2.37 – BATMAN (1989) and Duality

We embark on another franchise, kicking off with one of Rob’s favourite directors. We get geeky about comics history, talk about why fairy-tales make parts of this film unsatisfying, and say just why the visuals and audio are brilliant.

MR ROBOT (SEASON 1; 2015): Sam Esmail, Rami Malek, Carly Chaikin

JUNK FOOD CINEMA (2014): Brian Salisbury, C. Robert Carsgill

CHINATOWN (1974): Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway

BIG EYES (2014): Tim Burton, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM (1987): Barry Levinson, Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker

BRAZIL (1985): Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Pryce, Robert de Niro

If you want more comics geekery, about the 1954 Comics Code, the ‘Golden Age’ v. ‘Killing Joke’/‘Dark Knight’, etc., then these are some good links: http://cbldf.org/comics-code-history-the-seal-of-approval, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/the-golden-age-of-comics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Killing_Joke, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Dark_Knight, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Returns. This is an interesting article about the links between horror and comedy that Rob mentions: http://splitsider.com/2014/11/what-horror-and-comedy-have-in-common. Here’s a re-cap on what we mean by ‘the fourth wall’ (and ‘breaking’ it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall, and you can read more about a prominent theatrical tradition Rob talks about, here: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/comm/hd_comm.htm. Finally, Sam talks about why ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ is such a good theme in the film; you can get more on this, here: https://www.loc.gov/creativity/hampson/about_dreamer.html.