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For weeks, DC Comics and Arkham City have been striving in vain to break The Dark Knight Rises’s stranglehold on trending topics.  Rebooting their entire universe was not enough to get DC Comics noticed, but the company heads Geoff Johns and Jim Lee appearing at a Times Square comic shop where lucky shoppers can purchase the #1 issues of the relaunched titles has finally done what mere YouTube ads for the relaunch could not: broke into the Top 10 of Batman-related news.

1. Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises: so very good at being bad (via Sexy Girls Dressed)
2. The Dark Knight Rises Set Photos: Bane
3. Jim Lee and Geoff Johns in NY Times Square for a New 52 Event August 30th
4. DC Reboot Catwoman #1 – Wrong costume is a warning sign to fans but characterization sounds like an improvement
5. The Dark Knight Rises Location Photos: Batman/Batsuit #TDKR
6. Batman at Comic Con: First look at Joker, Batmobile from Hot Toys Batman ’89 Collection
7. Bane Mask, Other Batman Items coming up for sale in Movie Memorabilia Auction
8. Overheard on the Social Networks: That’s not Catwoman, it’s Anne Hathaway in fugly sunglasses
9. Batman Merch: Riddler Converse
10. Batman at Comic Con: Catwoman of the DC Comics Reboot, not apologizing for sexy!

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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents two major exhibits centering around Batman director Tim Burton:

A major retrospective exploring the full range of Tim Burton’s creative work, both as a film director and as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer.

Tim Burton was born in Burbank in 1958. After studying at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), he worked as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios before breaking out on his own. Taking inspiration from popular culture, fairy tales and traditions of the gothic, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of a personal vision.

The exhibition brings together over 700 drawings, paintings, photographs, moving-image works, storyboards, puppets, concept artworks, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, including art from a number of unrealized and little-known personal projects. Many of these objects come from the artist’s own archive, as well as from studio archives and private collections of Burton’s collaborators. Hundreds of never-before-exhibited artworks and sketches will be joined by a selection of film posters accompanied by music composed for the exhibition by Burton’s longtime collaborator Danny Elfman.

Two large-scale outdoor artworks are also installed on campus: a topiary inspired by Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Balloon Boy, an enormous figure based on an amalgamation of characters that Burton first introduced in his 1997 book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories.
via Tim Burton | LACMA.

But perhaps more interesting still

In conjunction with the exhibition, Tim Burton, LACMA invited the filmmaker to fill a gallery with works of his choosing from the permanent collection. Tim Burton Selects brings together an idiosyncratic array of graphic works chosen by Burton in consultation with the curatorial staff.

From childhood to the present day, Tim Burton has expressed himself through drawing. Since the early Renaissance, drawings have been considered to be especially revealing of the artist’s individual genius and style. Prints, by extension, can distill the hand-drawn line to its essence and reproduce it for mass distribution. Certain periods of art history have especially strong resonance with Burton’s vision. Mannerist artists of the mid-sixteenth century reacted against the orderly grace of the Renaissance with exaggerated, stylized figural concoctions. At the turn of the twentieth century, Symbolists created hallucinatory worlds filled with outsized eyeballs and insects. Japanese art has traditionally featured ghosts and demons to represent irrationality, while in Mexican culture the skeleton has both spiritual and political significance. Above all, German Expressionism, which flourished in the 1920s and 30s, brought intuition and anxiety to the fore. The stark, powerful prints of the Expressionist era seem to presage the haunted interiors and emotive creatures found in Burton’s feature films.

via Burton Selects: From LACMA’s Collection | LACMA.

Christian Bale’s biggest role of the last decade is about to come to an end. With filming nearing conclusion on The Dark Knight Rises, Batman will be looking for new employment.

Bale will have plenty of roles to choose from according to Variety, who list the Spike Lee remake of Oldboy at the top of possible projects. Bale has been touted to play the villain in the film, based on the cult Korean flick directed by Park Chan-wook.

