Yeah, This Is TOTALLY Appropriate

When a tragedy occurs with some kind of connection to a pop-culture property, it's only natural for the two to get bound up in eachother when it comes to artistic-expression of reactions to said tragedy. Which is a long way of saying that, while I'm kind of "put off" by the deluge of "Sad Batman" fan-art that started popping up in the wake of the Colorado Massacre (so much of it feels like it's more about empathizing with Batman - the fiction character - rather than the actual event) I expected it and understood it.

Seeing it on the days-later cover of The Hollywood Reporter, though? Advertising a series of "timely" essays on movie violence? That's just incredibly tacky. Trashy. This is National Enquirer/Fox News stuff - even an entertainment publication should have higher standards than this. Notably, the essay-collection features an astonishingly wrongheaded (to say nothing of incredibly irresponsible) "maybe the movies ARE to blame" piece by the great Peter Bogdanovich, of all people. (His 1968 film "Targets" featured a mentally-disturbed Vietnam veteran who trains a sniper-rifle on teenagers at a drive-in movie, is the connection.)