There’s no script or even (officially) a director, but the Batman movie has a release date: July 20, 2012.

Of course this date can change, but it’s still fun to get excited about the movie.  Detsils are still scarce, but we now know that the movie will be released in IMAX (no surprise there), it may be filmed entirely in IMAX and/or IMAX 3D, and it will be the final film in this series.

The rumors of the villains have already started, but all that has been confirmed is we won’t get Dr. Freeze.  I’m not worried – Nolan and company have proved that they can make an amazing movie with lesser known villains (Scarecrow and R’as Al Ghul were not household names prior to Batman Begins) and with bad guys we’d already seen on screen (The Joker and Two-Face from The Dark Knight.)  The Riddler seems to be getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere, but I could see Bane or Clayface or some other rogue going after Batman in the next movie.  Either way, it’s bound to have a lot of excitement and hype surrounding it – possibly more than any other movie that is still over two years away.

Amazing superhero movie news: Director Christopher Nolan, the guy who directed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, is set to “mentor” a new Superman film, while working on the next Batman movie!

Nolan is extremely well respected in Hollywood, as well as beloved by nerds and fanboys, so this is pretty much win-win all around. It looks exceedingly unlikely that Bryan Singer or Brandon Routh will return, as this new Superman will not be a sequel to Superman Returns, but a new take on the Man of Steel. Now, I have already discussed at great length why I think a reboot is a dicey proposition, and why I love Superman Returns. But the fact of the matter is that the Last Son of Krypton is in excellent hands with Nolan, and hearing news that he will have his hand in a new Superman movie AND the inevitable follow-up to The Dark Knight is amazing news.

I have a small amount of fear that they will try to make Superman too dark, to match the formula that worked with Batman. And dark isn’t a dirty word, I just hope that they stay true to the character, and make things gritty just for the sake of making them gritty. But again, I have faith that Nolan will steer the ship in the right direction.

Oh, and PS – The Deadline Hollywood article I linked to appears to have been updated; when the story first broke, it made a reference to “four mediocre Christopher Reeve films.” That has since been amended to reflect the awesomeness of the first two movies.

And PPS – Yeah, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that James blogged about this yesterday on his site…

Every December, a ton of “Best of the Year” lists pop up everywhere, and they can get old pretty quick, but I’m digging the “Best of the Decade” lists that I’ve been seeing lately. So I figured I’d jump on that particular bandwagon, and so I now present my list of some of the best pop culture trends of the past ten years.

Funny Music from Artists Besides Weird Al
Don’t get me wrong – my obsession with Weird Al Yankovic, the king of parodies and musical comedy, is still strong as ever. And he had a great decade in his own right, with the fantastic albums Poodle Hat and Straight Outta Lynwood, as well as his several Internet Leaks songs and videos. But he also had some competition in the funny music department. Tenacious D’s first album is side-splittingly funny. Though the movie and its soundtrack were less hilarious than they could have been, the genius of their first batch of songs more than makes up for it.

Then there’s Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew. The videos for Lazy Sunday, D*ck in a Box, I’m On a Boat, and others are brilliant in their lyrics and their visuals, and the digital shorts have been some of the best stuff on Saturday Night Live in recent years.

And who could forget the brilliance of Flight of the Conchords? Their two seasons on HBO, their two albums, and their EP were full of catchy, quotable, fantastic, and hysterical songs. I cried a little bit (on the inside) when I heard the show was officially done. Hopefully they’ll keep putting out music into the next decade.

The Renaissance of the Serialized Drama
The aughts may be remembered as the decade when hour-long, serialized dramas came back with a major vengeance. The best of the bunch has to be Lost – a show that not only blows your mind every week, but it has you obsessing in between episodes, talking over theories and trying to guess what it all means. The season 1 and 3 finales are two of my personal favorites in a standout series.

While the writing may not be as strong at 24 as it is on Lost, it’s still an extremely entertaining show, and it’s made Jack Bauer an instant kick ass pop icon. Sure, it’s cheesy when he screams “Dammit, we’re running out of time!” yet again, but it’s hard to resist the show’s real-time Die Hard feel. Then there’s Smallville, which has gotten much better at telling long stories over multiple episodes instead of just relying on freak-of-the-week episodes. And Fringe straddles the line of stand alone episodes with a greater mythology, and so far has been doing a great job of both. I also have high hopes for FlashForward and V, but it will remain to be seen how well those shows pay off long arcs, but they’re both off to good starts.

