HAY GUYS

Cal · Local time: Jul 22, 2008, 11:49 PM

Just got back from it. It was a Ledgerfest, but all the better for it. Easy standout performance. Oldman as head copper was fantastic.

Hackneyed score; lazily photographed (especially considering the genre). But they're minor.

How ya doing, buddy?

Shenlon · Jul 22, 2008, 09:35 AM

Oh No Weeeeeeeeeeeee
Batman star Christian Bale arrested in London - Yahoo! News

Quote:

"A 34-year-old man attended a central London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested in connection with an allegation of assault. He currently remains in custody."

The wording is the usual tangential way that British police have of confirming an arrest of a well-known personality.

The arrest follows an allegation of assault by his mother and sister, the tabloid Sun newspaper said.

It came the day after Bale attended the first European screening in London of "The Dark Knight," the latest in the Batman franchise also starring the late Heath Ledger as the Joker.

You guys broke the batman more than the joker ever could =p

Most amazing jew boots

Misogynyst Gynecologist · Jul 22, 2008, 09:37 AM

OH NO A PERSON NONE OF US WILL NEVER MEET HAS BEEN ARRESTED

WHATEVER WILL WE DO

TURN ON THE SIRENS RELEASE THE DOGS NOTIFY THE THUNDERBIRDS

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Shenlon · Jul 22, 2008, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by LeHah

OH NO A PERSON NONE OF US WILL NEVER MEET HAS BEEN ARRESTED

WHATEVER WILL WE DO

TURN ON THE SIRENS RELEASE THE DOGS NOTIFY THE THUNDERBIRDS

thats the spirit

There's nowhere I can't reach.

LZ · Jul 22, 2008, 10:06 AM

He's covering for Eckhart, that's all.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

**Fluffykitten McGrundlepuss** · Local time: Jul 22, 2008, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by LeHah

It's certainly a movie that is darned sure it has a message but can't even begin to figure out what it's supposed to be. It's one of those movies that idiots think is clever, like The Matrix. (As opposed to, say, Fight Club. Fight Club is a fairly smart movie ruined entirely by people, V is a fairly stupid movie treated the same way. I'd say there's still something to Fight Club; It's not the amazing meaning of life that every disaffected myspace user has been insisting for the past several years, but it does say something.)

V, though, is pretty far from subversive. Just the opposite, even -- it removes things from the comic to make it more appealing to general people... and all the stuff it adds are really really generic obvious modern jabs. The overwhelming sense you get from the comic is that it's just a 1984 pasthche - the overwhelming sense you get from the movie is that it's artistic cannibalism to remove points from the original plot to substitute whats popular to fight against in 2006.

"V.." was written as commentary against anti-gay politics in 1980s England. The movie still has all the stuff about the British government putting gays in concentration camps and the obvious message there -- but at the same time, V himself isn't gay in the movie, when he is a homosexual in the book.

If you want to be more exacting - why are you taking material that is rallying against the British Government by using a character in a Guy Fawkes mask, and then making it a movie about rallying against the Bush administration ... using a character in a Guy Fawkes mask? Shouldn't he be wearing a George Washington mask or something?

I think the movie is dated a lot more than the comic is, though, because lots of it comes off as clear attempts to glob modern commentary to a story where it doesn't belong and makes no sense. The comic has a taken-from-Orwell radio voice of authority who reports all the news - but the movie turns that into a Bill O'Reilly angry news commentator character. And they're part of the evil British fascist government and responsible for the concentration camps and such.

Way to be slick, Hollywood.

When I first saw it, for whatever reason it didn't register with me that it was made by Americans so the Bush analogy completely passed me by. The R.S.C. oldboys cast didn't help either. As such, I saw it as an obvious dumbing down of the message of the comic but leaving in enough of the anti-oppression stuff to not be forcing the message down people's throats and I felt that they were to an extent taking the "Don't hate gays and blacks" message as read and focussing more on how easy it is for a complacent populace to be led into a tyrannical, authoritarian state. Given that our current government have been chipping away at our civil liberties for years and Britain is now the surveilance capital of the world, I figured this was a deliberate focus choice, forgetting that the film was made by Septics. The heavy Guy Fawkes imagery also helps as I live in about the only town in the world to still properly celebrate Bonfire Night so I think I'm overly forgiving of the film's faultsbecause of external influences.

