Chapters

Things I have fixed in the past 24 hours

Include: The belts on the Miata, a mysterious gravelly metal noise on the Miata, the swirl marks in the paint on the Miata and now the LCD on my stupidphone (not a smart one).

I feel like Steve Jobs/Jesse James.

And its all thanks to the internet. Thanks internet!

Batman: Dark Knight

Sonya and I watched the latest Batman movie last night… “The Dark Knight”.

Heath Ledger’s second to last film before death. Heath nailed Joker. I like the revised interpretation of the character as compared to Jack Nicholson’s in the earlier Batman. Ledger’s voice and mannerisms were great licking his lips as he spoke was a great touch, alluding to both severe nervous habits and a need to address leaking cheek scars.

The plot was good, though long. I left thinking that it was really about Heath’s portrayal of the Joker. Which makes sense, filming had completed and editing had not. I read that the director left Heath’s performance intact, cutting as little as possible and not enhancing or altering.

Beyond this portrayal of the Joker, I get a little weary of Hollywood’s continuing strategy to release more and more sequels or remakes of childhood entertainment. Of course we’re going to go see the next Batman, Indiana Jones, Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator blockbuster! How could we miss it?

What’s interesting? The paradigm has tilted. I remember popular opinion, indeed movie dialogs from Clerks and Scream, belaboring the ridiculousness of sequels. (Except for Godfather movies they claimed). Someone at the big production studios saw through that and realized that if they keep releasing the next serial they will generate larger and larger profits so long as they aren’t complete garbage.

From a transplanted comic book perspective, I can’t comment as an expert. But the movie seemed to fulfill the recent stylistic requirements of the plot as a giant robot wondering through the movie and picking up characters and scenes, peering at them and putting them back down before it drags the main, main characters into the next. You can see the classic comic book angles, the lighting and almost the borders of each frame as plot elements are put together in a static-seeming flowchart consisting of boxes and arrows manner. That plus batman’s gear was bitchin. I loved that during daylight, batman drives a lamborghini beyron or a bright red sport bike.

Favorite scenes? Joker dressed as a nurse tending to two-face, batman driving his night motorcycle, batman absconding with Lau from Hong Kong and the prisoner on the ferry dumping the detonator out the window.

Great film