Animation Archives - Page 4 of 13

Ernest & Celestine (2012) + Jodorowsky’s Dune (2014)

April 10, 20142012, 2014, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Family, France, Luxembourg, Theatrical

Ernest et Célestine
**½/****
screenplay by Daniel Pennac, based on books by Gabrielle Vincent
directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner

JODOROWSKY’S DUNE
**½/****
directed by Frank Pavich

by Walter Chaw Broad, earnest, unassuming animation from France, Ernest & Celestine is the tale of a little girl mouse, Celestine (voice of Pauline Brunner), and gruff bear Ernest (Lambert Wilson), who overcome their cultural prejudices to become fast friends. Celestine is outcast because she’d like to be an artist instead of a dentist; Ernest is outcast because he’s a busker struggling to eke out a subsistence living. Over a series of misadventures, the two end up doing the Badlands in Ernest’s ramshackle hideaway, awaiting their fate and trying to enjoy their borrowed time. It’s all leading to a grim ending, but it’s not that kind of movie.

Justice League: War (2014) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

March 25, 20142014, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

click any image to enlarge

**/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
screenplay by Heath Corson, based on the graphic novel Justice League: Origins by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee
directed by Jay Oliva

by Jefferson Robbins The red underwear is gone, and with it, all humility. Justice League: War marks the first true animated appearance of Superman and the rest of the DC Universe heroes since the comics publisher's New 52 gambit launched in 2011, resetting at least twenty-five years of pulp history.¹ What that means for viewers is a militaristically-clothed Superman (vocal chameleon Alan Tudyk) who threatens to choke people to death and a dangerously naive Wonder Woman (Michelle Monaghan) who's definitely going to have sex with him after the credits. This, effectively, is the characters' debut. Set aside all those past versions you know, toss out even the previous direct-to-video titles you may have collected (including four "Justice League" movies) since the DCU animated line officially launched in 2007. This is where the Justice League meets–and where we meet them–for the first time. And, boy, are they a bunch of pricks.

The Wind Rises (2013) + Frozen (2013)

February 25, 2014****/****, 2013, 2014, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Disney, Drama, Family, Japan, Musical, Romance, War

THE WIND RISES
****/****
written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki

FROZEN
**½/****
screenplay by Jennifer Lee, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen"
directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

Editor's Note: This review pertains to the original Japanese-language version of The Wind Rises.

by Walter Chaw Hayao Miyazaki's alleged swan song The Wind Rises is mature, romantic, grand storytelling that just happens to be something like a romanticized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineer behind the design of the Mitsubishi A5M, which led, ultimately, to the Zero. Indeed, for a Western audience, watching Jiro's dreams of squadrons of Zeros buzzing over fields of green is chilling, and advance critics seemed unable to distinguish the Japanese war machine from the film's focus on a life lived in pursuit of dreams. In truth, separating these two aspects of the picture–the proximate and the historical–is self-defeating. (Dismissing the movie out of hand is equally blinkered.) One without the other, The Wind Rises loses anything like substance, resonance, importance. It would fall on the one side into gauzy bullshit, on the other into Triumph of the Will. As is, it's something more akin to Studio Ghibli's own Grave of the Fireflies in its humanizing of a man whose dreams were corrupted into something terrible. Einstein would be one of the West's potential Horikoshi corollaries–and if Miyazaki had done Albert's biography, I'd expect to see mushroom clouds illustrating his fantasies of relativity. For Horikoshi, Miyazaki provides upheavals and disasters as highlight to each of his life events: He first meets his wife in a train crash; in a lilting epilogue, when Jiro bids farewell to his dead wife, Miyazaki offers fields of devastation and a village in flames. Throughout, Miyazaki presents earthquakes, rainstorms, sudden bursts of wind as reminders of…what? The inevitability of change? The portents of war? The cycles of life and death? All of that; but what compels is the idea of helplessness in the face of larger forces–that although we chase our dreams, we're never really in control of our destinies.

