(Not So) Fast Break

Photo by Grant McKeekin, check out his Flickr here.

Basketball runs in my family.

My uncles from my Mother's side of the family were high school standouts for the El Paso High Tigers, with my younger uncle playing semi-pro basketball in Mexico for a time.  My older cousin Chris was a starter for his high school team in Albuquerque, and was quite a good one too.  I remember travelling with my family to his games in Las Cruces when La Cueva would play a local team there, like Mayfield or Onate.  My uncle Emilio was a local legend in El Paso, who often played pick up games against the famous 1966 Texas-El Paso team that won the NCAA championship, and even played for Don Haskins for a couple of years before a devastating knee injury derailed his hopes of turning pro.  His two daughters were starters for their ladies high school team, the Hanks High School Lady Knights, before going off to college.   Another cousin played for his local high school team while his father was stationed in Germany.  My sister played some junior high school ball for her team, and even my brother gave a crack at trying to play hoops.  He wasn't bad, but decided to do track instead.

Myself?   With this amazing history in my family, and the potential for possible adequacy, and perhaps even stardom in my genes, I should have been amazing at this sport that I had an interest in. right?

But no, I sucked hard.

No, that's a bit too harsh.  Despite my interest in the game (I'm a lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan), the skills weren't there.  Up until high school  I stood at five feet, had no rhythm or feel for the game, and barely able to control dribbling the ball.  So, to put it a little kinder, I was absolutely abysmal at basketball.  A vortex of suck, as the cool kids on the basketball blogs put it.

Needless to say, I tended to be on terrible teams when it came to P.E. basketball teams, especially in junior high, where coaches, out of disinterest or laziness, just allowed the kids to form their own teams.  Naturally, the kids that were good, or at least competent, tended to group together, creating two or three super-teams  which naturally walloped the out of the five or six squads made up of scrubs.  So, for the month and a half that basketball was organized for that particular grading period, P.E. became an exercise of suiting up in our uniforms of old t-shirts and shorts that were a couple of washes away from being used to wash a car (my uncle coined the term P.L.C.'s for these clothes, which stood for Para Llavar El Carro) and getting smoked by fifty. Yes, it was every bit as fun as it sounds.

It was in the final few games that my particular band of unathletic misfits (who had the audacity to call themselves the Celtics, which may have jinxed the real life Celtics who went 32-50 that season and missed the playoffs), went against the team that had dubbed themselves the Rockets, who were sitting pretty at the top of our makeshift division, with the playoffs set to begin the next week in a winner gets absolutely nothing, round robin tournament before we switched over to Dodgeball or something along those lines.

Predictably, things started off badly.  That particular team had at least two of the starters from the Slider 7th Grade A team, with at least a couple of the bench guys from the B team thrown into their mix.  They could play, and had been since they were kids.  My team on the other hand, could be summed up in the following statement:  we weren't big, but we were slow.   So it wasn't a surprise that after twenty minutes of play, my team was down by double digits.  My memory is hazy, but the point differential was probably in the thirties or forties.  It wasn't pretty.

Things only got worse after what consisted of our halftime, which was generally break long enough to go run to the outside water fountain, which was usually the one fountain on the school whose refreshment tasted faintly like the pipes. Still, whatever was in that faintly lead tasting hydration must have ignited some superhuman gene within our opponents, because we were getting destroyed at an even more breakneck pace than before. It was like watching the Seven Seconds or Less Suns, but with you being the guy this time, you're on the receiving end of the beating.

That's when my teammates started leaving. It should have been expected. At some point, no matter how hard you might try, there are certain things that you just aren't able to do, simply because physically, you can't. In this case, after all the losing from the past few weeks, as the schedules were far from balanced, the running up the score on others, and the current annihilation in progress, sometimes people reach their breaking points. And in this case, someone did. I don't remember the kids name, but I just remember the look of disgust on his face that preceded a quiet, cracking voice, still halfway between manhood and childhood croaking "Screw this."  One moment, he was playing matador defense against the other team's point guard, the next moment, he suddenly turned and walked sullenly, dejectedly off the court.  The dam had broken, as once one person leaves, it's hard to keep other people feeling the same way from doing so.  In the span of minutes, I found that I was now very much alone on the basketball court.

