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On the plane again, I saw:

Dark Knight
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wall-E
The Incredible Hulk

Trainspotting, American Psycho (uncut version), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4, Maniac Cop 2, and the last 20 minutes of Hot Fuzz.

Finally saw Dark Knight and I'll be damned, it actually lives up to the hype. Completely blows away the first one, and unlike that first one, I don't have much to complain about other than how ridiculous Christian Bale's Batman voice sounds like. It seriously is grating on the ears, Kevin Conroy did the two voices with a bit more subtlety. I can get over that though, since Bruce gets more important dialogue than Batman(who mostly just has to look cool and fight a lot). The movie as a whole is just marvelous. Every time I thought it was reaching its climax, it throws another surprise at you. The plot is far more complex than any super hero movie I have seen so far and really is very faithful to the comic books in many ways.

I had no idea the Joker character could be captured so brilliantly on the big screen. Even Jack Nicholson's admirable performance is thoroughly outdone by Heath Ledger, but a lot of credit goes to the script and the dialogue too. Great movie. Harvey Dent is done really too, despite not getting as much props as Ledger's Joker

REPO Man wrote:Trainspotting, American Psycho (uncut version), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4, Maniac Cop 2, and the last 20 minutes of Hot Fuzz.

Good calls, dude. Last movie I watched was Dario Argento's "Pelts" and it was great, he made it for that "Masters of Horror" series they ran on Starz.

IndestructibleWolves wrote:

REPO Man wrote:Trainspotting, American Psycho (uncut version), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4, Maniac Cop 2, and the last 20 minutes of Hot Fuzz.

Good calls, dude. Last movie I watched was Dario Argento's "Pelts" and it was great, he made it for that "Masters of Horror" series they ran on Starz.

One of my fave MoH eps.

Also, recently watched American Hardcore, a documentary about the hardcore punk rock movement in the early '80s.

REPO Man wrote:

IndestructibleWolves wrote:

REPO Man wrote:Trainspotting, American Psycho (uncut version), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4, Maniac Cop 2, and the last 20 minutes of Hot Fuzz.

Good calls, dude. Last movie I watched was Dario Argento's "Pelts" and it was great, he made it for that "Masters of Horror" series they ran on Starz.

One of my fave MoH eps.

Also, recently watched American Hardcore, a documentary about the hardcore punk rock movement in the early '80s.

Oh nice, I watched that last year, its really good but I thought it started lagging a bit towards the end. The Void/Minor Threat/Black Flag compiled footage was nice especially with Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye commentary. If you're into that kind of stuff you should read "Get In the Van" by Henry Rollins, its basically journal entries of all the Black Flag shows that he partook in (81-86 if I remember correctly!) Glad to see people show similar interests here other than retro-gaming.

See, I was so excited for The Dark Knight, having loved Batman Begins and being fan of Bale's acting and Nolan's direction (The Prestige is another by him I recommend), but was so disappointed.

It felt like a ten-episode special TV series squashed down into a movie. There was too much plot that none of the scenes nor characters save for the Joker (wisely, he has no character development) were given any room to breath. Batman/Bruce was reduced to nothing more than a plot device to move the story forward. The film hints that Batman is being pushed to the edge and might fall into darkness, but it is never explored beyond a couple of throwaway lines. Dent's fall was also non-existent. He wasn't psychologically scared by his accident, just madly pissed off. His obsessions with duality was just an idea he got from the Joker. I'm not saying those decisions were wrong to make, as they are an interesting interpretation of the character, but as it all happened so fast I was not impressed.

The reintroduction of ridiculous, James Bond-esque technology really grated on me.

I would also like to point out that the Gotham showed in The Dark Knight seemed a world away from Batman Begins' rendition. Though both shot in Chicago, they ended up being different aesthetically. Begins used CG trickery and pallete management to twist Chicago into Gotham; TDK's Gotham just looked like plain Chicago.

On the plus side, the Joker was perfect. A very daring adaptation of the character, especially as his backstory is non-existent to the viewer (or perhaps buried among all the fake ones he presents), but one that came through magnificently.

The annoying thing is I enjoyed so many of the ingredients in the film, from the cinematography to plot to acting to music, that I was annoyed at the ultimate execution. Plot holes (so what happens to the guests after Batman leaps from his apartment to save Rachel?) are the least of the troubles, as the end film feels like a summary rather than the product itself. Perhaps if Two Face had merely been setup for a sequel, rather than squashed in, the rest could have expanded a bit and been more effective.

The Children, an old horror film about little kids who become zombies that nuke you when they touch you.

