In the contemporary comic-book blockbuster, the sequels will always be better than the first entries. Spider-Man 2 is better than Spider-Man, X-Men 2 is better than X-Men, and I will bet that The Dark Knight will be better than Batman Begins, just as Batman Returns was better than Batman. The pattern seems to me to be that the first film in the series is relatively impersonal—the franchise must be established as a franchise, meaning that few boats will be rocked, and the director must prove that they can handle both a film on that scale, and can be trusted with the property with all the investment it represents.
But once they’ve done so, in the above cases where the first films enjoyed significant economic (and critical) success, the directors are given a bit more leeway, are allowed to drive the family car a little further and a little faster. In each case, the second film in the series by the same director has been significantly more idiosyncratic. Batman Returns has much more of Burton’s sense of humor and interest in the grotesque; X-Men 2 is a much more serious and ambitious film narratively and thematically, more obviously the product of a prestige filmmaker (Singer’s never been an auteur by any stretch, so that will have to do). Spider-Man seemed sort of anonymous in terms of style, but Spider-Man 2 had a much more extensive and playful use of classic Raimi techniques: short, fast zooms; canted angles; rapid camera movements; whimsical motivations for techniques, like the mechanical-tentacle POV shot (virtually a repeat of his flying-eyeball POV from Evil Dead 2).
Hieno on myös tämä Raemakerin luonnehdinta Ocean’s 12:sta:
I remain sort of fond of the film, which I think was best described as being like an issue of Us Weekly as put together by the editors of Cahiers du cinéma.
Tulos: lähes joka kymmenes viikonloppulööppi käsitteli samaa aihetta kuin torstaisin ilmestyvän Seiskan kansi. Tutkija itse jarruttelee tulkintoja kirjoittamalla Tämän tutkimuksen perusteella ei voi kuitenkaan suoraan sanoa, kuinka paljon iltapäivälehdet ottavat aiheita 7 päivää -lehdestä. Pelkkiä lööppejä tutkimalla ei aina selviä, mistä jokin tieto on peräisin
, mutta kaltaiseni moralistit osaavat kyllä lukea rivien välistä.
It’s a catch 22. If Google starts running ads on Google News now it would only strength the case of those media companies arguing that Google News infringes on copyright. And yet already the cost of these deals will be driving up costs for Google. Google will want to find a way to recoup these costs without having to pay thousands of additional media outlets for the right to syndicate content.
