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Batman may or may not beat Bane, but you know who does week after week?  Anne Hathaway – Selina Kyle – Catwoman.  Week after week.  All i takes is a see-through blouse.  Here she is again, settled in at Number 1.

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. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne / Batman in The Dark Knight Rises
4. batman-merchandise-the-dark-knight-joker-tshirt-why-so-serious
5. Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume
6. Batman and Catwoman Cosplay: The Best of Dragon Con
7. The Dark Knight Rises Stars Bale and Hathaway on set
8. Batman Merch: Joker Tshirt of the Day | TDW Geeks
9. Arkham City gets it all wrong: Edward Nygma
10. Newest Stills from TDKR
11. Bane Mask, Other Batman Items coming up for sale in Movie Memorabilia Auction
12. The Dark Knight Rises: New Poster and a menu on Official Website

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With the expected glut of Top Everything of 2011 lists and post-holiday lull in news, there was a fallback on older pictures and stories, such as Christian Bale “looking incredibly GQ as Bruce Wayne” and pre-TDKR Anne Hathaway looking unspeakably sexy in a see-through blouse, as well as set photos of Tom Hardy’s Bane from the location shooting in Pittsburgh, and a smattering of old stories on the Batmobile and Arkham City disappointments.  The only exception was the LA Times lack of discretion spoiling a scene from The Dark  Knight Rises just to set the scene for an Anne Hathaway interview.

1. “Sorry to spoil things, boys…” Did LA Times overstep on Anne Hathaway Catwoman interview?
2. The Dark Knight Rises Set Photos: Bane
3. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne / Batman in The Dark Knight Rises
4. Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises: so very good at being bad (via Sexy Girls Dressed)
5. Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume
6. The Dark Knight Rises: New Poster and a menu on Official Website
7. Arkham City gets it all wrong: Edward Nygma
8. Batman and Catwoman Cosplay: The Best of Dragon Con
9. DC Reboot Catwoman #1 – Wrong costume is a warning sign to fans but characterization sounds like an improvement
10. First peak at the Dark Knight Rises Batmobile

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It was the year of Catwoman, the triple threat of the The Dark Knight Rises, hot sex with Batman in the first issue of the DC Comics Reboot, and Arkham City’s excessive promotion made Selina Kyle the hottest Batman commodity on the internet in 2011, with Tom Hardy’s Bane chomping at her gloriously high heels.

1. Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises: so very good at being bad (via Sexy Girls Dressed)
2. DC Reboot Catwoman #1 – Wrong costume is a warning sign to fans but characterization sounds like an improvement
3. The Dark Knight Rises Set Photos: Bane
4. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne / Batman in The Dark Knight Rises
5. First peak at the Dark Knight Rises Batmobile
6. Bane Mask, Other Batman Items coming up for sale in Movie Memorabilia Auction
7. Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume
8. Hot New Location Photos: Not Bruce and Selina this time. It’s Batman and Catwoman IN FULL COSTUME (or is it?)
9. The Dark Knight Rises Location Photos: Batman/Batsuit #TDKR
10. Why I’m passing on Arkham City
11. Batman and Catwoman Cosplay: The Best of Dragon Con
12. Batman at Comic Con: Catwoman of the DC Comics Reboot, not apologizing for sexy!
13. Anne Hathaway Wardrobe Malfunction – too much Catwoman for the costume?
14. New Set Photos from The Dark Knight Rises: Christian Bale/Bruce Wayne looking very Wall Street and Joseph Gordon…
15. The Real and Fake Official Catwoman pic from The Dark Knight Rises

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Here we go again.  First, a titilating set of new set photos from the Los Angeles location shooting of The Dark Knight Rises.  It’s not Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle this time, it’s Batman and Catwoman.  And yes, those be CAT EARS. The lady is now goggle-free, which does give the rest of the outfit a decided Julie Newmar appearance.  But is this the “full Catwoman costume” as Cinemablend, Total Film and others are reporting?

After the notorious goggle picture, Anne Hathaway said we had only seen 10% of the catsuit.  She’s replaced the goggles with a proper cat mask and we have ears.  Does that really constitute a 90% addition, or is this just another tease?

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Gotham Trending thinks it’s likely The Dark Knight Rises may be taking a page from Iron Man and slyly alluding to different costumes before presenting its own new iconic look.

The Batman Live stage show hasn’t received much attention amidst all the excitement over The Dark Knight Rises, Arkham City, and the DC Comics reboot.  Perhaps it should be grateful, because what we’ve seen of the performances are cringe-worthy and the costumer obviously didn’t get the memo that Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin is widely viewed as the worst comic book movie of all time.

Flickr’s Mark Gascoigne has uploaded a fabulous photostream of it, however, taken with a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS.

Click to view the full Photostream on Flickr

That’s not to say word of mouth is  uniformally bad.  Reviews are mixed but ordinary people who aren’t regular theatre-goers are generous enough if they’re given a lot of visual spectacle, and for the hardcore fanboys, simply alluding to a name they know from comics, like Tony Zucco or Julie Madison gets kudos.

