DECORATING THE BATCAVE

From the ‘Weird stuff found on eBay’ department (link).

To coincide with the release of the 1989 Batman movie, some joker at Eurostudio allowed this to happen:

Whenever creepy licensed art like this pops up, the same questions arise: who was the artist? Who picked the images to use? Who bought this? Who did they think would want to decorate their room like this? Is it terrible or awesome?

There’s not much more I can say about this that the wallpaper doesn’t say itself. I do think it’s both considerate and telling that they made it spongeable, given that the first reaction of people to seeing a room covered in this would be to either explosively throw up or jizz.

MUGSHOTS

MyHeritage.com has a fun application on their site which scans face pictures and, using some kind of futuristic facial recognition software, compares that face to a celebrity.

Pretty accurate! George Clooney is 97% George Clooney. But then again…

Clearly we shouldn’t question the site’s ability, so let’s give it a real test.

For many years I’ve owned this set of Batman Forever ceramic mugs. I have never used them for drinking, because that’d just be…weird. Their likenesses always bothered me – the only one who really looks decent is the Riddler. Two-Face looks more like Keanu Reeves than Tommy Lee Jones. If only there were some way of gee, I dunno…comparing the likenesses of the mugs to the actors themselves, but using faultless computer logic…

Let’s start with the Riddler. This should be an easy warm-up before things start getting freaky. In this way we should hope to flawlessly recast Batman Forever for its eventual remake.

Let’s see what happens when we feed the cup into the machine.

You know, I can pay that one. Not bad, MyHeritage, but what do you think about the Riddler himself?

Whoa! I can kinda see what you’re going for there, but it might be a bit confusing for the young’uns.

Next, let’s try Robin.

First, the cup…

With David Duchovny as Batman, MyHeritage? I’d never really considered the idea of an all-female recasting of BF before, but it seems to have been on MyHeritage’s mind for a while. Let’s try the character…

I’m actually surprised this didn’t end up happening for real at some point.

Now for Two-Face…
The mug:

So…you’re suggesting we cast an unknown as Two-Face? With a cast loaded with stars like MyHeritage’s BF is, this is a good idea.

How about the character?

Th-that’s not what I meant, MyHeritage! Again!

So it’s one of those instances of getting a white-hot sporting superstar in to guarantee asses on seats. Have you no confidence in the film’s quality, MyHeritage?

Finally, we move onto Batman himself.

I’m Batman?

Hmm, interesting, although I’m not exactly sure what face it found…

I’m Batman?

Try as I might, I was not able to get MyHeritage to recognise a picture of Val Kilmer as Batman. From this we can assume one of two things – either MyHeritage refuses to acknowledge anyone but Kilmer in the role, or MyHeritage is as much of a Clooney fan as we discovered earlier.

Aside from torpedoing the recasting of Kilmer-Batman, MyHeritage has provided us with some interesting choices, and managed to hit all the Hollywood casting cliches along the way – the non-actor sports star, gambling on an unknown, the Oscar winner, the hot young starlet. Perhaps when Christopher Nolan vacates the director’s chair, Warner Bros. should get MyHeritage on the payroll.

Wait, what’s that, MyHeritage?

Oh. Never mind.