violence is the answer

As long as the entertainment industry employs violent means to achieve box office returns, and violent means to solve all conflict, and as long as the primary tool for this resolution of conflict is the firearm and its associated tools--I count missiles and high explosives in this--we'll have young men firing guns into crowds, young men killing neighbours at summer barbeques, young men who think the gun is sexy and makes them powerful and gives them a "voice," albeit one that usually ends in their own death or incarceration.

Life imitates art - big time

Just try to imagine being inside the head of a person so screwed-up he shoots and kills 12 people in the movie theatre.

Will this be good for the movie industry, or Will it deter people from going?

Will the movie industry taske heed of this event?

Will Americans realise the need for gun copntrol?

Probably not.

if young people especially are so influenced

by film violence, why then aren't they playing the hero's role and going out to fight the violent?

Hollywood is based on fear and greed and has a lot to answer for, but we should look elsewhere for causes of slaughter like this.

USA violence....

Young people are very influenced by the amount of violence they see on TV, in movies, in the streets, newspapers, magazines. America is a Gun Culture as the Australian aborigines are a Cargo Culture. We have seen how America treats its heroes - it kills them, one way or another. And we see how America treats its greedy corporate thieves and politicos - it gives them tax breaks, honours, and dollars galore. Why be a hero in America, surely the most dangerous country on this planet?

Not just an American Problem.

I guess the recent Toronto incident doesn't count (since it happened in Canada.)

School of Kubrick

In 'The Dark Knight', Christopher Nolan gave us a vicious caricature of GW Bush demolishing a building by remote control and threatening Senator Patrick Leahy (anthrax recipient) at a dinner party.

In his next film, 'Inception', Nolan stood Truther actress Marion Cotillard in front of a row of identical collapsing Building Sevens as part of a story about a man who knowingly inhabits a manufactured reality.

It is worth noting that in his film prior to 'The Dark Knight', 'The Prestige', the magician's trick works because it is so horrible that one forces oneself not to have seen it.

I am very much looking forward to 'The Dark Knight Rises', if only to see how much of it has gone over this reviewer's head.

Gun Control or No Gun Control......Same Old, Same Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/shooting-at-colorado-theater-showing-batman-movie.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120721

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who has waged a national campaign for stricter gun laws, offered a political challenge. “Maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly radio program, “because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

Luke O’Dell of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a Colorado group on the other side of the debate over gun control, took a nearly opposite view. “Potentially, if there had been a law-abiding citizen who had been able to carry in the theater, it’s possible the death toll would have been less.”

The Motivation for Madness (Part 1)

Regarding the film itself, which I watched yesterday, I agree with many of Shawn Conner's specific complaints, though not his overall dreariness.

The dialogue between Batman (speaking in his aftificially deep voice) and Bane (speaking through a nasty face mask) was often difficult to decipher over the pounding soundtrack. And the opening kidnapping scene -- which was used almost in its entirety in a trailer I saw last December -- made no more sense when it was part of the film. Stunning action sequences are somewhat less exciting when you don't know who you are rooting for and why (although you have a sneaky suspicion you are supposed to be rooting for the well-coifed American agent and against the fellow who looks permanently dressed for a Mexican wrestling match.)

I likewise agree that Tom Hardy's Bane and Anne Hathaway's cat-burglar were the best characters on screen, while Freeman, Caine, and Oldman were underused. Gordon-Levitt's young policeman could have been better if he'd been given a bit more action and a bit more character development, instead of being introduced as someone who easily sees through Batman's mask but doesn't do anything about it either way. In fact, my overall complaint about the film is that -- despite its 2 3/4 hour length -- the characters lack the nuance and clear motivations of the previous movies in the series.

The Motivation for Madness (Part 2)

And that is where a commentary on a Hollywood action flick slides into a commentary on a senseless crime.

Christopher Nolan's (and colleagues') biggest contribution to the Batman mythology was in crafting complex characters and believable motivations for both the heros and the villains in the films. Where the classic comic-book universe and previous films were populated with over-the-top heros battling over-the-top villains, the first two Nolan movies gave us human beings who were pushed just a little too far. Whether they are motivated by the desire for a better world -- Batman, early Harvey Dent, and even Ra's Al-Ghul and the League of Shadows -- or by more selfish desires of greed, pride and revenge, there's a reason for what they do. There is a clear explanation for Batman's choice of image and for the Scarecrow's use of a disturbing mask. Even the Joker's theatrics are explained as a one-up-manship response to the masked vigilante.

The comfort of the classic comic books (which I confess I'm not an expert in) and earlier Batman films, like so much popular action stories of the Cold War era, was the clear division between good and evil, us versus them. They gave people unambiguous monsters who could be despised and then vaquished by a greater power, a power equally uncompromising but wielded in defence of freedom and good. The colder comfort of the Dark Knight storylines comes from creating a clear and logical explanation for why horrific criminals act the way they do, and for its suggestion that all the decent law-abiding people of the world -- the hard-working cops and uncompromising district attornies -- are just waiting for a little back-up to really make a difference.

But here we are, back in the real world, and senseless, horrific crimes still occur with no Batman to stop them. However, look through all the news coverage, and you will find very few people writing off James Holmes as an evil, unfathomable monster. Instead, there are inquiries into his character and background, and a quoted desire from law enforcement to find a motive hidden in his booby-trapped apartment. Whether an explanation is ever found, the fact it is searched for is evidence that the Nolan films have accurately capture our era's understanding of evil, as something someone does not something someone is.

And as for good? Well, perhaps there is a different kind of comfort in the film's suggestion that a hero is what happens when you take a flawed but well-meaning person and give them million-dollar vehicles, weapons and armour. Without all that, Bruce Wayne probably would have been huddled between the movie theatre seats with all the other terrified citizens of Denver the other night.

ever drop your keys

or something in a theater? Able to find them quickly were you?

If something as trivial as that is not so easy in real life, how then would some "packing" citizen deal with: darkness, random, flickering, night-vision destroying light from the screen, a shooter who made no declaration and gave no warning (also dressed in head-to-toe black), with an unknown quantity and type of weapons that could be firing from anywhere, in an expanding cloud of tear-gas and gun smoke amid a throng of screaming, fleeing people? I'm thinking a citizen with a gun would have added to the death toll.

An alert granny hooking him in the groin from behind with her cane is what I might hope for.