Movie Chronicles

Betty’s Stakeout and Out of Time December 1st, 2007

EDIT: The feed is now up (pass­word and login details below), with a two minute audio clip from inside Betty’s Pie House. This is a must listen.

As we turn the cor­ner into the cold and bit­ter Decem­ber the night was once again a flurry of Dark Knight viral puzzles.

First up, solv­ing the per­fect get­away. Given the com­bined map of Gotham City from all the viral web­sites, and using a con­nect the dots method, a mes­sage stat­ing “Out of Time” was spelled out across the map, this led to the new Why So Seri­ous page:

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​u​t​o​f​t​i​me/

“My Kind of Clown! You’re obvi­ously cen­ter ring mate­r­ial, unlike some poor goons who can’t com­plete one sim­ple task. Watch the funny papers in a few days for your final step in the process

funny.jpg toe.jpg

The name on the tag is Alder Fred­er­ick, with a date of death 30th Novem­ber, caused by Asphyxia.(www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​u​t​o​f​t​i​m​e​/​a​l​d​e​r​.​htm)

A GPDiad email was also dis­cov­ered, glenn.​barhyte@​gpdiad.​com, which spewed out some inter­est­ing responses to queries about doc­u­ment LC6551. As a result this login form was discovered,

GPD Login Form. For which you can use the name and password:

Name: Bre­itup­Karl
Pass­word: 21485

Log­ging in and doing a file search for LC6551 yeilds the doc­u­ment,
Doc­u­ment LC6551, it is titled “Upswing in Extor­tions and Chechen Gang Activity”.

chechens.jpg

Some of the email responses from Glenn included:

“With all due respect, like I’ve told your friends, I just can’t dis­cuss
LC6551, or IA8214299 for that mat­ter. I don’t know who’s leak­ing
these, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m just not at lib­erty to
dis­cuss sen­si­tive information.

Glenn”

“[Karl Bre­itup] will meet some­one at Betty’s Pie Shop tomor­row. I can give you more infor­ma­tion, but you will need to coöper­ate with me for that.“

To access the sec­ond ref­er­enced doc­u­ment you need a login with higher author­ity, this is Glenn Barhyte’s account:

Name: Barhyte­Glenn
Pass­word: tevre­den­heid (sat­is­fac­tion in dutch, given via the clues for his favourite song by the Rolling Stones and in com­bi­na­tion with the file stat­ing he lived in Utrecht for 9 years — see The Gotham Times)

IA8214299 is a clear­ance request dis­cussing the sur­veil­lance of Betty’s House of Pies — six offi­cers, no uni­forms, lis­ten­ing van, equip­ment for recording.

clearancerequest.jpg

Fur­ther details of this stake­out can be found in a memo (memo.jpg)

Most impor­tantly, 15:00 Betty’s Pie Shop. Using Glenn’s login details a live audio feed will be played here. Get your record­ing equip­ment ready. (direct link to flash)

thefeed.jpg

Why So Serious The Perfect Getaway November 30th, 2007

And the third of the sea­sonal Why So Seri­ous chal­lenges is upon us, as was to be expected given the flurry of activ­ity this Friday.

The new site revolves around a per­fect get­away, ulti­mately using the maps spread across the var­i­ous Gotham Sites. www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​t​h​e​p​e​r​f​e​c​t​g​e​t​a​way (found via Page 4 of The Ha Ha Times)

Here are the plans:

getaway.jpg

For dis­cus­sion I rec­om­mend this thread.

More Devel­op­ments elsewhere…

Other big events today include threat­en­ing phones calls made to peo­ple that sub­mit­ted details to We are the Answer, Toas­t­er­Devil has kindly recorded this and placed it up on YouTube:

With a loose tran­scrip­tion from Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

“We heard about the mes­sage you left at the DA’s office. I know you have some big ideas about being a good cit­i­zen. No one likes a squeeler. You know noth­ing.They’re out there putting their lives on the line so you can sleep OK … and you’re lay­ing in your bed. Let’s see what hap­pens the next time you need some­one in blue.

