“Doing Milk was an incredible experince,” James Franco tells N.Y. Times writer Lynn Hirschberg in a recently-posted video interview. “I talked [to director Gus Van Sant] about how My Own Private Idaho and Drugstore Cowboy and how [he’s] been a hero of mine since I was a teenager, and of course Sean Penn as well.
“I will be asked about a million times what it was like to kiss Sean Penn. The few times I run into paparrazzi, that’s their new annoying thing. It was uncomfortable. The first time we did it…we didn’t do it many times, but the first kiss of the film, he had on…he grew a beard but he needed a slightly thicker beard so he had some [makeup] hairs interwined in his real hairs, and these hairs kept getting in my mouth. Uncomfortable. Not that fun. But yeah, Jeff Spiccoli…I got to make out with him.”

“If you take Harvey Weinstein out of the equation, you’re talking about removing one more layer of soul and passion and emotion from the movie business, which is already strapped on that level as it is. Whatever you say about his business dealings, Harvey loves and cares about movies. In this sense he’s one of the last guys who represent what Hollywood once was and should always be in terms of the spirit. It would be a tragic thing if we didn’t have him or his ilk in this business.
“Without guys like Harvey in the film business would be all corporate guys and Hollywood would become like Gotham City in The Dark Knight…no sense of history or soul, full of dark operators and cynical angles.” — Envelope columnist Pete Hammond during a chat about the Harvey-is-on-the-ropes articles by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein and Business Week‘s Ronald Glover.

I really don’t think there’s a need for another Chris Nolan Batman film now. On the audience end, I mean. From the Warner Bros. end they’ll absolutely make another one regardless because of the money, obviously, but The Dark Knight has done it, said it and triple-noired this already gloomy urban legend all to hell. No Bat franchise super-villain is ever going to top Heath Ledger‘s Joker so forget it. Job well done, now leave well enough alone.

I feel like I’ve had a great gourmet meal this morning, but in perhaps too-great amounts. And I don’t want any more rich foods in my system for a long while. I sincerely admired The Dark Knight but I want to be a vegetarian now, thank you. 177 aural chest whomps, seven or eight building falls, one big flipped-over truck, 78 or 79 wrecked cars, 78 million shards of shattered glass…all right already! The meat has been pounded flat. I feel pounded in a good way, yes, but pounded nonetheless.
And as sated and satisfied as I now feel, I don’t want to do this again for years. In fact, never again. I’m saying this with full-on respect. This not a back-pedal. It’s an “okay, cool…now I need a break for the next couple of decades” riff.
Anyone who helped to dream up, make and/or market The Dark Knight has reason this morning to feel enormous pride and satisfaction. I don’t mean to sound un-American or un-greedy, but what if all these folks were to step back, take a breath and let it go?
I really don’t care about Christian Bale‘s Batman taking the rap…oh, that’s right, I can’t talk about the last act. I’m just saying it feels “complete” regardless of the hanging thread, which I didn’t care all that much about. Threads are always hanging in movies. Nothing is ever resolved. My life is hanging by a thread. There are no ends, only means. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Where is it written that super franchises have to keep going until they fail by ruining or diluting the original magic and making everyone sick of them? The corporate Bat boys should think about showing a little class, is all I’m saying. Take a bow, count the money, open your hearts, get creative and think up something else that will earn several hundred million in various currencies.
A strong story has been told, and the best villain we’ve ever seen in a movie like this has been captured for all eternity, so back off and stop beating this thing to death. The corporate mentality is constitutionally incapable of hearing what I’ve just said — I realize that. I just thought I’d throw this idea out there because it would be, I feel, a sublime gesture on Warner Bros.’s part. Not that they would or could go there.
Deep, dark, longish and almost Macbeth-like in its meditations, The Dark Knight is a class act that will never suffer a re-assessment from me because it’s made of solid mahogany. But my basic take is, apart from a thousand different satisfactions, that I don’t want to get bogged down in the philosophical mumbo-jumbo of it all. I could have done with about 20 or 30 minutes less of it. Which isn’t to say that the length gave me pain. It didn’t. I just like movies better when they’re smarly pruned down. Don’t we all? Who likes girth for its own sake?
We are a deluded people living in a dark time, this movie is saying. Our culture is besieged by madmen, thugs and feral urban terrorists. Everyone is afraid, nobody knows the truth, nobody knows what to do but we need a tough good-hearted leader to look up to. And what else? Oh, yeah — the heroic Batman and the evil Joker are both freaks under the skin, and regarded as not all that different so what’s the difference? I think that more or less covers it.

How much of this got to me deep down? Some. Okay, not that much. Is the script some kind of truthful reflection in the pan of the world we’re actually living in now? Yeah, and I respect the Nolan brothers for having strengthened their hand in this fashion. But The Dark Knight‘s burdensome aspect,for me, is the relentless spouting of cryptic noir theology by each and every major character — Batman, Aaron Eckhart‘s Harvey Dent, Michael Caine‘s Alfred, Morgan Freeman‘s mellow engineer guy, etc.
The thoughtfulness is what makes the film stand tall, yes, and yet I wasn’t moved all that much (or I was moved only marginally) by this effort. What moved me was the intelligence, the adult layering, the constant story tension, the velocity, and the refusal to..well, indulge the usual third-act finale shenanigans. But the thing that lifted me up and sent me to the velvet pleasure chamber was Greasy Madman Heath — his flicking tongue and white face and red lipstick and skanky hair and heavenly sharp-toned snarl.
I love this Carrie Rickey line from her Philadelphia Inquirer review: Boiled down, Knight asks whether “the dark and stormy knight (Christian Bale‘s Batman) can defend Gotham City from Osama Bin Gene Simmons?”
This is a good one also: “When the Joker puts the moves on Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s Rachel, it marks Ledger as the only actor to come on to both Maggie and her brother, Jake, on-screen.”
I just realized I haven’t said a single thing about anyone else’s performance. Okay, here goes. Bale is fine but on the dull side. Eckhart is actually touching at times…tragic. Freeman and Caine phone it in. Eric Roberts, playing a gangster, delivers some nice seasoning. Maggie Gyllenhaal does a fine job. There are other stirring, noteworthy supporting perfs. But the fact that I was moved to mention them out of guilt says something.

Fantasy Moguls‘ Steve Mason is reporting that the all-night shows of The Dark Knight that began late last night have earned $18.4 million. Wait…the film has made that much in the last twelve hours? This beats the midnight opening record of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, Mason says.

I have this thing about getting to bed before the sun comes up. I got home from The Dark Knight at 4 am, and I can’t start banging out a review…not now. Okay, a few words. Some have lamented the oppressive, too-convoluted, over-labynthian pitch darkness of Chris and Jonathan Nolan‘s script. But the film is so well slapped together, you see, and committed to its Trip of Darkness, and it doesn’t really drag all that much besides so what’s to complain about? This movie knows itself, knows the turf, keeps the engine tuned, nails it all down.

Are the action sequences confusing? Uhh, yeah…they are. Like all action scenes these days. I was asking myself why they’ve gotten harder and harder to follow and sort through over the last ten years or less. I was keeping up for a while there with the Knight fights, and then I would fall behind and after a while I just said “fuck it.” But I really quite liked the way the Joker’s social experiment with the two ferry boats worked out. To me, that was the movie’s beating-heart payoff. It’s almost a kind of Obama moment.
But if that doesn’t work for you there’s Heath Ledger‘s wet mangy hair to look forward to, and what a delight that is. The Dark Knight never once pissed me off or pulled me down, and I loved the ending. But Ledger lifted me out of my seat. I fell in love with life again as I watched him — with humanity, with acting, with the whole joy-of-movies thing. Ledger brought me to tears in Brokeback Mountain, and here he was making me feel another current. And the poor guy’s dead, dammit. What a godawful sad thing. Burns right through.
Ledger’s cackle-voice voice alone made me laugh, chuckle and grin continuously. That “hiiii” he does in front of the bed of a certain hospital patient will never leave my head for the rest of my life. I’m resolved to start looking around for sound clips tomorrow and start practicing my Ledger/Joker voice so I can perform it at parties. The usual praise terms — delicious, delectable, deranged — apply to his swagger, of course, but this is more than just another nutso swan dive into frazzled delirium. It’s a piece of instant history.

