k i l l k i l l k i l l

No fewer than fifteen humans gathered at my home on July 19 for a bit of a party in the hours leading up to our screening of The Dark Knight in the famous Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. I can say nothing else on the subject without spoiling the movie. So for now, please enjoy these soul-stealing photographs of my friends behaving like freaks and mutants.

From Action Comics #866 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank & Jon Sibal with Brad Anderson.



Awesome.

Well, this was a trip. Akilesh, Ken and I drove to Vegas from LA to attend our 10-year SAS reunion. We hooked up with Kendall and Bianca and spent the next 48 hours getting reacquainted with old classmates, getting to know classmates we'd never even met before, and getting more or less drunk fucking continuously.

Every year, Kate's family throws a big Fourth of July party at their palatial home in San Diego. The food is always splendid and the drinks are always strong. The dogs Zeus and Dieter were there this year, along with a puggle visitor from next door.

We also played croquet, which in my considered opinion is the worst game yet created by man.

Behind American Football.

I talk to Aaron Eckhart about his portrayal of Harvey Dent in the hotly anticipated new Batman film, "The Dark Knight." Eckhart discusses comics, the nature of violence in our times, and Dent's ultimate destiny. SPOILER WARNING.

Read the whole piece here.

I talk to actor Christian Bale about his work on the hotly anticipated new Batman film, "The Dark Knight," in which his titular hero dons a new costume, rides a new bike, makes a new friend, and breaks a lot of people's arms.

Read the whole piece here.

A few of us went to the New Beverly Cinema to watch Never Too Young To Die starring John Stamos, Vanity and George Lazenby. It was unquestionably one of the worst movies I've ever seen, but one of my all-time favourite movie-going experiences. The whole crowd was there to laugh, and our group was allowed to sort of MSTK-ify the night to great effect. At one point, just the sight of a couple of characters moved the entire cinema -- which was packed -- to a laughter that sustained the duration of the scene -- nobody knows what the characters said or what information was communicated, we were just laughing because they looked so ridiculous.

We also brought in a bunch of booze, including the Sofia Coppola champagne-in-a-can, previously spotlighted in this photo blog.

In this first of a series of interviews with the cast and crew of "The Dark Knight," CBR's Andy Khouri goes in-depth with director Christopher Nolan about his vision of the Joker, Batman's detective acumen, and themes of violence and escalation.

This interview was part of a roundtable with other reporters, and versions of it have already been published at various outlets on the Web.

You will not see this version of it anywhere else because I, you know, EDITED mine.

I'm ceaselessly amazed by other hacks' refusal to employ even the most basic editing to these sorts of interviews, printing every "um" "er" and "like" a human can say, and presenting things exactly in the sequence in which they were said without a single thought given to overall flow and readability or even relevance. Cutting and pasting is not journalism and it's certainly not writing. There's more to reporting than a word-for-word transcript, and only a handful of comics journalists seem to realize this.

For the record: I am not talking about Troy at Newsarama. I like Troy's stuff.

My Christopher Nolan interview is prodigiously edited, rearranged and produced in such a way that makes it highly readable, entertaining, and all but completely unique to CBR. I do not feel strange about taking a larger degree of authorship for this than I would other roundtables, which are typically a kind of bastard collaboration between oneself and other reporters. We record each others' questions and publish them on our own sites. It's ghastly, but that's the way it is. But in this, it's pretty obvious which questions are mine and which are from the other journos.

I also used imagery that actually had something to do with the content of the interview, while other sites are just running with new shots of the Batpod WB sent to all the press. Again - relevance, thought. It's hard work but it makes all the difference.

I'm very happy with this piece, and I hope you like it. You can read the whole thing here.

With "The Dark Knight" coming to theaters in just under a month, CBR can finally bring you a detailed report from the set of the film in Chicago, where we visited last year to observe the filming of scenes between Batman and Jim Gordon, among others.

Read the whole piece here.

