#thrillist

"Gotham City is gross. I know this because I am told about how gross Gotham is every time the city is the setting of any major conflict involving superheroes and supervillains that tend to fashion themselves after animals and/or comedians. Exchanges of dialogue about how Gotham is corrupt, diseased, and rotting from the inside are as essential to any Batman movie as the caped crusader himself, so much so that we have taken it for granted that the actual sets will reflect any of that. It's not enough to have mere scenes where characters mutter and moan about the deterioration of their city if we can't actually see what they're talking about. In recent years, in fact, Gotham has looked downright pristine. When Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy ushered in the modern era of superhero movies for adults, the director's commitment to realism meant that his films needed to look and feel as grounded as possible, famously subbing in Chicago and Pittsburgh, whose streets looked swept almost to a shine. Zack Snyder's films, stylized as they are, took the same approach, simply hiding regular city streets and augmented nighttime skylines behind layers of rain and mist. There's nothing wrong with any of this, by the way, except that I fail to see in any of these movies what exactly makes Gotham City a hive of scum and villainy. The realist angle of superhero cinema is a fun experiment, and led to some downright incredible movies, but the inherent problem with bringing fantasy characters into the real world is that they don't belong here. [...] With The Batman, Matt Reeves accomplishes the nearly impossible feat of meshing our modern expectations of action movie realism with a very strong sense of atmosphere: Not since Tim Burton's Batman films has Gotham City looked so nasty, a city straight out of our wildest imaginations or our darkest nightmares."

Kyoto might be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The former capital of Japan hosts many of the country’s most notable shrines, temples, and even a bamboo forest—all available to visit even when they aren’t decorated with spring cherry blossoms or autumn leaves. In contrast with this beauty, the Kyoto Kawaramachi train station looks more or less like every other station you might have visited—which is to say gray and unremarkable and visited by ordinary trains. One train, however, is different from the rest, with a sleek burgundy exterior and a tendency to be boarded by well-dressed women clutching picnic baskets.

we are being treated so well lately 🤩🍬

Thrillist published a summary of Harvey’s guide to Echo Park in their Ride With Me series! See the video of the interview here.

Among other tidbits about himself and the area, Harvey revealed that he put together his Guillermo audition outfit from pieces he got at Sunday’s Best thrift shop: