Category: movies
The Dark Knight
I broke my own rule yesterday when my wife and I went to go see ‘The Dark Knight’. I’m not a fan of seeing movies at a theater, but we had free movie and refreshment coupons. We originally were planning on seeing it with some friends in IMAX format, but they sold out the IMAX show while we were in line so we ended up with a mere mortal presentation of the film.
I have to say that ‘The Dark Knight’ is probably the best Batman treatment I have ever seen. Many of the fight scenes do a great job of capturing the intensity of Batman as portrayed in the comics and especially recent graphic novels. I was also very happy to see Bruce Wayne injured, not because I like seeing people get hurt but it shows that Batman isn’t invincible. And this film also does a great job at looking at how far Bruce Wayne will go to protect the inhabitants of Gothic City. Lastly, kudos on the decision that Christopher Nolan takes with the Rachel Dawes character.
And Heath Ledger’s Joker. Wow. The Joker in this movie isn’t just some goofball with a green/white face that makes bad jokes and puns; the Heath Ledger Joker is a psychopathic badass that is every bit and probably more clever than anybody the good guys throw at him. Although the Caped Crusader has some nifty tricks up his sleeve, the Joker always seems one step ahead of him and the law. If nothing else, Heath’s final performance should be viewed as required viewing for aspiring actors looking for an example of batsh*t crazy (sorry for the pun, I couldn’t resist).
The movie isn’t perfect in my mind. Harvey Dent/Two-Face is wasted on the Nolan Batman franchise with an in and out performance that reminded me of Scarecrow’s screen time in ‘Batman Begins’ (although there is speculation that Dent’s fate may not be so obvious), and the entire Lau angle is an unneeded plot complication and a waste of time. I also think the Reese blackmail subplot wasn’t well thought out and just added time to an already long movie. The end result is that the film is more complicated and longer than it really needs to be.
Even with those reservations, I completely understand why people are interested in multiple viewings of this movie. Nolan has set the bar high with ‘The Dark Knight’ and I think the franchise will do well if he doesn’t keep discarding the villains. I realize that Nolan was likely counting on using the Joker again, but that isn’t going to be easy to do at the same quality level given Heath Ledger’s death.
Posted: 08.11.2008Secret History of Star Wars
Star Wars has always been a big thing for me. I saw all six films in the theater and can honestly say that I enjoyed most of them.
For true Star Wars geeks, The Secret History of Star Wars deserves at least a casual glance. It’s long but interesting reading. Several of the central ideas of this e-book are fascinating to me, namely:
1. Star Wars started as the telling of the tale of Luke Skywalker but ended up being about the life and times of Darth Vader.
2. George Lucas’ personal problems led to the abandonment of the originally proposed episodes XII-IX.
3. George Lucas’ propensity to rewrite history isn’t limited to his re-editing of his motion pictures.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of either the facts or the conslusions of this work, but the author has made a large effort to properly annotate and credit his sources so I suspect there is at least some truth to it.
Posted: 05.22.2008(Another) New Dune Movie
I saw SFFMedia’s story on Peter Berg getting a final ok on a new Dune movie, and honestly I’m not sure how I feel about seeing yet another version of Dune.
David Lynch tried to adapt Dune to the big screen and ended up with an overproduced mess. I really wasn’t a fan of the the SciFi Channel series that followed that either. Maybe the third time is the charm.
Posted: 04.04.2008DVR Goodness
As a bachelor, I spent a good deal of time with my combined DirecTV and Tivo, aka DirecTivo. For the time, it was a fantastic and revolutionary device, capable of recording and/or watching two programs simultaneously without a separate box and only $5/month subscription charge. One of the biggest regrets I had about ditching DirecTV was the fact that none of the available DVRs had the combination of low price, dual tuner capability, and a single decoder/DVR unit.
Now everybody has this capability, and I have it back. My wife gave me DVR service for the year through our cable provider. While the interface isn’t as polished as Tivo, it does most of the same things just as well. I also like that cable is able to push two tuners with a single cable (I had to have a separate cable run for my satellite service) as well as the fact that we have picture-in-picture. While I find PIP to generally be annoying, I might warm up to it now that it’s available.
I’m glad to have the DVR as it frees us up from being on TVs schedule. We’ve put in series recording orders for some of our favorite shows like Scrubs, Good Eats, Ax Men, New Yankee Workshop, and America’s Test Kitchen. I am looking forward to having the view-anytime flexibility that DVR provides back in my household.
Posted: 03.17.2008