This created a quandary, as the other team and I, were at something of an impasse.  The game was still going on, and coaches were watching to make sure that we were participating.  Quitting wasn't something that reflected well on one's P.E. grade, even if it was the difference from getting an A or a B on an otherwise useless class period.  On the other hand, there wasn't a team on the floor anymore, so technically, how could the game still be continue?  Realistically, I could leave the game, walk away, and no one would have blamed me for doing so.

Except I couldn't do that.  Call it stubbornness,  call it pride, or maybe some uncrushable part of my sense of self that I had yet to discover, but I couldn't walk away.  The idea was unacceptable to me.  Time was ticking, and a decision needed to be made.  I had the ball in my hands, and five other people were standing, wondering just what I was going to do next.

I had no one to inbound the ball to me, I just bounced it once and charged in, five on one, myself against the world.

If this were an episode of Saved By The Bell, or at the very least an episode of ABC's After School Special, I suppose this would be the moment where i discovered some sort of  hidden ability, an Allen Iverson-esque ability of basketball in which I could play in isolation, dominate the game, and somehow lead myself to a comeback.  Or that my teammates, inspired by my stubborn determination, would come roaring back to my side, and through some mixture of grit, luck, and determination, we would have emerged victorious.

But no, I got destroyed, 70-something to 4.  And I was extremely lucky to get the four.  The score would have probably been higher if the whistles not eventually sounded the final whistle for all of the games on the playground courts.  I have to admit, I was slightly embarrassed.  I hadn't expected to do well, although I didn't expect a trouncing along those lines.  However, I do remember feeling oddly proud of myself that I had at least played the entire period, and played my hardest, even though it wasn't very well.

The next day, after suiting up, I passed by the dot-matrixed printed standings of our divisions, which usually told us which playground court to go to, along with where we stood in our divisions.  Out of curiosity  I looked at my team's record, and was surprised to see that we had somehow picked up a win.  Well, I wasn't  surprised, my mind was blown.  I asked the couch if he had made a typo, and he said, no, you guys picked up a win yesterday.

I immediately sought out one of the guys from the other team the day before.  I asked him, what happened?

"You won the game."  He said simply.

"How?"  I asked, confused more than ever.  "You kicked my teams ass, and then my ass right after that."

"You didn't give up."  He said simply, looking at me like I was a complete idiot.  "Everyone left, but you stayed and you still played.  So we went to coach after the game and forfeited.  You earned that win."  And then he walked off, leaving me staring as he walked out into the school grounds as my band of misfits slowly dragged their sneaks to today's latest trouncing (we lost hard, breaking our one game win streak.)

Despite the rather unbelievable circumstances of this story, it is a true one, and I've told it as closely to the truth as a can, for it did happen almost 19 years ago.  And it has taught me quite a bit as I've reflected over time.  That being persistent and confident in one's self can help lead you to where you need to go.  That people will respect the effort that you place in a cause, even if it at times may be a hopeless one.  And that at times, even though something may seem hopeless or dire, perhaps it is better to

Maybe I do have something to add to my family's basketball history after all.  A story about a guy that took on the world, got beaten up in the process, and yet still came out with a victory, in his own way.  This is not going to be a story that will be held in esteem, nor will be told in the nostalgic, sepia tones that the tales of my uncles' hoop dreams are told then and now.  It's a story that will likely die with me, and will likely be forgotten.  But the important thing is that it happened.  And for that brief moment, as I stood in the hallway of the middle school, with the rest of my gym classmates filing past me, I might have, for that brief moment, felt like they did, when their stories were the moment, when they were young, and they were writing their stories on the hardwood.

Five Of My Favorite Disaster Flicks

Tomorrow is December 21st, 2012, the latest date that doomsday fetishists have circled for our immanent demise (and also, coincidentally enough, my parents' 33rd wedding anniversary.)   Seeing as how the world could either end in a massive technological-zombie apocalypse, or more likely, nothing, I figured I would share five of my favorite post-apocalypse films that I would show for a movie marathon.  Why?  Because it's the end of the world, what else do you have going on tomorrow?

28 Days Later

A modern horror classic, 28 Days Later is, in my opinion, perhaps the most important movie in the zombie genre since the original Night of The Living Dead.   It was revolutionary for it's departure from the zombie as a shuffling, slow, but unrelenting menace, instead portraying the undead hoards (well, infected hoards) as quick moving, violent threats that had to be dealt with quickly.  It's really a beautiful film to look at, with it's grainy, almost dirty look of the film showing Danny Boyle's point of view of post-apocalypse Great Britain.  There are some beautiful scenes: the almost picturesque views of the English countryside, allowing the viewer to momentarily forget the surroundings and circumstances of the film, the view of Jim walking through a empty and devastated London, to the intimate, brutal, and gory zombie battles, in particular the final scene when Jim leads the hoards of infected to rescue Selena and Hannah.  The soundtrack is also top notch, and is perfectly integrated with the film's scenes, in particular the zombie attacks, which gets progressively more frantic and unrelenting as the movie progresses.  All in all, it's a great film, and unlike many zombie films, it has a happy, hopeful ending.

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is another disaster film favorite of mine.  Granted, it's completely unrealistic (28 Days Later's zombie scenario is at least plausible, as opposed to God forgetting to pay the heat in this film), but it also knows this and doesn't take itself seriously.  It's highly entertaining, features Emmy Rossum looking incredibly cute, Dennis Quaid bring his brand of rugged awesomeness to the film, as well as Jake Gyllenthall bring youthful enthusiasm along with his brand of mediocre acting (he was great in Jarhead, though).  All in all, if you have time to waste, don't feel like exercising your brain, and just want a popcorn movie, this one's for you.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend is another good post-apocalypse film, loosely based (very loosely)on the comic book of the same name. It’s very much in the vein of 28 Days Later, in which a virus devastates the world, leaving very few survivors (in this case, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. No word about Carlton or Jazz). We have some great empty city shots, such as the driving through the empty city scene, as well as the mini-golf off of the aircraft carrier shot. Still, even though the source material is deviated from, it’s a good movie, and Will Smith does a fantastic job in it. See the extended cut with the alternate ending, it’s awesome.

The Postman

The Postman gets a lot of grief for being another over the top, over-budgeted Kevin Costner post-apocalypse film. Actually, though, it's not bad. The story isn't great, but it's plausible, and the cast manages to pull it off well enough to give it some believability. Costner's acting is good, and seeing him go from being a lonser to the father of civilization is oddly gratifying. And how can you not hate the Tom Petty cameo as the mayor of the dam city? The only problem I have is, didn't society come back a little too quickly at the end of the film? Other than that, it's not bad, much better than people will give it credit for.

The Book of Eli

he Book of Eli is a great film, centering around Denzel's character Eli, travelling through west coast, as he takes a Bible to Alcatraz to mass produce to the population, but is immediately set upon by raging atheists who want the book's power for their own means.  It's a gritty, dark and dirty film, but one that has some great fight scenes, and some good acting in the form of Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.  It's another plausible survivalist tale, and a damn good one.

So, hopefully if you are having any end of the world parties, be safe, be responsible, and don't do anything stupid, because remember, if the world doesn't end, and you do something stupid, you're going to have to answer for it on December 22.

Taping Music Off Of The Radio: A Brief Retrospective

Photo by Tramavirtual

My office Christmas party was this past Friday, and as usual, a great time was had, with lots of conversation, some drunken observations (I never drink at these gatherings for fear of becoming the talk of the office), as well as the usual shenanigans that tend to occur between co-workers after hours.  Rewind back to three hours prior, and I was tearing open my closets like I was robbing the place, looking for a roll of wrapping paper to wrap my secret Santa gift.

It was in this ransacking of my own home that I found something that had been tucked away in the back of a closet for quite some time, the sheen of dust already turning it's oily black exterior into a sort of gunmetal grey. I paused over this dusty little container, curious to what I had in there and what may have possessed me to keep this thing over the years.

Most of these tapes were made back in the 1990's, a magical time when I went from a awkward, shy youth to a even more awkward, shy young adult.  The Internet was still in it's infancy, and still had it's potential to become something new and exciting before becoming overrun by Facebook and porn.  MTV still had music in between their reality show programming, and Kurt Loder was years away from being locked in a freezer like Sly Stallone in Demolition Man, only to be thawed out when someone big from the 80's and 90's had passed.  The highlight of the video game world was probably Doom, in all of it's pixelated gore and glory.   Woodstock had returned, was hailed as a success, returned again, and went down in a fiery mess of violence, commercialism and Fred Durst.

The 1990's were also, more than any decade in my humble opinion, plagued by the misfortune of having an overabundance of albums that had perhaps one or two really good songs, with the rest of the album being only a hop skip and  a jump away from being categorized as a fetid sewer.  Keep in mind, the average CD price was around $12 to $15.  In 90's dollars, that was the difference between buying a music just so I could have access to the song Sex And Candy, or using said fundage on a tank of gas, a cheap date, some illegal beer for a kick back, or some other tomfoolery that I may have been up to back in those good old days.

Fortunately children, or those children who are young enough to have been born after 1990 or so, there were ways to get the song if you wanted it bad enough.  The first was to see if you could bum a CD from a friend that happened to be stupid enough to buy the song, usually for another CD that you had been stupid enough to purchase.  However, if you were desperate enough, and had enough patience, there was a way to get around having to pay for the song: taping said song off of the radio.   It's a long dead art, killed by the digital age, but back then, and several generations before then, we had this down to a science.  All you needed was a Memorex, a stereo with a record option, and some time.

The process began with calling the deejay on the request line, offering everything but your first born child for the chance of the song of your dreams to be played.  This tended to be a crap shoot, as deejays, then as now, tend to ahve their own ideas as far as what is good music that should be played.  I usually had the best of luck with Glen Garza, the only guy at our local (only) rock station to play music after 1986.   I hated Magic Mike, who played a non-stop orgy of Van Halen, both from the Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth eras.

Second, you assumed the yoga-esque pose by the radio, waiting like a lion for it's quarry.  Everyone had their own positions, usually some bizarre love child of the utkatasana and malasana poses.  Anything that prevented you from developing a bloodclot in your legs that would lodge itself in your lungs and kill you like Finney from the novel A Separate Peace.  

And there you would wait, often waiting through aggrevating commercials (like the infamous J.J. King of Beepers jingles), and at times shifting your yoga positions to something more comfortable, even taping an occasional song that you might have liked and had not occurred to you.  We all even had the songs that we knew and hated enough to use for bathroom breaks, grab a bite to eat, or go do something productive (in my case, usually something by Rush.)

And who can forget those moments waiting by the radio when your musical quarry, finally DID come on.....only to have the accursed deejay start rambling on about how this was the band's new single, how he thought it was awesome, and the name of the radio station before the song began to play. All the while, you're crouching there with the recorder going on your stereo screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP! I"m trying to get music here!"  Especially if said deejay happened to love the sound of his own voice to talk right up until the lyrics began (unfortunately, also Glen Garza.)

True, I did have enough recordings where I could remix two different sections into one complete song, and I acquired the skill (a useless one) to get it to where it was seemless.  But nothing beat the feeling of recording the song perfectly from one take to another, without interruption, commercials, or egotistical deejay ranting to ruin it.   Over time, I had even had a sort of loose network with my friends, where we each traded different mixtapes amongst each other for other music that we had.  It was like Pokemon, but without the stigma attached to it.  You would talk about new bands you had heard, shared music that you had, and just find different ways to enjoy something that you may have been passionate about.  And I think it's this part of the tapes that is why I kept them for all these years.  It was the memories of sharing and trading tunes with friends, and the different memories of a more innocent and simple time, of days gone by.

P.S.  Fuck you, Glen Garza.  I'm still bitter.

The Atrophied Remains Of My Terminated Writing Career

Photo by Thorin Nielson (check out his Flickr here)

I was cleaning out my USB drives the other day.  It's rather tedious work, as it is mostly organizing folders, old school assignments, small text file notes and other random bullshit that tends to accumulate when you are in a hurry or want to write something down on the go.  One of my more hated personal traits of mine is that I do tend to be a bit of a hoarder.  For some reason known only to my subconscious mind, I tend to hang onto things longer than I should, always out of some irrational fear that I'll need it at a later point, but won't have it.  In reality, most of it deserves to be tossed out.  Far too often, what sounds good at the time, after it's had the time to percolate and age, really turns out to have been a horrendous notion in the first place.  In the end, most of it after review is sent to my electronic dustbin, where it eventually, after a couple of keystrokes, is gone forever, blown into millions of electronic smithereens.  In the digital age, deletion tends to be easier, as we lose that physical connection that we have back when people found themselves buried under Andres mountain ranges of tree pulp.

