Batman: Mask of the Phantasm review

Much to my chagrin, it will likely be a while before I'm able to see The Dark Knight Rises. Theater tickets cost a lot of money these days, and with 3D – it is in 3D, isn't it? It has to be – a trip to the flicks is now a significant chunk out of my non-existent paycheck. So in the meantime, I've decided to catch up on some Batman films that I haven't seen. Earlier this week, I watched Batman: Year One, which wasn't half bad. And tonight, I decided that if I can't watch the Batman film that everybody is talking about, I can at least watch the Batman film that nobody is talking about.

Allow me to clarify: for better or for worse, there at least is an opinion on most Batman films. Adam West's Batman: The Movie is talked about all the time for how ridiculous and idiotic it is, a fact that the film itself almost seems to understand. Tim Burton's Batman is held in fairly high regard among most people I have heard, and Batman Returns has a great deal of mixed reviews. Batman and Robin is reviled for both its cheesy campiness and the fact that, unlike its 1960s predecessor, it does not realize how stupid it is. Even Batman Forever, though nowhere near as good as Burton's films or as expressly bad as Schumacher's followup, is at least brought up now and then as That Time Jim Carrey Wore Spandex. And of course Christopher Nolan's trilogy is nothing short of a pop cultural phenomenon, even if sometimes people seem to forget that there was a first film in the series.

But in 1993, hot off the success of the Animated Series and the disappointing returns from Batman Returns, there was another feature film release that is hardly mentioned at all – Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Part of the highly acclaimed Batman: the Animated Series, Mask of the Phantasm came out about a year after the launch of the series and fits in as part of the story. But the weird thing is that nobody ever seems to talk about it. I don't know if I have even ever met someone who has seen it, and basically every single one of my friends loves Batman. I had to find out about this on the internet, where the few people who mention it assure me it is quite good.

And the thing is, they're right. It is a really good Batman film. It both fits within the established mythos of the series (at the time. Later seasons would retcon some things.) and tells its own story well. Not only that, but unlike some film entries of existing series like Trigun: Badlands Rumble, the film has fairly high stakes. Sure, some of the most important characters are introduced in the movie and never seen outside of it, but their arcs are compelling and affect established characters in a way that makes sense.

For those who have not seen the film, there are two main stories that go on in it. The main story involves a mysterious hooded figure – the eponymous Phantasm, though as far as I noticed, nobody calls it this onscreen – who is systematically hunting down and killing mob bosses. These murders are blamed on Batman, which is not an unlikely leap, what what with the cape and the mask and the unmistakable influences from Gothic horror.

The second story involves a former love interest of Bruce Wayne's, a woman named Andrea Beaumont. And love interest is not a loose term here: we see her relationship with Bruce unfold quite seriously through a series of flashbacks. This story is actually very interesting, as it has an enormous effect on Bruce and raises answers to some pressing questions. Couldn't more good be accomplished by Bruce Wayne through donations to the police and charities? If so, why does he choose to become Batman instead? Where is the line drawn between vigilantism and vengeance and has Batman crossed it? It's an origin story that doesn't involve his technology or his childhood or his fear/fascination with bats, and it works because of it.

Other than these, the rest can be summed up by saying it's a part of the animated series. It succeeds best in its unique mesh of time periods and art styles. It can be somewhat camp and cartoony but still dark and interesting. The cast is fantastic, with some great (though short) parts with Wayne's butler Alfred and of course Mark Hamill's endlessly entertaining performance as The Joker. Furthermore, the scenes with the Phantasm evoke a wonderful classic monster movie feel, and significant development is given to the character and motivations of Bruce Wayne. Sure, it suffers some from its relatively short running time, and the climax perhaps leaves a bit to be desired and a lot unanswered. But in spite of these flaws, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm still is a great film, and easily belongs in the Top Five film adaptations of the Batman franchise ever made.

