page 58 of that
Another one that was extremely hard to draw for no clear reason. Even with some minor objects blatantly left undetailed or undrawn in certain frames. I did draw in the missing feet from the previous page. Gallimimus is still misspelled.
I admit this page accomplishes absolutely nothing. Not directly, anyway. I decided it was better to stretch this incident to fill the whole page than try to cut into something else with two frame-spaces left. i have decided I want to keep things even so that I can move them around more easily if the need ever arises. I think out of order but do not understand a picture until I have drawn it, which makes “planning ahead” a very alien concept. there is probably some fundamental rule of cartooning written by somebody I should have heard of that ways “never spend 12 frames on a total diversion”
And then of course I thought of something else after stretching it so now everything is tightly crammed in. I meant to stop forcing things onto pages that could not hold them. truly i did. or dispense with the concept of “pages” when they were not necessary. That is not going well! In fact it is not going at all.
I had to change this drawing to get the right effect, but that is one of the most punchable elpses I recollect encountering.
“one of,” I said.
Sad elpse in a circle reminds me of the drawing of a meeply round-eared animal that accompanied the word “cub” in my old phonics books. I recall I used to draw swords stabbing into it and helicopters shooting bullets at it right there on the page. I do not recall a teacher ever asking me why I did this or acknowledging the questionable behaviour in any way. They really didn’t pay much attention to individual students, usually. One time I joined two lowercase Ts on a word like “butter” and had the word marked as incorrect because (and I had to bring up the issue myself afterward) the teacher thought I spelled it with one H in it. A capital H in the middle of the word “butter” with lines poking out the left and right where there should have been two Ts which make a completely different sound than H. What that we’ve been through together makes you think I am capable of such a ludicrous error? I hope that’s not the REAL reason I was sent to special education. “Who would think a capital H goes there? After all the phonics we’ve been through? Get that kid outta here!” Dumb old elpse. It is elpse’s fault that I was forced into a series of environments within which I would become so disordered through the years that I eventually thought elpse was a good idea to come up with.
Seeing that life in magazine form last week reminded me that Jack Nicholson was in the 1989 Batman movie, and how surprised I was when I finally watched it, roundabout 2009 and found it just about as silly as the Joel Shoemaker Batman films it was supposed to be powers greater than. I was expecting a dark, edgy Batman but it was preposterous. I thought the sequel, 1992’s Batman Returns would have to be better, due to lacking The Joker and any totally inappropriate Prince songs, but I forgot that Danny Devito was in it and Michael Keaton again.
This is a good role for Danny Devito, but not a good role for a film that thinks it is anything apart from ludicrous. I only got to seeing it a few months before now. I do things at my own pace! It isn’t such a big deal that 12 years passed between when I started college and received a bachelor degree when it took me almost twice as long to watch two Batman films. And even considering that tastes change in such a period, it was hard for me to take, especially after encountering for much of that length the notion of how badly the subsequent films made a solid and noble franchise abruptly laughable.
It is “dark” in the respect that people get shot and fall out of buildings, but it is still a smirking hokefest that makes the title character look more clownish than his adversaries (many of whom are actual clowns). Bruce Wayne comes across like a total goof with his weird haircut, christmas sweaters and Glenn Beck glasses.
Do I just have the wrong expectations? The better Batman comics support a view that Batman is “real” with Bruce Wayne a persona maintained to preserve secrecy and financing for Batman’s operations, so if it serves his purposes to have Bruce be a dork he will do it. But here he is dorking it up as Bruce Wayne in the Batcave. BRUCE WAYNE IS NOT ALLOWED IN THE BATCAVE!
Clearly sweaters are important to Bruce Wayne, since he sometimes buys extra airplane seats for them, but he does not wear them unless urgent circumstances require it, and never in the Batcave!
This film just treats him like Clark Kent without magic powers, though, so in this context I am supposed to believe that this is how somebody who becomes Batman wants to be perceived. If possible he would quit being Batman and have his butler bring him hot chocolate all day. A more convincing Batman wouldn’t know what to do with himself if the crime ran out. I relate to that Batman because nobody can really relate to him.
Not only is Christopher Walken, who is absurd, prominently in the film, there is another person in it doing an impression of Walken, and both are less ridiculous than the main characters DESPITE wearing bowties.