However, upon encountering an older USB drive that I forgotten I had, I was surprised to find out that I unearthed a treasure trove of older .doc files that I had from years ago.  This was my old back up of my creative projects, back when I fancied myself as a younger, browner, Stephen King.  The amount of stuff on there ran the gamut of literary expression.  Old poems, some of which had been finished, but never collected or posted.  Various started and aborted short stories, although a few were finished.   And, incredibly enough, four projects that I was once very serious about that, but had stopped working on, all far enough along that they weren't ideas or short stories anymore, but full fledged bodies and skeletons of narratives.  I suppose the best analogy to describe them would be if you were rebuilding a car, and had managed to get the frame cleaned and straightened out, had the basic guts of the engine installed, as well as some of the necessary components that make a car a car.  Granted, it wouldn't get you very far, but at the very least, there was something there that gave you a vague idea of what the car would have looked like when finished, and perhaps even taken you where you wanted to go (like those junk yard cars that exist to solely take you from one car corpse to another.)

They were never finished, and probably weren't anywhere close to being so, but the story concepts were far enough along that each one had sort of undergone a miniature big bang, with universes beginning to form around the central outlines and ideas of the stories.  There were characters that had evolved from mere shadows that shuffled in and out of my subconscious, having fully decided to step out into the overcast light that I imagine is what the inside of my mind looks like, to introduce themselves and take part in whatever literary whim I would decide to cast them in.  There were four stories that I had managed to get quite a bit of work done.

• Battle Royale - A colaborative effort with Jesse Sanchez, a friend of mine at the time.  We had both read and watched the film, Battle Royale, and wanted to create an American version of the film, using the same guidelines as the BR Universe.  
• A Walk With Death - A random idea of mine, it would be a collection of stories of people, who, in their last five minutes of life, would have a conversation with Death himself.  Not all of them were exactly nice, uplifting stories.  Some were quite dark.  Really dark.
• A Social Experiment - Another odd title of mine, where I took the concept: what if you took a regular guy, suddenly made him the world's most wanted criminal, and dropped him into a foreign country to survive on his wits alone for three days.  I wrote day's one and three on legal paper, with the outlines of day two typed out.
• Like A Song (Working Title) - Like a song was a dystopian/sci-fi novel that I was writing, about an otherwise perfect society that we had in the future, It centered around a young man, a promising cadet for the society's security service/military forces, that wound up joining the rebellion after a great personal loss that occured, as well as how the event was spun.  It had giant robots, various tidbits of philosophy that I had learned, most notably Noam Chomsky, as well as my own various theory about religion, mythology, and other things that happened to pop into my head.  This was my opus,   This work was the most complete, and actually had a book and a half done, as well as some other future sequels finished.

After going through the words that I had once so carefully typed out, dedicated so many evenings to weaving the different threads of thoughts together, a thought came to me.

Why didn't I ever finish?

I suppose, in two cases, real world events came into play that made my once carefully crafted thoughts dated.  I had a falling out with Jesse, and tried to continue Battle Royale on my own.  Then, The Hunger Games was published, and I knew that, with a similar premise and it's own rising sales numbers, a true tribute to Takami's work would not be possible.   As for Like A Song, around the same time as I stopped work on Royale, I discovered the T.V. series Firefly, which more or less covered some of the same concepts that I had been working on in my own work.  And so, I discontinued it, fearing being seen as piggybacking off of Joss Wheldon's work (although I do love Firefly, Angel, and Wheldon's work with the Marvel Universe.)

Before I knew it, hours had passed, and it was now early in the morning hours.  And that same thought lingered in the air, as sobering and depressing as the smell of a lost love's perfume, enough to bring back some fond, happy memories, but the absence of the person making it all the more apparent that the physical presence is gone.

Why didn't I ever finish?

I knew the answer.

Fear.

Fear of being labeled as being too similar to another writer's work.  A fear of being labeled of not being quite good enough.  Most importantly, it was a fear that the work that I had put in heart and soul into, spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours working on crafting thousands of different cranial synapses together, and something I had truly cared about and was passionate about, being rejected as not being good enough to share with others.   Around 2009, I abandoned any further attempts at a writing career.  I felt that I was too old, and that many of the ideas I had written were already now out in the public.  I deemed that the stories had been told, in one way or another, and that rather have them suffer the fate of being labeled as unoriginal, and savaged as such, I would just archive them and do nothing.

