Batman is the only movie franchise where we can't wait for the main character to go car shopping.
Once Batman Begins safely establishes itself as a smart, biting overhaul of a series shuttered and condemned by neglect, we can settle in with a happy shiver for what Michael Caine might call the good bits.
A key pleasure is watching Christian Bale accessorize for his first foray as the Dark Knight. Body armor? Very good, Sir, would you prefer black or black? Self-retracting high-tensile climbing wire? Designers at Bechtel are doing very exciting things for the spring collection. Transportation? These little babies from the Pentagon are flying off the lot.
Batman Begins works in large part because the winged crusader's cast of supporting salesmen hangs as tightly as, well, bats in a cave. Bale is a major force, serious enough for a hundred tortured superheroes. But he would look stale and silly without amiable backup.
Director Chris Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) admired how Superman in 1979 employed giants like Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty for secondary credits, and Nolan makes a good imitation here.
Morgan Freeman craftily hands Batman the tools he needs to soar through the night, looting his own Wayne Enterprises for spare parts. Caine is the indomitable Wayne family butler, Alfred, shrouding the dour Batman and the grim proceedings in warm, hip humanity. Even in a small role as the future commissioner Gordon, Gary Oldman brings a sad, workmanlike nobility to being the one good cop in a city ruined by decay.
"I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do with your past, sir," says Caine, always in service but never servile. "Just know there are those of us who haven't given up on your future." That's just good writing, and good acting, and it's what brings Batman Begins closer to the Superman and Spider Man ideal than a host of pending pretenders.
Nolan and co-writer David try to bury the awful excess of Batman and Robin and Batman Returns by searching for the avenger's roots. In the interest of preserving plot enjoyment, we'll boil it down to this: Caves. Creatures. Phobias. Confronting nightmares. Vengeance. Justice. Villains who talk too much.
Discuss.
There remains a bit of mange in the fresh fur for the franchise. Katie Holmes has spirit, but it's of the indie sort, not yet the mega-budget female face. Liam Neeson needs to drop the swordplay for a while after running out of moves in The Phantom Menace and Kingdom of Heaven. His take on the "snatch the flower from my hand" school of Asian fighting is tiresome here.
And Nolan left in 15 minutes too much of speechifying villains, laughable pseudo-science and the tour of Gotham by monorail.
There is plenty here to build on, though, if Warner insists on stretching out the Batman saga it took over in DC Comics. Does anyone believe they won't try? Here's a legend sometimes proved true: Sharp writing and thoughtful directing make the oldest tales seem new.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless