News & Notes

Busy week at work for me, so I've been slow getting this out, but here's some news:

• Batman on Film has some Batman 3 stuff, it's mostly non-news, but they raise a decent point:
  

  at some point soon, Warner Bros. is going to have to publicly lay claim to Summer 2012 release date for BATMAN 3 -- the clock is ticking on that and the ticks are getting louder.

  
  Studios announce the opening dates for big summer movies years in advance so that they can lay claim to the big movie weekends (and typically they don't like to release two big movies at the same time, it would just cause both films to earn less at the box office). For a summer 2012 release, something would probably be announced by the end of this year.


• Unsurprisingly, Heath Ledger won the Best Villain award at the MTV movie awards.


• Bam Kapow lists Five Batman vs Joker stories you may have missed. I'm not a huge fan of any of these, probably Devil's Advocate would be my favorite of the three, just because it's a cool concept (Joker gets the death penalty, but for murders he didn't commit, so Batman's sense of justice forces him to prove Joker's innocence).


• This past week's Brave and the Bold cartoon was pretty excellent, with appearances from Bat-Mite, Ace the Bat-Hound, Catman, Calendar Man, Catwoman, Riddler, and many others. io9 has a nice review up.


• And as long as I'm linking there, io9 has a review of Battle for the Cowl and a piece hyping the new Batman & Robin comic, which comes out Wednesday.


• And finally, some French folks made a pretty impressive looking fan film (it's very R-rated, probably not work-safe). The film borrows the Sin City/Spirit look, and creates what can only be called an unusual take on Batman, as a sort of murderous avenging monstrous man. I didn't really care for it, but I really appreciate the effort that went into making it.