To be fair though, my taste in films, as you well know, tends towards explosions and car chases so I'm not really the right person to be having esoteric discussions about the various messages present or lacking in more cerebral pieces of cinema.

Most amazing jew boots

Megalith · Jul 24, 2008, 06:08 PM

The best scene in the film is the shot of Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong, with a panning shot that follows Fox across the helipad.

::Eptesicus::

Am I wrong.

I was speaking idiomatically.

No. Hard Pass. · Local time: Jul 24, 2008, 05:37 PM

Well you've never been right in your entire life, so one assumes yes. You are.

Zeal-impression more.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

**The unmovable stubborn** · Jul 24, 2008, 06:42 PM

Impression?

Wait, so they're not both the same guy? I always figured there was some dupe-account goofery going on that was being overlooked for comedy reasons.

FELIPE NO

No. Hard Pass. · Local time: Jul 24, 2008, 05:44 PM

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Impression?

Wait, so they're not both the same guy? I always figured there was some dupe-account goofery going on that was being overlooked for comedy reasons.

Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you.

But it turns out Megalith started ripping off Zeal's schtick years ago, and basically wanders around pretending to be his friend because... well, who knows why. But Zeal called him out on it and Megalith got all cowed and ran away.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Misogynyst Gynecologist · Jul 24, 2008, 06:46 PM

Just when you think a thread about a crappy movie can't get anymore craptastic

Jam it back in, in the dark.

RYU · Local time: Jul 25, 2008, 06:29 AM

I'm really like movie specially Heath Ledger as Joker

There's nowhere I can't reach.

No. Hard Pass. · Local time: Jul 24, 2008, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by LeHah

Just when you think a thread about a crappy movie can't get anymore craptastic

And then

Originally Posted by RYU

I'm really like movie specially Heath Ledger as Joker

which leads to

Originally Posted by world

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Put Balls · Local time: Jul 25, 2008, 05:32 AM

I'll copypasta some stuff from the journals.

So, the peek-a-premiere was tonight. The Dark Knight was more about the villains and the city again, the lack of which I wholly disliked in the previous film.

Action sucked, was too music video-y and quite unbalanced, and not to mention very unexciting. And completely unnecessary when looking at the big picture (the story). I could have lived without the million cars -chase stolen from Matrix 2 and the random mob guys popping out about in the end.

Ledger was what he could do as an actor in a very tightly written script. He did his part just great. Bale on the other hand was his own lispy self which I've always disliked. I kept thinking maybe someone else did the voiceovers for Batman, since they were actually unintentionally hilarious, even if they were obligatory. The other characters were just collateral. It was all about Batman and his flipside, The Joker. As implied by the presence of Two-Face and the flippage of million coins (got a bit annoying about halfway through).

Entropy and Chaos 101 was okay, if not a bit unnecessary until Harvey became what we know him for. They were the main driver of the plot and it worked out alright.

The thing I liked the very most about the movie was that during the stuff in Hong Kong, the kidnapping of the plotwise completely random asian guy, in the offices there was a huge aquarium and it didn't get smashed. How awesome is that!

Anyway, liked the flick as a whole. It's not an excellent movie in any way, but many small things make it an enjoyable watch.

How ya doing, buddy?

Thalin · Local time: Jul 25, 2008, 09:07 AM

Am I aloud to say me and my friend enjoyed the movie?

Anyway, who was the guy who started killing the bank robbers at the start, who said 'don't you know who you're stealing from etc'

I was speaking idiomatically.

