Professor Hugo Strange

Hugo Strange was one of Batman's first adversaries, having been around even longer than the Joker has. He doesn't really have any specific theatrical gimmicks like most of Batman's villains do. You can read about story lines he is known for on his wikipedia page if you'd like. The character has appeared in several animated shows, like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, and The Batman. When Tom Hardy was cast in The Dark Knight Rises, it was rumored or speculated that he would play Hugo Strange. Around that time, the character's popularity had just spiked due to his inclusion in the then forthcoming video game Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Obviously we now know that Hardy was cast as Bane instead.

I've seen a lot of ideas from fans about who they would like to see play the role of Hugo Strange in a Christopher Nolan Batman movie, including Robin Williams, but I think the best person for the job is Kelsey Grammer.

It is perhaps typecasting, but in my opinion, he has the presence, the intellect, the intensity, and the right kind of voice for the character. I could picture him with the bald head, the glasses, and the distinctive beard, and he doesn't look too silly to me to fit in with the style of Nolan's world. When I was searching for a photo of Kelsey Grammer to post here, I actually found a picture of him with a beard that looks exactly like a perfect Hugo Strange beard!

Despite his silly name, I think Professor Strange is one of the characters who would fit right into Nolan's Gotham City. I imagine him as a brilliant professor of criminal psychology at Gotham University who uses rather unorthodox or possibly unethical techniques to try and understand the mind of a criminal. He would probably be consulted by the police to find out Batman's secret identity, and in the process would become more and more obsessed with Batman, to the point of going crazy and wanting to actually be Batman.

Reinterpreting Batman villains for movies.

One of the things I really love about the character Batman is all of the wildly different takes on him, his city, and the other characters in that city. For most of them, there just aren't any definitive versions in my mind, and I find the different interpretations and portrayals to be fascinating.

One version I'm a huge fan of is Christopher Nolan's take on Gotham City and the characters in it. Nolan's Gotham City is certainly not the definitive Gotham. Batman in Nolan's movies is not the definitive Batman. The Joker in Nolan's movie is not the definitive Joker. But I love what the director has done with that world and those characters in his movies. I loved Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Christian Bale has been a great Bruce Wayne (and his Batman voice doesn't bother me at all), Heath Ledger was amazing as The Joker, and I think Gary Oldman as James Gordon is one of the best comic book movie casting decisions that has ever been made. The third movie in the series, The Dark Knight Rises, is one I'm very excited about. Unfortunately, it has been widely reported as the final Batman film made by Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale. Although Bale recently stated it was a possibility that he would come back for a fourth movie, it probably won't happen.

Ever since I saw Batman Begins, I've thought a lot about what existing Batman characters could fit into the Nolan's vision of Gotham City, and what kind of role they might play in a movie. It's a lot of fun to think about, especially with the villains. Obviously a lot of Batman's villains just wouldn't fit, and if you changed them to try to make them more realistic, trying to force a square peg in a round hole, you'd probably strip away everything that made the characters interesting in the first place. Everything that made you want to see them in a live-action movie. Other characters though, with some tweaking, could fit right in. I think characters like The Riddler, Hugo Strange, Black Mask, and Hush could each make good major villains in Nolan's Gotham City, and characters like Firefly, Penguin, and possibly even Ventriloquist and The Mad Hatter could be minor villains.

I also really like thinking about who could play these characters in movies if they were ever made. For some of those characters I listed above, I've thought of people who I think could be perfect to play them. I think of it as a fun creative exercise, and I thought it might be fun to share some of these thoughts on my blog, so I'll be making three posts this week about a few villains that I think would fit well in Nolan's Gotham City, with my thoughts about how the characters could be interpreted and adapted to fit in a Nolan movie, and my own suggestions for what actors could play them. I know that Christopher Nolan would have his own interpretations of these characters, were he to feature them in a new movie, and it's pretty much impossible to predict who he might cast, because his casting decisions have often been pretty surprising. These posts are just meant to be my own ideas, not predictions of who he would cast. And on Thursday, July 19th, the day before The Dark Knight Rises comes out, I'll be making a few more post that are a bit different, featuring what is sort of my own alternate interpretation of a character that Nolan has already featured in a Batman movie.

Prometheus, brought to you by Adult Swim

Prometheus.

Zombieland

I just saw Zombieland (directed by Ruben Fleischer) for the first time. I'm pretty sick of zombie movies, so I hadn't been interested in seeing this until it kept getting recommended to me by people who have a grasp of my taste in movies. I gave it a shot because being sick of zombies doesn't keep me from enjoying the hell out of Shaun Of The Dead.

Besides Zombieland being a zombie movie, it kind of felt like it was tailor-made for me, as if the writers know me. I love Bill Murray, I'm afraid of clowns, and I hate Sno Balls (coconut is my Kryptonite). That scene where they find the Hostess truck hit me really hard emotionally.

I'd love to see a sequel. I read that it would be in 3D. I think that would be very interesting for when the "rules for surviving Zombieland" pop up on the screen and interact with the characters and environment. The first movie actually had several shots that would have been beautiful in 3D. Slow motion shots with various objects flying through the air, such as in the beginning credits sequence, or later in the movie when the main characters trash a shop.

Another celebrity should probably cameo in the sequel as well, but who would be a good choice after Bill Murray? I think William Shatner would be... He could give the sequel the same level of geek cred as Murray did with the first movie, and he could be really enjoyable playing an exaggerated version of himself.

I won't be seeing Dark Shadows in the theater.

I never saw the original Dark Shadows television show, but considering the fact that it was a soap opera, I was assuming Tim Burton's movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp would be primarily a drama.

When these four beautiful shots from the movie were released, they made me want to see the movie. Enough that I thought seeing the movie in the theater might actually be worth the insane cost of ticket prices. Don't these seem like images from a beautiful looking gothic drama?

I'm fascinated by the colors and composition of these pictures. The more I looked at these shots, the more I wanted to see the movie.

Then they released the first trailer. What the hell was that? The movie is a comedy? I might not have been so bothered either if it wasn't such stupid humor. I was incredibly disappointed, and I no longer had the urge to see Dark Shadows.

I was explaining this to someone, and I wanted to show them the beautiful pictures I saw. The ones I've now posted above. At the time, I couldn't find them though. Finally, I found the article I originally saw them in, but they weren't there. In their place was an update saying they were removed at the request of the movie studio. Those were the pictures that made me want to see the movie, and for whatever reason, the studio didn't want people seeing them? I didn't understand that at all. What they should have done is left those pictures up, but tried to keep people from seeing that terrible trailer.

I ended up finding the pictures still up on ScreenCrave. When I saw them again, all I could think was "I want to see the movie those shots are from, not the movie that the trailer is for," as if they were two different movies. I wish they were.

Dark Shadows came out today, but I won't be seeing it in the theater. I will check it out when it has been released on DVD, mostly to see Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloë Grace Moretz play mother and daughter.

Rear Window Timelapse

Jeff Desom created a timelapse video compositing everything (?) that the character L. B. Jeffries sees outside of his apartment window in Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 movie Rear Window. It's not only a brilliant idea, but it's beautifully executed, and quite a striking display.

Indiana Jones and the Shot-By-Shot Remake

I saw this a while back and thought it was interesting. Just as Raiders Of The Lost Ark was an homage to old adventure movie serials, this shot-by-shot remake was put together from old adventure movies as an homage to Raiders Of The Lost Ark. One of those "coming full circle" situations.