Just watched Eight Diagram Pole Fighter last night, I haven't seen it for years but it's still as good as I remembered. This is probably Gordon Liu's & Lau Kar-Leung's best film, but it's often overlooked in favour of 36th Chamber, and while I love that movie to bits, I much prefer Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (or Invincible Pole Fighter as it was known in the US). As is to be expected from Shaw Bros. films from the 70's & 80's the fight choreography is absolutely perfect with many highly memorable sequences leading to one of the greatest final fights in kung-fu cinema.

Spoiler Duck wrote:See, I was so excited for The Dark Knight, having loved Batman Begins and being fan of Bale's acting and Nolan's direction (The Prestige is another by him I recommend), but was so disappointed.

It felt like a ten-episode special TV series squashed down into a movie. There was too much plot that none of the scenes nor characters save for the Joker (wisely, he has no character development) were given any room to breath. Batman/Bruce was reduced to nothing more than a plot device to move the story forward. The film hints that Batman is being pushed to the edge and might fall into darkness, but it is never explored beyond a couple of throwaway lines. Dent's fall was also non-existent. He wasn't psychologically scared by his accident, just madly pissed off. His obsessions with duality was just an idea he got from the Joker. I'm not saying those decisions were wrong to make, as they are an interesting interpretation of the character, but as it all happened so fast I was not impressed.

The reintroduction of ridiculous, James Bond-esque technology really grated on me.

I would also like to point out that the Gotham showed in The Dark Knight seemed a world away from Batman Begins' rendition. Though both shot in Chicago, they ended up being different aesthetically. Begins used CG trickery and pallete management to twist Chicago into Gotham; TDK's Gotham just looked like plain Chicago.

On the plus side, the Joker was perfect. A very daring adaptation of the character, especially as his backstory is non-existent to the viewer (or perhaps buried among all the fake ones he presents), but one that came through magnificently.

The annoying thing is I enjoyed so many of the ingredients in the film, from the cinematography to plot to acting to music, that I was annoyed at the ultimate execution. Plot holes (so what happens to the guests after Batman leaps from his apartment to save Rachel?) are the least of the troubles, as the end film feels like a summary rather than the product itself. Perhaps if Two Face had merely been setup for a sequel, rather than squashed in, the rest could have expanded a bit and been more effective.

Batman was not a plot device, the whole movie is about how he is both the same and also different from Harvey Dent(the White Knight). The movie also explores Batman beginning to question whether or not his presence in Gotham is a good thing. Not only does he inspire stupid people to try and be vigilantes, but he brings people like the Joker into existence. Much of what Joker does throughout the movie is due to Batman's existence and Barbara at one point in the movie blames Batman for what he has brought upon Gotham and her family. Batman also has to explore how far he is willing to go and what he is willing to sacrifice to stop his enemy and protect Gotham. The movie explores his psyche on many levels. And for the record, the movie at no point whatsoever hints that Batman is going to a "dark side". At every opportunity, he makes the right choice(not killing Joker TWICE, letting Luscius destroy the sonar device, etc.). HARVEY is the one who falls to the dark side, which is the great irony. The White Knight falls to the dark side, not the Dark Knight.

Why would Joker kill the guests? He was there for Harvey. You won't find a single kill on Joker's part that isn't done without a very specific reason(even if it's just because someone pissed him off). Also, Joker was smart enough to get the heck out of Dodge after distracting Batman by throwing Rachel out the window. Sticking around to kill some guests and let Batman come back to capture him would have been stupid.

Dent's fall makes complete sense. He loses his love, he loses his political career(which would surely have been destroyed by the disfigurement)and he loses his ideals(which he makes quite clear later in the movie when he asks why he was the only one in the trio(him, Batman and Gordon)that had to lose everything when both Batman and Gordon are more corrupt than he is(or so he believes). The whole thing with Gordon working with corrupt cops(which leads to Harvey's tragedy), and yet not losing it all like Harvey, really burns him and really makes him lose his ideals. Harvey is in no way shoehorned into the movie. Everything that happens in the movie revolves around him and Batman(the two knights), which Joker being the man who ultimately tests them both(and all of Gotham as well). He successfully corrupts one(the White Knight), but not the other. Also, he doesn't have an obsession with duality. I don't know where you got that from. The coin flipping is meaningless early on in the movie, but after he "falls", it represents his belief that luck is the only fair thing in a cruel, unfair world that robbed him of so much despite what a good man he was. It's a variation on Joker's belief that chaos and anarchy are fair(which is how Joker manages to manipulate Harvey in the first place)

The movie was brilliant. It explores many themes, has the kind of depth of a novel, EVERYTHING in the plot makes sense, and the characters had plenty of room to breathe. Their motivations and ways of thinking were all made quite clear. Nothing was rushed or half-assed. At two and a half hours, I never got bored. They seriously went above and beyond with this movie. As a Batman fan, I love seeing how much they borrowed from classic Batman comic stories. There's elements from The Killing Joke, The Long Halloween, The Dark Knight Returns and probably other Batman classics I'm not even thinking of.