The Jungle Book (1967) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

February 23, 20141960s, 2014, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical

***/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras A
story by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, Vance Gerry, inspired by the Rudyard Kipling “Mowgli” stories
directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The Jungle Book receives only two passing mentions in Neal Gabler’s mammoth biography of Walt Disney, even though it has the distinction of being the last animated film Disney lived to produce and ended his career in a commercial triumph to bookend the early success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Gabler’s brevity on the subject suggests that The Jungle Book was of little consequence to Disney, but there are clues to the contrary between the lines, such as when Gabler writes tantalizingly about Walt’s opinion that early drafts of the script were too “sober.” Indeed, he was personally invested in the project to the point of choosing it over his relationship with long-time story man Bill Peet, who’d brought Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories to Disney’s attention in the first place. Peet’s adaptation was, as Walt saw it, beset by its fidelity to Kipling, and he solidified his vision for lighter-hearted fare by hiring radio icon Phil Harris, whose husky, hearty voice would become synonymous with Disney animation in those posthumous years. The energy and levity Harris brought to the minor character of Baloo the Bear led to a reconceiving of the narrative so that it pivoted, in Gabler’s words, on the Falstaff/Prince Hal dynamic between Baloo and child hero Mowgli.

Monsters University (2013) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 12, 20132013, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Family, Pixar

Mu2

**/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
screenplay by Daniel Gerson & Robert L. Baird, Dan Scanlon
directed by Dan Scanlon

by Bill Chambers On a school trip to Monsters, Incorporated, young cyclops Mike Wazowski, the kind of pipsqueak who gets saddled with the teacher when his classmates choose partners, sneaks onto the scaring platform and follows an octopus-like creature through one of the closet-door terminals. Rather than reprimand him, the monster tells Mike he might have what it takes to become a scarer and gives him his cap, Mean Joe Green-style. That hat bears the logo of the Scarer’s alma mater, Monsters University (better than Fear Tech!); an undergrad is born.

“Shrink-Ray”

August 28, 20132013, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog

Please excuse this self-indulgent post, but the latest episode of my side-project "The Monster Show", "Shrink-Ray," just went live, in glorious 1080p. Thanks for checking it out, I hope it's a pleasant waste of your time. If you like what you see, you can catch up with previous instalments here.

Superman: Unbound (2013) – Blu-ray + DVD + Ultraviolet

June 24, 20132013, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Superhero

Supermanunbound3

***/**** Image B- Sound B+ Extras C+
screenplay by Bob Goodman, based on the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank
directed by James Tucker

by Jefferson Robbins With Superman: Unbound, DC Universe’s appropriation of anime elements for its superhero cartoons reaches its logical endpoint: tentacle rape. Our first glimpse of longstanding Superman nemesis Brainiac, a semi-organic humanoid computer, features his natural eye getting plucked out by a pincered appendage to be replaced with an upgraded model. Later, a bound and helpless Superman will have terabytes of deadly information pumped straight into his cortex by other such squidlike injectors. The last five years of direct-to-video DC Comics adaptations, many engineered by Korean production house MOI Animation, have all gone East for key sequences–the lonely drift of a Gotham cityscape, robot foes ripped from the comics to be redesigned as mechas. So I guess it was only a matter of time before weird snaky appendages tried to skull-fuck the Man of Steel.

Extracurricular Activities: “The Monster Show”

April 10, 20132013, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Comedy

by Bill Chambers Recently, my brother Derek
and I–a failed screenwriting team if ever there was one–took advantage of the new technological democracy and decided to make our own web cartoon, spun off from
a short story Derek wrote ("The Monster Strikes") about a closet
monster who goes on strike and becomes roommates with his intended victim. For
years we had scribbled ideas for a potential TV show based on the concept,
though our initial desire to satirize sitcom tropes changed (evolved?) over
time as we realized we wanted to get away from meta humour and do something
more organically stupid.

Peter Pan (1953) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

February 4, 20131950s, 2013, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Revenge

**/**** Image
B+ Sound
A Extras
B+
directed
by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson

click any image to enlarge

by
Bill Chambers Since the 1950s, mainstream audiences have
grown up
knowing Walt Disney’s Peter Pan as the definitive
adaptation of J.M.
Barrie’s play and its subsequent novelization (Peter and Wendy),
and
that’s a mixed blessing. For every thing the Disney does well, like the
swashbuckling, it does
something
horribly wrong, like compounding Barrie’s 19^th-century
notions with
retrograde
values all the movie’s own. For instance, the English Barrie may have
regarded
Native Americans as exotic creatures by locating them in Never Land, but
it’s
Disney who immortalized them in literal red skin, then gave them a song
celebrating
their mono-syllabic cretinism:

