Batman vs The Imax
I went to see Batman yesterday. Marylou and I and some of the Moran circus troupe I was telling you about. There are bloody hundreds of them and they’re all geniuses in their own cackly way. Anyway Head Moran Cait, treated the lot of us to Batman at the Imax and afterwards to a japanese Restaurant for a slap up Hot Sake session.
Look at how many there are! That’s nothing; there’s at least another thirty of them back at their tent.
I was very excited about the film. I’ve been a big Batman fan for years and I thought that the first batch of films with Keaton, Nicholson, DeVito and big Arnie were an insult. Sure the new films are dark but that’s the way the comic started out, before it was corralled into the war effort and later after a few desperate years of Bat Mite and punch ups on Mars. IT’S THE WAY IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!
We rode the tubes, falling out at Waterloo and then falling straight into the nearest food and booze establishment which happened to be the Royal festival Hall. I had a cappuccino, friendlied up with a cheeky whisky while Mary had coffee and some kind of Humous Focaccia. The Imax was packed and everybody seemed to be eager for the film to start but just as we were about to find our seats, CALAMITY! Some bloody alarm goes off and we’re told to leave the building. After standing outside for fifteen minutes or so we’re ushered back in and in no time we’re in our seats looking at a screen that is bigger than Jeebus. usually at this point would be tunneling head first down a massive bucket of popcorn but due to ’staff shortages’ there was concessions stand so I had to make do with half a bottle of warm water.
There was only one trailer but oh! what a trailer it was. The Watchmen film looks aces and I would implore anyone who hasn’t read the greatest, most culturally significant graphic novel ever written (and drawn) to check it out.
Then it was Batman and it was fantastic. I’m not sure which bits were the 3D bits, if any of it was, but it didn’t matter. Heath Ledger is, even after all the beautiful corpse hype, a brilliant Joker. Unhinged, funny and completely psychotic, the Joker of ‘Arkham Asylum’ and ‘Killing Joke’. Unfortunately the alarm went off a few times during the film and the lights went on and off and at one point the film stopped for five minutes. All of this was annoying, true, but I didn’t see the point in the anger and rudeness that I witnessed in the lobby later on. I didn’t want my money back (not that I’d spent any), I’d gone to see a film and I saw it. I don’t like ‘Rip-off Britain’ any more than you do but I don’t think what happened here was anybody’s fault.
We strolled along Southbank as far as Tooley Street where our restaurant lay. I had a red duck curry washed down with a couple of bottles of Tiger and a few tumblers of hot Sake which warmed my insides and rounded it off with more coffee and whiskey. Again this was all paid for and I thank all that is magic for having such beautiful, generous friends. After Keystone-esque capers on the tubes we finally arrived home and sat outside for a couple of hours singing songs and pretending to understand what Cait was talking about before wending our weary ways skyward and to bed.