Also on the slate is Clint Eastwood’s A Star is Born remake, though we’re more than a little curious as to why Bale would want to star opposite Beyonce in such a film.

Other films said to have tickled his fancy are Michael Mann’s Gold, Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace, and Darren Aronofsky’s epic Noah.

Bale’s first post-Batman role will be in Terrence Malick’s next, as yet untitled, project.

via Christian Bale considers Oldboy, A Star is Born after Dark Knight | Quickflix® DVD & Movie Blog.

It’s very odd, but an anime Batman as a metal block would have to be.  It is rather cute.

List Price: $24.99

Manufacture : Funko

Type : Action Figure

This is Anime Figure series of Batman. DC Comics: Batman METALLIC BLOX Figure (SDCC 2011)

via  Anime Store, animeharu.com’s blog.

Dark Knight Rises stars Gary Oldman will be leading an all star cast in the remake of  Tomas Alfredson’s adapatation of John Le Carré’s Cold War thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  The film’s amazing all-star cast also includes TDKR co-star Tom Hardy, along with Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Stephen Graham, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ciarán Hinds.

Optimum have released eight new images and as our source at Culture Me Badd put it, “It doesn’t get much better than that!”

Gary Oldman is reprising his role as James Gordon, now Gotham City’s  police commissioner, and Tom Hardy plays the villain Bane.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is scheduled to be released September 16 in the UK and November 18 in the US.

With filming still underway and nearly a year before release, The Dark Knight Rises is alreadyhaving an impact on fashion.  No, nothing to do with Anne Hathaway and those “fugly sunglasses” that were too evocative of the disappointing Catwoman costume.  Not even close it’s

Tom Hardy's Bane from The Dark Knight Risesas tattoo art

 

I talk about, or at least reference, Batman and the Batman universe a lot on here. It’s just something I like to sprinkle into everything I talk about and create because I’m a boy and boys have a tendency to want as much Batman in their lives as possible. Therefore I enjoy Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman movies and I am very much looking forward to the next installment, The Dark Knight Rises. On an excitement scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “UGGHHH” and 10 being “TATTOO BANE ON ME”, I’d say I’m around an 8 or even a 9 when I’ve had a lot of sugar. As much as I love Batman, the Batman universe and the Nolan movies, I don’t think I’ll ever quite be a 10. It’s nice to know that someone else is already there though.

We’re almost A YEAR away from the new movie coming out and the only way someone even managed to create a Tom-Hardy-As-Bane tattoo is due to sneaky paparazzi footage of the film’s filming. I mean, I definitely have faith in both Christopher Nolan and Tom Hardy that the movie and character will be decent but…yeah, like I said, I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to get to 10. I’ll wait until I actually see The Dark Knight Rises before I get my Bane tattoo, just like all the other sellouts. That being said, I am planning on getting a tattoo this weekend that’s inspired by a classic Nintendo game. I’m just much more comfortable living in the past than the future.

via Ahead Of The Curve: Bane Tattoos. « Awe Chasm.

Another Dark Knight Rises star will soon have a movie to promote.  Marion Cotillard will appear as Dr. Leonora Orantes in Contagion, starring Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishbourne, and Steven Soderbergh.

Contagion is an action-thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the outbreak.

Contagion, opening September 9, has just released a massive number of still images.  Click below:

Photo by Claudette Barius – © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc

Marion Cotillard is playing Miranda Tate in The Dark Knight Rises.  She is best known to Christopher Nolan fans from Inception where she played Mal Cobb.

With comic book adaptations firing up the big screen, television is doing its best to keep up.  Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  CW has had better luck than anyone with Smallville, which ran longer than any comic-based television show.  The ill-conceived Birds of Prey, on the other hand, struggled to make it through a single season.  The less said about NBC’s Wonder Woman debacle the better.