However, none of it is as bad as I may have thought.  Some of it does have some originality, and the narrative is a much different than what I would have thought.  I'm thinking of finishing some of it, and rather than submit it to publish, just sharing it here for free.  For at my best, even though I have a great number of things I like to dabble in creatively, I'm an daydreamer, and a story teller.  Perhaps, just by putting it out there for the general public to read and receive it as they choose to, I'll have achieved both.

Batman On Film: How Could The Nolan Series Continue?

With the rumors that persist about Joseph Gordon-Levitt possibly being in talks to appear in the rumored to be in development Justice League movie as Batman, in a attempt to tie in both the Nolan Franchises into the project, a la The Avengers, it brings up some thoughts again as to how could the Dark Knight Series could possibly continue without it imploding into a spectacular failure as the Burton/Schumacher Franchise did.

For starters, before I address anything, let me say that I think that Gordon-Levitt would be a solid choice to be Batman.  His character, John Blake, was a capable detective, of above average intelligence, tough, determined, had a unflinching sense of justice, and was more than able of handling himself in a fight.  Provided that people are willing to see a somewhat different style of Batman, I think that he could be quite successful 

While it's possible that there could be a completely original storyline done by Warner Brothers as far as how they could continue the narrative of Batman with Blake wearing the mantle of the Dark Knight, Nolan's films do draw upon the vast and diverse amount of comic book source material available.  With that in mind, here are four different comic book approaches on how I could see any potential Dark Knight sequels progressing.

Jim Lee did the kick ass artwork above, btw.

The Batman Beyond Approach

The most popular approach that has been recommended, and probably one of the more obvious on the surface, is the Batman Beyond approach.  Batman Beyond, set in the future, is the story of Terry McGuiness, who more or less inherits the mantle of the Batman after his own father is murdered.  Guided by a elderly, but still sharp Bruce Wayne, McGuiness learns the role on the fly, over time becoming more and more skilled as his predecessor, and becoming a capable Batman in his own right.   It would work well, as Detective Blake, aside from his sharp detective skills and above average intelligence, doesn't show much in terms of the necessary fighting skill that made Bruce Wayne such a formidable opponent.  While that could be acquired, Blake is otherwise more than able for the mental rigors of being Batman, which is quite different from McGuiness for much of the series.  Plus, with Bale having all but said goodbye to the series, and his Bruce Wayne having appeared to be at peace and happy for the first time in ages at the end of the The Dark Knight Rises, it's highly unlikely that this will be the way to go.  This doesn't mean that the Batman Beyond concept should be ignored, as the series is now regarded to be a modern classic.  The writing is still excellent, the animation is on par with modern series', and it still feels innovative and fresh when viewed now.  It has aged aged remarkably well, and could be a successful film series in it's own right if Warner Brothers decided to go in a completely different direction than a reboot.  Keep this series in mind, and in the meantime, check out the series if you've never seen it before.

The Batman: Reborn Approach

In 2009, after a storyarc that resulted in the apparent death of Bruce Wayne, and a citywide fight in a chaotic Gotham City instigated by Jason Todd, Bruce's fallen Robin, in The Battle For The Cowl, the Batman titles returned to find a new Batman and Robin team gracing their pages, with Dick Grayson, the original Robin, now wearing the mantle of the Bat, and Damian Wayne, Bruce's highly skilled, but violent and socially inept son, now as Robin.  Though the pairing didn't last, as Wayne eventually returned and the entire DC Universe was rebotted after the events of Flashpoint, the concept of a different man under the mask was highly successful, and incredibly popular, much more so than DC's past failed attempt at replacing Bruce Wayne in the failed experiment of John Paul Valley as Batman.

This is probably the storyline concept that would make the most sense, as Dick Grayson was a younger man that respected the legacy of his mentor, but at the same time was not afraid to be his own man.  He had the uniform altered to fit his fighting style, as well as the technology in some cases, and had his own methods for dealing with the police and with the Rogue's Gallery (most notably the Joker, who actually disappeared during Grayson's tenure, only to turn up posing as a masked detective in the UK.)  For the concept to work, however, the writers of the film would have to consult with Grant Morrison, who planned the entire sequence of events leading to Wayne's exit and Grayson's elevation.  Morrison also operates more or less along the lines of Nolan (in my opinion) and wouldn't be afraid to find new ways to modernize and twist up the various Batvillians into the series.   This is my pic for how the series would continue.