Animechanic · Local time: Jul 25, 2008, 01:13 AM

Just some mob guy watching over his mob bank. Apparently pissing off the mob was Joker's hobby before he decided to kill the Batman instead.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

indutrial · 05:39 AM

Originally Posted by LeHah

You know why Mask Of The Phantasm is the best Batman movie made? They don't discuss the reasons, they just tell a story; everything you can ask for is there if you decide to break it down, instead of the writer throwing it in your face.

As far as I see it, Mask of the Phantasm is also the movie with the best Joker. The whole 'agent of chaos' thing was kind of cliched and I left Dark Knight wondering why the Joker didn't tell any good jokes or drop any good plays on words like the kooky-yet-intimidatingly-evil animated Joker. I also wished that at least one of his props would include the hand buzzer, the laughing gas flower, anything.

I can't help but feel that this movie went a bit overboard in trying to appeal to every movie-goers' basest interests and desires, and the end result was too wanna-be-hardcore to actually inspire the feelings of fascination and excitement I had so hoped to gain from a movie about a guy who dresses up as a fucking bat and fights criminals. "Why so serious?", ehh. Maybe Chris Nolan should have taken that idea a bit more seriously. The Prestige, despite its thick air of darkness and tragedy, managed to keep me at the edge of my seat until the very end, introducing more and more mysterious and exciting elements until it reaches a fever pitch and smashes you with an awesome ending. I really wish that the same could have happened with TDK, and Batman Begins for that matter. TDK was too long and the plot ended up spider-webbing in too many disparate directions, leading to an extremely clumsy and anticlimactic conclusion.

I won't say that it's a crappy movie. I think all of the hot air holding it up needs to be let out of it a little. The IMDB thing is a downright hilarious display of pure asshole-mania. We may as well look at it retroactively and put movies like Total Recall and Spiderman in the top ten also. Those were exciting in the first few weeks they were out too, no?

Most amazing jew boots

Thalin · 05:01 PM

I don't know if this has been brought up before, but I can't stop cracking up when I watch this YouTube - The Dark Knight 1966 Style

The shark attack is great, and when he say's 'the right choice' and he walks in on a couple. I havn't seen the 1966 film (i'm really not a batman film, I just really liked The Dark Knight)

Additional Spam:
Just got back from seeing it the second time. I love it when that note/bass whatever it's called 'builds up' when the Joker 'plans'. It's the perfect tension builder!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Dark Nation · 10:29 PM

So, saw the movie earlier today.

My thoughts:

Spoiler:

I'm probably being harder on the film here then I would in normal conversation, but I DID enjoy the film. Aaron Eckhart's portrayal as Harvey was great, Heath as the joker was riveting, and the other smaller roles were put through with no complaints.

So yeah, I'd probably get this on DVD when it comes out.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Misogynyst Gynecologist · Jul 27, 2008, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Christopher Nolan panders to hip, nihilistic tendencies, forgetting that superheroes are also meant to inspire hope

By Armond White

The Dark Knight
Directed by Christopher Nolan

Every generation has a right to its own Batman. Every generation also has the right—no, obligation—to question a pop-entertainment that diminishes universal ideas of good, evil, social purpose and pleasure. And Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, is a highly questionable pop enterprise. Forty-two-year-old movie lovers can’t tell 21-year-old movie lovers why; 21 can only know by getting to be 42. But I’ll try.

After announcing his new comics interpretation with 2005’s oppressively grim Batman Begins, Nolan continues the intellectual squalor popularized in his pseudo-existential hit Memento. Appealing to adolescent jadedness and boredom, Nolan revamps millionaire Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the crime-fighter Batman (played by indie-zombie Christian Bale), by making him a twisted icon, what the kids call “sick.” The Dark Knight is not an adventure movie with a driven protagonist; it’s a goddamn psychodrama in which Batman/Bruce Wayne’s neuroses compete with two alter-egos: Gotham City’s law-and-order District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and master criminal The Joker (Heath Ledger)—all three personifying the contemporary distrust of virtue.

