TODAY IN BAT-NEWS™:

Ending years of bespectacled nerd speculation, Warner Bros. has announced that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (heh) will feature Anne Hathaway playing one of Batman's most interesting characters, Catwoman, and Tom Hardy playing one of Batman's stupidest characters, Bane.

You might remember Hathaway from her excellent turns in Brokeback Mountain, Get Smart, Alice in Wonderland, and Ezra Ace Caraeff's favorite film, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Hardy, meanwhile, kicked all sorts of ass in Bronson, sniveled his way through a forgotten turn as Jean-Luc Picard's whiny clone in Star Trek: Nemesis, and is most famous as "that beefy dreamboat from Inception."

As for the cinematic history of their characters, I'll be forever indebted to Michelle Pfieffphereprer's Catwoman for jumpstarting my puberty in Tim Burton's Batman Returns, while some people might vaguely remember that dipshit S&M fiend/steroid junkie Bane from Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin. Hey, that reminds me:

Wait, shit. I totally forgot Catwoman once had her own movie, too. :(

Shitty old Batman movies aside, Hathaway and Hardy are two great actors—but does it seem weird to anybody else that Catwoman and Bane are gonna be in Nolan's final bat-movie? So far, Nolan's series has been dark, gritty, and semi-realistic in a way that's made it stand out from other superhero franchises. But both Catwoman and Bane are cartoony enough—or are frequently portrayed as such—that it seems they could skew The Dark Knight Rises into lighter territory. Or hell, maybe Nolan's totally retooling these characters so they make more sense in his particular universe; god knows on the surface, plenty of characters in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight seem pretty goofy.

The @God_Damn_Batman has some thoughts on today's news, too.