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It’s been a good year for movies, if you don’t analyze the plots all that much.  I often wonder what movies would be like in real life, i.e. Tony Stark in Iron Man would just be killed once the terrorists realize a ransom won’t be paid.  But then that would make most movies like 30 minutes long.  I’m okay with that.  Coming back home, I watched The Dark Knight again and realized that even though it’s a gripping crime drama and held my attention for two-plus hours, the plot is absurd.  And that’s why those two movies make the list, along with Mama Mia!, Indiana Jones, Sex and the City, Hancock, and Wanted. I won’t include the final one on the list, since it makes for a good punchline.  [The Guardian]

I’m worried that with The Dark Knight having come and gone so long ago that Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker will get overlooked come awards season.  And though at the time I thought Aaron Eckhart’s performance was the better of the two, I can’t shake Ledger’s turn as the maniacal Joker some six months later.

Maybe part of that is tied into his early death, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else turning in a better performance acting wise this year.  Well, okay, that’s a stretch and things like acting performances are always subjective but still it was a captivating performance.

Warner Bros. has begun their publicity push with advertisements in Variety for Heath Ledger as Best Supporting Actor.  Academy Award ballots are mailed on December 26th, polls close on January 12th, and the nominations are announced on January 22nd.

According to Slashfilm, his competition in the category includes: Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt, John Malkovich in Changeling, Ralph Fiennes in Duchess, John Malkovich and Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading and Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder.

Strange that three of those performances are strictly comedic and Ledger’s comes from a “comic book” movie.  Two genres the academy has consistantly looked down their noses at.  I can’t really imagine Ledger not being nominated for several reasons, but mostly because of his searing performance and his untimely death.

Especially in light of quotes like this from his ex-wife Michelle Williams: “It’s so sad. I guess it’s always changing. What else can I say? I just wake up each day in a slightly different place. Grief is like a moving river, so that’s what I mean by ‘it’s always changing’.It’s a strange thing to say because I’m at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It’s just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. In some ways it gets worse. That’s what I would say,” speaking about late husband Heath Ledger with Newsweek’s Ramin Setoodeh.

Everybody who saw The Dark Knight knows that the movie was almost flawlessly executed and built from a cornerstone of exquisite story telling.  The movie built and built and built suspension from the dynamics of The Joker and Batman.  For me, I’ll always think the movie was about the conflicting duality of Harvey Dent’s personality manifested between The Bats and The Joker.  Regardless, it seems as if the movie and the screenplay were both exceptional.  Mystery Man on Film has the comparison.

And his name is?  Well let’s just say that thank the lords Dr. Moreau didn’t take Batman and Hancock to the island of misfits and come up with a new creation.

This first-run theater with second-run conditions is within spitting distance of my apartment in Portland.  I saw the change over about two weeks ago at Cinemagic at the intersection of Hawthorne and 20th. and it was the first time I actually felt a pang of sadness for not owning a snazzy camera phone.  Luckily someone did and they passes it along to Shawn Levy, film critic extraordinaire at the Oregonian.

Unfortunately, the Oregonian is a conservative paper and you couldn’t get away with posting this on their website.  So Mr. Levy passed it along to Jeff Wells and my guilt for not having a camera is gone because Jeff posted it to the ever-awesome Hollywood-Elsewhere.

Life is funny sometimes.  So yeah, I can vouch for no photoshop, probably just someone with a good sense of humor doing the marque changeover.

It goes something like this, and take this with a grain of salt since The Sun isn’t exactly known for its journalism integrity, but The Dark Knight star, Christian Bale, aka Batman, was allowed by police to attend the London premiere of the greatest movie in the history of the universe (internet’s description not ours) even though he was wanted for questioning in connection to assaulting his mother and sister.

That’s how you spell it.  Now, this is coming from The Sun and here’s the basis for the story.  Bale’s mother and sister went to lodge a complaint at a Hampshire, UK police station yesterday.  Today, Bale will be brought in for questioning regarding the undisclosed matter.

A Met Police spokesman said: “We can confirm we have received allegation from another force in relation to an alleged incident in central London.”

Then the story is rounded out with quotes from an unnamed source, never a good thing, and some bullshit background about Ledger’s death.  Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Now that everyone has seen the movie, we can probably talk about it openly.  How much money is the movie going to make?  Bundles more, there really isn’t anything on the horizon that looks to challenge the movie.  I’ll be back tonight to offer some thoughts about it and basically say goodbye to the movie after following it’s development from start to finish.  Quickly: I love it.  Thought it was pretty remarkable, but I did have some problems with it and I wanted to share them and see what other people thought.  So look for that tonight.  I don’t want to be contrarian, however, I think some things need to be discussed, things that need time to be fleshed out further.