We’re way beyond film noir here. The Dark Knight has no black-and-white moral shading. Everything is dark, the tone glibly nihilistic (hip) due to The Joker’s rampage that brings Gotham City to its knees—exhausting the D.A. and nearly wearing-out Batman’s arsenal of expensive gizmos. Nolan isn’t interested in providing James Bond–style gadgetry for its own ingenious wonder; rather, these crime battle accoutrements evoke Zodiac-style “process” (part of the futility and dread exemplified by the constantly outwitted police). This pessimism links Batman to our post-9/11 anxiety by escalating the violence quotient, evoking terrorist threat and urban helplessness. And though the film’s violence is hard, loud and constant, it is never realistic—it fabricates disaster simply to tease millennial death wish and psychosis.

Watching psychic volleys between Batman, Dent and The Joker (there’s even a love quadrangle that includes Maggie Gyllenhaal’s slouchy Assistant D.A., Rachel Dawes) is as fraught and unpleasurable as There Will Be Blood with bat wings. This sociological bloodsport shouldn’t be acceptable to any thinking generation.

There hasn’t been so much pressure to like a Batman movie since street vendors were selling bootleg Batman T-shirts in 1989. If blurbs like “The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil—expected to do battle—decide instead to get it on and dance” sound desperate, it’s due to the awful tendency to convert criticism into ad copy—constantly pandering to Hollywood’s teen demographic. This not only revamps ideas of escapist entertainment; like Nolan, it corrupts them.

Remember how Tim Burton’s 1989 interpretation of the comics superhero wasn’t quite good enough? Yet Burton attempted something dazzling: a balance of scary/satirical mood (which he nearly perfected in the 1992 Batman Returns) that gave substance to a pop-culture totem, enhancing it without sacrificing its delight. Burton didn’t need to repeat the tongue-in-cheek 1960s TV series; being romantically in touch with Catwoman, Bruce Wayne and The Penguin’s loneliness was richer. Burton’s pop-geek specialty is to humorously explicate childhood nightmare. But Nolan’s The Dark Knight has one note: gloom. For Nolan, making Batman somber is the same as making it serious. This is not a triumph of comics culture commanding the mainstream: It’s giving in to bleakness. Ever since Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic-novel reinvention, The Dark Knight Returns, pop consumers have rejected traditional moral verities as corny. That might be the ultimate capitalist deception.

A bleak Batman entraps us in a commercial mechanism, not art. There’s none of Burton’s satirical detachment from the crime-and-punishment theme. In Nolan’s view, crime is never punished or expunged. (“I am an agent of chaos!” boasts The Joker.) The generation of consumers who swallow this pessimistic sentiment can’t see past the product to its debased morality. Instead, their excitement about The Dark Knight’s dread (that teenage thrall with subversion) inspires their fealty to product.

Ironically, Nolan’s aggressive style won’t be slagged “manipulative” because it doesn’t require viewers to feel those discredited virtues, “hope” and “faith.” Like Hellboy II, this kind of sci-fi or horror or comics-whatever obviates morality. It trashes belief systems and encourages childish fantasies of absurd macho potency and fabulous grotesqueries. That’s how Nolan could take the fun out of Batman and still be acclaimed hip. As in Memento, Nolan shows rudimentary craft; his zeitgeist filmmaking—morose, obsessive, fussily executed yet emotionally unsatisfying—will only impress anyone who hasn’t seen De Palma’s genuinely, politically serious crime-fighter movie, The Black Dahlia.

Aaron Eckhart’s cop role in The Black Dahlia humanized the complexity of crime and morality. But as Harvey Dent, sorrow transforms him into the vengeful Two-Face, another Armageddon freak in Nolan’s sideshow. The idea is that Dent proves heroism is improbable or unlikely in this life. Dent says, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” What kind of crap is that to teach our children, or swallow ourselves? Such illogic sums up hipster nihilism, just like Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Putting that crap in a Batman movie panders to the naiveté of those who have not outgrown the moral simplifications of old comics but relish cynicism as smartness. That’s the point of The Joker telling Batman, “You complete me.” Tim Burton might have ridiculed that Jerry Maguire canard, but Nolan means it—his hero is as sick as his villain.

