A more than adequate summer..

THE DARK KNIGHT
DIR. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

TALENT: Christian Bale (Newsies), Aaron Eckhart (The Core), Heath Ledger (10 Things I Hate About You), Gary Oldman (True Romance)



Before this movie had made an ungodly amount of money at the box office it was already being hailed as a "masterpiece," "The Godfather of comic book movies," and the words "Posthumous oscar" were being thrown about. One rather famous critic specifically gets worked up into a lather over Ledger's turn as the Joker, I won't name names but his last name rhymes with GROPER.

Is it all of these things? Is it truly the greatest comic book film ever made?

Well, you could argue that. It doesn't make it true, it just means you could argue that it is the best film adapted from a comic book source material. Christopher Nolan's direction here is incredible, his ability to transform Chicago into Gotham is fantastic. Gotham has always been shot on soundstages or in New York but I think the grand scope of the city of Chicago lends itself nicely to a city as large as Gotham is supposed to be. Plus I'm glad Michael Mann let his helicopter pilot out of his cage long enough to film some of the shots that Nolan used.

This movie deals with the same questions that Hellboy deals with. What makes a man? What makes a hero? What is the difference between the two and can they live together in the same person? Sure TDK may not answer those questions, but the ride to the non-answers you get is so much more eloquent.

Performances.

Bale. Bale. Bale. Why, oh why use the 'bat-voice'? In BB the 'bat-voice' is barely noticeable because Batman doesn't have large amounts of dialogue, he says a few lines and then vanishes. In TDK Batman makes some pretty long speeches and the 'bat-voice' is a little more grating, he should have taken a page out of Ledger's book for this and developed some inflections, some up and down. Not every line needs to be delivered like Nathan Explosion.

Eckhart and Oldman. I believe in Harvey Dent, I just don't believe in TwoFace. I like the look of TwoFace but don't really think his arch should have been so short, give me some development of a psyche that is obviously broken. I wish that the rumored 'shoot each scene two ways and have it appear as if Harvey/TwoFace is arguing with himself ala Smeagol/Gollum' would have happened, at least then I would have bought it a little more.

It's been a long time since I was really impressed by Gary Oldman. That being said he owns this film.

Truly though the movie belongs to Ledger. His turn as the Joker is so frightening, so engrossing, and so absolutely riveting that he is impossible to not watch. His quieter moments are by far the ones that will become classic, but his bombast as the Joker is a sight to behold.
Nothing can prepare you for how good he really is in this movie, if you haven't seen it. Does he deserve a nomination, yes. Will he win? Maybe.

The Joker is everything you want him to be, he would be so happy to kill everyone in the world until it's just him and Batman just to see if when no one is looking would Batman break his rules. Love it.

Cracking the Batman myth and finding what makes him tick has been going on for nigh on 70 years. Many people have taken a wack at the Bat only to leave us with a handful of truly memorable stories that transcend the comic medium and enter the realm of full-fledged literature. I think the Nolans are on the right track with BB and TDK, one more and I think they'll nail it. The problem is the untimely death of probably the greatest Joker who ever lived could hamper that, considering the Joker is the tails to Batman's heads and always has been.

So TDK, is almost everything people are saying about it, but it essentially is still a comic book movie, and who are we to expect so much from a comic book movie.*

The Dark Knight. 29.9/31

*personally I think its the best directed, best acted and most sublimely shot comic book movie to date. Until WATCHMEN.

Hey There

SIGNAL me this..

What to say about "The Signal"?



Well it's enjoyable, its interesting and as an experiment in filmatism it is a unique little science fiction film that ultimately succeeds in providing it's viewers, however scant that audience may be, with a few laughs, some entertainment and some interesting ideas.

While I am a fan of Stephen King's work specifically the Dark Tower Saga, I did enjoy his book CELL, to which "The Signal" has been compared. Outright I was under the assumption that this was going to be some second rate King rip off and I was proved only half wrong.

While the basic premise seems directly lifted from King's novel, the execution here is what grabbed me as a viewer. The story is told in three parts, each part labeled 'TRANSMISSION I', 'TRANSMISSION II' etc. but here is how this film is unique, each part was given to a different writer/director to tell in his own way, the only common thread being the characters, their relationships and the basic premise of the story. This is what makes the movie worth while, if a bit uneven tonally (specifically TRANSIMISSION II hilarious but a bit jarring from the melodrama of T I & III).

I enjoyed how it played with the conventions of who is crazy who isn't and who is stuck somewhere in the middle, but it could have done without some of the mind-fuckery that has become so popular in this post Matrix SCI-FI world of ours. My one big gripe is a bit of nit pickery. My big gripe is the name of the city in which this narrative(s) of ours take place, Terminus. It's one thing to read the word Terminus in a book or short story but to actually hear people saying it as the name of their homes is another altogether. I'd prefer something as broadly vague and Cronenberg-ian as "The City," but that's just me.

Overall The Signal gets: 23/31

day 2...

been a rough one, watched Jurassic Park repeatedly at work today.

Funny thing bout JP... it still holds up almost 15 years later.

Remember what you were doing in 1993?

I know I was watching the shit out of some TMNT re-runs and begging my mom to take me to see Jurassic Park again, for the fourth time. When I played high school football a few years later the band was still tuning up to the tones of JP.

It's no JAWS but I'll be damned if I don't stand still when that T-Rex kicks the shit outta that Ford Explorer.

Jurassic Park = 26/31

Welcome to the Outpost

Well hopefully I will be able to keep up with this thing on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. Only time will tell, but for now let's look to the future optimistically before the crushing reality of work and projects and cynicism set in.

What will this blog be about?

I don't particularly know, mostly about film and possibly some updates on how some of my projects are going.

Oh yeah, forgot to introduce myself. I'm Billy, Bill, William, and any other such derivation. I'm a bit of a film geek and will spend much of my time and yours writing about things in that world. I want to review some things, bitch about some things and just put it out there for whatever readership I may or may not enjoy.

So let's toast to the start of something terrible.