Unfortunately, the Welles Batman "discovery" is a hoax. Of all people, the AICN folks have taken Millar to task, pointing out that the Riddler wasn't introduced until 1948.

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/tb_display.cgi?id=16188

But, man, did we all so much want to believe. Shame on Millar for playing the film/comic book geeks (myself included) like a fiddle. For this, I'll deliberately boycot any comics that Millar writes (not that he improved all that much upon Warren Ellis after his run on THE AUTHORITY).

Thanks, Ed. Both for the original tip, and again, for coming by with word of the hoax.

Like I say in the update: How could we have been taken? Two factors, I guess: 1) the source, otherwise reliable; 2) it's just a very, very fun concept one would like to believe was actually floated at some point.

But hey, with CGI, I suppose it could still be realized...

i'd rather have seen him do the spirit...

but i remember reading that ebert rant about digital projection a while ago. nikos's response passes right by it, pointing to "story" and "performance" as though roger ebert, a very demanding mass-media critic when it comes to screenplays and dialogue, didn't care about good writing; failing to address what has been the main distinction between "cinema" and "television" - film can be totally incredibly gorgeous; and mostly importantly, appealing to cost-consciousness and futurism to slap down bourgeois aesthetics.

it's good to get the costs down for shooting. the money can be used for other things. however it's not good, it's capitulation, to declare visual quality dead just because arts funding and theater space have dried up, or because miniaturization has defeated mechanization as a cool 1st world goal, or because of some allergic reaction to form - unsure how to escape the feudal aspects of capitalist society, one reaches for a hope that the "marketplace of ideas" will one day supplant porn.

it could be that people who switched to video years ago left film because they were tired of mythmaking in an unpoetic era. disassembling myths could be done in verse. once verse played a role in cinema, when a nation was judged by the beauty of its ideals, but cinema has turned to reflect the fact that the great factories have (or have been) closed and people have (or have been) turned against each other - encouraging high and achievable goals has turned to encouraging petty, greedy daydreams. totally understandable then that poets (of any era) would frame the tradition of lush technical achievement and reject it as narcissism - the myths that were the raison d'être for the greater beauty were sour years ago and now are nearly poisonous.

i liked the marxists better than today's radicals masquerading as capitalist democrats. the marxists could deal with the fact that things could be both pretty and populist at the same time.

... until it turns into Soviet realism.

Just kidding.

No, some of the things you're saying lead me on to other thoughts: that there's a general perception of "digital filmmaking," as Steinbacher calls it (we're going to have to come up with a term that isn't laughable), as great for economics and lousy for aesthetics. (I'm not ascribing this perception to you directly; I'm just thinking out loud.)

My guess is that it's because this tech is still relatively new and is still evolving at an extraordinarily fast rate. At the moment, digital tech has been picked up by filmmakers on the very high end of the economic scale - Lucas, effects houses - and on the very low end - Dogme and a lot of indie directors basically making Dogme films without calling them Dogme films.

There's very, very little in between. As an exception, some time back, I pointed to a piece about the making of Altman's The Company. He and his DP and his team were very serious about getting what they wanted, and the gist of the piece was: it's still hard and it's still not cheap if you're after the sort of visual quality you're talking about, even if you're shooting ballet dancers rather than Jedi warriors.

I read in a German paper a few weeks ago about Bergman's frustrations; he'd been convinced to shoot something for Swedish television in HDTV - and he was furious! To his eyes, it looked terrible and he deeply regretted that he didn't shoot on film.

It's this area here, serious artists who aren't aiming for either CGI eye-poppers or mean streets verisimilitude, but rather to tell stories in a cinematic language that has evolved over 100 years who are yet to be served by digital tech.

I can't help but think the day will come when they will be, but in the meantime, hearts are being hardened against the very idea of digital.

Btw, I goofed; I'd meant to put that pair of digital stories right after the Decasia opener, but the other Guardian stories came along and I got distracted... pretty common among bloggers, I understand.

i saw decasia... definitely something to see in relation to this.

hearts are being hardened against the very idea of digital. well why shouldn't they be? DV pushers are arguing the ridiculous, and nikos's argument is a perfect example. nikos doesn't care about quality, he thinks it's a distraction from the meat of a movie. but still he argues that because quality won't be an issue sometime in the future, it shouldn't be an issue now.

that argument is a) stupid, b) not persuasive, and c) really f---ing common!!!

ps. people know that video will eventually take over. tea leaves, palm lines, cards all say so.

pps. when george lucas pitched HDTV to robert rodriguez, it wasn't really filmmaker to filmmaker, though that's what it looks like from an audience/auteur point of view. both of them own big studios in which other productions are run. both of them are geeks first, filmmakers second, which is something people should keep in mind as they both champion digital, to not let their auteur statuses disguise their mutual inclination to indulge in gadget-fetishes.

I think it's probably the inevitability that makes me want to learn to come to terms with it now and root for filmmakers to get across to manufacturers what it is they need it to do.

Believe me, I'll miss film as much as anyone (well, maybe not anyone, but you know what I mean). It's been a while since I worked with 16mm and a Bell & Howell, and before that, Super 8, but I know the kind of visceral, physical relationship that develops with film as material. Which makes me think that, like paint, it may be around a lot longer, maybe a lot longer than we're thinking right now in the heat of 'revolution' - just not at the multiplex.

Re: The Battle of Algiers. It's official--Rialto Pictures will be theatrically releasing the film in January! (This also means a Region 1 Criterion DVD is on its way.)

wow, just in time for the primaries. won't that be fun!

[licking lips at hearing public reaction, and debates by pundit/politician/movie press]

Awesome news, Doug! Thanks for passing that along. I'm very excited... so are a few film teachers I know.

C