Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

So excited that over the last four days I've watched Batman Begins, Gotham Knight, and seven episodes of the animated series first season.

I've got an advance ticket for this at the IMAX on Thursday night...

What's the deal with preview screenings? I don't understand how it can be so easy to get in to see a film before its general release?

If you so much as walk aimlessly around certain malls (especially in big cities) there will be people who are giving out, if not actively harassing you to take, free screening passes. The last two movies I was directly offered passes to I turned down and they both, ironically, were gigantic hits (Borat and Knocked Up).

If you register at seefilmfirst, you'll get emails offering you tickets for preview screenings. It works on a first come first serve basis though, so there's no guarantee that you'll actually get a seat even if you've got a ticket. I've seen loads of pretty good films this way though.

list and map of chicago shooting locations for the dark knight.

this one is my favorite because they blew up the fucking parking garage (kitted to look like a hospital in the movie i think) and didn't tell any of the neighbors. the explosion and 10 story fireball scared the hell out of much of the west side.

What's the deal with preview screenings?

I have a Visa credit card and received some rewards-type e-mail last week offering free advance tickets. I hope they're for real and that I won't return home to find my apartment ransacked.

Kenneth Turan approves.

(Though he somehow forgets that the 'next film' Nolan did was The Prestige.)

Also, a soundtrack review.

Armond let'er rip:

Aaron Eckhart’s cop role in The Black Dahlia humanized the complexity of crime and morality. But as Harvey Dent, sorrow transforms him into the vengeful Two-Face, another Armageddon freak in Nolan’s sideshow. The idea is that Dent proves heroism is improbable or unlikely in this life. Dent says, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” What kind of crap is that to teach our children, or swallow ourselves? Such illogic sums up hipster nihilism, just like Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Putting that crap in a Batman movie panders to the naiveté of those who have not outgrown the moral simplifications of old comics but relish cynicism as smartness. That’s the point of The Joker telling Batman, “You complete me.” Tim Burton might have ridiculed that Jerry Maguire canard, but Nolan means it—his hero is as sick as his villain.

Man’s struggle to be good isn’t news. The difficulty only scares children—which was the original, sophisticated point of Jack Nicholson’s ’89 Joker. Nicholson’s disfigurement abstracted psychosis, being sufficiently hideous without confusing our sympathy. Ledger’s Joker (sweaty clown’s make-up to cover his Black Dahlia–style facial scar) descends from the serial killer clichés of Hannibal Lecter and Anton Chigurh—fashionable icons of modern irrational fear. The Joker’s escalation of urban chaos and destruction is accompanied by booming sound effects and sirens—to spook excitable kids. Ledger’s already-overrated performance consists of a Ratso Rizzo voice and lots of lip-licking. But how great of an actor was Ledger to accept this trite material in the first place?

Unlike Nicholson’s multileveled characterization, Ledger reduces The Joker to one-note ham-acting and trite symbolism. If you fell for the evil-versus-evil antagonism of There Will Be Blood, then The Dark Knight should be the movie of your wretched dreams. Nolan’s unvaried direction drives home the depressing similarities between Batman and his nemeses. Nolan’s single trick is to torment viewers with relentless action montages; distracting ellipses that create narrative frustration and paranoia. Delayed resolution. Fake tension. Such effects used to be called cheap. Cheap like The Joker’s psychobabble: “Madness, as you know, is like gravity—all it takes is a little push.” The Dark Knight is the sentinel of our cultural abyss. All it takes is a push.

But is it art?

didn't see that coming

Wait, hold on:

Unlike Nicholson’s multileveled characterization

This phrase should not exist.

^^^^for realz. that sentence is completely backwards.

why does Armond have a job?

Denby and now White - I'm beginning to wish Pauline Kael had never been born.

major lolz

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/ironicnotfunny/whitelolz.jpg

I had no idea Armond White was an old bald black guy. for some reason I had this mental picture of him as stereotypical ivory-tower-living old white liberal dude.

That graphic is hilarious...and White's blurb is the best written.

i know, so many levels of funny

That graphic is hilarious...and White's blurb is the best written.

sad but true

I need to tell heave ho about Victoria Alexander

I don't know. I'm totally anxious to see this, and I'm not often interested in big-budget Hollywood movies. But I wonder when I read praise like this:

This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

“The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.

Roger Ebert's Review. I've read this over-and-over in other reviews. But none of this is new. It's the same key conflict at the heart of a lot of comic-book movies, e.g., the first Batman franchise; Spiderman. The hero is often a haunted vigilante who teeters on the edge of good and evil; The villian often is a rouge monster who challenges the hero's (self-)identity as virtuous. There's more to Ebert's review, to be sure (including a lengthy discussion of what looks like the best thing about the movie: It's hypercool feel and Ledger's performance), but there's something that rings hollow about all the reviews saying that the plotline and the characters' internal struggles "raise the bar" for comic book movies.