The show is a wonder to look at. Every penny of the bloated budget is there on the stage, with the aesthetics genuinely feeling like a circus, Wayne Manor, Arkham Asylum, and many more locations. We are also treated to spectacular dancing, acrobatics, and props that would make any West End show green with envy- hot air balloons, a giant Joker head, and of course the impressive Batmobile (a modified Formula 1 car). The first act is perhaps less impressive, owing no doubt to the fact that it is trying to appeal to everyone. This act is full of backstory, and that makes for a somewhat slow pace (albeit with the welcome distraction of some wonderful acrobatics). The general tone is a little pulpy, somewhat like a Dick Tracy serial, which will not please fans of the darker Christopher Nolan interpretation (although, to be fair, that would be a tough sell to a crowd of families).

Read full review at James Reviews

Or not

The show itself was good, but there were some bad moments. I personally loved the opening scene with the death of the Wayne’s. Young Bruce was jumping around with his toy sword and mask after seeing the Mark of Zorro and told his father at this point he wanted to fight crime with a mask just like Zorro. Then, the Wayne’s are gunned down by Joe Chill and we saw an emotional scene where young Bruce swore revenge. This was very well done, and probably the darkest moment of the whole show. The death of the Grayson’s was next but I found it kind of boring. I’m not a fan of the circus and what we got here was quite a bit of a Cirque du Soleil with dancers, clowns, and the Flying Grayson’s performing acrobatics. I also think there should have been a scene with Batman before the death of the Grayson’s, as it seemed we were waiting ages for Batman to arrive. One thing I did love though was that Tony Zucco was the man who caused the death of the Grayson’s and there was even a scene with Dick’s father arguing with him. When the Grayson’s died, they did a slow motion rope fall which was effective as I had no idea how they’d do the actual fall. It became clear that someone had ordered the hit on the Grayson’s but we wouldn’t find out who until a little bit later. There was also a scene before the death with Commisioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne, in which it was pretty clear Gordon didn’t like Bruce very much and even accused him of being a playboy (Julie Madison and Vicki Vale even got a mention). They also had a scene at the close of the Circus scene where Gordon asks Bruce to take Dick in which Bruce reluctantly does.

Read full review (with spoilers) at Simply Superman Batman

Unfortunately, the producers made a critical mistake, boasting just before opening that DC Comics had a hand in everything.    As one fan on Twitter put it, to any real Batman fan “DC Comics” = “Kiss of Death.”

It’s amusing how fanboys at a certain website try to appear sophisticated by dismissing the “enhancements” described to help Tom Hardy play Bane in The Dark Knight Rises because they are from an article in the British tabloid The Sun.  The Sun is certainly no titan of journalism, but neither are the fanboys, for they use this story (which they pass on while claiming not to believe it) as a platform to whine anew about:

• Christian Bale’s bat-voice (Yes, still whining since 2005)
• Bane’s voice (which they have only heard in low quality youtubes from the Pittsburgh location shooting and have no idea if what they heard will be used in the final film
• and Bane’s costume which they claim has drawn fan fire.

That last is very odd.  We don’t remember anybody bitching about Bane’s mask or costume, only Catwoman’s lackluster appearance in un-Catwoman goggles and a non-descript biker outfit.

He’s been wearing specially made shoes fitted with three-inch lifts so he can be the same size as co-stars Christian Bale and Morgan Freeman.

The former model is hardly struggling for height at 5ft 9in.

But the film’s producers wanted his character, Bane, to be of similar height to Batman and Freeman’s Lucius Fox, who are both over 6ft.

Wearing Tom Cruise’s shoes has led to some ribbing.

He’s also been the victim of on-set pranks. Tom wears a voice box which controls the pitch of his speech.

It’s set low to give him a villainous tone but the sound effects team have been amusing themselves by speeding up the frequency and making To`m sound like a Bee Gee.

via The Sun

There is no question what the draw of The Dark Knight Rises production is: Bruce and Selina.  The set photos of Los Angeles location filming with Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle jumped to the top of the week’s most popular posts despite being released very late in the week.  We haven’t seen a Thursday or Friday post make the Top 10 this way since the video of Bale and Hathaway as Bruce and Selina on the steps of Wayne Manor.

1. Location Photos from The Dark Knight Rises: Hathaway/Selina turning heads
2. Batman and Catwoman Cosplay: The Best of Dragon Con
3. Christian Bale in the Batsuit: Best Batman Action Figure Ever
4. Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises: so very good at being bad (via Sexy Girls Dressed)
5. DC Reboot Catwoman #1 – Wrong costume is a warning sign to fans but characterization sounds like an improvement
6. Catwoman goggles the symbol of bad costuming in comic book movies?
7. The cure for TDKR Location Photo Fatigue: Batman!
8. Batman at Comic Con: Catwoman of the DC Comics Reboot, not apologizing for sexy!
9. Why Doesn’t Batman Kill? | Comics Alliance
10. Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume

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Rocksteady’s latest offering to drum up interest in Arkham City, the sequel to popular Arkham City is a music soundtrack. Featuring 12 new original tracks by Daughtry, Panic! At The Disco, Coheed and Cambria, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and more (full track list below), Batman: Arkham City – The Album will be released on October 4th, two weeks prior to the game’s North American release on October 18th. The Batman: Arkham City Collector’s Edition of the game will include an album download along with additional bonus content.