Review of Batman: Year One

I just finished watching the straight-to-DVD animated adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. It was pretty good. Granted, was certainly not the kind of film that could get a theatrical release. The pacing wasn't fantastic and the animation wasn't exactly studio quality. Additionally, at 64 minutes long, it isn't even as long as a Pokemon movie. But as a home release animated film, it worked quite well. It was certainly more interesting than some other comic book home releases like The Invincible Iron Man, which was surprisingly boring. And as far as Batman films go, it also was more coherent and engaging than Batman: Gotham Knight, the DVD release interquel between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

The film, for the uninitiated, follows both Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon as they come to Gotham City in order to fight crime: Gordon as an honest lieutenant in a precinct full of dirty cops, and Wayne as a vigilante who soon becomes the legendary Batman. Interestingly, the film spends a great deal of time more on Lt. Gordon, as he deals with corrupt cops, his superiors, troubles with his marriage, and a so-called giant bat that seems to be attacking people.

Honestly, I suspect that the film would have been done itself a favor if it had stuck with this idea and run with it. It told a very interesting story about Jim Gordon, and a Batman story completely from his view would be fantastic. Additionally, by dropping the few, unsatisfactory parts based around Wayne – as well as the late-coming and quickly forgotten arc about Catwoman – the film could have had more time to develop a few of its plot threads that seemed rushed.

That was one of the biggest problems with the film: the pacing. While the first half had a great deal of nicely done buildup, by the end it seemed like plot threads were rushed to completion – like the aftermath of Gordon's infidelity – or dropped altogether – like the origin of Catwoman. I understand that this is a direct adaptation of an existing story, but many of these parts feel awkwardly forced in.  Other problems revolved around the voice acting  In many cases, it was fine, but some acting, notably Bruce Wayne himself, fell rather flat.

The animation itself was a bit of a mixed bag, though perhaps not quite as literally mixed as Gotham Knight, which was a series of shorts produces by different directors and studios, creating the effect of switching halfway through an episode of Samurai Champloo to watch a little Death Note. Year One seems to take some of its cues from the current trend of Motion Comics, adapting a comic book or graphic novel by putting limited animation into the existing panels. However, it becomes clear that this is mostly to save money for the fight scenes. The fight scenes are stunningly animated, which can provide a bit of a jarring contrast to much of the rest of the film, which thankfully found a bit of a middle ground between the limited style of some scenes and the glossy production of others.

But all things considered, this was a fairly enjoyable film. The story was mostly solid, the animation had some great scenes, and the voice acting was fantastic with only a few exceptions. Fans of Batman Begins or Batman: The Animated Series would probably enjoy this – it certainly has a similar ring to it – and it could even change the minds of those who have found previous DVD releases to be somewhat lacking. It definitely wouldn't win over anyone who doesn't like Batman, of course. But let's be real here: those people are quite beyond help already.

Titles are the Hardest Part

People have known for a while how much writing is something I love, something I feel passionate about. But in truth, I haven't always had the drive to do it. It's difficult sometimes. Sometimes I just didn't feel like it. But I think the error in my thought process was this whole waiting for inspiration to strike. Because sometimes inspiration won't strike, and you just have to go and find it for yourself.

True, I'm still not finished with all of the projects I've been meaning to work on. I still am not much further than I was months ago on my second draft of Life, Love and the Fourth Wall, though admittedly I have changed the title. Clearly, calling it Life and Love Along the Fourth Wall counts as significant progress, wouldn't you agree? I'm still not certain that will be the final title though. Perhaps Life Along The Fourth Wall? Maybe something even more different.

A while back, I recalled hearing a commercial for National Public Radio that referred to NPR as being like “A little bit of tofu and a little chocolate cake.” I immediately thought that would make a great title for a play. I don't know why I thought that. I wasn't nearly as entrenched in reading and writing plays as I am now, and I had only just begun to really think about theatre seriously. But that has still stuck with me for all these years.  

Looking at it in print, it looks a bit long, but long play titles are nothing new. For instance: The Future is in Eggs or It Takes All Kinds To Make The World, or perhaps A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, or the brilliant and ridiculous Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Those are definitely lengthy titles, and that's one of the things that I always liked about theatre. This way of not taking itself so seriously that it can't have ridiculous titles that would make a Fall Out Boy album shiver with envy.

