of the production with such authenticity that it leaves you constantly wondering, even after you’ve finished reading it, how Superman was ever completed, let alone become a box office–ruling behemoth. Continue reading “The Making of Superman: The Struggle to Make a Blockbuster”

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Amish Otaku, Movies

Transformers Review Response

Transformers was exactly the movie I expected it to be. It was chock full of CGI, furious robot-on-robot action and more explosions and destruction than is truly necessary. That said, it was not a good movie.

On the Internet, a lot of people are attacking Michael Bay (and rightly so), but having looked at his past work, he really was the best director for the job. One of his earliest feature films was Bad Boys, a very good buddy cop action/comedy. A few years later, he gave us hits like The Rock and Armageddon. Say what you will, these were good movies. They may have been taken over the top, but at least Bay has a genuine sense of conflict in these movies and a strong enough cast to compensate for any deficiencies in the script. Continue reading “Transformers Review Response”

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Amish Otaku, Movies

Transformers Review

Guest Post

An AO response to the live-action Transformers movie was inevitable. Initially, I had no interest in seeing it and I just wasn’t expecting that I’d be writing a response for a number of reasons. First off, I thought it was going to be terrible, which, not so coincidentally, it was. Second of all, Dan Allen had expressed interest in seeing it (his review is coming also). As much as I didn’t want to fuel Michael Bay’s career (I didn’t, since we ended up with free passes, thankfully), the notoriety surrounding the movie was too great. Everyone I know who saw it said “It was awesome,” which was pre-bolstered by generally good reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 59% and a 7.3/10 in the Cream of the Crop (the choice reviewers) section, unprecedented for anything Michael “I think I’m cool because I look like I drive a 5.0 Mustang” Bay directed since The Rock, which didn’t have nearly as high a Cream of the Crop rating. I was afraid I might even like Transformers. Putting temptation over the fact that I started an anti-Bay Transformers Facebook group months before the release, I took the plunge. I had to see it. I shot Dan an IM on Sunday and we were ready to roll for the 4:55 p.m. showing. Continue reading “Transformers Review”

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