The artists “approached their contributions to the album with their own unique interpretations of the stories surrounding Batman.”   Presumably not the tale of the actual game, the premise of which – the mayor closing the prisons and abandoning a huge portion of Gotham to crime – has been called preposterously dark and ludicrously improbable.  Still, the music sounds interesting to Batman fans.

The result is an eclectic mix of dynamic, atmospheric songs for an album that will appeal to fans of both the artists and Batman: Arkham City. Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez said, “I write in a very conceptual format with the stories that surround Coheed and Cambria, but Batman has a much larger, defined history and rules that go along with it. My goal was to find universal themes from Batman’s existing history to help give the lyrics legs and dimension so that the song could live within that world.”

Check out the track listing below:

1. Panic! At The Disco – Mercenary

2. Coheed and Cambria – Deranged

3. The Duke Spirit – Creature

4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Shadow On The Run

5. Blaqk Audio – Afterdark

6. The Raveonettes – Oh, Stranger

7. ††† (Crosses) – The Years

8. The Damned Things – Trophy Widow

9. Daughtry – Drown In You

10. The Boxer Rebellion – Losing You

11. Serj Tankian – Total Paranoia

*Bonus Collector’s Edition track

12. A Place to Bury Strangers – In The Shadow

The game will be released for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, Games for Windows PC and the PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system.  Published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and developed by Rocksteady Studios, Batman: Arkham City “builds upon the intense, atmospheric foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, sending players soaring into Arkham City, the new maximum security“home for all of Gotham City’s thugs, gangsters and insane criminal master-minds.”  In addition to the improbable premise, the game drew early fire for using the goggled costume for Catwoman which scores of fans despise.

The sequel “introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.”

See Related:
Zimmer: Batman 3 score must do more than rehash The Dark Knight

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 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

The third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy The Dark Knight Rises is currently filming in Pittsburgh.  A great deal of amateur video has been captured and shown on YouTube.  On all videos, assume spoilers.  If you don’t want to risk it, don’t watch.  If you want to peak behind the curtain before and see what happens before the movie magic is applied, enjoy:

In this video:  Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle/Catwoman)’s stunt double, in the notorious “We hope that’s not supposed to be the Catwoman costume” outfit, walking around the Batpod, and still being coached on how to drive it.

The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, Joseph gordon-levitt, et al

The Dark Knight Rises Batmobile finally unseated Catwoman as the Batman keyword that has social networks buzzing, but it didn’t win by much. The Feline Fatale is still the most popular buzzword related to Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, Arkham City, and DC Comics reboot.

1. First peak at the Dark Knight Rises Batmobile
2. DC Reboot Catwoman #1 – Wrong costume is a warning sign to fans but characterization sounds like an improvement
3. Batmobile for the Dark Knight Rises to be revealed. Is it the Audi R-18?
4. Batman: Arkham City announces another playable character
5. Anne Hathaway Wardrobe Malfunction – too much Catwoman for the costume?
6. First look at Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises Batsuit #TDKR #Batman
7. Batman Relaunch cover leaked already? Twitter seems to think so but…
8. Did Anne Hathaway really punch a stuntman? Or is it a smokescreen to hide leaked Catwoman costume for The Dark Knight Rises
9. Catwoman slow reveal in #thefirerises viral?
10. Arkham City Epic Fail on Catwoman Costume

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Tim Drake's Robin an unlockable player character in Arkham City

Rocksteady has announced that the Tim Drake Robin will be a playable character in the “new and improved challenge mode” in Batman:Arkham City.   Details are promised next week: if he will be a pre-order perk or platform specific the way Joker was in Arkham Asylum.

The lack of details in this pre-announcement hints that the news may have been bumped up because the announcement of Catwoman as a player character the week before E3 drew a lesser reaction than was hoped for.  Her trailer, followed by the gameplay preview at E3 renewed fan grumbles about her appearance, as well as the enhanced darkness of the game’s scenario.  ”The first game was set in an asylum, and this is grimmer?” complained one viewer.

See related:
More Batman than Arkham City on AC artwork
Catwoman in Arkham City: Trailer and Interview

Arkham City's "appallingly bad" Catwoman "has never looked worse"

Arkham City makers must have expected slavish fanboy fawning when they asked “What Arkham City Imagery did you see that made you go WOW!”   Instead they heard…

The imagery that made me go EPIC FAIL is Catwoman’s appearance. That goggle costume is the worst thing that ever happened to the character, and even though you wisely followed Jim Lee’s lead in getting them off her face asap, her face itself is not very attractive. I look at the smoking hot women like Miranda in Mass Effect and had such high expectations when I heard Catwoman would be in AC. And you come up with this. Epic fail.