Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

xpost, moonship otm

I might have to see that again now, actually, to wash all this coal-dust-colored moral gravity off me.

Madness is like gravity, indeed.

what's funny about the scene is that the thing on top of the helmet that looks an awful lot like a blender is actually the top of a commercial coffee grinder ... "caffeine'll kill ya!"

i forget exactly what the movie landscape was like when that came out but IIRC we were all suffering through a glut of surreal weirdly-lit fantasy-landscape movies like "city of lost children" and "nightmare before christmas" and whatnot and that whole OTT style (is there a name for it?) was starting to get pretty tired.

At least the Batman credit card ("never leave the cave without it") was saved for the next movie.

Lines uttered by Arnold Scwarzenegger (as Mr Freeze) in "Batman & Robin"

we were all suffering through a glut of surreal weirdly-lit fantasy-landscape movies

I feel like right now we're suffering through the Age Of The Thinly Veiled Meatphor. Usually for the war on terror, or Iraq, or what have you. You know what we really need? Better porn.

here's another thing we're suffering through: movies where people casually shoot each other without warning ... at points "the dark knight" started to feel a lot like "the departed" or "children of men" or "no country for old men" (specifically with the way GRITTY GUN VIOLENCE was deployed) and i don't have a whole lot of patience for that. a lot of times during the dark knight i was like "oh for god's sake, will the director please stop having hapless beat cops get shot for no reason". i actually sympathize with armond white on that point.

The Kiss from a Rose video is much better than movie itsel. Forever is a dud.

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I very much forgive it in No Country, because that kind of thing is a Coen Bros trademark, if not partial invention.

Gary Oldman? I thought that was short-story writer Stuart Dybek.

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/images/2007/09/dybek1_infusino.jpg

just saw this in IMAX. it was pretty good.

it only happened a few times in NCfOM, though, compared to all the freaking time in tDK. and anyway that wasn't a PG-13 "superhero movie".

NCfOM actually pretty great at keeping the violence off-screen!

almost all the gore (if not violence) was kept offscreen in THE DARK KNIGHT, i noticed. still felt very brutal, especially when... i guess i shouldn't spoil it.

I've gone off before about the sequence in No Country when Tommy Lee Jones drives up just in time to see the aftermath of what must have gotten pretty ugly. One of my favorite sequences.

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i think that is the difference between R and PG-13.

it was always: dude looks up at camera, reverse-angle shot with someone drawing the gun, sudden cut to black accompanied by a super loud BANG

well, not always, but you get the point.

I can't believe this only got a 12A in the UK.

The one half of Two Face's face looked pretty R to me. Sickening. Good job, I guess I mean.

Little details, like the blood on his pillow... ugh.

yeah but it kind of killed "suspension of disbelief" a bit. could anybody really walk around like that?

think of how much brainpower went into director-producer discussions on how to make this as violent and visceral as possible without pulling an R rating.

I have kind of a big question about the ending of TDK and wanted to gauge satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Maybe after the weekend when more folks have seen it.

I want to see Aaron E. do Glengarry in that makeup.

could anybody really walk around like that?

OR SPEAK!

put me down as extremely impressed by the middle third but dissatisfied with the ending. i give it 7/10.

i've been thinking a lot about "hannibal" lately, partly because of anthony hopkins vs heath ledger comparisons i've been hearing. i thought maybe it would've been better if they did two-face sort of like gary oldman in "hannibal". but maybe that's too far off from the comic book.

oldman in hannibal = i don't think i've really seen anything as disgusting in the movies since. well, maybe the few post-irreversible head-smashing scenes. there was one in "pan's labyrinth", where was the other?

the sequences shot on 70mm were pretty spectacular when projected in that format. people gasped.

I will not sit idly by while people defend Batman Forever.

this movie was so long. aaron eckhart stuff completely unnecessary. i agree that the cops vs joker thread was way more compelling than anything bats did. gotham central would make a terrific movie.

aaron eckhart really sucks.

he was better than you were in the movie

you did portray the rottweiler right?

eckhart was fine.

a LOT of british and australian talent here

nolan = english
bale = welsh
ledger = australian
caine = english
oldman = english

i thought eckhart was good. adam smokin' crack.

at least in terms of the principals, they seem to outnumber the americans (gyllenhaal, eckhardt, freeman...)

also:

didn't care much for the proper score,

but the low- and high-pitched electronic drones worked REALLY well! sort of lynchian--they were clearly not coming from anything IN the film, but they weren't exactly proper "scoring" either.

and i reiterate: you should see this in IMAX, the helicopter shots of chicago were especially magnificent.

i don't really go back on what i said earlier, not entirely anyway; the ideas behind the film didn't seem as compelling as some (ebert, et al) would say, and i think there was a degree of incoherence that reviewers aren't acknowledging. and i thought some minor plot points were a bit botched in the telling. but overall this was quite fine.

////SPOILERS?////

and the whole batman-as-jesus thing was a bit dubious, although i think they set up the next film nicely, but putting b-man in a very different place. although, i sort of remember one of the earlier films doing this too, maybe batman returns? it's been 15+ years though, so i'm not sure i remember perfectly.

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yeah, it's actually kind of a messy film. but really really good.

SPOILERS][][

my crack smoking aside did yall really buy his 3rd act flipout? dude was totally hamming it up all blandly and nothing in the face of ledger/bale ham.

i liked the rottweilers.

didn't care much for the proper score,

but the low- and high-pitched electronic drones worked REALLY well!

soundtrack should have been all dubstep.

I will not sit idly by while people defend Batman Forever.

Bring it on, Mr. Humorless. I'll go get my rubber outfit.

It was a steaming pile! STEAMING PILE!

No, it was spectacle, and camp, and very shallow, and totally pissed on any notion of Batman as brooding Nietzschian superman. Schumacher's Batman is much different, much sillier animal.

not to mention it was zzzzzzzzzzZZzzzzzzzzzzzz and too self-aware at times

I'll take self-silly over self-serious any day

i love how movies that don't completely take themselves seriously get let off the hook as if standards go out the window once you wink at the audience

That's unfair. I didn't say it was a great movie (and I kinda hate Tommy Lee Jones in it), I said it was fun.

A night in with whatever's on cable, like.