Esto que pueden leer abajo --en inglés, me temo que no me da para traducirlo todo-- es la nueva columna de opinión de Peter Bart, el editor en jefe de "Variety", un imbécil con cartel, dicho esto aún por los críticos de la revista/diario de la industria. Resumiendo, este Bart (que deja al pequeño Simpson como un verdadero intelectual) dice que no entiende cómo se puede celebrar a películas basadas en cómics de la misma manera en que se debería hacer con las obras teatrales o las novelas. Y agrega que no entiende las excelentes críticas que está teniendo "Batman" ya que, después de todo, no es más que una simple historieta. Esto, viniendo del tipo que hace unos meses decía no entender cómo Hollywood podía financiar una película de un "asesino" como Che Guevara. Para los que creían que los columnistas retrógrados sólo escribían en la prensa argentina, sepan que no. Que aquí está Peter Bart. Una garantía de estupidez cotidiana.
There was a time when movie studios based most of their films on plays or novels. Today, of course, comic books, toys and video games have become prime source material, which makes for damn good box office -- except that some of the filmmakers (and critics) are starting to comment on them as though they were, well, plays and novels.
A case in point is Christopher Nolan, the dour Brit who skillfully directed "The Dark Knight," which opens July 17. "The Dark Knight" happens to be a Batman sequel. Listen to Nolan, however, and its origins become surreal.
Interviewing Nolan in the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher reports that, in the director’s mind, the movie is really “a search for the dark heart of society.” Nolan, we are told, is consumed with the theme of “moral uncertainty.”
Concludes the worshipful interviewer: “For Nolan, the movie is an unsettling crime film, not a super-hero escapade.”
Variety’s critic, Justin Chang, also goes to lengths to stress that the movie is a “brainy pop entertainment…a full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity.” He never even mentions the word Batman until his sixth paragraph.
Meanwhile, the portentous print ads for the movie are emblazoned with a quote from Peter Travers, the oft-cited Rolling Stone critic, who proclaims, “The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination.”
OK, let’s re-group here: Superhero sequels have reached a new level -- an “untamed” new level. Hulk is really Hamlet. Batman must be Macbeth. And Chris Nolan is Stanley Kubrick.
Got all that straight?
