RIP Richard Griffiths 1947-2013)

I don't know much about the recently departed actor Richard Griffiths other than that he was in one of the funniest moments and movie history. Let's watch that moment right now:

The Wolverine Trailer

The guys ahead of me in line at the comic book store today were talking about this trailer and saying it looked awful. You know guys in comic book stores. They don't like anything. Anyway, I just checked it out, and I think it looks pretty cool. I'll see it.

Check it out here.

The Dark Knight Rises

I actually liked this one.

I was surprised by how much I liked it, actually. Or maybe I was just surprised that I even liked it at all, considering how luke warm I was on the first of this trilogy, and how much I actively hated the second. But this one was good. I enjoyed it. I liked it. I was glad I saw it. It had something the first two films were lacking: It was actually kind of fun.

For the most part. I mean, it is a Christopher Nolan film, so it's still needlessly complicated, overwrought, overlong, and pretentious, full of odd plot holes and lapses in logic. But it is a Christopher Nolan film, so it's beautifully shot, has a great cast, tremendous production values, an epic story, and is interesting and unlike anything you've seen before. Well, unless you've seen the previous two Batman films, that is, since all three are basically remakes of the same story: Some Bad Guy wants to create chaos that will destroy Gotham City, and only Batman can stop him. Then again, that's the story of every Batman story, so that's not really a complaint.

So they're all the same story and they're all the same film. This just happens to be the first one that Christopher Nolan did right. That is to say, this is the first of his Batman films that actually sort of maybe has a character who in some small way bears a passable resemblance to some character from the comics named Batman. Sort of.

Midnight Snack