Went to see The Dark Knight
Went to see The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). 152 minutes.
I'm a superhero too now. I drove to the movie house on the left bank today, and in the parking garage below I saw an eighteen-month-old baby in a pushchair right behind a huge black car, and I immediately realized the car was backing into the baby. So I sped up to it, screeched, yelled and honked. The car stopped half an inch from the baby, who started screaming its lungs out. And what do you know, the six people in the car got out: the baby was theirs. Not only had they totally forgotten its existence, but they had very nearly killed it. Total white trash, inbred and alcoholic and probably illiterate (I know, it's not their fault). They never thanked me! They never said a word, just muttered among themselves. The six of them looked at me with an identical annoyed / brainless / simian expression, put the pushchair in the trunk, the baby in the back, and droveoff, while I stood there gaping, my heart still beating faster than usual. Wow. When I told my godfather about it he said maybe they were trying to get rid of it and I ruined their plans.
Anyway. Batman. Mm. The Batman. This is not Frank Miller's Dark Knight, it must be said. A bit long. Rather coherent, with Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005). Maggie Gyllenhaal instead of Katie Holmes playing Rachel (a plus). Same British director, helped by his British brother and the ubiquitous (when it comes to superheroes) David S. Goyer for the writing. With the British Christian Bale and Gary Oldman playing Americans, Australian Heath Ledger (RIP) playing an American; and the British Michael Caine playing a Brit (with an accent evoking that of his youth, pointedly not doing the upper-class accent of traditional Hollywood British butlers in the US). The story is OK. It's difficult, when you've read literally hundreds of Batman comics and have seen dozens of incarnations of the Joker or Two-Face, not to have more or less precise expectations. The filming is good, the acting is good (Ledger tremendous, he will be so missed), the action is gripping. But I miss Tim Burton.
Christian Bale looks a bit more like my idea of Bruce Wayne, he's visually closer to my idea of Bruce Wayne (as formed in the 1960s) than Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer or George Clooney. I suggest Colin Egglesfield, he'd be perfect.