Man’s struggle to be good isn’t news. The difficulty only scares children—which was the original, sophisticated point of Jack Nicholson’s ’89 Joker. Nicholson’s disfigurement abstracted psychosis, being sufficiently hideous without confusing our sympathy. Ledger’s Joker (sweaty clown’s make-up to cover his Black Dahlia–style facial scar) descends from the serial killer clichés of Hannibal Lecter and Anton Chigurh—fashionable icons of modern irrational fear. The Joker’s escalation of urban chaos and destruction is accompanied by booming sound effects and sirens—to spook excitable kids. Ledger’s already-overrated performance consists of a Ratso Rizzo voice and lots of lip-licking. But how great of an actor was Ledger to accept this trite material in the first place?

Unlike Nicholson’s multileveled characterization, Ledger reduces The Joker to one-note ham-acting and trite symbolism. If you fell for the evil-versus-evil antagonism of There Will Be Blood, then The Dark Knight should be the movie of your wretched dreams. Nolan’s unvaried direction drives home the depressing similarities between Batman and his nemeses. Nolan’s single trick is to torment viewers with relentless action montages; distracting ellipses that create narrative frustration and paranoia. Delayed resolution. Fake tension. Such effects used to be called cheap. Cheap like The Joker’s psychobabble: “Madness, as you know, is like gravity—all it takes is a little push.” The Dark Knight is the sentinel of our cultural abyss. All it takes is a push.

I both strongly disagree and strongly agree with this critic on the movie. While I think Mr White puts far too much emphasis on Burton as a filmmaker (since, lets face it, Burton at his best is simply tasteful pastiche) and an overemphasis on Nicholson's Joker (which is nothing more than Jack Nicholson... in make-up), the points of society being too obsessed with pesudo-babble pro-facist pop-psych bullshit IS running the whole comic book movie system into the ground.

Anyone else agree or disagree with the above quote?

(For the record: I hated The Black Dahlia)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

**Fluffykitten McGrundlepuss** · Local time: Jul 27, 2008, 07:43 PM

So I actually saw this last night and I thought it was pretty good. I certainly think some people are looking for things to complain about for the sake of complaining (They over used the Joker's name at the beginning? What? They said it twice) but I equally don't think it's the greatest film ever made as some are claiming and I think Batman Begins was better. The whole copycat vigilante thing was an interesting angle they completely ignored after the initial scene, all the bits with Bruce Wayne doing heroic things were completely at odds with his image as a slightly useless socialite and although Ledger was ok as the Joker, he was nothing spectacular and whilst it was a decent enough performace as a criminal, it wasn't anything special as a portrayal of a proper psychopath.

I mean yeah, it was a good film but fuck off should anyone get an oscar for it or anything like that.

How ya doing, buddy?

Cal · Local time: Jul 28, 2008, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Nicholson’s multileveled characterization

SHOOPITY DOOP DOOP DOO.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Misogynyst Gynecologist · Jul 27, 2008, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by Cal

SHOOPITY DOOP DOOP DOO.

Ain't that the truth. I like the fact the guy tries to say the role ala Nicholson is some kind of sarcastic remark about insanity - but JESUS thats a load of BS.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Cirno · Local time: Jul 27, 2008, 03:47 PM

ITT: nostalgia faggots.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Interrobang · Local time: Jul 27, 2008, 07:48 PM

Originally Posted by LeHah

the points of society being too obsessed with pesudo-babble pro-facist pop-psych bullshit IS running the whole comic book movie system into the ground.

I didn't get that out of the review. Rather, what I read was an old man whining about how society is getting progressively dark and immoral and using The Dark Knight as a vehicle to bitch about it. With a dash of masturbating over the Burton films.

How ya doing, buddy?