Think about who they are. Check doc­u­ment LC6551. You know where to look.”

We are the Answer also have a new email response:

Thank you for your infor­ma­tion on sus­pi­cious activ­ity regard­ing a police offi­cer. Your infor­ma­tion appears to pos­si­bly be very impor­tant in an open inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing the officer(s) involved. It is impos­si­ble to dis­close any spe­cific infor­ma­tion on the inves­ti­ga­tion, but be assured that the infor­ma­tion you have pro­vided is being han­dled with the utmost seri­ous­ness and confidentiality.

If you have any fur­ther infor­ma­tion about crim­i­nal activ­ity that the officer(s) have or will be engag­ing in, you are encour­aged to use the tip-line form as an ongo­ing resource.

Please keep this email and the infor­ma­tion you have pro­vided us con­fi­den­tial. Your infor­ma­tion is part of an ongo­ing police inves­ti­ga­tion and is there­fore sub­ject to all laws gov­ern­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. Pre­ma­ture dis­clo­sure of infor­ma­tion could com­pro­mise the investigation.

Again, thank you for your assis­tance. We rely on your help. Together, we are mak­ing Gotham City bet­ter, safer, stronger. Together, We Are the Answer.

So we will be able to turn some­one else in soon. We just need a time and location…wait!

St. Swithuns and Betty’s House of Pies November 30th, 2007

These viral sites keep get­ting churned out by the dozen now, three more today.

First up is Betty’s House of Pies, www​.bet​tyshouse​of​pies​.com

bettyshouseofpies.jpg

$8.00
Betty’s Clas­sic Apple — Sliced apples with plenty of cin­na­mon Try it with ice cream; you won’t be sorry! Dutch-Apple — Betty’s clas­sic apple fill­ing baked with raisins, fresh cream, and topped with streusel crunch.”

The site con­tains an email address for reser­va­tions — reservations@​bettyshouseofpies.​com and a tele­phone num­ber — 1866–237-6152. The house itself is based off Mal­oney Street in down­town Gotham, if you’re ever there and fancy pop­ping in for a bite. The email reser­va­tion gives this response,

“We don’t take reser­va­tions from e-mail any­more because nobody ever checked and peo­ple just got mad.”

Next comes Saint Swith­uns Catholic Church, www​.saintswith​un​schurch​.org,

“St. Swith­uns is the old­est Catholic Church in Gotham. Built by Ital­ian and Greek immi­grants, it has fine exam­ples of Old World stone­ma­sonary, plas­ter­work, and car­pen­try. But this tra­di­tional set­ting is the foun­da­tion of a vibrant, ser­vice and com­mu­nity ori­ented ministry. ”

This page has a records search located here. Enter­ing the name Sal­va­tor Maroni works and brings up a mar­riage cer­tifi­cate which he was wit­ness to. The bride in the cer­tifi­cate, Anna Marie Loverso, also brings up a cer­tifi­cate of Baptism:

marriagecert.jpg baptism.jpg

You can also find them at the cor­ner of South Drive and Hat­ters Avenue, in Har­row, Gotham, or call them via 1866–237-6339:

church_01.jpg

schedule.jpg

Thirdly, there is an inter­nal affairs divi­sion of the Gotham Police Depart­ment, located at www​.gpdiad​.com:

“If the cit­i­zens of Gotham are to have the trust and con­fi­dence in the police, the Gotham Police Depart­ment must to fos­ter a good rela­tion­ship with its cit­i­zenry. This means some­one must take the respon­si­bil­ity of polic­ing the police.

Police offi­cers face sit­u­a­tions call­ing for imme­di­ate assess­ment and swift action, and must be free to exer­cise their best judg­ment and to ini­ti­ate action in a rea­son­able, law­ful, and impar­tial man­ner with­out fear of reprisal. At the same time, they must observe the rights of all peo­ple. Cit­i­zens must feel free to ques­tion police con­duct which they feel is improper.”

