4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we pay tribute to the year 1989! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 1989 Films
The Church (1989, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Renato Tafuri)
Batman (1989, dir by Tim Burton, DP: Roger Pratt)
Cyborg (1989, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Philip Alan Waters)
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989, dir by Uli Edel, DP: Stefan Czapsky)
I know how it feels to get caught up in someone’s music. Two short stories, and then I’ll get into it. My apologies for rambling here.
Way back in the early 2000s, my best friend and I got into The Foo Fighters something huge. Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows of my adoration of Prince, Underworld and Nine Inch Nails, but this was something different. We knew all the band members names, watched all their concerts and even bought guitars to learn how to play them. I still have the songbook for the In Your Honor album back home, with the guitar. I didn’t learn it as well as I liked, though I’ll admit that the game Rocksmith helped me more than anything I tried beforehand. Eventually, all of the Foo Fandom reached a head when my friend suggested that maybe we should go to a concert. We caught the Foos in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the former stadium of the New Jersey Devils, where Weezer opened for them. In the mosh pit area, we had a fantastic time. All of the band members were in screaming distance from us, and we enjoyed it so much that we caught them again at Madison Square Garden. Serj Tankian (lead vocalist for System of a Down) opened for them that night. We were once again in the mosh pit area and almost got in a shoving match. The energy in the stadium was amazing.
Over the years, though, the world changed. With the lockdown, pandemic and shifting ideologies, my friend no longer enjoyed the Foos the way I did. They went against what he believed in. Despite this, I look back at the shared concert experiences with joy, happy to be able to say “We did that, it was the best.”
Earlier in the year, my sister was able to score tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. She drove out from North Carolina to Kentucky with her kids to see it, which amazed me. If you ever have the chance to take a good long road trip, don’t hesitate. Trust me. Pack up your favorite ride with snacks and friends and just head out. It’s truly the best.
Anyway, she told me about the concert and how much her family enjoyed it. She kind of went off tangent (much like I do, we are family after all) and mentioned that Swift likes to leave clues around for different projects she works on. I’ll admit that I was jealous. I don’t usually do jealousy when it comes to people. Everyone comes from a different walk of life. Some have advantages, others have great mindsets and approaches, all of which we can aspire to. With my siblings, however, we all had the same starting point. While I won’t say I have to take the lead in any race I have with them – I was more than happy for and proud of my sis and her family – there was a part of me that truly felt that fear of missing out with it all. So finding out that The Eras Tour was coming out in theatres was a chance to maybe capture that same sense of euphoria my sister did.
If you’ve ever found yourself unable to stop humming “Shake it Off”, “Delicate” or “Wildest Dreams” or perhaps suffered through all of Cats just to see and hear “Macavity” – yeah, you just might be a Swiftie. To get a feeling of what The Eras Tour is like, you could even watch the Retribution Stadium Tour on Netflix. Even if you haven’t, it’s easy to appreciate Swift’s work in The Eras Tour. There isn’t much one can say about a concert. It’s either music and a performance you appreciate, or you don’t.
“Wait,” you may ask. “Why throw a concert using songs from ages ago instead of just focusing on her latest album?” Good question. It’s a long story, but Swift had most of her music collection bought out by a third party and held under lock and key. Since she couldn’t buy back the Masters of her recordings, she went ahead and start re-recording them as “Taylor’s Version”. The Eras tour covers music from Lover, Red, Evermore, Folklore, 1989, Reputation, Speak Now, and Midnights. That is a lot of music to cover. With a runtime of 3 hours, there’s a lot of music, and it’s edited well enough to keep everything moving along at a nice pace.
It’s not perfect, though. To be able to keep the runtime low, five songs were removed from the playlist:
The Archer No Body, No Crime (with Haim) Long Live cardigan Wildest Dreams
Additionally, I would have liked to have seen more of the behind the scenes that went into the show. The staging for the show is pretty elaborate, with an LED dance floor that’s used just like a screen. Although this doesn’t have the floating stages of the Reputation tour, it still packs a visual punch. One of the best sequences had Swift diving down beneath the stage and appearing to swim through it, only to show up somewhere else. Christopher Nolan would be proud, I’d imagine.