Anyone seen it yet? Is there something to this notion that the movie takes "comic book films" to a newer, deeper place?

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore.

RUH ROH!!!!

plainly i think cinema >>> comic books, & heres why: the plot points can be the same, or complexified, whatever, but theres no doubt in my mind that movies can engender stronger emotional responses when done properly/perfectly than a fucking comic book can, theyre frankly far more complex in a great way: youve got the potential for sound/text/image/movement/triggers in the form of actors - if these things are combined well you get something far greater than a comic book

thats why i think you guys arguing film critics suggesting this is superior to comix are being pretentious are being dumb- i personally believe theyre right, but theres every reason for those specific people to say that as well

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore.

RUH ROH!!!!

But that kind of comment is everywhere: NY Daily News ("this new Batman action-drama - 'action-adventure' is too slight a description - marks the moment superhero movies turned serious"); Seattle Post Intelligencer ("With The Dark Knight, the cinematic superhero spectacle comes closest to becoming modern myth, a pulp tragedy with costumed players and elevated stakes and terrible sacrifices"); Miami Herald ("Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, uses the story to explore the nature of heroism and the futility of playing by the rules in a world that has no use for them. In The Dark Knight, doing the right and proper thing often backfires on the good guys, and it's the extremes to which Nolan pushes this idea that gives the film its subversive streak. By downplaying the fantastical elements of the scenario -- Gotham City has never looked this much like a real city, with practically no computer-generated embellishments -- the filmmakers give The Dark Knight an urgency and gravity that is uncommon to comic-book pictures"); many others.

Not sure who you're directing your last comment to, but FWIW, I agree: Movies have a much stronger emotional pull (for me) than comic-books ever could.

i know it is - i agree w/ it, im just saying im looking forward to this debate xp

that says less about the film's quality and more about critics' usual inability to convey something without saying the same shit everyone else us imo

daniel i cant remember if you were involved or not but i accidently got involved in some debate on ILC about this stuff

i'm guessing this film is great but it's probably just because it does this particular shit a lot better than other previous films have in a different way, rather than doing anything different with the story itself if that makes sense.

Anyone seen it yet? Is there something to this notion that the movie takes "comic book films" to a newer, deeper place?

without having seen it but having seen the previews im gonna say yes, & that it has little to do with the plot

yeah im totally agreed w/ you omar

And, to reiterate, I'm totally into seeing this film. But only because it looks very cool, well-made, and the marketing campaign has been extremely good. I'm not sure how Ledger's death impacts my interest in seeing the film, if at all (morbid, I know; just being honest).

Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald's review describes a comic book adaptation I don't wanna see.

right, because this is primarily a comic book adaptation

get real peoples

Apparently lots of film critics didn't get the memo that you can treat comics seriously. deeznuts you do not have to respond to every post.

ok hoos! i will choose to say nothing about your idiotic post because thatd only be fair

"primarily"

oh youre right, knowledgeable filmgoers will read it ONLY as a comic book adaptation, & judge it on these merits

the rest are fucktards who should be ignored

twelve 10/10 reviews on that metacritic link up there. jeepers!

http://www.progets.com/simpsons/pics/the%20comic%20book%20guy%20pondering.gif
twelve 10/10 reviews on metacritic is suspect

thats why i think you guys arguing film critics suggesting this is superior to comix are being pretentious are being dumb

I think, if you weren't so busy trying to be right (and failing, btw), you'd realize that all art forms can do things unique to themselves, and that these differences don't intrinsically make one or the other better, unless you're expecting sound from a book, or pictures from a novel.

But that's not even the issue. The issue is these film critic dopes saying that TDK "redeems" SUPER HERO comic books, brings them kicking and screaming into adulthood, and most folks are having an issue w/ critics getting on their high horse proclaiming this shit, as if 1) the stuff that these critics are responding to in TDK never existed in the genre before, and 2) as if SUPER HERO books need to be "serious" in order to be considered worthy of guilt-free praise.

Tho I'm probably off-base, conflating SUPER HERO w/ SUPER HERO MOVIE.

It seems that after you hear people make the "comic books are art/myths" arguments it is soon followed by some critics actually judging the movies like they're high-art, dismissing them, and the original comic-book lovers getting upset that they're taking the films too seriously. You can't win.

And am I the only one here who finds Bale's Bruce Wayne too dull?

I sort of prefer Michael Keaton's take on the role, but I'm sure I am the only one who feels that way.

You aren't. Bale's embarrassing. I mean, I'd rather have sex with him; or maybe his hair.

My wife's totally, utterly in love with Christian Bale. So I hate him.