Some­thing else to take note of, on the Gotham USD web­site has updated and now men­tions by name the man pic­tured in the Evi­dence Fault from the last Why So Seri­ous challenge,

11/30
Con­grat­u­la­tions go out to the fol­low­ing 30-year GUSD veterans:

[…]

Jake Kar­nass­ian: Mgr. Build­ings an Grounds (on hia­tus)

Dark Knight on Today Show November 30th, 2007

The Today Show recently had a Dark Knight seg­ment fea­tur­ing some new footage from the film includ­ing Bale in the new bat suit and some Har­vey Dent podium scenes. There’s also a Chris­t­ian Bale inter­view dis­cussing the ins and outs of the new plot and the Bat­man character:

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago

New Joker and Bale Images November 30th, 2007

Along with Empire, Wiz­ard have a super hero themed issue which dons a glo­ri­ous front cover pic­ture of Heath Ledger as The Joker:

Click to em’biggen.

Joker on Wizard Cover

The Empire arti­cle itself also con­tains a new Bat­man pic­ture of Bruce Wayne admir­ing the new bat-suit. For those inter­ested in read­ing the arti­cle, but are unable to pur­chase a copy of the British pub­li­ca­tion, a typed out ver­sion can be found on SHH, Empire Arti­cle. This is an extract from the Empire inter­view with Chris Nolan:

“The way Bat­man Begins ended was intended not so much as sequel bait,” Nolan insists, “but to cre­ate a level of excite­ment at the end of the movie. Ulti­mately, the sequel hap­pened because we got caught up in that process of imag­in­ing how you would see the Joker go through the prism of what we did in the first film.”

And how is the Joker seen through that prism? “Inde­scrib­able, really, Not to sound eva­sive — it actu­ally is quite dif­fi­cult to explain, but all I can really say is Heath’s not doing any par­tic­u­lar thing, he’s inhab­it­ing the char­ac­ter in very much the way I’d hoped from a psy­cho­log­i­cal per­spec­tive. He really cre­ated some­thing that I think is going to be quite terrifying.”

TDK Batsuit

Gotham Victims Advocate Foundation November 28th, 2007

Yet another Bat­man viral site has been dis­cov­ered, this time it is the GVAFoun­da­tion, or Gotham Vic­tims Advo­cate Foun­da­tion, which can be found at this address: www​.gvafoun​da​tion​.org

In other news, Empire fin­ished reveal­ing the Joker (offi­cially this time). They also removed the click-able links to the very high res­o­lu­tion seg­ments, much to my dis­may. If any­one has man­aged to grab a high res­o­lu­tion ver­sion of that Joker grin I would be most happy to see it, as I am sure oth­ers will be too!

Fresh Sam Raimi Interview November 28th, 2007

Comic Book Resource have been talk­ing with Sam Raimi. I have extracted the Spi­der­man 4 parts of the inter­view for you here, though I rec­om­mend read­ing the full arti­cle as it gives an inter­est­ing insight into the thoughts and processes behind Raimi himself.

Do you have any incli­na­tion yet towards whether you’d like to pro­duce or direct the next Spider-Man movie, or is too early to call?

Sam: I think that’s going to be up to Sony Pic­tures, and I think that it’s too early for them to say, actu­ally. But cur­rently I’m work­ing on… well, not now, but as soon as the writ­ers strike’s over… I’m going to begin work­ing with a writer on the screenplay.

Is it impor­tant to you that the story fol­lows on from the first three? I mean, how impor­tant is inter­nal con­ti­nu­ity to you? Can you go Evil Dead-style and change details a lit­tle bit, maybe change the story up a lit­tle bit?