Despite not having the ones listed above, I had a great time with the concert. I listened and noted the songs I was unfamiliar with and belted out the ones I did from my seat in the front row. Thankfully, my showing was so early in the evening that it wasn’t really packed. I’d say there were probably maybe 10 people total in my showing. A pair of women approached me at the start, and I told them about my sister’s trip. They laughed and also remarked on how empty it was. They were as shocked as I was. We didn’t have anyone dancing in front of the screen (which I can imagine probably happened at the Lincoln Center IMAX), but there was much joy to be had. At the end of the day, the whole thing put a smile on my face and I walked out the theatre humming songs.
I still don’t know about the importance of the number 13 (which seems to be a big thing), but I guess that’s something to figure out later down the road.
Here on the Shattered Lens, the love for Batman is very strong. There are too many Batman related articles to fully list, but for a good start, go with Ryan’s Which Way Forward for the Batman Franchise.
This isn’t so much a review for Batman as it’s just me looking back on the film.
I spent the Saturday Morning of June 24th, 1989 standing on a line that snaked around the white walls of the Sunrise Multiplex Cinema in Valley Stream. Thankfully, by the time I arrived, there were only a few people there. Most of them were my friends, so we were close to the door. The following year, the Sunrise would go down in history as being the only movie theatre I’ve ever known with metal detectors after a shooting around the release of The Godfather Part III prompted tighter security. Before then, anyone going into the theatre had a free run of the place. From that incident to the theatre’s shutdown in 2015, you always had to pass the metal detectors.
You knew Tim Burton’s Batman was going to be something grand when they first put up the posters in bus stations. The character was so well known that the poster was simply a black and gold Batsymbol with a date – June 23. In my neighborhood, the poster lasted a week before the bus stop’s glass was broken and it was stolen. This was how mad people were for the film. Although merchandise was already available, it moved at an incredible pace. For a film made before pre-Internet, the buzz was just amazing.
“Okay, Everyone, we know you’re looking forward to seeing the movie.”, came the announcement over the theatre’s loudspeaker, which caused a few murmurs from everyone. It was a smooth, business like voice, probably from someone who had never even heard of The Caped Crusader. “We’re going to open up the doors and we want everyone to proceed to the ticket booths in a nice, orderly fashion.”
I was 14 at the time. Batman was the first movie I ever saw without my family. My parents, a cop and a bartender, saw so much of the worst of NYC that they figured the best place for me was home. Still, since I was among friends they knew, I gave me a pass. It was a big deal. My friend Pierre and I had a plan, along with the 4 others that came with us. We’d head in, make for the ticket booth and go right in for our seats near the back right side.. No refreshments were necessary, since we could all go eat at the mall later on after the move was done. To make sure I didn’t miss anything, I had already read the novel for the story beforehand.
Anyone close to the door could see the theatre workers as they approached, keys in hand. The layout of the Sunrise was such that after stepping through the front door, you could cut to your immediate left or right down a open path to separate ticket booth. As the door unlocked, was pushed open and secured, someone from near the middle of the line decided it was time, declaring in a loud scream.
“Batman!!!!!”
It was madness. Utter madness. Bodies piled into the theatre in a mad scramble for the ticket booth. On the way there, I was shoulder blocked and fell to the floor. I instantly curled into a ball to keep from getting trampled, wondering if my parents were right about not letting me out. ‘Here lies Lenny…”, my epitaph would read. “…he died at the movies after being let outside on his own just once.”
Thankfully, I was scooped up to my feet a few seconds later by one of my friends.
“Go on! We’ve got your tickets! Head for the ticket guy, we’ll meet you there!” he yelled over the crowd passing us on sides.
“Okay!!” I’d been to the Sunrise tons of times, so I knew it well. I moved through the crowd, bypassing the concession stand, which was already developing a line of its own. I thought they were going to go in without me and leave me there. I don’t know they did it, but within a few minutes of reaching the ticket taker. most of my group caught up, tickets in hand for all of us.
The actual experience of Batman was a packed crowd with almost non-stop talking throughout. After all, the audience was made up of teens and DC fans that that were ravenous for anything Batman related. Superman had about four films by the time Batman premiered. I think the only real time the entire audience hushed was near the beginning when we first see Batman grab the one robber and they ask him what he is. After that, the crowd pretty much erupted in applause.
