Author Topic: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, your Views. "SPOILERS" welcome!  (Read 175163 times)

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2008, 11:23:57 pm »



The Dark Knight Massive Billboard Photos


Heath Ledger appears as The Joker on a giant billboard advertising The Dark Knight on Houston Street. The ad was placed just two blocks from the Tribeca apartment building in Manhattan, where the actor died of an accidental overdose of prescription medication in January 2008.
The billboard advertisement heralds the release of the long awaited Batman flick that will open in theaters on July 18th. Ledgers fellow actors are vocal about their co-stars chances of being nominated for an Oscar. Christian Bale said:
“I do think that Heath has created an iconic villain that will stand for the ages, and of course, I would love to see him get an award. But you know, to me, you can witness his talent, celebrate his talent with this movie. Anything else is gravy. Heath has done a phenomenal enough job that I would not be surprised if he won.”
Seven actors have receive posthumous Oscar nominations, and only Australian actor Peter Finch won posthumously for his performance in the 1976 movie Network. He died of a heart attack prior to the awards show.

http://bittenandbound.com/2008/07/08/heath-ledger-the-dark-knight-massive-billboard-photos/

Marge_Innavera

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #11 on: July 10, 2008, 08:34:27 am »
Here's the review of TDK from Richard Corliss at Time Magazine, dated yesterday:



There's a beautiful high-angle shot, early in The Dark Knight, that looks down on Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in full Batman regalia as he perches atop a Gotham skyscraper, surveying the city he lives to protect, then leaping off and spreading his majestic bat wings to swoop down into the night. Bruce's trajectory is also the film's. It traces a descent into moral anarchy, and each of its major characters will hit bottom. Some will never recover, broken by the touch of evil or by finding it, like a fatal infection, in themselves.

The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season's earlier movies based on comic books. It's the fifth, and three of the first four (Iron Man, Wanted and Hellboy II) have been terrific or just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.) It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases — including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels — and lots of stuff blowing up. Even the tie-in action figures with Reese's Pieces suggest this is a fast-food movie.

But Nolan has a more subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It's as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of the Joker. Batman Begins, the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony. 


A Better Class of Criminal 

Gotham has a new white knight: a fearless district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who's determined to nab malefactors through the law with the same gusto that Batman, the dark knight, applies using his gadgets and charisma. The Mob (led by Eric Roberts) they can handle, with the help of stalwart police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). But the Joker — this guy is nuts. He does deals with the Mob, then crosses them up. He makes a point with his pencil by ramming it into a gangster's head. "This town," he says, "deserves a better class of criminals." So do action movies, and here he is, vowing to bring down Batman and Dent, just for the mad fun of it.
In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.

No, really. This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history.

And the actor, who died in January at 28 of an accidental prescription-drug overdose, is magnificent. Echoing the sly psychopathy and scary singsong voice of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Ledger!), Ledger carries in him the deranged threat of a punk star like Sid Vicious, whom he supposedly took as one of the models for his character. The Joker observes no rules, pursues no grand scheme; he's the terrorist as improv artist. Evil is his tenor sax, Armageddon his melody. Why, he might blow up a hospital or turn ordinary people into mass murderers to save their own lives.

The Joker may be insane, but he's a shrewd judge of character. He knows that Batman has two vulnerable spots: his girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, assuming the role Katie Holmes had in the first film) and his hidden identity. So the Joker starts preying on Rachel, and he says he'll stop terrorizing Gotham if Batman will come out from under the mask. A modest request from the bin Laden of movie villains, yet Bruce is reluctant. Or rather, the film is, since the informing principle of any franchise is perpetuation of the series. No secret, no Batman — just a moneybags with a Messiah complex.

The other would-be hero on a downward spiral is the district attorney. He's brave and ballsy enough to fight the Mob and the Joker, but when a tragedy makes his guilt roil, Dent gets bent. Old Two-Face has a mission of his own, and like the Joker, he can be a one-man plague — but with some of the poignance of classic tragedy.

