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 I just saw Batman
Begins and I couldn't be more excited. Finally a Batman movie
that's true to the comics. Dark and mysterious with strong
characters and a believable hero. Maybe one day they'll film The
Dark Knight Returns with Clint
Eastwood in the lead as a grizzled Caped Crusader, but until
that day arrives, and even if it never does, I'm relieved to report
that Christian
Bale is the business. It's the movie of the summer, I reckon.
I'll probably go to see it another couple of times with different
friends, not just to see it again, but to get as many people as
possible to see it because it's awesome. Then I'll have to wait for
it to come out on DVD and see it another five or six times before I
can finally relax about it and begin the long wait for the next one.
The good news is that Bale, Michael
Caine and Morgan
Freeman have all signed on for another. Hopefully Gary
Oldman will as well because his Gordon was amazing. I'm not at
all bothered about Katie
Holmes though, and if gossip is to be believed, she won't be
returning as studio executives weren't exactly pleased with her
headline consuming relationship with Tom
Cruise
stealing publicity away from
the movie. And apparently it's going to be a Joker story.
Bale finally seems set for the kind of
A-list stardom that has so far eluded him. Although only 31 years
old, he's been acting for more than 20 years, making his debut in an
ad for Pac Man Cereal when he was nine, and earning worldwide
attention as the young star of Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun
in 1987. Over the years he's made many well received movies, some
arty, some studio, and won an awful lot of fans. But if you went up
to someone on the street and asked who he was, they'd probably draw
a blank. But no longer. Not that Bale is now Bats. Now everyone is
going to know who he is, and then finally they might care to look
back at his already impressive career, and check out the likes of American
Psycho, Equilibrium
and The
Machinist
, newly out on DVD.
Incidentally, when
I got home from the cinema after Batman
Begins, I caught a bit of Capricorn
One on the telly. I'd never noticed it before, but I couldn't
believe how much the James
Brolin of twenty to thirty years ago looks like the Christian
Bale
of today. Just compare their
pictures, and you'll see what I mean. It's uncanny...
July 4 always makes me
think of America. The things I love about it: movies and tv, deli
food and friendly people. And the things I hate about it, too:
politics and healthcare, violence and stupid people. I'd still
rather England become an American state than part of the EU, though.
But I'm not really a political person, and don't have much more to
say on the subject than that, so I'm going to talk about movies
instead, which is far safer ground for me. Specifically All-American
movies, film that gush America from every pore.
 Films
like Superman:
The Movie, still my favourite superhero flick despite the flag
waving, as Chris
Reeve fights for truth, justice and the American way. With North
By Northwest, master of suspense Alfred
Hitchcock took audiences on a train tour around the States,
climaxing on top and around the mighty Mount Rushmore monument. Not
only are we roundly thrilled by the adventure, but we're given a
rather grand sightseeing tour as well. More so than even Manhattan,
Woody
Allen's Annie
Hall captures the sights and sounds, even the feel and smell of
New York City. And there's not a single American high school or
college comedy that doesn't owe a debt of thanks to the first and
best of them all, Animal
House
, a film that forever
established in my mind what it must be like to go to school in the
USA.
Since America is also the great land of
opportunity, a couple of All-American success stories are also in
order. The crude and inspiring tale of a shock jock who conquered
the nation, Howard Stern biopic Private
Parts, starring the man himself, is certainly funnier than most
triumph of the spirit stories. And I'd also make some time for Al
Pacino's Scarface
remake, in which a violent hoodlum finds the
streets of Miami paved with gold, drugs and hookers. And that's
quality paving.
 Everything
that's bad about American politics is captured with humour and
pathos by Warren
Beatty in his last great movie (to date), Bulworth,
the tale of a Senator so mortally disenchanted with politics that he
actually decides to tell the truth. Another film that lets America
have it right between the eyes is the deceptively clever Team
America: World Police, which looks like an iffy puppet show but
gives great satire, roasting American foreign policy and Hollywood
celebrities at the same time. Dawn
of the Dead
, meanwhile, strikes
me as the perfect comment on American consumer culture as even after
they've been killed and turned into hulking, flesh-eating monsters,
the zombies can't help but go hang out at the mall.
And so finally we come to Singin'
in the Rain
, the definitive Hollywood musical, and
perhaps the sunniest and most likeable movie ever made. Plucky,
breezy, positive and inventive, it represents the best of America
and I'll never get tired of it. Like I'll never get tired of the
States, no matter how awful it gets there. I suppose if it ever gets
really bad we could always nip over the Atlantic and take it back,
teach them some manners and how to spell, maybe, before letting them
look after themselves again.
Happy Independence
Day!
Marshall
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