Obligatory Dark Knight review

[sabotabby]

Um, holy shit. It is actually as good as they say.

Also, hee hee hee at the pencil thing.

Comments

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Yup yup yup!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Damn it! Everyone on my f-list has seen it and it's only opening here tomorrow and I'm only going to be able to see it on Saturday.

Bah.

Am so bloody impatient.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

oh the pencil thing! Aiiii!

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had the response-twitch too.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I laughed at the pencil thing, too. Though I thought the movie itself was mostly boring.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the pencil thing and not going to see it, but if I ask you for a spoiler, someone on your flist will probably get all sad.

[cheshirecat25.livejournal.com]

The Pencil Thing

[sabotabby]

No, I can't describe it. Here.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Ooh, someone uploaded the Pencil Thing!

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

RATS

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

//goes through four-five links, finds working Pencil Trick one

HOLY CRAP

[sabotabby]

It's better on a big screen where you can see everyone's facial expressions.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Dude, the clip I saw was obviously filmed in the theatre and so dark you could barely make out the guy's _head._ But still:

HOLY CRAP!

[cheshirecat25.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Never mind the bank heist, the pencil thing totally set up what kind of Joker we were in for.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

[funnel101.livejournal.com]

Totally agree, on both counts. :)

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

wait, was that you with rob connell at the paramount last night? i couldn't tell. i tried hollering at him, but he didn't hear me.

[sabotabby]

Yes, yes it was. I didn't see you at all, though I ran into the nice lady who sold me my glasses.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

Damn! I said it was you & Nick said it wasn't. Turns out, he thought I was talking about another person with your name, but I don't know why he'd think that seeing as I've never met that person.

I was sitting in the first 3 rows. You two stood a little in front of us looking for a seat. That's when I hollered, but I guess not loud enough. Boo.

[sabotabby]

Poo! Yeah, I was late because of some stupid apartment-related business, and by the time I got there, I couldn't really think of anything else. We were in the second row.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the Joker. And Harvey.
But Batman... I could take him or leave him.

Maggie was 12,000,027,829 times better than Katie-the-slave-girl. That was a relief.
.
.
.


SPOILER

Her death was too. The character was never a favorite of mine. Kind of lazy writing. "Break glass if girl is needed to forward character or plot."


/SPOILER

.
.
.

[sabotabby]

For some reason, [spoiler] her death, while completely WiRtastic, bothered me less than Penny in Dr. Horrible. At least she had some agency, and she wasn't just in the line of fire because she was in a love triangle with Batman and Dent, but also because she was Assistant DA. [/spoiler] Also, I love Maggie Gyllenhaal in anything and she sold Rachel as a character even where the script sold her short.

Christian Bale is by far the best Batman, but that's not saying much.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Maggie was 12,000,027,829 times better than Katie-the-slave-girl.
I love Maggie Gyllenhaal in anything

Maggie ... slave-girl... Secretary - I knew I had seen her somewhere before. Ooo! And Donnie Darko, and Adaptation. I'll have to check out some other movies she's been in.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Penny wasn't supposed to have agency! ARGHGHGHGH

I was unimpressed.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

Agency? The only scene in the movie where she has the potential to assert herself as a strong female presence—when she's going to make a deal with the Asian banker that will benefit Gotham—she goes out into the hall to confer with the men who then tell her what to do. For the rest of the movie she's just a psychological receptacle for Dent's and Batman's woman issues.

[genesayssitdown.livejournal.com]

my favorite part of the movie was being disappointed at how it was ending, and then realizing it still had an hour left.

also the pencil thing.

[nom-de-grr.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought it was a knock out. But am I the only one that thought the way the film winkingly condoned the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program was kind of odd? The movie is no 24, but the whole "it's ok to spy on everyone JUST THIS ONCE cuz there's a terrorist on the loose" was pretty iffy.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

I must be some kinda freak, but yeah, that was my thoughts.

Also lots of thinly veiled 9/11 fearmongering, fake prisoner's dilemmas, and cheesy pro-elite moralizing. It was supposed to be "dark" and serious, but I found myself laughing at bits that were supposed to be serious and troubling, and it usually doesn't take much for a movie to make me cry - I'm a sucker for it.

I must add that things were stacked against me liking the movie - the two heros are an annoying billionaire and a more annoying district attorney. The villain is a cross between Osama Bin Laden and sociopathic serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer. I hate serial-killer movies, and I really hate terrorism fear-mongering movies. Trying to bridge from fantasy to the real world is great and all, but the "real world" they were bridging to seemed to be some republican fantasy world.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[sabotabby]

The movie's politics are sketchy for sure. But it's Batman. The only non-politically-sketchy Batman story that I know of is Golden Streets of Gotham.

I think a somewhat progressive analysis is this: Batman's vigilante act doesn't actually make Gotham safer. It breeds a tougher class of criminals bent on mass murder. All of the surveillance gadgetry and lawbreaking doesn't [spoiler] save Rachel or Two-Face or the scores of innocent people who bite it in the movie. What saves all of the people on the ferries? Ultimately, the fact that neither the ordinary evacuees or the prisoners were willing to kill to save their own lives. The face of morality is not the billionaire or the DA, but the black convict who throws the detonator out the window. [/spoiler]

That, and I was sorta rooting for the Joker.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess I'm just not much of a batman fan. Except maybe the old TV show.


I probably would have like it if people didn't get my hopes up.

[nom-de-grr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you know the resolution to the ferry thing? Totally cheesy baloney that I didn't buy for a second, followed by the most groan-worthy bit of exposition in the entire movie.

Paul Pope had his crack at a randroid Batman. Someone should do him as an IWW saboteur.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I liked it, especially Dent. But booo on Gordon liking his son the best and his daughter being pretty much not focused on.

HELLO??? Barbara freaking Gordon, asswipe Nolan.

[kaelynn.livejournal.com]

No connection, just links for you:
http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_promo_7897.php
and maybe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71kckb8hhOQ

[sabotabby]

OMFG. I've seen the coal one, but animated GYWO? It's deeply exciting.

[kaelynn.livejournal.com]

hee, somehow I thought you'd appreciate ^_^