The Three Ghosts Of Batman Approach

Another concept for possibly introducing Blake into the role of Batman would be another Grant Morrison concept, The Three Ghosts of Batman.  In this storyline, Batman stumbles upon three masked pretenders, all clad in some variation of his costume.  As the story develops, Batman uncovers that a failed Gotham P.D./U.S. Military Project to train three capable Gotham City cops, one of whom would replace him if he were ever to fall in the line of duty.  It was an interesting, and at times, twisted story, especially when you saw that the mental conditioning and trauma that would normally serve as the drive that kept Batman going had essentially driven the three insane.  It would certainly be a good approach to see in a Nolan series extension, in which Blake, newly operating as Batman, is confronted by each of the three pretenders, whom all seek to take on the role that they trained for, but was given to Blake.  The problem is that it would be an incredibly difficult concept to pull off believable, and as such, the only would who might be able to pull off the concept might be Nolan himself.  Because Nolan has moved on from the Dark Knight, that's not happening.

The Dark Knight Strikes Back Approach

The Frank Miller era of Batman isn't a new source for the Nolan Franchise.  Batman Begins was very loosely based on Batman:  Year One, and The Dark Knight Rises has elements from The Dark Knight Returns integrated into it.  So why not go back to the Miller well one more time, and use the base premise of The Dark Knight Strikes Back, in which Batman, after a hiatus and taking time to rebuild his body, arsenal, suit, and train and army of vigilantes, returns to take down the totalitarian regime that is run by Lex Luthor.   Except in this case, we can simplify it to being just Blake, having taken the time to condition his body in a manner similar to his predecessor, as well as rebuild the arsenal by collaborating with Lucius Fox, returns to Gotham to strike back at a new criminal syndicate that has formed in the absence of Batman.  It would still have the realistic, gritty appeal of the Nolan films, as well as allow for the introduction of other classic Bat villains to take part in the mayhem (Killer Croc, Harley Quinn and even The Riddler all lend themselves particularly well for the Nolan treatment).  It works from a certain point of view, but you would have to have a creative enough director and writer to pull it off.

All in all, there are several ways you can go for reintroducing a Batman into the Nolan Universe, if you are creative enough.  There are infinite amounts of possibilities, provided the director is as inventive enough as Nolan was.  It all hinges on Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC Comics, feeling on whether or not they are willing to go with a Batman without Bruce Wayne.  It would take a great deal of courage to do so, but it could be immensely successful if they so choose to go in that direction.

Flick Review: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Directed By:  Stephen Chbosky

Starring:  Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller, Emma Watson, Mae Wittman, Paul Rudd, Nina Dobarev, and others

Well, it's been a bit dead around here, mostly due to the madness that usually comes with finals week, but with the week now officially here, I do have some time to kill, so I thought I'd tell you all about a wonderful little movie I saw a week ago. It's been out for a while, and might now still be available in your local multiplex, but if it is, I highly recommend you go catch it.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower is based off of the novel of the same name by Stephen Chbosky. It was published back in 1999, and the film certainly looks the part, with the fashions, music, and settings looking the part. However, it refreshingly go overboard with trying to recreate the period, but goes with just enough of an atmosphere to make it authentic, without making it look cliche. Surprisingly enough, the novel was published by MTV, but you'll be hard pressed to find anything of the mind numbing obtuseness that makes up modern MTV.   Chbosky also directs the film, which means the film's characters, narratives, messages, and storyline stay close to how the author intended it, a true rarity.

The film follows Charlie (Logan Lerman), a quite, intelligent, observant, thoughtful kid who is about to begin his freshman year. However, Charlie himself has his own mental burdens aside from the usual teenage issues, having lost his best friend recently to suicide, and still mourning the loss of his beloved aunt, whose death he still hasn't gotten over. It’s implied that he has sought some counseling over it, but still is troubled by both events. He begins the year a loner, lacking in basic social skills, and treated by the student population and his older sister with a mixture of disdain and occasional torment by the usual douchebags that every high school tends to have.