I especially disliked the ruse through which Bruce Wayne puts Penguin back into public disfavor amidst his promising mayoral campaign. Penguin is giving a speech, and then Bruce jams up in the frequency of the speech. I know this because there are several scenes of him jamming frequencies while Alfred wears ridiculous headphones and gives “OK!!!” gestures and a television monitor shows the message “JAMMING FREQUENCY.” This causes, to emit from the Penguin’s loudspeakers, some audio Batman had recorded earlier of the Penguin saying something like “ha ha, got em!” and then Wayne loops it endlessly, which proves the Penguin means it, because he said it so many times.
The actual line is “You gotta admit, I played this stinkin’ city like a harp from hyellll!” which is a peculiar phrase and I had to hear it about 20 times to figure out what it was. The audience only hears it about 15 times but recognize it immediately. “NOBODY plays Gotham city like a harp from hell by golly ohare! ESPECIALLY not after calling it stinkin’!”
Even though it is weird and bruce wayne is doing some mix dj scratch thing to it that should make it obvious as an altered voice, even though he CAN’T do that because he is playing a compact disc and not a vinyl record, which means the sound data is stored digitally and not in a linear analog fashion, but Tim Burton just thought “CDs, those are like high-tech records, right? Those sound like things Batman would have” without considering that they operate differently, even though it should be obvious because there is no needle. I would accept this from the Adam West Bat-Man series, but nobody had CDs then so the situation did not arise.
So this one bit of audio out of context, that clearly is not being spoken by the speaker or any non-robot and that doesn’t follow from the speech he had been giving at all is instantly taken as full, inarguable proof of Penguin’s full corruption by every person in the city who likes him even though there only appear to be about fifty attending his speech, which suggests he had no hope of being elected anyway. None of those people wonder “where is this looped bit of inexpertly remixed audio coming from? Should we so quickly doubt this man we came from so far to trust?”
Penguin makes no effort to explain it, despite his gift for schemes and misleading people and having already established that people are prejudiced against him, and the audience begins literally speaking some very enunciated “boo!”s accompanied by Tony the Tiger gestures, followed by tossing obscene amounts of produce, which Penguin identifies as “eggs and tomaytas” on camera as lettuce and tomatoes strike his umbrella.
They generate it out of their hands like they are monsters from video games. This whole scene could have been presented absurdly, to show that the people of Gotham City are fickle and treat politics like a vaudeville show, but it is presented as if it is plausible.
I don’t think there is a way to do that plausibly!
I hate hate hate that plot contrivance. I hated it in UHF der film and that one episode of the simpsons, although those two were even less plausible. In both of them some rich guy boasted about how he tricked people, and a clever protagonist started filming it and this was instantly broadcast on every television box in the world without a batcave full of computers to jam with frequencies or interrupt current programming. You turn on the camera and everybody everywhere sees it and despite how weird that is, they trust it.
It must be acknowledged that this is normally one of Joker’s schemes. He is constantly taking over every broadcast outlet at once and threatening people, and it’s never explained how, in the context of this world that is supposed to be so gritty and hard-realistic. TV is just MAGIC.
After all that, as I said, Penguin pulls out his umbrella to defend against the killer eggs and then opens fire on the crowd. Fortunately they all have military training and instantly drop to foxhole position and none are killed. Still, as the only person in town who knows Penguin’s umbrella is made out of a machine-gun, Batman should have been THERE and beating Penguin up in front of people instead of pulling tricks out of Bosko cartoons. The REASON for the roundabout method is that the public adores the Penguin for reasons demonstrated as expertly and convincingly as anything else in the film and Batman cannot beat him up without exposing him as a fraud first. Except Batman CAN do that because Batman is unconcerned with public opinion when there is a risk of potential parents being shot. It works in Batman’s favor when criminals think he is NOT working with the police. Since this is Batman versus the Penguin and not Flagstroop McGrit versus Arab-looking Fellow there isn’t any risk of the “SEE? Unlawful detention and torture saves LIVES” subtext that our present biased left-wing media loves so much.
Also consider that Wayne jams not the broadcast television signal, but the connection from Penguin’s microphone to the local amplification system, because the people in that crowd there hear the edit. That means Wayne had to go all the way to city hall, mess with the wires on those specific microphones, then go all the way back to the Batcave to engineer his giggle symphony.
the actual “fight” between batman and penguin lasts about 7 seconds, and then penguin’s hideout explodes for 20 minutes. All in all a film that exists.