Even when theses kinds of shows haven’t worked all that well (Dollhouse, Terminator, Heroes) or when they were good concepts that were canceled too soon (Eli Stone), it’s still good that network executives are giving their audience some credit, understanding that we have patience, and can appreciate the kind of story-telling where everything isn’t all wrapped up in a tidy package in 42 minutes.

There is a great, albeit very long article about this topic at GQ.com with the guys from Bad Robot – I recommend it if you have a half-hour to kill.

Sit-coms Are Amazing Again!
It wasn’t just hour-long dramas that rocked the decade; the sit-com was reintroduced as a medium of clever comedies, and not just full of pratfalls and one-dimensional characters. Arrested Development was able to use bad puns, sight gags, kissing cousins, and The Final Countdown to great effect for powerful belly laughs. The British version of The Office gave us an amazing new brand of painful and awkward humor that would live on in the American series, as well as Ricky Gervais’ show Extras. 30 Rock is written so brilliantly and the jokes come so fast I find myself having to constantly rewind back to listen to jokes again. How I Met Your Mother gave a new twist to the story of urban singles looking for love. And we got 8 great years of Scrubs – even if Season 9 leaves a little to be desired.

The Superhero Is Cool Again
It seems like ages ago, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past that superhero movies weren’t really anything to get that excited about. Then in a single decade, we got four fantastic films in the genre: Superman Returns, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Iron Man. (I know I’m going to get mocked for making those the ones I single out… but I just can’t get behind Spider-man. I tried, really, I did. And I enjoyed X-Men and X2, but I don’t know if they were amazing.) Too often, superhero movies were considered formulaic drivel, and could be released, hated, and forgotten about quickly. But the aughts made them not only bankable hits, but films that both nerds and critics agreed were actually good. I’ve defended Superman Returns so many times I’ve lost count, so I’ll just make this quick – it had its fans, and its share of people who hated it, but I loved it, so it goes on *MY* list, OK? The rebooted Batman films were also incredible, and they made that world so dark and believable it’s hard to not be foaming at the mouth for more sequels. And even though I knew nothing about Iron Man, I thoroughly enjoyed that film as well. Sure there have been some bad superhero movies in the past ten years, but the good ones were so great, it almost doesn’t matter.

The Apatow Movie Method
If some strange pop culture villain put a gun to my head and demanded I name the funniest movie of the past ten years, it’s a safe bet that I’d answer Superbad. I was laughing out loud a lot when we first saw that flick, and every time I’ve watched it since, I have the same reaction. That’s impressive considering I know the jokes that are coming. I also feel similarly about Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and The 40-Year Old Virgin. And Anchorman and Talladega Nights and Walk Hard and any movie that had Apatow’s name attached to was guaranteed to be at least funnier than your average comedy. Of course, Judd himself didn’t always have much to do with every all of the above movies, but his influence can be felt in them – and others where he had no involvement whatsoever, like I Love You, Man; there are outrageous moments, painful moments, and things that are ridiculous enough to make you laugh so hard your stomach hurts, but they still keep themselves grounded in such a way that you buy what’s happening. Movie comedies will probably continue to evolve, but these movies will always make me laugh.

The Pixar Streak
So much has already been said about the brilliance of the Pixar movies, but here it goes anyway: The folks at Pixar are geniuses, and each and every one of their flicks have been funny, beautiful to watch, and full of great characters and stories. Two of the greatest films of the decade in my humble opinion are WALL·E and Up, neither of which sounded like a home-run concept, but were both executed flawlessly. Sure there are other companies doing similar kinds of animation, but those movies always just fail to impress me with their stories, and often times they are so full of timely references that the jokes will be out dated in a few years. Courtney and I have been watching a DVR’d collection of Pixar shorts, and even the company’s short films are crafted with amazing precision and humor. I sure hope my kids love these movies, because I know I’ll enjoy watching them too.

Nintendo Changes Video Gaming
I’m a Nintendo fanboy – always have been, always will be. And I loved the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance. But what Nintendo pulled off with the Wii and the Nintendo DS is truly incredible. Video-gaming is no longer just associated with nerds playing alone in dark basements – it’s now something that the whole family can do together, something that parents don’t dread if their kids want to do, and it’s even something that women actually enjoy. (And are not just pretending to enjoy for the sake of their boyfriends or husbands.) Wii Sports isn’t my favorite game personally, but I love watching people who have never held a game controller pick it up and play with ease. Wii Fit is a really fun way to exercise at home. The latest iterations of the classic franchises have all been fantastic: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii are all incredible games, as are their counterparts on the DS. (I just beat the first dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks this morning – it’s really fun so far!)