Sam: If I was writ­ing it I would have a very strong opin­ion about that, but we’re hir­ing a writer to come up with his own take. Sony was will­ing to go either way, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with. I think anything’s pos­si­ble, though.

I mean, there’s been so many dif­fer­ent ver­sions, it doesn’t have to fol­low the movies that we’ve made. I’d very much like to see Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, so I have a per­sonal inter­est in that, but cer­tainly anything’s pos­si­ble. Spider-Man’s such a big char­ac­ter in the comic books that he could endure a lot of dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions. You could start over or you could start with a dif­fer­ent aspect of the story than I’ve focused on in the pic­tures I’ve made, we’ll just have to wait and see what the writer comes up with.

Do you think the story will still be inter­est­ing if Spider-Man moves on and gets mar­ried? Because within the world of comics, a lot of writ­ers com­plain that once he got mar­ried the sto­ries weren’t as inter­est­ing, and the movies seem to be head­ing towards that. As some­one who’s a mar­ried man and has a fam­ily, what do you think of this idea that he can’t be inter­est­ing once he’s married?

Sam: He’s most pow­er­ful to me as an ado­les­cent. The thing that Stan Lee cre­ated that was so spe­cial was that he was a very young char­ac­ter, and he’s a kid try­ing to deal with these fan­tas­tic pow­ers. The idea of being mar­ried coun­ters that a lit­tle bit. It’s a place of accepted respon­si­bil­ity ver­sus being on the road to learn­ing respon­si­bil­ity. It’s asso­ci­ated with adult­hood ver­sus being the ulti­mate kid who’s a super­hero. So it’s not that you couldn’t tell a good story with a mar­ried Spider-Man, but my favorite Spider-Man is the unmar­ried one.

Why So Serious Mausoleum November 27th, 2007

EDIT: Look­ing for the “It’s all part of the plan” safe codes? Check our cov­er­age here: “It’s all part of the plan — Why So Seri­ous

EDIT 2: Now a new site has been revealed, http://​www​.gothamusd​.net/ — The Gotham Uni­fied School District

EDIT: OPENED…

It’s a vault! Why So Seri­ous has a sec­ond secret stage dis­cov­ered in the per­son­al­ity pro­file… http://​www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​m​a​u​s​o​l​e​um/ Thanks to Hol­ly­wood Chicago for the heads up!

The secret itself was found by look­ing at the let­ters in the var­i­ous lev­els you could achieve on the pro­filer, it was found that tak­ing one let­ter from each could spell mau­soleum and hence gen­er­ate the next fas­ci­nat­ing URL.

This is the email that was sent out:

If you’ve fin­ished my quiz, then it’s time for the next step in the inter­view process, some­thing to test your apti­tude. Spaces count:

* Eighth
* Sixth
* Eighth
* Ninth
* Ninth
* Sec­ond
* Fourth
* Sec­ond
* Third

The text on the note reads:

” You surely know how to put a smile on a guys face ! Now your task is simple.

Your job is to find a way into the evi­dence vault.

Our fine friends in blue have col­lected some­thing that surely dosn’t belong to them.”

UPDATE:From the blood­ied let­ters you can get the ana­gram, “TIME FOR TAFFY” — refer­ring to The Gotham Times, Johnny “Taffy­face” Linata died at 7:38am. There is a clock with­out any view­able hands to the left of the safe.

UPDATE: There seems to be a new secu­rity related Gotham web­site, http://​acmese​cu​ri​tysys​tems​.com/

“ACME Busi­ness Secu­rity pro­vides reli­able secu­rity sys­tems for busi­nesses through­out Gotham City. We pro­vide a range of ser­vices, from pas­sive alarm to con­stant video surveillance.

We spe­cial­ize in ware­house and com­mer­cial real estate secu­rity with flex­i­ble plans—allowing you secu­rity when you need it, for as long as you need it.”

There is also yet another Gotham City based web­site, this time its Gotham Cabs at http://​www​.gotham​cab​.com/

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