Batman Begins

[Rhydderch Hael]

Screw Ben Stiller! Actually, you guys can screw Ben Stiller. I'll screw— well, I already had my say into that matter...

I just have a thing for girls in black who talk to the dead.

I found William H. Macy's 'Shoveler' a much more visible leader than Mr. Furious. He was the one asking the questions when they confronted Casanova Frankenstein on the road. It was he who rallied the gang for the final battle (showcasing one of but two instances in my personal cinematic history where food was used as a symbol of defeat— fresh chocolate cake being the other). It was he with the greatest emotional stake and the most to lose in his super-hero lifestyle. Plus, he got the big physical fight scene in the mansion.

And Casanova Frankenstein... well, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl before Mystery Men. I know now where Geoffrey Rush's character study on Captain Barbosa was born— and surpised to find that Barbosa was the less-wacky version of the two villians.

There was one quote that kind of hit a little too close to home for me, though. "...You try and say pithy things, but your wit is a hinderance and therefore nothing is provocative— just mixed metaphors. Doesn't that make you angry?..."

That, or it was "...you dress in the manner of a male prostitute..." I forget which.

...There's a certain point where you a bunch of parodied super heroes. And then there's a whole 'nother line you cross when you have "The Spleen".
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Hey! Not my fault that 9 out of 10 gyspy curses give their victims a bad case of gas.

Reminds me of another super-hero motif: a Chinese chef who bungled an order to tragic consequences.

You see, there was this special arrangement between his restuarant and this particularly wealthy and powerful customer to have a fortune cookie specially prepared with a little slip of paper proposing marriage to his longtime girlfriend. The cookie would be given to the lucky lady as a rather glib way to pop the big question.

Well, this chef accidentally mixed the fortune cookies up. The results— utter disaster! The cookie containing the proposal ended up in the hands of another woman at a nearby table, and its intended recipient got a commonplace cookie in its stead. The companion to the woman who actually received the proposal found himself in a most dire social circumstance— seeing as this was his first date with a woman who was, he would soon learn, of such psychological vulnerability as to cling steadfastly to any and all conclusions that were presented to her. The woman who was supposed to receive the cookie, took one look at the commotion that erupted at this nearby table and asked rather heatedly to her boyfriend why he never did anything like that for her— sparking off a tempest of pent-up disappointments and heated words that ultimately ended rather badly for all concerned.

'All concerned', of course, meant our hapless chef/super-hero, who was blacklisted and fired from the restaurant, tortured and killed in a high-tech nuclear laboratory run by the irate millionaire jilter, and then buried in a shallow grave deep in the desert— only to be brought back to life through mystical power by a Native American shaman who was grateful that his ditzy daughter had suddenly found herself a husband in Champion City (apparently the lucky girl was propositioned at dinner on the first date...)

Resurrected, he now uses the skills he honed in the art of Chinese gourmet to battle evil in all its guises. What those powers are— I haven't figured that out yet. But I suspect it has something to do with a wok and cans of MSG.