 
Free Fall to Destiny

The mayhem and torture wreaked here, by saint or scum, are so vivid and persistent that it's a wonder, and a puzzle, why The Dark Knight snagged a PG-13 rating. (Don't take your 9-year-old son unless you think he'd enjoy seeing a kid just like him tremble in fear while a gun is held to his head by a previously sympathetic character.) But kids would have trouble following the movie, let alone understanding it. For teens and adults, it's a strap-yourselves-in trip, handsome and assured as only a big-budget picture can be. (Part of it was shot in the IMAX process, which lends the action scenes a startling clarity and depth.) And for reassurance, Nolan brings back old friends from Batman Begins: Michael Caine as Bruce's butler Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Fox, who takes care of Bruce's toys.

Actually, they're just diversions from the epochal face-off of Bruce and the Joker. For a good part of the film, when the two embrace in a free fall of souls — one doomed, the other imperiled — you may think you're in the grip of a mordant masterpiece. That feeling will pass, as the film spends too many of its final moments setting up the series' third installment. The chill will linger, though. The Dark Knight is bound to haunt you long after you've told yourself, Aah, it's only a comic-book movie.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #12 on: July 10, 2008, 09:24:27 pm »

From San Francisco:



(photo taken by my friend, Judy, with her trusty iPhone)
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
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Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
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retropian

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #13 on: July 10, 2008, 10:01:29 pm »
Good grief. Just reading the reviews and accolades for Heath's turn as the Joker gets me all teary eyed. I hope I can hold back the tears when I go to the theater.

Offline Fran

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #14 on: July 10, 2008, 10:07:33 pm »
Here's the review of TDK from Richard Corliss at Time Magazine, dated yesterday:

[snip]
But Nolan has a more subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten.

I got goosebumps reading this part!!!

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #15 on: July 11, 2008, 02:05:33 pm »

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-ledger.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

From The New York Times:

Oscar Buzz Mounts For Late Heath Ledger

By REUTERS

Published: July 11, 2008
Filed at 1:29 p.m. ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Actor Heath Ledger won rave reviews from Australian critics on Friday for his final performance as the Joker in the new Batman movie, fuelling speculation of a rare posthumous Oscar.

Australian film critics said the late actor was "manically mesmerizing" and overshadowed everyone else in "The Dark Knight" that was previewed in Sydney on Thursday ahead of the movie's world premiere in New York on July 14.

"Hypnotic farewell from the Joker," wrote Sydney Morning Herald critic Garry Maddox, saying the film was a reminder of the brilliance of the 28-year-old actor who died in his Manhattan apartment in January of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

"And who knows? The campaign for a posthumous Oscar nomination that has started overseas might just gather momentum when 'The Dark Knight' opens next week."

The Australian newspaper's critic David Stratton said Ledger's performance of "an unforgettable, genuinely creepy, villain" was a cross between Marlon Brando and James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson thrown in.

The Daily Telegraph's film editor Vicky Roach said there was a morbid intensity to the interest in Ledger's final performance but his "triumph in creating one of the most memorable villains in recent cinematic history should be celebrated."

Ledger's eerie performance as the Joker has already won him plaudits from international critics and co-stars, making him an unlikely forerunner to posthumously win the Academy Award for best supporting actor next February.

Ledger was nominated in 2006 for an Oscar for best actor for his role as a brooding gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain."

"If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous (acting) Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's "Network," sign me up," wrote Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers.

Finch, who was born in England but raised in Australia, died of a heart attack aged 60 during the voting period for the Oscars and remains the only actor to win the award posthumously although Oscars have been awarded posthumously to several non-actors.

Co-star Christian Bale, who plays Batman, was quoted by Contactmusic as saying: "I do think that Heath has created an iconic villain that will stand for the ages, and of course, I would love to see him get an award."

But history is not on Ledger's side. Five other actors nominated posthumously for Oscars were not successful.

James Dean was nominated twice after his death for a best actor Oscar and Spencer Tracy, Massimo Troisi, Ralph Richardson and Jeanne Eagels also missed out on posthumous awards.

Residents of Ledger's home town of Perth in Western Australian have found their own way to ensure his legacy lives on, naming a theatre in his honor for his commitment to acting.

At a naming ceremony last week, state premier for Western Australia Alan Carpenter said the $87 million, 575-seat theatre was a fitting tribute as Ledger was always supportive of other young actors.