DC is still considered a good buy, however:

With Smallville ending its 10-season run this past May, the CW has made launching a new superhero franchise based on a DC property a priority. The network’s first effort this development season is Deadman, a drama based on the DC Comics books by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino, which will be written and executive produced by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. The project is about the spirit of a murdered man, Boston Brand, who lives on as he inhabits other people’s bodies and helps them solve crises in their own lives. It is produced by Warner Bros. TV, which handles the mining of the DC catalog for TV series.

“We’re looking next year to do a superhero show if the right superhero comes to be,” CW president Mark Pedowitz said at TCA last month, noting the advantage of having Time Warner-owned DC Comics in the family. (CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS). Getting Kripke to develop Deadman seems like a no-brainer as he is the man behind CW’s longest running scripted series on the air. Sci-fi drama Supernatural enters its seventh season this fall and Pedowitz recently indicated that it is not intended to be the show’s last. While no longer a hands-on showrunner (Supernatural is co-run by Sera Gamble and Robert Singer), Kripke continues to serve as an executive producer.
via ‘Earth Station One.

See related:
The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer teams with Showtime for adaptation of 100 bullets

Come August 30th, the streets of New York may be getting some extra super heroes, as hundreds of costumed fans are expected in-line outside of New York’s Midtown Comics (200 West 40th street) in anticipation of DC Comics midnight launch of its new No. 1 titles.

The midnight event will give fans an exclusive opportunity to purchase “Justice League” No. 1, the new historic title from DC Comics, starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and others. Fans who wait in-line will also have the opportunity to meet the comic book icons behind the title, Jim Lee and Geoff Johns, as well as purchase the conclusion to this summer’s blockbuster series, “Flashpoint” No. 5. The Midnight Madness event and historic launch are all in support of DC Entertainment’s goal of giving casual and long-time fans an opportunity to enjoy comics in an easy, accessible way.

Since announced in June, the comic book industry has been buzzing about DC Comics-The New 52. In case you haven’t heard, DC Entertainment, the publisher of the world’s most iconic and recognizable super heroes, is renumbering the entire DC Comics line of comic books and releasing 52 new first issues this fall, including ACTION COMICS, DETECTIVE COMICS and BATWOMAN (to name only a few).

JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 will officially kick off DC Comics-The New 52. JUSTICE LEAGUE will be set at the dawn of the age of super heroes. The first storyline explores the team’s origins as they ultimately become the world’s greatest super heroes, featuring such iconic characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg.

FLASHPOINT #5 is the final issue in Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert’s bestselling series that has kept everyone talking this summer and the months leading up to it. In addition to the story’s shattering conclusion, the issue provides an exciting bridge from the current events of FLASHPOINT to the upcoming events of DC Comics-The New 52, ushering in a historic new era for the comic book industry.

This will be an event like no other, with festivities going on inside and outside the store all evening, leading up to midnight! After all, what better way to commence DC Comics-The New 52 than with a party?

Watch this space and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more info. Midtown Comics is located at 200 W. 40th Street (on the corner of 7th Avenue) in Manhattan, New York. For updates about the event, please visit Midtown Comics’ official website, www.midtowncomics.com, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

See Related:
DC Comics: The New 52

With the coming reboot, it’s no surprise that we’re getting a great new wave of figures from DC Direct. Here’s one you can pre-order now, arriving in 2012!

Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash and the Joker are all here rocking their latest looks (which means pants for Wonder Woman and some rough-looking makeup for the Clown Prince of Crime). Each one is about 6 inches tall and comes with character-appropriate accessories where applicable. If you’re a fan of the rebooted DC Universe, then you’ll definitely want to get your order in now for an April 2012 delivery!
via Action Figure World.

Overheard on the Social Networks:

No Superman?   Ditch the butch Wonder Woman already and make the World’s Finest the centerpiece of the (Justice) League  -Facebook

Tim Burton and Michael Keaton (Batman/Bruce Wayne) on the set of the 1989 Batman

Happy Birthday Tim Burton! The eerie director was born Timothy Walter Burton in Burbank, California on August 25th 1958. Burton’s films are well known for their endearing quirk and horrific imagery. His most well received films are Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, and Alice in Wonderland.

