A second helping of Batman Begins

It was a reunion of sorts last night, getting together with "Weird" Ed and Chad for the first time we've been together since Forcery's release a few weeks ago, and got to catch up with a guy named Andrew, a really cool dude I used to work with from the old Elon days (hadn't seen him in six years). I was the only one of the bunch that had seen Batman Begins already so it was sort of my own little kick to watch their reactions to stuff in the movie.

I may catch Star Wars Episode III once or twice more this summer, but Batman Begins is by far my hands-down favorite of this season. And it only got better with a second viewing. There were a lot of little details that I noticed this time around (example: (SPOILER highlight to read) the second time we see Zsaz - after the inmates are set loose from Arkham - I saw that he DOES have the "notch marks" carved in his flesh, just like in the comic books). A few other things too, like (not quite a spoiler) the explanation for that line that Batman swings around on: Morgan Freeman's character Lucius Fox is describing something a LOT like nano-tubules, so that isn't a stretch from reality at all.

Well, suffice it to say that all three of my comrades loved it. We wound up talking about it quite a bit afterward. And it was a relief knowing that we could finally wash the decaying remains that was the abortion of a Batman movie that Joel Schumacher did out of our brains forevermore amen.

Gotta talk about the music.

'Cuz right after we finished up I went to Target and bought the soundtrack CD. It's now loaded up on my 20-gigabyte MP3 player. And I've no doubt that a slew of speeding tickets is in my future when I crank up track 10 - "Molossus" - while driving my car. It's got that same "push to the limit" umph to it that "Duel of the Fates" had when the Star Wars Episode I soundtrack came out, that "Battle of the Heroes" in Episode III has too. But THIS one is actually composed with driving a car in mind: ain't no telling how much carnage James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer are going to wreck with this 'un.

Who knows, I might just watch Batman Begins again this afternoon. It sounded like Dad might be interested in giving this a looksee and he hasn't been to a movie theater in like five years, so I might just give him a treat for Father's Day :-)