…you may be the only one. The movie has made over 312 million dollars in just one week (two weekends). Dark Knight is notable for remaining true to the darker, grittier perception of the Batman made popular during the “realism shift” of comic books in the mid ’80s, and for the performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. Ledger turns in a quality performance, but that should not diminish strong performances also turned in by Aaron Eckhardt as Harvey Dent/Two Face, Maggie Gyllenhall as Rachel Dawes, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and of course, Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Batman (and give Bale credit for actually playing the two as different characters, something that prior Batmen, even Michael Keaton who I think turned in the second best Batman performance, were never really able to do).
It seems like the Christian Bale assault charge may prove to be little more than unwelcome publicity. Not only is Bale denying the assault, his mother and sister, the alleged victims, are denying reporting the assault. Bale is scheduled to return to London in September to face the charges although it wouldn’t surprise me if they were dismissed by then. Here are some MSNBC pundits looking over the issue.
Christian Bale is in the news today, allegedly out on bail after being arrested in London due to allegations of assault by his mother and sister. This is a very weird story. We’ve never heard of Bale being in any real trouble before, and his mom and sister don’t seem too distressed by the incident, having waited until AFTER the Batman premiere to even report it. Bale himself is denying the allegations. I think there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye. We’ll have to see what develops.
The New “Incredible Hulk” movie starring Ed Norton is out, and it effectively wipes away the Ang Lee disaster of a Hulk movie in 2003, probably one of the all time worst choices Hollywood has ever made. Many reviewers who wish to appear above the fray will tell you reluctantly that this new version is more “in tune” with what “Hulk fans” want than Ang Lee’s more thoughtful version, but I will tell you that it’s just better. It’s a movie made by someone who understands the character, not who is making a movie on a fluke.
The movie takes its cue from the popular and effective television version of the Incredible Hulk from the late 70s-early 80s and wisely so. This is the Bruce Banner we know and love, a hapless fugitive scientist on the run. This is the Hulk we want to see, a misunderstood Frankenstein’s monster who keeps getting dragged into conflicts he would just as soon avoid.
Another interesting thing to note is the decision that Marvel has made to create a continuity throughout their movies as there is in the comics. In this they have taken their cue from the “Ultimate” Marvel Universe, where nearly every super hero is an offshoot at failed attempts at reviving the Super Soldier program and where SHIELD and Nick Fury (A bald, somewhat Machiavellian black man as opposed to a classic hard-assed white grizzled veteran type in the original, non-ultimate Marvel universe) pretty much run everything.
Keep an eye out at the end of the movie (and post-credits at the end of Iron Man) for teasers which we expect will lead to the formation of the Avengers (possibly under the name “The Ultimates”) and corresponding movie.
Here is your Oscar winner, No Country For Old Men, by Joel and Ethan Coen. This is a movie that I believe suffers seriously from “Emperor Has No Clothes” Syndrome. That is to say, take a movie that defies all screenwriting conventions just for the sake of doing so, attach filmmakers that have a reputation for being avant garde, and you have a formula for winning an Oscar with a movie about a guy who rips off drug dealers which goes nowhere.
I firmly believe that this script is one which would get thrown out of any first year screenwriting class in the country if it didn’t have the Coen bros. attached to it and here’s why:
Every screenplay should have certain things:
A. A protagonist
Your protagonist should be someone that the audience can root for. He doesn’t have to be a pure do-gooding hero, but he needs to have some redeeming quality that makes the viewer care about his journey. Stealing 2 million dollars from criminals for no other reason than “money is good” does not make the cut if you are not a Coen Brother.
B. An Arc
Your protagonist should move through an arc, where he experiences highs and lows and achieves his goal because of lessons learned, or fails to achieve them because of lessons ignored. He should not end up murdered off screen and lying dead on a motel floor because the bad guys just finally caught up with him.
C. A Resolution
The story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The villain gets his comeuppance, the hero learns something. We’ve already found out that the hero learns nothing in this movie, and the most compelling character, Xavier Bardem’s disturbing psychopath, is left hanging, injured but free, sort of halfway between having been caught and getting away, leaving us (intentionally I’m sure) with an anti-resolution.
The scenes you can see above are interesting. They’re interesting in this form because they are clips, random scenes just meant to amuse without actually telling a story. Unfortunately, the entire movie is made up of such scenes. Screenplay scenes are supposed to advance the story. You could remove any one of the above scenes, I dare say, remove any scene from the movie, or show them in any order, and it wouldn’t change anything, certainly not the praise the critics are blindly heaping on this weak, weak effort. You could delete the characters played by Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson entirely and you wouldn’t lose anything; in fact you would gain some much needed editing.
But that’s just my opinion. I suppose there are 6,000 Academy Members with compelling counterarguments. They are more than welcome to post them here.
Tron is a movie that came out in 1982, long before the Internet, before laptops, before Apple Personal computers, before video games any more sophisticated than Space Invaders. It was a time when no one knew what was possible with computers.
What writer/director Steven Lisberger guessed was possible, naturally, was that anthropomorphized software programs inside a computer would battle each other in gladiatorial games for the amusement of a Master Control Program (MCP). One could further speculate that a freak accident could send someone from our world into this computer where he would meet these programs who would appear strangely like fantasized representations of his friends, a la Dorothy and the characters of the Wizard of Oz.
The result of Lisberger’s speculation is a supremely cool movie which gave a lot of kids of the era a good excuse to wing Frisbees at each other.
This is a trailer for the upcoming movie “Wanted” starring Angelina Jolie. It looks sort of like a cross between Fight Club and the Matrix. It is in fact based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar. Millar belongs to a new breed of comic book writers that evolved out of the “dark and gritty” period of comic books in the late ‘80s. In this period, some extremely talented writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller gave comic books legitimacy by trying to inject them with realism.
This concept evolved into the logical conclusion, originally postulated in Marvel Comics’ Squadron Supreme, that superpowered beings would quickly take over any world they found themselves in, whether for selfish purposes or as caretakers. Millar handled this concept in groundbreaking books like The Authority and The Ultimates, and brought the concept to his own series, Wanted. Wanted flips the concept, presenting a world where the super villains win. Wanted has received critical acclaim on its own although the ending is somewhat controversial. A heavily altered movie version of Wanted will soon be coming to a theater near you. Comic book purists are already buzzing at the lack of faithfulness of the movie to the book, but I’d be surprised if your average moviegoer takes issue with that. I’m looking forward to finding out.
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