Released in the United States this weekend, Marvel Studios’ “The Incredible Hulk” is largely a far more enjoyable remake of the regrettable 2003 effort by Universal Studios and director Ang Lee, crossed with memorable components of Marvel Comics’ Hulk-starring, alternate universe comic book series “The Ultimates.” As such, neither of the Hulk films released this decade are particularly faithful to the work of creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, although director Louis Leterrier’s extended remix is considerably dancier (read: way more ultra-violent), with better production values (read: Hulk doesn’t look so fake) and quite a great many samples (read: lots of comic book references, cameos) thrown in to get the crowd’s hands in the air.

If that's not enough, or you haven't the time to read my full review, please enjoy this helpful comic book movie scorecard.

• 20:44 FUCK ME. Dad called. Unplugged his iMac. Plugged it back. Doesn't get why nothing's on screen. Didn't know there was an ON button. #
• 10:15 Chuck Dixon no longer working for DC Comics "in any capacity." tinyurl.com/5y78p6 #

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Veteran comics writer Chuck Dixon announced on his official forum last night that he is no longer employed by DC Comics “in any capacity.” The confirmation comes after Monday’s news that Frank Tieri would be writing a two-issue story for the “Batman and the Outsiders,” a title that Dixon was brought in to retool and write under similarly unexpected circumstances, following the exit of scribe Tony Bedard prior to the book’s launch. Presently, it appears Dixon’s final issue of “Batman and the Outsiders” is August’s #10.

Read the whole piece here.

Part 16 of an ongoing series of cats, children, comics, booze, bitchez and r0b0tz as seen through my variously functional phonecam.

Ferocious J visits, margaritas are mixed, a pool is lounged around, and couch pixxx are taken.

I encourage fanboy rage-o-philes to catch up on this Newsarama thread, among others. The lines are being drawn between the old Talkers and the discourteous Imaginova mods over Newsarama's launching of what they admit is an unfinished redesign to facilitate ad sales and apparent desire to pursue a more Kung-Fu Panda-centric style of coverage, with one 'Rama evangelical hoping to derail the criticism by accusing CBR of having a "corporate mentality deeply stuck in being beholden to Marvel and DC that's only just slightly better than Wizard at its worst."

Also, "...the absolute worst thing Imaginova could possibly do is to parrot and copy CBR's corporate sellout business model"

Also, "I have no love whatsoever for the sellouts running CBR and their egomaniac moderators who seem to suspend and ban members of their message boards sometimes for utterly stupid banalities and trivia."

Also, he compares CBR to Enron.

According to his profile, the poster designated SaturnKnight is local, so if by some chance he's reading this, I'd like to invite him to tour our luxurious corporate offices here in Los Angeles. I just need a few weeks' notice so we can be sure to coordinate with security and prepare the necessary bar-codes and laminated Guest Passes he'll need to park.

BTW, a breakdown of Newsarama's front page as of this date and time:

DC/Marvel features: 12
Other publishers features: 9
TV/Film features: 6
Kung-Fu Panda features: 4

Breakdown of CBR's front page as of this date and time:

DC/Marvel features: 15
Other publishers features: 14
TV/Film features (all comics-related, btw): 4
Kung-Fu Panda features: 0

My girlfriend Stepho started a book club. It's called FUCK CITY, after a joke from Arrested Development. The idea is that when you have to bow out of some kind of party or club night because you have a book club meeting -- normally a pathetic and shameful excuse -- this way you get to say, "Oh, sorry, I have to go to my book club. It's called FUCK CITY."

The latest book was "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith" by Jon Krakauer, and the meeting took the form of a barbeque by the pool at my building. I know this will come as a shock to you all, but I've lived here for about five years and never, ever visited the pool before.

Everybody brought some food and Stepho took care of the grilling. The whole afternoon proved to be delicious, nutritious, and O_o.

Stepho, Ginny and Kimmy embarked on a six-hour trek through Los Angeles for accoutrements of the sexy, glamourous and even slutty varieties.

I was contracted to drive and document the endeavor -- which I know sounds like a complete drag, following cute girls around and taking pictures of them trying on sexy stuff, but we all know I didn't have anything better to do.