Sure Nintendo has room for improvement – better online capability, HD graphics, etc. But the fact of the matter is what they are doing now works, and it works well, and it works well for a huge chunk of the population.

Better, Clearer, Faster
High definition television. DVR. Portable players that let us watch movies, TV shows, and carry tons of music and photos, too. It’s pretty amazing that when we started this decade, those things weren’t common, and now it’s hard to imagine life without them. It sounds like a sweeping statement, but it isn’t, really. Try to go through a week without using your DVR. Or switch back to a standard definition TV. You’ll be going out of your mind in a week. What are you going to do, record your favorite shows with a VCR? Seriously.

And remember when you had to carry a discman with you to listen to music on the go? You looked strange wearing headphones, and you could only listen to one album at a time! Now you can carry thousands of songs in your cell phone.

And remember dial-up? When it would take a half hour to load a 30 second video clip? Now you can watch entire episodes of TV shows or whole movies on your laptop – or even on your TV – that load in seconds.

It’s hard to imagine so much has happened in ten years, and it’s even crazier that in December 2019, we’ll be looking back at all of this stuff as quaint and old-fashioned.

Have you all heard?  In the next Batman movie, not only is Johnny Depp is going to be The Riddler, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is going to play the Penguin, but no matter what those silly Angelina Jolie rumors said, Cher is going to be playing Catwoman!!!

I mean when you think about it, it all makes PERFECT sense!

OK, really?  Why is anyone picking up these “news” stories?   (I realize I am further feeding the cycle by blogging about it, but hey, irony – what are you gonna do.)

Let’s recap some of the people who were rumored to be cast as The Joker in The Dark Knight:  Sean Penn.  Adrien Brody.  Robin Williams.  Steve Carell.   Mark Hamill, Crispin Glover, and many others also were named as possibilities before it was announced that Heath Ledger had won the part.

And that was all after we KNEW that the Joker was going to be in the movie.  So now we don’t even know who the villain will be in the next Batman movie, and yet folks are not only guessing WHICH villains it will be, but also WHO will play them.

And it’s all a complete exercise in futility, and a total waste of time.  I am hereby making several official alannoah.com predictions: Philip Seymour Hoffman will NOT play the Penguin.   Johny Depp is NOT going to play the Riddler.  Angelina Jolie will NOT play Catwoman.

But really, really, really, I do hereby predict and virtually promise that Cher will NOT play Catwoman.

For starters, the woman is over 60.  That’s not a knock at older women taking on meaty roles, but one of the points in resetting the Batman franchise at the beginning was to give Batman a younger cast.  Sure, Batman needs some wrinkled faces around, like those of Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, but as a villain?  Can you imagine Batman beating up a Catwoman who has to go through her purse for 20 minutes looking for her keys?

And just for the record, there are plenty of other great Batman villains that weren’t in the 80’s/90’s movies that Christopher Nolan could use in the third film. Ra’s al Ghul and the Scarecrow weren’t the most well known guys in Batman’s rogues gallery, but they made great foes in Batman Begins.  It can be fun to speculate who would fit in the next movie and who could play those roles, but it should be treated as just that: pure speculation.

OMG did you hear?  It was just announced that the next Batman villains are going to be the Man-Bat played by Brad Pitt and Calendar Man played, in a bold and bizarre move, by Raven Symone!

Despite my best efforts, the powers that be at Warner Bros. have decided that Superman Returns wasn’t Superman-y enough, and the franchise will be re-started in a new, darker direction.

Sigh.

I already said all I have to say on this matter in my unbelievably long articles on this (that you all already read – right? RIGHT???), but to recap in just one post, I really think this is a terrible idea. I mean, if the new movie comes out and is awesome, I’ll be stoked, because I love the character of Superman and always have, but I just don’t see Superman needing the reboot treatment.

Just in case there are any non-nerds reading, a “reboot” is what they did with the Batman, Hulk, and James Bond franchises – they basically took all of the old movies, pretended that they don’t exist, and started over with the character. It made total sense to reboot Batman, because it had been eight years since the last Batman movie, and 13 since the last GOOD Batman movie. And James Bond had been through so many incarnations over the years, giving him a fresh start also was a wise move.