Frankenweenie (2012) – Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 20, 20132012, 2013, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Disney, Family, Horror

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by John August, based on a screenplay by Lenny Ripps
directed by Tim Burton

click any image to enlarge

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Back in the early-Eighties, Tim Burton was part of the conveyor belt at the Walt Disney Company, cranking out artwork for films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. But drawing cuddly animals proved as bad a fit for Burton as it did for R. Crumb, and the studio eventually allowed him to separate from the pack, giving him a chance to hone his voice that was kind of unprecedented. Under the Disney umbrella, Burton produced two black-and-white shorts: the animated Vincent, a sweet and Seussian ode to his idol, Vincent Price (who narrated); and the live-action Frankenweenie, about a boy who uses mad science to bring his departed canine back to life. The latter scandalized Disney (too “scary,” plus dead dogs and black-and-white have got to be roughly equivalent anathema to kiddie fare), and plans were shelved to attach the film to prints of Pinocchio in 1984. Three decades later, Disney confidently bankrolled a feature-length remake of Frankenweenie, stop-motion animated this time but still in black-and-white, and still with an undead dog at the crux of the narrative. What changed in the interim?

ParaNorman (2012) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 30, 20122012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Horror, Zombie

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Chris Butler & Sam Fell
directed by Chris Butler

click any image to enlarge

by Walter Chaw Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see and speak with ghosts, which, if you squint a little, is only a metaphor for the kind of sensitivity that, in a boy, will invariably lead to about a decade of being brutalized by his disconnected male peer group. (Everything will change once he invents Microsoft or Pixar.) Norman's chief tormentor is barely-verbal Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, already past his sell-by date); his shallow and image-obsessed teenaged sister with a heart of gold™ is Courtney (the awesome Anna Kendrick), who has the hots for the captain of the football team, pre-verbal Mitch (Casey Affleck); and Norman's best friend, whether he likes it or not, is Mitch's weird, fat little brother, Neil (Tucker Albrizzi). The first problem of ParaNorman is that, in its rush to be sensitive to intelligent outcasts like Norman and Neil, it dehumanizes and mocks its tormentors, robbing them of the depth and complexity that would have resulted in a better film than this beautifully-wrought, entirely predictable package. (It's like a jack-in-the-box made by Faberge.) The only moment in which one of these "inside" characters is given any kind of depth (it's Mitch) is used as a sort of sitcom punchline that doesn't lend the moment gravity so much as it continues the road of taking sloppy aim at an easy target.

Peanuts: Deluxe Holiday Collection [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 21, 20121960s, 1970s, 1980s, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Family, Television

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) Image A Sound B+ Extras C

"It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown" (1992)

"It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966) Image A Sound A Extras C

"It's Magic, Charlie Brown" (1981)

"A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (1973) Image A Sound B Extras C

"The Mayflower Voyagers" (1988)

by Jefferson Robbins I defy you to ingest the first minute of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (***½/****) and not yearn for the idealized childhood nobody ever had. It's not merely nostalgic, it's made of nostalgia. Traversing the quiet streets of your tiny snow-painted town, cracking the whip on a frozen pond, singing a Christmas carol that seems to have lived in your heart long before it was ever written–it's enough to turn a guy Republican. Then, the poison pill, in the very first line of dialogue: "I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus."

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 11, 20122012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Bob Goodman, based upon the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson
directed by Jay Oliva

by Jefferson Robbins There's
nothing left. Batman: Year One is so last year, The Killing
Joke basically got turned into The Dark Knight, and "Watchmen" has become both a big-movie flopola and a prequel
comics series. With Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 on shelves
now and its concluding Part 2 due on direct-to-video disc this winter,
the DC Universe has basically wrung itself dry of compelling product from the
'80s comics revolution that it can repurpose into features and animated
editions. The bones remain for new stories, but the cost-benefit on original
work vs. revivified fan favourites ever tilts towards the latter. Those of us
who discovered or returned to superhero comics as a result of Frank Miller's and
Alan Moore's mature deconstructions are seeing their final fruits. The only
burning question is how many shmoes bought this package from Amazon thinking
they were getting The Dark Knight Rises in half of a special two-disc edition.

