I’m busy guest blogging all over the place as we get nearer to the release date of Dark Faith: Invocations. Today I’m over at Suvudu.
Speculative fiction has a bit of an uneasy relationship with religion. On the one hand, Stephen King has considered horror writers as little more than moralists as they explore the nature of evil. On the other, some people of faith are concerned that books like Harry Potter might lead children down the path to witchcraft. Still, faith plays an important role not only in the lives of people, but also in the stories we create.
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I have a broader definition of faith than some folks…
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See you *are* still blogging! I just tweeted your essay from the suvudu site!
Tell me Mo; have you actually read *all* of Harry Potter? Or of Pullman’s trilogy?
Well – I was keeping away bcos you said you were busy – but *did* you see The Dark Knight Rises yet? &if so, what did you think? Critical response seems to be a lot more negative this time, both on right and on left – mainly on the left.
Did the shocking Aurora disaster/tragedy make you think twice abt going to the movie on the first week/end – with your family? (It would me!)
&when do we get your review?
Oh I haven’t been quiet on Mr Nolan and what I think of him! (click on the handle/link,folks!)
Basically I think this film is unnecessary -he *has* basically re-played out the “terrorist” theme of DKR, only with a more organised villain who can get people other than just nuts to work for him! The League Of Shadows re-enters the picture – where were they in the middle movie??
(& it’s interesting that the real-life “insane villain”, James Holmes, combined elements of both main baddies, Bane and Joker, to form his own serial-killer image.
This is what happens, I will insist, when creators perform the..
..unhappy marriage of strong, surreal fantasy elements, with a specious script/publicity insisting it’s all real, based on “real-world issues” such as terrorism, could happen down the street from you etc: we must all be totally po-faced and serious about there comic-book characters etc. Bah. Tim Burton’s Batman movies were dark, violent and gloomy: yet no-one did anything like THIS to “celebrate” them, bcos the director made it obvious (with far better sets, etc – if not scripts!) that they were fantasy. I rest my case. Except to say that I don’t think Bob Kane would’ve been impressed, by either these movies, or the turn of events. &I really have to write my own essay on it & post it on my oneoflokis wordpress.
But creators have to be careful with archetypes, you know! & Nolan shouldn’t produce so much propaganda.
OK so what was it propaganda FOR? Nonsensical, contradictory, largely anti-the-common-man messages, I’d say! (No wonder it stirs people up bcos it CONFUSES them and sets up mental double-binds: which is BAD! It’s the way they made the computer go mad in A Space Odyssey!)
People have been muttering abt MKUltra already!
But I’d say that Nolan was trying to “run with the hares and still hunt with the hounds.” You gotta take sides.
More than anything, it would seem he wants to glorify cops – ie State power – IN PREFERENCE TO the real point of such tales: the more independent-minded superhero figure! Don’t like it. & cops may like to think they’re an army: but in real life would NEVER fight a guerrilla army like Bane’s: more likely to run in search of a donut shop!
The best reviews of it I’ve seen have been on socialistworker.org.uk and dominionpaper.ca. Which made the latter point.
Why should superhero movies have cops as the main heroes: rather than the individualist “cowboy”?
Looks like I’ll have to look to lewrockwell.com for *that* answer! :S
It just seems to be all moving away from American volunteerism – towards state power and a mixture of all the Nazi stormtroopers and dictatorial – almost Soviet – definitely imperial – power your nation always said it hated!
& as for Bane being the “real” totalitarian dictator? well.. he would’ve been if better written: he would’ve been sth like a real-world Naxalite/Chairman Mao.
BUT: an eat-the-rich revolutionary who REALLY turns out to be disinterested in either power or a better society &wants to blow the city up – just because *an ancient cult tells him to?* Come on: that really IS childish: I’ve seen better plots/politics in Tin-Tin comics!
Anyway I await your review/opinion with interest!
(No: I’ve changed ny mind: Bane isn’t a Naxalite: with those apocalyptic ideas, he resembles not even a Muslim, but more a born-again, rapturist Christian!!)
There are about 2 people/orgs left, who I really want to review this movie. One of them is you! The other – is the World Socialist Web Site! NEITHER of you yet has! EVERYBODY else I tend to wanna read has, ages ago.
?
i’m behind on reviews. i’m working on them for spider-man, tyler perry’s madea witness protection, and dark knight rises (though guaranteed i’m taking a different tack on this than you may expect)
Great! I look forward to reading all those reviews!
(As to why the WSWS have STILL not jumped in there with a review of The Dark Knight Rises, it’s anybody’s guess. They seem to enjoy bashing Nolan: & quite a few other filmmakers both populist and “art”: (mind you I agree with them that contemporary filmmaking is in a terrible state).. so anyway, what keeps them? I can only think that they want to avoid any more publicity for a film that they probably see as endorsing the capitalist Satan.. &now has provoked a shooting in a working-class neighbourhood.. Most of these usually white spree killers turn out to be racists/rightwingers tho..)
Anyway: if WSWS annoy me any further by dillydallying, I shall email them &tell them they’ve lost their bottle. I’m hard on everyone you know!
Oh: & they’re not the same outfit as the Socialist Workers: although both are Trotskyist, they’re quite separate organisations – and hate each other! Just thought I’d fill you in!)
So you’re going for a surprising approach -
- to TDKR ? Not just a view that contradicts my criticisms of this film and its director as expressed here and elsewhere?
So – not just a review I may not like – but that says something unexpected. Well – good – I like surprises!
But like the kid and the Xmas present, I also love anticipating them!
Now WHAT could it be.. hmm.. you’re going to tell me that Chris Nolan and his angle on Batman is just one giant hippy love-in in disguise?!?
But you know: everybody nowadays IS unorginally reinventing the wheel! U know Nolan’s Inception: well a couple of guys got in on the tail of the slipstream of publicity for that; used it to claim they’d invented revolutionary “lucid dream specs”. I thought: “haven’t I heard of those before?” when I found a ref on the blogs of this weird guy I follow, Ken Korczak, who mentioned the professor who’d done the REAL lucid dream research & invented the first electronic specs in the 80s.
An example of what I’ve been telling you about!
Well.. talking of the reluctant WSWS.. they obliged with a review this morning: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/batm-a09.shtml It’s ponderous! It’s turgid – just like the movie! Now I just have to compose an email to bug reviewer Adam Haig!
(He’s a bore I think – anyone who cites Harold Bloom – in his previous, Harry Potter review – must be!)
Yup. This review’s better: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4557