Vermont’s senior Senator Patrick Leahy was so enamored with Batman as a child, that he’s turned his love into a mini side-career.  The 68-year-old six-term senator has gone from a non-speaking role in 1997’s Batman and Robin, writing introductions for various comic serials, voice work in animated renditions of the character, to a full-blown speaking role in The Dark Knight.

“We tried it two different ways — one was authoritative, the other one was with a lot of fear in my voice,” Mr. Leahy said, of his speaking role.  His scene is one where he confronts Heath Ledger’s Joker at a fancy dinner.

The senator donates all of his Batman proceeds to the children’s wing of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier.

Batman became his favorite superhero because “he has no superpowers,” Mr. Leahy said. “He had to use his own brains and his own knowledge. He could have had an entirely different life. As a billionaire, he could have done anything.”

You can watch the scene here.  Sen. Leahy is at the end, the one who stands up and says, “We’re not intimidated by thugs.”

This might be the last item we post about The Dark Knight until we actually see the movie and share our thoughts on it. But again, the movie is getting boffo reviews from the flood of early screenings. The buzz is this isn’t just a great Batman movie or comic book movie, but this is a great film. I’ve read one review that said this is the first mainstream movie to adequately deal with this country’s post 9/11 fears. And it’s from a writer I admire and not just some fanboy going apeshit.

Anyway, the new trailer is a Joker monologue cut with the usual scenes we’ve already been seeing. Oddly, it has something to do with Domino’s Pizza. The trailer premiered on their website. MORE »

Let’s take a look at the trailers that have piqued our interest this past week.

The Dark Knight

Yeah, like this needs any explanation. Some new footage to look at.

Star Wars: Clone Wars

It’s another blatant attempt from George Lucas to milk the teet of his cash cow. We won’t blame him for doing so, but just because Lucas comes out with new Star Wars doesn’t make us interested. Especially when you come at us with this lame animation – the human characters look too angular.

In this Pixar animation world we live in you better come strong with an animated project and this doesn’t hold up. The other problem is that this animated movie/show takes place between Episode II and III. Do we really care about what happens between the prequels?

Yet. We’d be lying if there wasn’t some tiny part of our heart, possibly the seven-year-old part who dressed up like Luke Skywalker or possibly the sucker part that is curious.

Mirrors

We need more J-horror movies like we need more press coverage of Paris Hilton. But alas, Keifer Sutherland decided to star in one, so we’re obliged to shrug our shoulders and pretend to care. Ho-hum.

Miracle at St. Anna

When he’s not arguing with Clint Eastwood over such pithy things at depictions of African-Americans in movies, Spike Lee is also a filmmaker. And a pretty damn good one to. It’s interesting to watch the late career development of Lee. I get the feeling that something is going on and you can almost see him reinvent himself on the screen. Inside Man felt like a smart thriller and was a radical departure for the director. Miracle at St. Anna continues that trend. Here Lee combines a WW II war movie, Italian superstition, and an investigative journalist into something of a mystery. We haven’t been this jazzed about a Spike Lee movie since, well, never.

Punisher: War Zone

Count us among the five who didn’t hate Punisher, mostly due to Thomas Jane’s deft turn as vigilante Frank Castle. Yes, setting the movie in Tampa was dumb as was John Travolta’s hammy turn as the heel. However, it was okay in that bored on a Saturday afternoon I think I’ll see what’s on TNT, TBS or USA kind of way.

Now we get a redo, much like this summer’s Incredible Hulk. Director Lexi Alexander constantly surprises us and if this is a hard R than we’ll be excited. Ray Stevenson doesn’t look bad as the new Frank Castle.

Mostly, this teaser trailer makes us wish Thomas Jane had this kind of material to chew on.

Death Race

Another lame remake from hack director Paul W.S. Anderson. This time we’ve got Jason Stathem as some sort of criminal who must run the gauntlet against killer cars for his freedom. We’re still shocked that this material was able to secure a rather B-List cast, but with Ian McShane, Joan Allen, Tyrese Gibson and Stathem is it possible that the actors could elevate the material and direction? Also the use of G’N'R doesn’t hurt either.

Wanted

The first seven minutes of this summer action flick is online. James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie are guided by the ever mellow Morgan Freeman to assassinate people and bend bullets and essentially rip off the Wachowski Brothers, but it’s all good in the hood.

Also: The first seven minutes of the Steve Carrell comedy Get Smart are available for an exclusive iTunes download. But you can watch it below.

And yes, we’re huge supporters of releasing the first seven or five or ten minutes of movies ahead of time.

