Tom Hardy as Bane (via: FirstShowing)

Empire has released photos of Tom Hardy as Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and Christopher Nolan offers up more details on the eagerly anticipated sequel, due out next Summer.

Rises picks up eight years after The Dark Knight (2008), with Bruce Wayne still reeling from the death of Harvey Dent. Empire‘s real scoop though is on Bane, Nolan’s choice of villain for this, his third in the series.

Nolan: “With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.” (via: FirstShowing)

Tom Hardy (Warrior, Inception) also offered a few choice details on the fighting style of the Dark Knight’s new nemesis:

“He’s brutal. Brutal. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. It’s not about fighting. It’s about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action.”  (via: FirstShowing)

I’m not usually one for gratuitous violence but…I really want to see this movie!

Rises already promises to be far grittier than Nolan’s last two installments but I trust the director as a storyteller, especially when it comes to this franchise.

I like but do not love Inception. Same goes for The Prestige and even (hold the hate mail) Memento. But Nolan hit on something with this superhero franchise, of all things. He found a way to make these generations-old characters seem new and interesting again by wrapping them in the issues and politics of the day.

Instead of obsessing over the psyche and motivations of his heros and villains, as many of his predecessors have (with both pen and lens), he cloaked them in a Gotham new yet familiar. One that resembles the flawed communities to which his audiences belong. One that he could use, with little effort, to ground a more demented Joker and a less empathetic Bruce Wayne. That was a stroke of genius for a director dealing with a cast of characters this timeworn.

I don’t relish the “snapping (of) heads” or the ripping of “spinal columns” but I’m eager to see where Nolan takes our Knight next. It might be darker than we expect, it might not, but I know he’ll keep it interesting.

Read more on: Empire | FirstShowing | SlashFilm | MTV News | HitFlix

Tom Hardy as Bane (via: SlashFilm)

Tom Hardy as Bane (via: SlashFilm)

Bale as Batman (via: SlashFilm)

Bane from DKR on Empire (via: HitFlix)

Dark Knight on Empire (v: HitFlix)

// via: The New York Times

Meet the latest in reality television, Malay style: 10 young contestants stride confidently onto a green-hued set, ready for their moment before a studio audience and viewers across the country.

These women in floor-length black skirts, their hair covered with brightly colored scarves, are competing to show superior knowledge of Islam and their ability to teach it to others.

Pundits are surprised that the latest Twilight sequel didn’t break any box office records during its opening weekend. Mind you, it still did top the chart.

I’m actually surprised it made out as well as it did, drawing a respectable $139.5 million Friday through Sunday. Putting that in perspective, the weekend’s runner-up was Happy Feet Two, which only drew $22 million. Blockbuster season is over and it’s chilly out this time of year.

Turns out the stink is over the fact that only 20% of Dawn‘s audience turned out to be male, in the US. Meaning (dayum!), American women spent $111.6 million (yes, I did the math) to see Kristen Stewart get knocked up. 

I wouldn’t complain or worry, E!. Filmmakers out there should actually take note and put out more product geared toward women. 

Not in that Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids are Alright) kinda way, mind. But in that blood-sucking-Swarovski-dildo-fighting-for-your-affection-against-an-underage-werewolf-greased-up-with-puffy-nipples sort of way. And yes, maybe “dudes” won’t get it. But, so what? Women do! $111.6 million in three days says they do. 

Films made for men run the gamut from art-house to Judd Apatow to Michael Bay. It’s odd that Hollywood hasn’t given the fairer sex the same opportunities to indulge in wanton immodesty, while suspending disbelief. We all deserve to indulge in fantasy that is as intoxicating as it is mindless. Intoxicating because it is mindless. 

So, right on! Women now have their Swarovski dildos. Us guys wouldn’t have it any other way. 

BTW: “Dudes”, if your woman followed you to the last 3 Transformers flicks to see the interchangeable hot chick bounce around in between explosions, suck it up and go with her to Breaking Dawn. We, men, as a community, really need to figure out what the hell women find so hot about Robert Pattinson. I mean, seriously!

We really do. 

[Read the E! Online story]

Ouch!

“What emerges from analysing this index is that Malaysia ranks highly because its business environment…” 

The report also noted a “worrisome” trend of an increasing gap between the University of Malaya (UM) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), Southeast Asia’s leading university.

For a split second you’re caught in disbelief that anyone would boo Michelle Obama. That passes, you remember it’s NASCAR and…yup, yeah, that sounds about right!

// via: Screen Junkies + @SpicyMutton

“I have to say that was the first scene I shot on the set, and Tarsem never discussed the sex scene or any full-on nudity or anything, so it was kind of a surprise for me,” Pinto said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “But it was also a surprise that he had already found a body double, so it was massive pressur taken off of my shoulders…”

// via: soupsoup

Baby Boy: The Sociocultural Effects of Prolonged Male Adolescence

Check on It: The Gendered Dynamics of Male Spectatorship in Urban Public Spaces

Independent Women: Girl I Didn’t Know You Could Get Down (to Business in the Public Sphere and Still Be Expected to Perform Domestic Labor During the “Second Shift”) Like That

Kids, these theses are for you to laugh at, not use for your next assignment. You’ve been warned!