So that will be something to think about. As will actually writing scene 2 for my play. And then revising the rest of it. And then probably transcribing the whole thing into a scriptwriting program for my third draft. And then seeing if anyone wants to produce it. Okay, so the journey is far from over. But writing each day, this is part of it. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as any Successory will be happy to tell you, and writing is no different. Except for being measured in miles or actually involving walking.

Sins and Stages

On Monday, I woke up without you. I showered, running the water a little bit because I remembered you didn’t like to go in unless it had warmed up enough. I made breakfast and set two places. I read all day, looking up every time I thought I heard someone pass the door. Dinner was for two, romantic, candle-lit, rigatoni in meat sauce with sauteed pea pods and an unopened bottle of 2005 Merlot. I went to bed and fell asleep waiting for you. I dreamed myself in your arms with nothing between us.

On Tuesday, I couldn’t stand the thought of you. I picked up all the pictures I had of us, stuffed them into a mason jar and lit the crumpled mess on fire. As it burned, I just kept thinking how much better off I was, how I never needed you. I told myself that you held me back and now that you were gone I could finally prove how great I was and how everybody loved me and you just prevented me from shining and them from getting closer to me. When the flames settled down, I picked up the jar of ashes and melted plastic and threw it at the television. I sat down and cried until I passed out.

On Wednesday, I tried to think of how to change things. How it could have been different. I wished I had your grace and your charm. I resented that you had been so good at everything and so good to me while I was awful and spiteful to you. I wondered if I might have been half the person you were, might I have been able to keep this from happening. And then I looked through all the things you left behind. I watched your movies, hoping something could take my mind off of this. I put your Nintendo up for sale online.

On Thursday, I didn’t get up at all. I hardly moved all day, not leaving the bed, looking up at the ceiling, wishing for the cold or the numbness of death. I didn’t care that I stained the pillows as I drank the rest of the Merlot by myself. I didn’t check to see if anyone bid because I didn’t really care if they had. I drifted in and out of sleep. The awful dreams weren’t enough to make me get up.

On Friday, I waited an acceptance that will never come.

My Favorite Book

I've had a number of favorite books over the course of my life. When I was very young, it was of course The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, a book I do not entirely recall, but whose naming fits with my brother's favorite book around the same age, The Saggy, Baggy Elephant. Growing up, I enjoyed books by Roald Dahl, especially The BFG, which hit that mixture of childhood whimsy and people dying brutally that really spoke to me as a child. This might have contributed to my discovery of Michael Crichton, whose books I read with great fervor through what most people would consider my middle school and early high school years. Not long after, I discovered the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, which despite controversy and declining quality surrounding Card's more recent work, gave me Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead as two of my favorite books of all time.

Throughout the years since, I discovered other books that really stuck with me. Books like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien really resonated with me in high school, exposing me not only to fascinating narrative methods, but also to themes that I might have otherwise never accepted. In college, I have discovered an incredible love for poetry through the works of Langston Hughes and Billy Collins especially, both of whose unique styles I've sought to emulate and learn from. Additionally, books like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa, Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff, and Looking for Alaska by John Green have really rekindled my love for young adult literature.

But throughout all of this, I often forget about what has probably been my favorite book through it all, much like how I often forget that The Blues Brothers really is my favorite movie of all time. When I was around the age of Junior High – I don't recall exactly when – my trumpet instructor suggested I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. He said he thought it would fit with my sense of humor nicely, which was dry, sarcastic and silly as a sort of byproduct of growing up watching a lot of British films that often involved James Bond or the Monty Python troupe.

So I picked it up from a library, and I loved every line of it. I cannot remember finding anything so funny as the first time I read The Hitchhiker's Guide. It really remains an incredible book, a near-perfect blend of hard science fiction elements and mind-bending, absurd humor. Douglas Adams was the master of describing things in terms that are nearly impossible to visualize. A spaceship shaped like an Italian Bistro that can only be seen out of the corner of ones eye. A slender four that prances in the background of one scene. A cocktail that feels like getting bashed over the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick. It's a masterpiece of both classic sci-fi writing and humorous literature at the same time.