Burton, a fan of the stop motion animation technique, starting making films as early as 13 years old. He went on to study character animation at the California Institute of the Arts and after graduating, secured a job at Walt Disney Animation Studios after his short film Stalk of the Celery Monster caught their attention. He worked as an animator, storyboard artist and conceptual artist in films such as The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Tron.

Disney and Burton eventually parted ways due to creative differences and by the mid 80s had prepared his first project, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Since then, Burton has constructed a brilliant body of work causing him to be justly heralded as our generation’s Vincent Price. He will 53 years old.

via Marilyn’s Serenade: Tim Burton. « Quiet Lunch.

We had a feast of red carpet and talk show appearances as The Dark Knight Rises star Anne Hathaway promoted her new movie One Day in America during an internet flurry of controversy surrounding her disappointingly Un-Catwomanesque appearance in the first photo of her as either Selina Kyle or Catwoman in Nolan’s final installment of The Dark Knight trilogy.  While we share the collective disappointment in what we’ve seen of Catwoman, we cannot get enough of Anne looking radiantly beautiful and oh so stylish and sexy, apart from some ill-chosen sunglasses at The Daily Show.  Luckily, One Day is just opening in London.  Here she is at the European opening in London.

Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises) at the London Premiere of One Day, August 23, 2011

See related:
Overheard on the Social Networks: That’s not Catwoman, it’s Anne Hathaway in fugly sunglasses

Christopher Nolan and the film crew of The Dark Knight Rises bid a classy farewell to Pittsburgh taking out a full page ad in the city newspaper, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.   We don’t know what it cost, and  it may not seem much of an expense in a $250 million movie budget that’s already totaled an IMAX camera, but it’s the sort of expenditure that is unusual in a movie budget.  A class act, Dark Knight.

Christopher Nolan and the film crew of Warner Bros. wrapped up their summer filming of “The Dark Knight: Rises” in Pittsburgh, P.A. That photo above is created by Warner Bros. for a Pittsburgh local newspaper.

The film crew will next head to Los Angeles and New York City to film the rest of the movie.

More on it, here.

Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” is currently filming now as well. Warner Bros. hard at work with both “Superman” and “Batman”. I’m looking forward to both of these films.

“The Dark Knight: Rises” is looking great so far though. Can’t wait to see more behind the scenes pics when they hit Los Angeles and New York.

via Cool Photo: Warner Bros. thanks Pittsburgh in a unique way… « K’Brocking Entertainment.

Another Playable Character in Rocksteady’s Arkham City, sequel to the highly successful Arkham Asylum, has optional skins t change the look and costume.  Do we dare to hope  Catwoman is next, offering the costumes fans love as an alternative to the goggles that caused such dismay?

Arkham City Robin Costumes of the Day: A few new skins for Batman: Arkham City’s Robin have been posted at the arkhamcity.co.uk fanboard, to go with the intense version of Tim Drake revealed a couple of months ago.

The new costumes, spotted on Amazon.de, include a standard Robin outfit, Red Robin, and the Batman: The Animated Series Robin.

Robin (and his two challenge maps) have been announced as a Best Buy pre-order exclusive, but the character should eventually be released via DLC.

via Arkham City Robin Costumes of the Day – TDW Geeks.

See related:
Arkham City Preorder Perk: Batman Costume skins – UK ONLY
Batman: Arkham City Will Have 3D Support, No Need for a 3D TV « The Lazy Geeks
Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume

With games like Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City sometimes stumbling to make a sequel live up to expectations raised by a fabulously popular original, it’s important for game makers to keep abreast not of what the landscape is now but what it will be two years from now when their efforts hit the market.  Simply taking cues from the comics in matters of a costume can derail a promotional campaign before it’s even begun.  Understanding players and what they want rather than serving another company’s agenda is paramount.

Study Finds 95% of Gamers Want to Move Games out of the Screen, into the “Offline” World

Over the past few years, the popularity of mobile phones and tablets have contributed to an explosion in gaming by offering users the newfound ability to game anytime and anywhere. A study just released by the research consultancy, Latitude, offers a deeper-dive investigation into the new gaming landscape and the profile of tomorrow’s gamer, suggesting opportunities for both game developers and companies across industries.

The study included a Web survey of 290 smartphone owners between the ages of 15-54 who self-identified as “casual gamers,” with nearly half labeling themselves “game enthusiasts.” More than two-thirds said they expect to be gaming even more over the next few years.

A Video Portrait of the New Gamers

In conjunction with The Future of Gaming survey, Latitude conducted a series of expert interviews with both game makers and game enthusiasts, culminating in the production of a mini-documentary, The Future of Gaming: a Portrait of the New Gamers. This thought-provoking snapshot of the new gaming landscape serves up fresh, insider perspectives on how games have evolved, and who exactly is playing today — or will be tomorrow.

“Our interviews are meant to brings to life what we found in the study: that the new gamers are connected — often outgoing — people who live and play in the ‘real world,’ and who have a serious interest in bettering themselves and society as a whole,” says Dan Hemmerly-Brown, the video’s director and an Innovation Engineer at Latitude. “These conversations have even inspired Latitude to consider possibilities for building game elements into our own research techniques and technologies.”

Who are the New Gamers?

The study found that the stereotype of the reclusive gamer is outdated; this emerging demographic is social, heavily engaged with the “offline” world, and extremely goal-oriented — with a strong drive to improve themselves and the world around them. The new gamers are not constrained to any single platform, and have many different motivations for gaming in addition to just having fun [See 'New Gamers -- Infographic']. Moreover, they expect that online games will continue to move out of the traditional screen environment, blending seamlessly with the “offline” world in new and engaging ways that go beyond just “checking in” with apps like Foursquare and SCVNGR.

“This study is part of our larger People Connected initiative, a series designed to offer a snapshot of intentionally small groups who are currently redefining what’s possible through the Web,” says Neela Sakaria, Senior Vice President of Latitude. “We go beyond just identifying changes in technology, delving deeply into technology’s potential impact on us as people — how we think, relate to each other, and approach our daily lives. Profiling dynamic user groups like ‘the new gamers’ gives us a window into how companies can not only develop meaningful tech experiences today but, more excitingly, grasp opportunities that are just on the horizon.”

The study pinpointed three key insights summarizing what the new gamers are expecting for the future:

1. Games Go Beyond the Screen
Eager to get beyond their smartphone screens, gamers are actively seeking new levels of interactivity, more intuitive interfaces (e.g., gestural or telepathic controls), and personalization of the physical world that mirrors what’s possible online. Future games should register and respond to people as they exist in the offline world, which may mean using a player’s location, mood or stress level as metrics in a game, or allowing players to overlay virtual environments or information onto their actual surroundings, as with augmented reality.

Study participants expressed an overwhelming desire for immersive integration of digital content with traditionally offline spaces and activities:

-95 percent would like to see more games that do a better job of combining digital content with the real, physical world.

-90 percent agreed that current and future technologies will play a critical role in extending games beyond the traditional screen environment, moving them out into the real world.

“The gamers of tomorrow won’t be limited by platform or location. As technology becomes more seamlessly integrated with our lives, everyone will be a gamer, and the world around us will become the ultimate playing field,” explains Natalie Stehfest, a senior research analyst who led the study and who heads up Latitude’s qualitative research team. “Technology will allow us to measure — and, ultimately, improve — ourselves in the context of our daily activities and surroundings. Many people making small changes can have a large impact in society, and this study suggests that the new gamers are ready to ‘level-up,’and be challenged in this way.”

More: Beyond the Screen: Latitude Study Profiles the New Gamers « Imagine That.