Of course, that line would become famous and reused over the years, such as it was with the WB’s Supernatural.
Even before the film was released, the buzz for Batman was immense.
Batman focuses on Gotham City, a grand town with a great deal of crime. Reports are coming in of a mysterious vigilante figure resembling a giant bat that’s taking down random criminals. Crime in Gotham is run by Boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance, City Slickers), with his right hand man, Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson, The Departed). After discovering that Napier’s spent some quality time with his girl, Alicia (Jerry Hall, Urban Cowboy), Grissom sets him up so that he’ll be caught by the cops. Things don’t go as planned, and after falling into a vat of chemicals, Napier is reborn as The Joker. Can the Dark Knight defeat this new menace?
One of Anton Furst’s designs for Batman.
For me, one of the most interesting elements of Tim Burton’s Batman is how Jack Nicholson was the main draw for the film. Nicholson stands front and center in this film. If any real eyebrows were raised, it was over casting Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight. Keaton and Burton worked together on Beetlejuice, so there was some chemistry. However, when the announcement for Keaton being cast in Batman, most people were pretty skeptical. Keaton was known for playing more comedic roles, and playing the Batman required a more serious attitude. However, I’ve always felt that comedians are the most shocking when they take on a serious role. Some examples of this are Patton Oswalt in Big Fan, Robin Williams’ Academy Award winning performance in Good Will Hunting and most recently, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. I feel that worked for Keaton, and most viewers underestimated what he could bring to both Bruce Wayne and Batman. As Wayne, Keaton seems a bit subdued. As Batman, he’s a little scary simply because he doesn’t quite look like the kind of individual who would roam the streets at night dressed as a bat. My parents would later argue over Batman’s drop of Jack Napier at Axis Chemicals. I thought it was a situation where he just couldn’t hold on to him. My parents’ viewpoint was that Batman deliberately did it. We never really know for sure, but it did seem a little convenient that Batman couldn’t hold on to Napier. Overall, Keaton’s Batman plays second fiddle to Nicholson’s Joker, who also had a some sway in the design of the nemesis for the film.
Batman’s cast also includes Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential) as Vicki Vale, Robert Wuhl (Bull Durham), Billy Dee Williams (Nighthawks) and Pat Hingle (Sudden Impact) as Commissioner Gordon, The cast is pretty perfect here, without anyone really falling out of step. Batman stories would grow more serious by the time Nolan would step in, but for the 1980s, it was just fine.
Anton Furst would win an Oscar for Best Art Direction for his design of Gotham City, which was for its time, quite dazzling. On par with some of the designs from Blade Runner and The Crow, Furst’s rendition of Gotham was dark and brooding, compared to the more modern backdrop of Batman Begins. In addition to Gotham’s look, Furst also helped design the Batmobile, which was based off the Chevy Impala (another Supernatural connection). When the film was released on home video, my family caught sight of the Batmobile up close on the street as it delivered VHS Copies to a video store in Manhattan. Although he died some years later, Furst’s work on Batman remains an influence on both the comics and future installments of the movies.
1989 was also a big year for Danny Elfman. His score for Batman would earn him a Grammy, and the main theme would become a definitive one for the Caped Crusader throughout the early 1990. Shirley Walker would build on the theme with her music from Batman: The Animated Series. It was also something of a surprise for Prince. With songs like Trust, Electric Chair and Vicki’s Waiting, Prince’s Batman Soundtrack is full of great hits that you really wouldn’t think would fit in a story like Batman. Still, they manage to do just fine, and even elevate scenes like the Joker’s entry in the Gotham Museum and the Balloon Parade.
Batman is not without a few problems. It gets a little long in the tooth in the film’s second half, particularly in the scenes leading up to the Monarch and Bruce losing his parents. It’s not a terrible slowdown, since it has to set the tone for some of the more spectacular fights later on. It could have been edited just a little tighter. Additionally, when compared to some of the modern versions, 1989’s Batman can feel a little bit dated (to me, anyway). That’s more of a nitpick, or where you stand on the Batman universe as a whole. Everyone has their favorite adaptation on the Caped Crusader.
Burton and Keaton would later reunite in 1992’s Batman Returns, and the franchise on a whole would take a different turn with Joel Schumacher’s takes in 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997 Batman & Robin.
Through the Shattered Lens 
