Superhero movies: if you've seen one...

How long has it been since my last blog post that had anything to do with superhero movies (supposedly my object of research)? A long time. And why is this? Because obviously all superhero movies are exactly the same. See below for evidence...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

More Dark Knight parody: "Key of Awesome"

Somebody up there clearly wants me to keep updating my blog: now that I recently indicated that my update-finger starts a-twitchin' as soon as I come across a fresh Dark Knight analysis and/or parody, they seem to be popping up all over the place. This one is a spot-on music video parody that combines some astutely observed critical points on the film with the usual kind of silly parody (discovered via Jim Emerson).

Agents of Chaos

Once again, a Dark Knight-related YouTube clip pushes me towards an eternally-overdue blog update. This time it's a new video essay by Film Freak Central reviewer Jefferson Robins, whose Agents of Chaos brings an entirely new perspective to the film characters that came closest to capturing a particular contemporary Zeitgeist.

You're The Voice

A fabulous peek-a-boo moment last week on NBC's Community, a new comedy that is continuing to pick up steam as it moves through its first season. In the Halloween episode, Abed comes dressed as Batman, entering an early scene with a flawless imitation of Christian Bale's increasingly irritating Batman whisper/growl. But what brings the episode home at several levels is his climactic reappearance at the end of the episode, which currently stands as the finest parody/homage/reappropriation of Nolan's Batman universe.

Weirdest interviews: Adam West

No. 3 on the new list of "20 Weirdest TV Interviews of All Time": Adam West and Jerry Lawler in Batman and Superman costumes (1977).

Of Samurai and Dark Knights

Resulting from a guest lecture I gave a few months ago on 9/11 and representations of evil, I have been invited to introduce screenings of two films this week, which have been programmed as a 'superhero double bill.' The appearance of last year's phenomenal The Dark Knight on the schedule will probably surprise no one. Combining it on a single bill with Kurosawa's arthouse classic Rashomon, however, is to my mind a more 'creative' choice: I doubt I am the only one to be initially somewhat baffled by the thought that Rashomon is in any way related to the superhero movie genre.

But although Rashomon's reputation is mostly based on the way it constitutes narrative as subjective, with its contradictory accounts of a single event, what it seems to have in common with Nolan's The Dark Knight is the way in which it offers competing ideas about the nature of reality. Speaking more broadly, the different people talking about the different eye-witness accounts bring into sharp relief the absence of a single, trustworthy perspective on the world, which is in many ways one of the foundations of the superhero genre as a whole.

Both films also, each in its own way, break with the moral and aesthetic conventions of the genre from which they have emerged. Where Rashomon offers a deconstruction of traditional Japanese samurai stories, The Dark Knight is far more interested in the slippery slope one encounters when confronted with chaos and nihilism. So whatever the original reasons for programming these two films together on a single bill, I guess there is some basis for a somewhat cohesive introduction...

Superhero double bill @ Crea Amsterdam