Cinderella (1950) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 2, 20121950s, 2012, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
directed by Clyde Geronomi & Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske

by Bill Chambers Despite its streamlining of the particulars, Walt Disney’s feature-length Cinderella ultimately takes fewer liberties with the source material (chiefly, Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella, or The Glass Slipper”) than almost any of his other animated fairytales. Consequently, there remains the problem of a heroine who’d still be sweeping the floors were it not for her Fairy Godmother, the deus ex machina to end deus ex machinas. The Cinderella myth, as Perrault interpreted it, is at best anachronistic–we learn that beauty is a virtue but that grace is a gift…whatever that means. Disney’s contemporization turns it into a karma fable of sorts, with martyrdom paying off like a jackpot and the comeuppance of Cinderella’s tormentors the real happily-ever-after of the piece. Cinderella’s a less-than-ideal role model for the millions exposed to the movie in childhood, really, because she accepts victimhood until external forces intervene on her behalf.

Brave (2012)

June 20, 20122012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Pixar, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
screenplay by Mark Andrews and Steve Purcell and Brenda Chapman and Irene Mecchi
directed by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman

by Walter Chaw Brave…isn't. Not very. It's by far the most conventional Pixar film, and while it's better than either Cars, that's only because the Cars movies are simply awful. Brave has a plucky girl heroine who disobeys her mother, makes a hash of things, then solves everything at the end through the murder of the antagonist. It has an adorable animal sidekick (three of them, actually), treats an entire culture like a broad ethnic joke, and misses every single opportunity to be about something. Huzzah! When we say as a culture that something's for children, we mean that it's better–unless we're talking about media culture. Brave is for children, and its only connection to things like WALL·E, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, or Ratatouille is its company's pedigree, fading fast until Brad Bird or Andrew Stanton decides to strap 'em on and jump back in the ol' computer-animated saddle, riding to the rescue as the company founded on their beautiful complexities descends into absolute, uncontroversial, shallow mendacity.

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012)

June 7, 20122012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical

***/****
screenplay by Eric Darnell and Noah Baumbach
directed by Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon, Tom McGrath

by Walter Chaw Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (hereafter Madagascar 3) is easily the best one yet and the product, I'll bet, of co-directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath's foray into the rigors of gag-writing for an animated TV series ("The Penguins of Madagascar")–though I wouldn't discount the influence of credited screenwriter Noah Baumbach, either. Madagascar 3 is deeply involved in surrealism, rivalling Disney's pink elephants on parade in a circus sequence that, if not as good as Dumbo's, is not as good because it's scored by a genuinely dreadful Katy Perry song. The picture's so cheerfully, indefatigably strange, in fact, that at times it approaches the Golden Age of Looney Tunes. It's an effervescent little artifact housing a psychotic, bestial gendarme named Capt. Chantel DuBois (voiced maniacally by Frances McDormand), who, in a moment of extreme cultural insensitivity, rouses her comatose henchmen with a rendition of Edith Piaf's "Non, He Ne Regrette Rien," right there in an Italian ICU. The picture is lawless in this way: Chris Rock's Marty the Zebra has never been blacker (his signature song this time around has something to do with a circus afro), David Schwimmer's Melman the Giraffe was never more of a kvetch, Bryan Cranston's Russian tiger Vitaly is depressed and bellicose, and Martin Short's brilliantly-conceived sea lion Stefano is enthusiastically, effervescently, Roberto Benigni-stupidly Italian.

Justice League: Doom (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

April 2, 20122012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Dwayne McDuffie, based on "Justice League: Tower of Babel" by Mark Waid
directed by Lauren Montgomery

by Jefferson Robbins I've figured out what Warner Premiere's DC Universe features need: music-only audio tracks. At least, as long as Christopher Drake stays on as in-house composer. His scores, from All-Star Superman to Batman: Year One to the new Justice League: Doom, are varied, adventurous, and attuned to character in a way that puts, say, Michael Giacchino to shame. His music has the same evocative power as the fables from which it springs, and at times it outclasses the direct-to-video animation it adorns. I'm not sure Drake could do "sprightly and happy," but as long as he's scoring the DCU projects, he won't get the chance. The non-sequential movies, overseen by long-time producer Bruce Timm, take their cues from DC Comics' big-screen live-action entries like Superman Returns and The Dark Knight. Punch, mope, punch some more, mope, punch really hard… Both the aforementioned theatrical fare and the DCU cartoons are firmly in PG to PG-13 territory, because why would any little kid want to watch a Batman movie, right? Right, guys…?

