The Dark Knight

[Linderbee]

I saw the trailer for it, and while it does look much better than the first one, it would have to be light-years ahead of the last one to even be average. I'd give it a shot based on liking Norton as an actor, but I like Bana as an actor too, and he couldn't save that steaming pile.

I think we're seeing eye to eye on this one

 

[Pariah]

The trailer for the Dark Knight out now makes raised my expectations...which were already sky-high. Looks like Ledger went out with a bang--his Joker looks great.

 

[Brian in Mesa]

From Batman-On-Film:

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[dodie53]

scary looking.

nice poster

 

[Jersey Girl]

The trailer for the Dark Knight out now makes raised my expectations...which were already sky-high. Looks like Ledger went out with a bang--his Joker looks great.

Yeah. It looks like it's gonna be pretty awesome.

 

[Brian in Mesa]

Omelete has some new banners up...

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[Brian in Mesa]

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[Brian in Mesa]

Got milk?

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[SuperSpck]

Milk makes your head extremely round.

 

[Pariah]

From a Rolling Stone review:

Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe.



Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil — expected to do battle — decide instead to get it on and dance. "I don't want to kill you," Heath Ledger's psycho Joker tells Christian Bale's stalwart Batman. "You complete me." Don't buy the tease. He means it.


The trouble is that Batman, a.k.a. playboy Bruce Wayne, has had it up to here with being the white knight. He's pissed that the public sees him as a vigilante. He'll leave the hero stuff to district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and stop the DA from moving in on Rachel Dawes (feisty Maggie Gyllenhaal, in for sweetie Katie Holmes), the lady love who is Batman's only hope for a normal life.



Everything gleams like sin in Gotham City (cinematographer Wally Pfister shot on location in Chicago, bringing a gritty reality to a cartoon fantasy). And the bad guys seem jazzed by their evildoing. Take the Joker, who treats a stunningly staged bank robbery like his private video game with accomplices in Joker masks, blood spurting and only one winner. Nolan shot this sequence, and three others, for the IMAX screen and with a finesse for choreographing action that rivals Michael Mann's Heat. But it's what's going on inside the Bathead that pulls us in. Bale is electrifying as a fallibly human crusader at war with his own conscience.



I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson's broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what's comic is hardly a relief. No plastic mask for Ledger; his face is caked with moldy makeup that highlights the red scar of a grin, the grungy hair and the yellowing teeth of a hound fresh out of hell. To the clown prince of crime, a knife is preferable to a gun, the better to "savor the moment."
The deft script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, taking note of Bob Kane's original Batman and Frank Miller's bleak rethink, refuses to explain the Joker with pop psychology. Forget Freudian hints about a dad who carved a smile into his son's face with a razor. As the Joker says, "What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."



The Joker represents the last completed role for Ledger, who died in January at 28 before finishing work on Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It's typical of Ledger's total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked. If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up. Ledger's Joker has no gray areas — he's all rampaging id. Watch him crash a party and circle Rachel, a woman torn between Bale's Bruce (she knows he's Batman) and Eckhart's DA, another lover she has to share with his civic duty. "Hello, beautiful," says the Joker, sniffing Rachel like a feral beast. He's right when he compares himself to a dog chasing a car: The chase is all. The Joker's sadism is limitless, and the masochistic delight he takes in being punched and bloodied to a pulp would shame the Marquis de Sade. "I choose chaos," says the Joker, and those words sum up what's at stake in The Dark Knight.
The Joker wants Batman to choose chaos as well. He knows humanity is what you lose while you're busy making plans to gain power. Every actor brings his A game to show the lure of the dark side. Michael Caine purrs with sarcastic wit as Bruce's butler, Alfred, who harbors a secret that could crush his boss's spirit. Morgan Freeman radiates tough wisdom as Lucius Fox, the scientist who designs those wonderful toys — wait till you get a load of the Batpod — but who finds his own standards being compromised. Gary Oldman is so skilled that he makes virtue exciting as Jim Gordon, the ultimate good cop and as such a prime target for the Joker. As Harvey tells the Caped Crusader, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain." Eckhart earns major props for scarily and movingly portraying the DA's transformation into the dreaded Harvey Two-Face, an event sparked by the brutal murder of a major character.


No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan — a world-class filmmaker, be it Memento, Insomnia or The Prestige — brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art. It's enough to watch Bale chillingly render Batman as a lost warrior, evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather II in his delusion and desolation. It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages. Go ahead, bitch about the movie being too long, at two and a half hours, for short attention spans (it is), too somber for the Hulk crowd (it is), too smart for its own good (it isn't). The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams.

I didn't think I could be more psyched for this movie, but now I'm almost whipped into a bloody frenzy of anticipation.

Damn.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Oh My Lord!



​

 

[Pariah]

Kevin Smith (who I an't stand, but will credit him here) is calling this movie "the Godfather II of comic book movies."

 

[Pariah]

...I wonder what he calls his Daredevil? "The Ishtar of comic book movies?"

 

[Pariah]

...nah, that was "Elektra."

 

[Pariah]

...We shall never speak of that movie again, BTW.

 

[Dr. Jones]

I don't think there is any way that this movie can live up to my expectations.

 

[hsandhu]

I don't think there is any way that this movie can live up to my expectations.

You're doing that to downplay your expectations. I get that. But this movie will freaking own. I'm calling my shot right now, 1 year from now (i'm citing the future because the ratings will be skewed in the beginning) this movie will be in the imdb top 10.

i mean the first one was spectacular, now nolan comes back w/ledger added. Two more reviews have been added to rottentomatoes calling this brilliant.

 

[Chaplin]

You're doing that to downplay your expectations. I get that. But this movie will freaking own. I'm calling my shot right now, 1 year from now (i'm citing the future because the ratings will be skewed in the beginning) this movie will be in the imdb top 10.

i mean the first one was spectacular, now nolan comes back w/ledger added. Two more reviews have been added to rottentomatoes calling this brilliant.

LOL

Please tell me you don't put any credence in that.

 

[Mulli]

So how do I institute a complete silence rule on my house for when the commericial for this comes on?

 

[Cardinals.Ken]

I don't think there is any way that this movie can live up to my expectations.

I'm with you. I learned my lesson long ago (with Star Trek V) to not get too pumped up about a film prior to release.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

I'm already predicting an Oscar nomination for Ledger in this film...

It's going to be unbelievable.

 

[Mulli]

I'm with you. I learned my lesson long ago (with Star Trek V) to not get too pumped up about a film prior to release.

I got burned on the last three Star Wars movies.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

I saw the 2 minute or so long trailer on FSN Arizona maybe?

Super stoked.




So, Linda and I decided that we are going to see this at the IMAX. Anyone want to join us?

 

[Linderbee]

I saw the 2 minute or so long trailer on FSN Arizona maybe?

Super stoked.




So, Linda and I decided that we are going to see this at the IMAX. Anyone want to join us?

So, apparently it's the Deer Valley IMAX in case anyone's wondering.

I can't wait to see this...damn.

 

[abomb]

LOL

Please tell me you don't put any credence in that.

What? You mean Wall-E isnt the sixth best movie ever?!?!?

So, apparently it's the Deer Valley IMAX in case anyone's wondering.

Likely.