But it doesn’t make sense with Superman. Superman Returns wasn’t universally loved, but it wasn’t as universally despised as Ang Lee’s Hulk. That movie was so panned that it was given the reboot treatment this year, and though The Incredible Hulk fared better with critics, fans, and at the box office, it didn’t do MUCH better than the last film. I am sure that had at least something to do with the fact that there was only a five year gap between the two movies, and a lot of people were put off by the concept of such a recent movie being ignored.

But Warner Bros. wants every movie to be as big as The Dark Knight, so they’re going to throw away Superman Returns, and we’ll have another, totally new and separate movie in 2011. For those keeping score, that will be just five years after Returns, the exact same time difference between the two Hulk movies.

They want Superman to go in a darker and grittier direction, similar to what Christopher Nolan did with Batman.  That’s all well and good in theory, but what they fail to understand is that Superman is a fundamentally different character.  Batman, despite undergoing some pretty silly incarnations over the years, is at heart a really dark and gritty character, a human being who is fundamentally flawed and driven by vengeance.  Superman is not.  He is a beacon of hope, an alien with unwavering moral fibers who is virtually indestructible, and for better or worse, almost unrelateable.  Some people just don’t like Superman because of these differences, but I personally think they are what makes him interesting.  Superman is constantly trying to save everyone all the time, and the struggle in the way he balances his quest for truth, justice, and the American way by his life as a humble reporter, his love of Lois Lane, and the times he is unable to save people make him, in my humble opinion, a fascinating character.

Superman Returns showed how the world, and Lois specifically, reacted to having, losing, and then regaining Superman, and it made for a powerful story with TONS of sequel potential; Jason growing into his powers, the island of kryptonite hurtling through space, and even a possibility of what really kept Supes tied up for five years – was he attacked by Zod?  Captured in the Phantom Zone?  Enslaved by Darkseid?  We’ll never know, because the story is starting over from scratch.

Whoever ends up making the new movie and whatever direction they go with the story, I just hope they treat the character with the respect that he deserves.  Like I say, if the new movie is amazing, I’ll be thrilled, because Superman deserves to have fantastic big screen adventures, just like his Gotham City chum.  But for whatever it’s worth, Superman Returns was a phenomenal movie, and it will always have fans like me who cry foul over the reboot.

FOUL!

$155 million plus later, The Dark Knight is certainly more than a little buzzworthy. Of course, assuming you’ve seen it, you should have already read my review, but there are a few other things that have crossed my mind since seeing it a second time. (Minor spoilers below…)

1. If you see it in IMAX, which you should, you really need to be in the last row. The first time I saw it, we were five or six rows from the back, and it was still a little too close. The second time we were in the very last row, and we had the perfect vantage point. Being in the middle is of course still ideal, but you’re better off being as far back as you can and over to the side than in the middle a few rows down.
2. This is more about Batman Begins, but still: At the end of the first movie, Batman tells Ra’s al Ghul that though he won’t kill Ra’s, he doesn’t have to save him either, and Batman escapes the crashing train without Ra’s, allowing him to die.  But isn’t that sort of the same as killing him?  Batman didn’t directly cause the train to crash, but he instructed Lt. Gordon to do it, so he was still responsible.  In Dark Knight, Batman saves the Joker because of his no-killing rule, but is it really that different?  Yeah, had he let him go, he would have been more directly to blame for that death than for Ra’s’, but he’s sort of splitting hairs then, isn’t he?
3. Isn’t it a little weird that, through the whole movie, Gotham’s mayor NEVER SEEMS TO AGE?

Don’t worry, no spoilers here.  If you want spoilers, or if you’ve seen the movie already, click on the link below.  I got into a screening of The Dark Knight last night, in IMAX no less, and it is an absolutely amazing movie.  As a total side note, do they really need to have everyone in those advance screenings check their cell phones?  Who would be satisfied watching this movie in crappy cell phone camera footage?  I highly doubt Warner Bros. would really lose a ton of money if some stuff hit the net a few days before the official release.  But if they really do want to crack down on piracy, it might have made more sense to have ushers keep watch during the movie, instead of having a ton of people waiting for four guys to figure out which cell phone belongs to who afterwards.

Anyway, here’s a brief, spoiler free excerpt from my Dark Knight review:

The Dark Knight didn’t have to deal with the origin story that was covered so well in Batman Begins, but by introducing a villain like the Joker, it forces Bruce to re-examine the nature of what it means to be Batman, just as he thought he had it all figured out. This allows for the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman to evolve, and it adds that much more to an already dense movie. 

For the full review, please click here.