The “Hitchhiker's Trilogy” of course contains a total of five books and a short story by Douglas Adams, as well as another novel named And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. I haven't read this final one yet, apprehension prevents this for the moment. But I plan to after I reread the whole series, which I have just started again this week. Despite my uncertainty, I actually am looking forward to reading it. It would be nice to have an ending to the series that isn't the depressingly bleak Mostly Harmless.

But if you have not read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I cannot think of any excuse for not at least attempting. It's a difficult book, one that can hurt the brain at times, but it is also one of the funniest things ever written, and the series explores a number of interesting themes. It probably is my favorite book of all time, but this is, of course, always up for debate.

A Look at My Summer

This summer is the first time I've set a schedule for myself in regards to reading and writing. It's as true for music and sports as it is for writing that the only way to improve at something is to practice every day. Many of the best and most prolific writers, from writers that I love like Terry Pratchett to writers that I hate like Ernest Hemingway, got to their level of skill by writing every single day. Granted, not every great author wrote every day, but most of the ones that offer advice on how to become a better writer list that as the first step.

I always knew I had to do it, but I just never did. Unaccustomed as I have been to scheduling my own free time, I've generally written just whenever I felt like it, which is both a good way to ensure that nothing gets written and a great way to not get any better. So this summer, at the advice of my father and my brother (along with some words from Neil Gaiman bouncing around in my head), I decided to set up a regimen of sorts that both offers flexibility yet ensures that I will read and write every day.

Each morning, I read for at least one hour by 11:00 am. If I start too late to allow for an hour by 11:00, then I read for two hours. After I read, I write at least 400 words before using the computer for anything else.  I should state that this is a great way of ensuring that I will write, seeing as most of my favorite time wasters require computer use. Additionally, I update this blog Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I did miss this Friday, but I figure a one-day delay is not the end of the world. I also seek to send things out for publication weekly. This one is a bit harder to manage, seeing as I still get rather intimidated by the process. But it is something I can and will do, in spite of the anxiety.

Of further note is that July is Flash Fiction Month. A friend of mine told me about this. Similar to National Novel Writing Month, where participants attempt to write a fifty-thousand word novel during the month of November, Flash Fiction Month participants write a piece of Flash Fiction every day for the month of July. Flash Fiction, for those who don't know, is typically defined as a short short story that is under one thousand words. I've actually managed pretty well! It's an especially great way for me to practice writing Flash Fiction and prose fiction in general, which I have found difficult in the past. I won't write a masterpiece every day, but every bit of practice helps.

Writing is an acquired skill. I distinctly remember teaching myself to write eight years ago, and I will continue to teach myself to write for as long as I live. And the only way to really do this is to practice.

Every Day's the Fourth of July

Sometimes I wonder what people think of me as they pass by. I wonder what that little child with his ice cream pop thinks I am doing. I wonder what thoughts I cause in the people who speed swiftly down the street on bicycles, coupes, inline skates, what images I conjure in the minds of poets who might be strolling down the street, looking for a muse, a simple idea or picture or comment that might place one word firmly behind the next, and then more words following in a line or a stanza or a battalion of rhetorical soldiers.

Perhaps they look at me and see me at face value, just a frail old man sitting on a bench, jotting in a notebook while feeding pigeons on the sidewalk that leads into the entrance of the park. Perhaps they try to suppose my life story, my circumstances, maybe thinking my wife could have died years ago from terminal brain cancer, my children moved away to the corners of the world, the notebook filled with all the words I would have said to my wife, the pigeons filled with all the bread I would have given to my children.

I look at the pigeons, I look at the people, and I can't help but smile a bit. And I look down into my notebook, and my smile turns to a grin as I write the words I've been waiting my whole life to put down:

“Phase One Complete.”

“Delta Strike is Go.”