Did everyone have a great weekend? I finally spent it taking care of odd and ends and not thinking at all about what was going on in the world? Strange but also comforting. Finished unpacking, updated the back end of the website (and still working out the kinks and adjustments), went to see Liam Finn and Laura Veirs on Saturday night (look for a brief review since it was unexpected and I didn’t have a camera or notebook with me) and then Sunday was relaxing in the morning, gardening in the afternoon sunshine and then caught a late showing of Iron Man. (Yes, it’s as good as advertised. Again look for some brief thoughts soon.)

But let’s take a look at some of the trailers that I was digging on this week that didn’t make it to post. A few of these broke over the weekend.

The Dark Knight
We got a glimpse of this in a shitty bootlegged version early in the week. But this one manages to reaffirm it’s ass-kickory without giving away too much. No matter what, I can’t get over Heath Ledger’s strangely pitched delivery as The Joker. It’s um, hypnotic, and weirdly comforting.

The Happening
M. Night Shalam-a-ding-dong has burned lots of his fans recently and deservedly so. He’s made five well-known movies and only two of them have been better than good. He’s been coasting on his reputation since Unbreakable. Possibly the crash and burn nature of Lady in the Water has made him realize that he can’t coast on his name and a snazzy out-of-nowhere ending. We still don’t know what to expect out of his new picture, but it boasts a great cast and it looks ominous as shit.

Swing Vote
So there’s an election and it comes down to … egats! Kevin Costner? Holy cow, this looks like the worst movie ever and yet I’ll still watch it at some point because, um. Remind me again? I guess I’m the one person in America who doesn’t hate Kevin Costner. So yeah, they floated out this shit ship for me.

Bangkok Dangerous
It’s impossible to take Nic Cage seriously, especially now that he’s rocking the balding mullet look that’s so popular in Hollywood. Anyway, this time around he’s a super assassin in Thailand. Shenanigans and hijinks no doubt ensue.

Indiana Jones and the movie that sells itself
Wouldn’t you love to be the marketing department behind this movie? But still, their trailers have been flawless. The first time around they played up Indy’s iconography and this time around they sell us on the adventure. It seems so obvious and yet they nailed it.

At Showest, the Las Vegas convention for theater owners, director Chris Nolan and actor Christian Bale were both on hand ot promote this summer’s highly anticipated The Dark Knight.  Luckily, the AP was on hand to film it and get their thoughts on Heath Ledger.

It’s strange how Ledger’s untimely death led the marketing department to shift gears from promoting The Joker to using Harvey Dent/Two Face in the marketing.  Not sure if that was the intent all along, or if the switch was because of Ledger’s death.  Regardless, things have quieted recently on The Dark Knight front, but our interest has not.

DC Comics has decided to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and this summer’s follow-up The Dark Knight with a direct-to-DVD anime styled Batman adventure.

The Gotham Knight will follow six intertwining Batman adventures (from six different writers and animators). Among those writers participating are David Goyer (Batman Begins), Josh Olson (A History of Violence), Greg Rucka (Gotham Central), Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets), Jordan Goldberg (The Prestige), Alan Burnett (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm); with the whole shegang overseen by director Bruce Timm. Timm, who may recall, was responsible for what is revered as the purest incarnation of the Batman character ever – Batman The Animated Series. [opening segment]

The promo below really plays up Batman’s detective roots, which has been sorely lacking in all of the bigscreen adaptations of the character. However, it still makes it a point to indulge in the infamous rogues gallery. Christian Bale will be voicing this animated character.

Difficult to tell from the promo what the stories will be or if they’ll be any good, but the animation looks very cool. I’d actually be in favor of doing a bloody and violent cartoon rendition of Batman with this style of animation.

The animation for this series is being handled by three of Japan’s most popular animation production houses, which will create different looks for each short. These three companies are Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell, Blood: The Last Vampire), Madhouse (Metropolis, Paprika, Vampire Hunter D), and Studio 4°C (Mind Game, Tekkon Kinkreet, The Animatrix).

The DVD will come out sometime close to the July 18 release of The Dark Knight, but you can look forward to more info on February 26 when DC’s latest animated project Justice League: The New Frontier hits stores. It contains a sneak peek featurette on Gotham Knight.

Sometimes it’s the little things. When so much of the viral marketing for The Dark Knight hinged on Heath Ledger’s character The Joker and his website whysoserious.com, Warner Bros. made a small gesture, but a very fitting one. Draped on the website is a simple black ribbon.

Any doubts about the studio handling further marketing of the movie in the wake of this tragedy, as anything less than classy, should be put to rest.

Also: MTV has video of what could be Heath’s final performance. A spy shot some cellphone video of the late actor on the set of the now defunct Terry Gilliam movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.