Tom & Jerry: Golden Collection – Volume One (1940-1948) – Blu-ray Disc

March 12, 20121940s, 2012, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Short Films

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
"Puss Gets the Boot," "The Midnight Snack," "The Night Before Christmas," "Fraidy Cat," "Dog Trouble," "Puss N' Toots," "The Bowling Alley-Cat," Fine Feathered Friend," "Sufferin' Cats," "The Lonesome Mouse," "The Yankee Doodle Mouse," "Baby Puss," "The Zoot Cat," "The Million Dollar Cat," "The Bodyguard," "Puttin' On The Dog," "Mouse Trouble," "The Mouse Comes To Dinner," "Flirty Birdy," "Quiet Please!," "Springtime For Thomas," "The Milky Waif," "Trap Happy," "Solid Serenade," "Cat Fishin'," "Part Time Pal," "The Cat Concerto," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse," "Salt Water Tabby," "A Mouse in the House," "The Invisible Mouse," "Kitty Foiled," "The Truce Hurts," "Old Rockin' Chair Tom," "Professor Tom"

by Jefferson Robbins They're phenomenally enjoyable, but the conflict in Warner's Roadrunner cartoons comes down to a lively protagonist pitting himself against something that's not a character, nor even a "force of nature." Nature, in fact, is suspended; Wile E. Coyote is struggling with a quantum impossibility. When he sets out after his prey, he finds laws of matter, energy, and motion suspended and reversed. (At times, the Roadrunner appears to move at lightspeed or beyond.) The Coyote applies Acme™ science to the chase, but discovers science doesn't apply. The Roadrunner has no obvious inner life or larger goals, and seems to exist just to frustrate his pursuer. The Universe simply does not want the Coyote to catch this blankly-smiling creature with a void howling behind its eyes, and so he never will.

Lady and the Tramp (1955) – Diamond Edition Blu-ray + DVD

March 5, 20121950s, 2012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
animated; screenplay by Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don Dagradi
directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson

by Bill Chambers Given that it may have the most famous scene in the Disney oeuvre, it’s odd that Lady and the Tramp doesn’t enjoy a better, or at least bigger, reputation. The first animated feature in CinemaScope, as well as the studio’s first original story¹ and its first dog movie (various Pluto-starring shorts notwithstanding), the film, despite earning the highest grosses of any Disney production since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, seems to have been eclipsed in the public consciousness from a genre standpoint by 101 Dalmatians and from a cinematographic standpoint by Sleeping Beauty, each of which followed so closely on Lady and the Tramp‘s heels as to reduce history’s perception of it to a dry run. It’s a bit better than that, but, coveted “Diamond” status to the contrary, frankly not one of the greats.

Batman: Year One (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 16, 20122011, 2012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Superhero

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Tab Murphy, from the comics story by Frank Miller
directed by Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery

by Jefferson Robbins Before he was a grouchy and politically-nearsighted old man with enough clout to cast Scarlett Johansson in a $60M fetish video, Frank Miller truly did change the face of mainstream superhero comics. Doing so brought him fame as a visionary, a label that implies prophetic or pioneering concepts but–at least in comics art–is most commonly applied to artists fusing pre-existing styles into a successful hybrid, or distilling an old story to its barest elements. Miller did both. In fact, between 1986's "The Dark Knight Returns" and the 1987 "Batman: Year One" arc, his reengineering of the Batman mythos wasn't so much a thrusting of the character forward into the 1980s as a slingshotting back to the 1970s. The core fact of Batman, viewed in the light of Taxi Driver, is that he's Travis Bickle with a cape and lots of money. What is Travis's mohawk if not a costume to strike fear into the hearts of criminals? What is his trick pistol sling, fashioned from a typewriter carriage, but a blue-collar utility belt? And what is the hardboiled dialogue Miller puts in Bruce Wayne's mouth–better read than spoken–but Bicklean self-justification? No coincidence that Batman's first, badly-botched outing as a crimefighter in "Year One" involves the violent rescue of an underaged prostitute.