All this is not to say that Batman Forever is superior or as good or any good –I have not viewed it in its entirety since its initial release and recall nothing of substance about it–, merely that its descent into hokeyness is consistent and picks up where Tim Burton left off. Let us be rid of the fantasy that Tim Burton directed great and sensible Batman Films. When people say Batman Returns is “dark,” that just means there is blood in it, and possibly worse lighting. That does not have any bearing on how stupid it isn’t. Batman Forever is the “less dark” and it still finds an opportunity to present the mentally disabled as hilarious morons wearing 1930s straight jackets. (Disregarding this time that the name “asylum” suggests the residents should have some safety there, since Arkham Asylum is accepted to primarily house unrepentant murderers). It may not be reasonable to expect anything more mature than that from a film series about a man who dresses like a bat to combat people who dress like other animals.
People that I have met in person claim the ABC saturday morning sonic hedgehog cartoon is “darker” than a contemporary syndicated cartoon series that was consciously ridiculous. Alright, but it’s still abundantly embarrassing, and without being able to blame anything on Japanese weirdness.
My favorite scene that I recall shows 2-Face at The Circus, where he threatens to [something] if Batman did not reveal himself. Of course Bruce Wayne IS at The Circus, so he stands up and starts yelling out “I’m Batman!” over and over again but nobody hears him doing that. I tried to find that scene in your tube but all I found were dorks who video-recorded their heads emitting the exact same reviews this movie got when it came out 18 bloody years ago, plus a staggering amount of gorbos playing, and usually not especially well, the innumerable worse ports of the already terrible Super Nintendo game vaguely based on the film. If people will watch THAT then they don’t need to be complaining about the less bad thing that is based on.
First of all that is not an argument, and not my fault anyhow! I think the case could be made that if Batman Forever had not have been produced, Batman Returns could never have been favorably compared against it, and people would see it for what it is and be less inclined to
That is enough for today.
Hello, Jack Nicholson is dead, according to context clues given off by this ironically named publication. I wonder if his unnaturally street caricature-like swollen head was a factor in his demise. Maybe an airplane crashed into it or a triceratops hatched out of it.
Additionally, I am so off my contemporary culture that I had to check first to make sure Jack Nicholson was not dead before posting this.
Another large-headed matter I had valid reason to check up on recently:
Tommy Lasorda, best known for his endorsement of the perennial Toys R Us video game-cover pegboard space-filler Bill Clinton Baseball on the Sega Genesis now looks like
the president who succeeded Clinton, Dick Cheney.
Also, when I was in Colorado (a geographical region to the west of where I presently reside), every man over a certain age looked like Dick Cheney. I believe one of them overheard me remark on this, and while he appeared to frown in my direction, he did not have me executed because he does not have enough shame to realize that me comparing him to himself is meant to be derogatory.
That is an odd way to end, so here instead is a corny guy listening to corn.
He looks like the protagonist from another Sega Genesis release, Flashback. I am also reminded of the time I loaned my flash to somebody, for at some point I needed to get my flash back. Additionally, public nudity enthusiasts never expect you to flash back.
I will call him Cornrad.
However, corn is not rad (though it may be radioactive).
TMI Tuesday
page 57 of this.
imagine I generate this for ten more years. Will something happen or will it just be a matter of getting from one unpleasant service interaction to another? How long can i show nemitz being annoyed at elpse being annoyed at lope before it becomes implausible for them to be together?
Unfortunately elpse is only too plausible to me. I constantly resent people who really have no hope of ever not annoying me. people like me who really should not. Elpse does not represent me nor does the lizard represent anyone else, though. They are only their own brightly colored punchable selves.
“close-up” frames save a bit of time but I keep feeling like i am missing opportunities to show background silliness that are best to do in frames where nothing is happening in the foreground – the reason it is possible to be close up.
The last few pages I used no real ink on because that took a long time. Not to do, just to think about, because I am so terrified of mistakes, and then the backgrounds always held me up, whereas if I only used computer lines I could figure the setting out as I went along. But I bought a huge bottle of ink about two years ago, during a period when I was inexplicably confident in my ability to use it, when I also had no time to use it, that I now need to justify the purchase of. I felt like the characters looked more interesting with the real ink, also. Do they? Assuming you have been following along, you probably didn’t even notice that I had stopped! (unless I said so, but that would also mean you read my accompanying dull ramblement) Still, in an attempt to sort all that out, I this time put ink over just the characters and stopped once it started to get annoying, and imagined I would erase the pencil lines underneath just that ink and fill in less important matters later. So it happened that at the scan phase this nemitz was just a head and an indistinct, not-quite matched torso, and it looked like a barely mobile, segment-operated boss foe from a super nintendo game. That took longer to say than it was worth.
I refrain from commenting on the justifiability of this.