 This changes when Charlie introduces himself to Patrick (Ezra Miller), an outgoing, hilarious and openly gay student from his shop class, and subsequently falls in with his group of misfits which include Patrick’s stepsister Sam (Emma Watson), a intelligent, music loving girl with a bit of a slutty reputation. Charlie begins to escape his shell little by little as his newfound friends expose him to new and engaging things, including hip bands, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, drugs, and being a part of a group. However, things get complicated over time as Charlie finds struggles to cope with his increasing love for Sam, the weight of his observations about emotional attachment and people, and his own past traumas beginning to re-emerge.

The cast is excellent, and mesh well with one another, giving Charlie’s two families a sense of realism that is natural. We’ll start with Emma Watson, who is the biggest name here due to the Harry Potter films. Watson is endearing as Sam, the passionate 80’s loving emo music nut, something she shares in common with Charlie. However, she is overshadowed by several of the other cast members at times, particularly by Miller. Watson pulls off the American accent well, with only one or two slip ups. Ezra Miller, who plays Charlie’s eccentric, knowledgeable, gay and supportive best friend, rocks this film. He’s charismatic and your eyes instantly fix on him whenever he’s on screen. Some of the best one liners throughout the film are made by him, and he instantly turns every situation into a barrel of laughs, even though he does have his own insecurities that he hides beneath the surface.

Logan Lerman plays the lead as Charlie, and in my opinion, is outstanding. He gives Charlie real intelligence and thoughtfulness, as well as giving the early scenes of him as the shy outcast real believability. He also gives him a sneaky sense of humor, which is almost on par with the outrageousness of Patrick. All in all, he’s great, and a capable strong lead. In my opinion, Lerman seems to have found his niche as an actor. He always seemed miscast in the more action oriented roles like Percy Jackson and The Three Musketeers that he played earlier in his career. But as a thoughtful, cerebral type of actor, he shines.

The rest of the acting is solid, with some big names backing up the kid leads. Paul Rudd is lovable as the English Teacher/Mentor to Charlie. He’s both enough of an authority figure for a student to look up to, while also enough of a confidant for a student to confide in. He’s the English teacher we all wish we had, but very few of us got (I was lucky enough to have two, Mr. Flickenger and Mrs. Avila, respectively.) Mae Whitman, from Parenthood fame, plays Mary Elizabeth, a member of Patrick's group who is sarcastic and pushy, and yet has a softer and insecure side that she keeps hidden. Nina Dobrev, who plays Charlie's sister, Candace, gives a good, but not great performance of a sister who is self consumed in her own problems, but does have a love for her brother that emerges as the film passes. Dylan McDermott plays Charlie’s father, and does a good job, playing a man who genuinely loves and wants to help his son, but is not sure of just how to do so. Even the master of gore effects, Tom Savini, has a small cameo role as an irascible shop teacher that is memorable for the comedic foil that he provides with Patrick.

The music is excellent, bringing back fond memories of the days when friends used to be able to share mixtapes of various music on cassette. The soundtrack features a good mix of 90’s bands, with some classics tossed in for some flavor. The cinematography is good too, giving some great visuals for some of the more memorable moments, such as the tunnel scenes.

However, what I really like about the film is that it feels real, and not staged or fake. The interaction between the group is real and not forced, as are the different moments of awkwardness for the more romantic moments. It also perfectly captures the angst of having a crush on a cool, pretty girl who dates assholes, but without the creepiness that movies usually convey with it. It also has the best quote about why people get involved with people that they shouldn't or don’t deserve to be.

It also genuinely captures high school, in ways that most films fail to do (American Pie and She’s All That being some of the worst offenders.) It captures how tough high school can be for kids that are introverted, or outcasts, as well as the importance of having a loyal, devoted group of friends of the period. It covers how hard it can be to be a gay kid that has not yet come out, as well as how difficult life can be for one that has. It also gives the kids a genuine sense that they don’t all have it figured out, in spite of some outward confidence that they may. But the best part of the film may be that it’s also inspirational from the standpoint of being able to have the courage to open yourself to the world, for the good and bad. It also gives a genuine hopeful message that one can move on from tragedy, or from past traumas that can cripple a person if not dealt with, and that one can lead a happy and fruitful life. So, I highly recommend that you see this movie. It’s funny, it’s inspirational, as well as sweet, quirky and different in all the right ways. It’s a masterpiece, with enough going for it to perhaps even be timeless. I love it.