Penchant for Trenchant

I must be quick, as I really need to write. The exhaustion from working so much overtime, even last Sunday, is mounting. I can feel it in my body. And I'll be honest, when I'm tired and/or in a bad mood, it often comes out in odd places.

Like here, for instance, where for little good reason I poked some fun at the two gentlemen posting their picks for Tom Spurgeon's Five For Friday feature, this time on Kids Books by Cartoonists. I'm just trying to amuse myself, and no harm is meant. Tom wrote to me that it was funny, but if it inspires more joke replies he'll have to slash my tires when he's in San Diego.

Wrote well over 700 words on Dan Clowes' ICE HAVEN on Saturday night. I'd taken my son for a haircut earlier in the day and liked the stylist, so I got her card and actually left her a message asking her out for that night, but never heard from her. I'm not really disappointed; I feel good just for asking, actually. Fun, drunken barbecue on Sunday with friends, but it's left me really drained today.

Oh, I saw BATMAN BEGINS and concur with many that it's okay, not great. I liked the training portions better than the big, rollercoaster climax, which looked kinda fake and pretty boring. I agree the fight scenes are a bit hard to follow but generally I think this approach was better than something really slickly choreographed and posed. Bale is good, easily the best Wayne yet because he does look haunted by his past, but I didn't really like the digitally smooth Batman get-up much. The Batmobile is cool, and I liked the more "realistic" bits where he's putting together his own gear. Michael Caine is good; Gary Oldman is fine but not given much to do, much like Morgan Freeman and Rutger Hauer, too. Cillian Murphy is excellent, and I think would have made just as good of a Joker--he's got too good a face to hide under a dirty burlap sack. Liam Neeson is quite good, though I think pretty much every character would have benefitted from another run at the script to give them better lines and speeches. Katie Holmes isn't as bad as many are saying. I thought she was fine half the time, and her non-reaction when she's told her old love Bruce is alive is clearly a fault of Nolan the director rather than her as the actress. Nolan seems to really have struggled here with trying to do something creepy and cool and compromising with the demands of Warner Brothers to make it big and spectacular, and it's not a good fit. A lot of the big stuff is kind of boring, while the fear gas hallucinations are very cool but too dark for the under-13 kids who will no doubt be seeing this film with their stupid parents. That's not really Nolan's fault, I realize, but it still seemed somewhat needlessly dark in spots, while not taking advantage in other areas to be similarly edgy, such as how the Arkham inmates are so run-of-the-mill and there are no cameos for future villains other than the lackluster Zsasz. I really questioned why Nolan would allow the very serious breakup scene with Bale and Holmes to so prominently feature her nipples, and I think that's the point, so to speak, where you see just how willing Nolan is to sacrifice his creative integrity to keep things "interesting." I mean, I realize that her acting alone in this scene is yawn-inducing, and it's nice to have something else to look at but her doe-like face, but it's just such a cheap ploy.