Yeah, it’s been a bit quiet around here lately.   My fault entirely, of course; I found myself working on a 2pm to 10pm shift for a while, which, timing-wise, probably couldn’t have been designed any better to make it difficult to go to the movies.   There are weekends, of course, but somehow those always seem taken up by the stuff that I’d normally have done in the week.    So the end result of all this is that quite a few movies that I’m sure I’d have found myself at have bypassed me – War for the Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (a better title than the frankly unwieldy Dead Men Tell No Tales, I think) and Alien Covenant, to name a few.    On the other hand, work does mean money.    It’s a trade off.    But I’ve now moved shifts, settled into some new hours (6am to 2pm) and so things are a bit easier to manage.

So, what’s been going on while I’ve been off doing stuff?

Well, probably most significantly, given what I’ve waffled on about in the past is that DC/Warners finally have the DCEU’s first undisputed hit in Wonder Woman, which came out to both critical and commercial success.   Given the general mess that they’ve seemed intent on making of their shared universe property, it’s really encouraging to see them put out a movie that is, by all accounts, just sheer good entertainment.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this success has exactly inspired a new sense of focus in the powers-that-be there.   Given that the one definite bright spot so far is a female-led movie, one might expect that they might look in that direction for inspiration.   Reports coming out of Warners are muddled to say the least, but it looks right now that Gotham City Sirens, a proposed movie focusing on Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Poison Ivy, is going onto the back burner in favour of a new movie dealing with the dysfunctionally abusive relationship between Harley and the Joker.

Weirdly, this isn’t the only Joker-related movie that’s been announced in the last month or so.    Also in the pipeline is a Joker origin movie, slated to be produced by, I kid you not, Martin Scorsese, and heavily influenced by Scorsese’s crime movies.    Personally, I’m not of the opinion that the Joker really needs an origin story – I think part of his allure is that he just is what he is, without the need to spell out some early life trauma that made him crack – but I can’t deny that there’s some interest value in what might come out of such an unlikely collaboration.    That’s not really the weird bit, though.   What is strange is that, according to reports, this movie is not intended to be part of the DCEU and will feature an entirely different Joker to that currently being portrayed by Jared Leto.    With the DCEU still finding its feet, I’m not sure it’s a particularly sensible move to be making what are effectively competing movies about two different versions of the same character.   But we’ll see what happens.   Right now they seem to be talking about different movies every month, so who knows what’ll ultimately see the light of day.

So, anyway, hopefully I’m back and can get on with the occasional post.   I’ve already managed to get to a couple of movies that I feared I might end up missing, Spider-Man Homecoming and Dunkirk, so there’ll be reviews on those coming.    A fair amount of other stuff coming up, most notably for me the next entry in the Star Wars canon, The Last Jedi, which is looking great, and Marvel’s latest, Thor: Ragnarok, which is looking insane in all the best possible ways.    Stuff to look forward to…