"Heath Ledger was totally dedicated to the craft of being an actor and that's what made him successful," Carpenter told local reporters. "I think what we're doing is continuing that support for young people who want to make a career in the arts and acting, stage and in film, whatever it happens to be."

(To read more about our entertainment news, visit our blog "Fan Fare" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare)
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
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Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, etc. CAUTION: possible SPOILERS.
« Reply #16 on: July 11, 2008, 05:42:19 pm »

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/movies/09dark.html?ref=movies

Many Movie Theaters Decide to Leave the Bat Signal on Till Dawn



By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: July 9, 2008

LOS ANGELES — “The Dark Knight” just spilled over into early morning.

In a frenzy, fans have bought so many late-night tickets for the July 18 opening of the next Batman movie that theaters in places like San Diego, Chicago, and even Eagan, Minn., are scheduling 6 a.m. screenings for those who can’t get in at midnight or 3 in the morning.

Movie theaters have sometimes opened their doors at odd hours for their most highly anticipated films, say, an entry in the “Star Wars” series, and midnight shows have become part of the summer blockbuster ritual.

But all-night sellouts far in advance of an opening have come only with the near ubiquity of online ticket sales. Fandango.com, for instance, reports well over 1,500 wee-hour showings for “The Dark Knight” in theaters that typically do not open their doors before about 10 a.m.

The Dark Knight,” which stars Christian Bale as Batman, is directed by Christopher Nolan. It builds on his “Batman Begins,” which took in more than $200 million at the domestic box office for Warner Brothers after opening to a solid, but not spectacular, $49 million in domestic ticket sales in June 2005. The film also had strong sales on DVD.

This time much of the fan interest has been driven by word of a career-topping performance by Heath Ledger, the Australian actor who died in January. His louche interpretation of the Joker has already inspired Oscar talk.

“In the public mind, opening weekends have been eventized,” said Thomas Tull, the chairman of Legendary Pictures and an executive producer of “The Dark Knight.”

Increasingly, fans have paid certain movie openings — most recently that of “Sex and the City” — the attention once reserved for rock concerts, basketball games or the introduction of a hot product like the iPhone.

About 38 percent of ticket buyers polled by Fandango said in a recent survey that they intended to take some or all of July 18 off to see “The Dark Knight.".

While Sony Pictures opened “Hancock,” Will Smith’s somewhat arch take on superheroes, to a respectable $66 million last weekend (it has made more than $100 million to date), much of the audience had jumped ahead.

According to Movietickets.com, about one in four of the respondents to a survey of moviegoers under 25 polled between June 24 and June 28 said “The Dark Knight” was the next movie he or she expected to see in theaters.

Viewers seeking Imax screenings may have to wait. All of the first week’s showings at Lincoln Square are sold out, except for some 6 a.m. screenings, Whit Clay, an Imax spokesman, said.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, your Views. "SPOILERS" welcome!
« Reply #17 on: July 12, 2008, 09:21:19 pm »
So, I went to see it--and yes, it's big all right.
(Taken from the traffic island on Houston between Bowery and Elizabeth, New York, Saturday, July 12, 2008):



It's so strange--it is within five or six city blocks from Heath's Broome Street apartment. If he would have seen it, I think he would have laughed--

Strange.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline BelAir

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, your Views. "SPOILERS" welcome!
« Reply #18 on: July 12, 2008, 11:45:25 pm »
So, I went to see it--and yes, it's big all right.

It's so strange--it is within five or six city blocks from Heath's Broome Street apartment. If he would have seen it, I think he would have laughed--

Strange.

 :)   and   :(.

Well, hopefully he is having a little chuckle wherever he is now...

"— a thirst for life, for love, and for truth..."

Offline optom3

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Re: The Dark Knight: News, Reviews, your Views. "SPOILERS" welcome!
« Reply #19 on: July 12, 2008, 11:50:41 pm »
:)   and   :(.

Well, hopefully he is having a little chuckle wherever he is now...



He hated all the posters of AKT, with the he will rock you tag line. I suspect he would not have been overkeen on the enormous posters of him again.