Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

good method to watch TDK, everytime a character says something in low pensive tones, yell "WHY. SO. SERIOUS?!" at the screen.

i was excited for this movie about a year or so ago, now meh.

"i'd like to see a pixar batman more than the self-serious murk this film seems to be promising"

ugh

im sure you guys are all very happy you werent pulp novel nerds in the 1940s

"these hollywood directors & critics just dont understaaaaaaaaaand, man!"

huh? did i say anything about comic books?

there are two equally stupid arguments against this film being made on this thread & sometimes i conflate them

a)not true to its source/not better than its source
b)not enough ironic distance for me to be comfortable with it
(c) film critics really like it)

as some people on thread may know the whole OOOH LOOK ITS SO DARK, ITS MORALLY COMPLEX AND PEOPLE GET SHOT aesthetic is one that people have been having arguments over viz. crime novels for twenty years or so now, actually. "grim and gritty" is largely recognised as cliché at best, travesty at worst.

-- thomp, Thursday, July 17, 1946 9:16 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is why kiss me deadly is a parody!

jk it is actually a parody for totally different reasons, are you one of those people that takes noir VERY SERIOUSLY as an HIGHBROW AESTHETE? if so, you should be shot.

ha fuck no, im one of those people who thinks this looks like a badass movie

are you one of those people who think 'adaptation' was gods greatest gift to filmmaking?

I'm sure this has been mentioned, as I haven't read the whole thread, but in discussing critical reaction to this I think it's important to be specific about when someone is putting The Dark Knight into the context of "super-hero" COMIC BOOKS and when it's being put into the context of "super-hero" comic-book MOVIE ADAPTATIONS. Which are not the same thing.

TDK feels more like a good, epic crime procedural (HEAT is the movie it evokes, strongly) than it does like any other comic-hero MOVIE. I'm sure there are plenty of comics -- Batman comics probably — that have the same feel/tone. But none of the super hero movies quite do. If it rises above it's form (and I'm not sure it does -- I like X-Men 2 best of the comic adaptations I've seen), it's the form of the movie-adaptations, not of comic books themselves.

just came back from a midnight screening.

yeah, it ruled. that is all.

i need to rewatch this though. i was forced to sit in the front row, the theater was so packed.

does batman really say punk rock joker?

i don't think so. i don't remember him saying it. but i missed a lot of little things.

does christian bale ever have his shirt off? that is pretty much all i care about.

so fuckin tired of superhero movies, don't care how 'dark' or 'innovative' they are. i just want to see some super-physiques, feel me

he impales the joker and two-face with his cock, but he has his shirt on.

this was the shit

whoever plays the joker next should kill himself before the role cuz he isn't topping ledger

robert downey jr in blackface cameo was A++ too

i just saw this, it was pretty good. all i'll say about it is that it could've been about 1/3rd shorter and less complicated. heath ledger and gary oldman rule. christian bale's "batman voice" is terrible, though.

does robert downjey jnr really cameo in blackface?

it's 45 minutes too long. it thinks it's a brooding, morailty tale, with all gray and no black or white, which it's not. it's actually got a bit of ayn rand in it, which i found tedious. the acting is all well done, but the characters themselves are much less interesting than in the first one... though to be honest, i don't think any of the roles were especially demanding. and to top it all off, maggie gylenhall looks like the fish man from hellboy. seriously.

i'd like to see a pixar batman more than the self-serious murk this film seems to be promising . . . .

Pixar shouldn't just be making films for the kid market, anyway. Everytime I'm sitting through a Pixar film with my wife and daughter, I think: ''You know what would be great? A Pixar version of Jaws.''

YES

A friend raised a question I'd never thought of ... why don't they call Caine ALFIE the Butler?

"'Ello, sir... Black rubber again t'night? Ow, the birds really go fer that, eh? Fair nuff."

Or Caine as Harry Palmer: "Going out? I was just about to make an omelette. Do us a favour and bring us back some tinned mushrooms. And get the expensive ones this time, cos there really is a difference in the flavour."

...or as Charlie Croker: "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! Not flatten a street full of cars and fill an apartment block full of bat droppings."

Or as the old hippie in Children of Men: "Joker, eh? Think you're funny, eh? Come on, pull my finger."

see, none of those are short for "Alfred"

How about the film ending with a real cliffhanger ending, with the Batmobile balancing on the edge of a cliff and Alfred says "Wait a minute, I've got an idea"? Oh never mind...

Saw this in IMAX last night. Really good, though strangely derivative of No Country for Old Men and Saw. Take those three movies and you've got a thesis on the American psyche in this decade, I guess.

I loved the heavy Mies van der Rohe influence on the interiors (which fits with the whole Chicago skyline). Also interesting how careful Nolan was to exclude any easily identifiable landmarks (Sears Tower, Hancock Tower, etc.) and focus on the more anonymous ones.

In IMAX, the Hong Kong section was especially amazing.

This film was shot before anyone but festival audiences saw No Country for Old Men, oui?

i tink i might see this tonight, i am very excited

not to get too OT here but is "saw" actually worth seeing eazy? usually mainstream horror movies come out & every year theres a couple where people are like but this ones DIFFERENT & SPECIAL in some way & every time theyre not (in my experience)

True. No idea if NCfOM the screenplay was circulated much before then, or if it's just (coin)cidence.

I've only seen enough of Saw clips to know it's a manclown taunting people and setting traps for them from afar.

But... The joker IS a 'manclown' and two-face DOES make decisions based on the toss of a coin, these are established characters devised way before 'saw' or 'no country' and as such it's bullshit to suggest they are derivative of the saw bloke and anton chigurrrrrrr.

Great movie by the way, a big step up from batman begins in my opinion.

And the pencil trick was just brilliant!

Reminiscent of Saw??????

y'know Batman villains and their traps, etc.

kinda foolish to say this is derivative of sources that are actually predated by all this stuff in the Batman mythos (coin-flipping, death traps, etc.)

saw and no country for old men = "IT IS DARK AND OSTENSIBLY NIHILISTIC"

yea i didnt make the connection b/w jigsaw=joker & two-face = chigurh, that doesnt really hold water

i always thought chigurh's coin fetish was pretty lol two-face.

And the pencil trick was just brilliant!

-- spaghetti, Friday, July 18, 2008 12:01 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

theatre had big lols at this

And I'm out of this thread until I see it.

"pencil trick" is enough of a harbinger of spoilers for me to know when I should leave.

The coin, the clown, you guys are right. As a moviegoer, and as far as thinking about what fears they're playing on, they made me think of these other movies.

i still can't get over how lame bale's "angry batman" growl was.

i can get over it. but it is kinda lame, like he's gargling gravel.

I had trouble with it for the first half-hour or so, eventually I got over it.

they should've gotten the dude from the animated series to do it

kevin conroy

I came three times. I'm seeing it again today