I’m not feeling a second’s hesitation in saying that Ledger’s Joker is now part of the eternal firmament of legendary screen villains. Now and forever he’ll stand side by side with Robert Mitchum‘s Night of the Hunter preacher, Anthony Hopkins‘ Hannibal Lecter, Victory Jory in The Fugitive Kind, Robert Walker‘s Bruno Antony in Strangers on a Train, Tony Perkins‘ Norman Bates…who else? I can’t think anymore. I’m whipped. I’m going to bed.

It’s 12:15 am, and I’m sitting in the fourth row of theatre #14 at Universal City plex, waiting for a 35mm screening of The Dark Knight to begin. (The midnight IMAX show would have been preferable, of course.) I’m the only over-40 guy in the theatre. Jett just called from Boston, walking home from a midnight showing at the Fenway plex. “Fasten your seat belt,” he said. “The time flies right by. Ledger is phenomenal…amazing.”
Knight is my third film of the evening. Three films in a row feels like something here, but at Sundance or Toronto it’s nothing. I’ve had two king-sized Red Bulls within the last three hours. Cranked and primed.
The evening began with a Stepbrothers screening at 7:30 pm at the Sherman Oaks Arclight. I sat next to “JoMo” (the hip-hop “street” name for Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern) and talked a bit about the breaking Dark Knight reviews and poor Sydney Pollack. Nothing to say yet about Stepbrothers except that Richard Jenkins gives the funniest performance.
I next drove down to Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre to catch a 9:45 pm screening of Blake Edwards‘ Experiment in Terror, which still works in an alluring monochrome time-machine sort of way but is paced slow as molasses. I caught about 75 minutes’ worth, and then drove up to Universal City. I’ll probably bang something out when I get home around 3 am.

The Dark Knight is tracking at 89, 71 and 51 — God, that’s the biggest first-choice number I’ve ever seen! Mamma Mia! is running at 88, 28 and 14. Space Chimps is pretty much a disaster — 62, 18 and 1. Stepbrothers (7.25) is running at 83, 35 and 5. The X-Files: I Want to Believe is at 75, 23 and 4. The new Mummy movie is 90. 36 and 6. Kevin Costner‘s Swing Vote is at 47, 16 and 1– obviously in trouble. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants chick flick is running at 67, 18 and 4. Fly Me to the Moon is at 19 13 and 0. Perfect Game is at 20 13 and 0. Pineapple Express (opening August 8th) is running at 35, 32 and 2.

HE reader Evan Boucher, who works in a brokerage house (or something like that), believes that The Dark Knight “is running the risk of setting expectations that literally can’t be met.
“I work with a group of five yuppies, 22-32,” he writes. “Two of these people have said that they plan on seeing it more than once this weekend. Two more have said that they definitely plan on seeing in in the theater even though neither have been to a movie this year. My 19 year old next-door-neighbor is seeing it tonight with a group of 10 buddies. Another co-worker says that they are going to a megaplex tonight where 12 out of 18 theaters are showing Dark Knight at midnight, and they sold out tickets for that show last Tuesday.
“I think this movie is at least $500 million domestic due to these factors: (a) Everyone knows Batman, (b) Crazy Batman fanboys who will see it over and over again; (c) IMAX impact; (d) Uber talented director in his prime; (e) Known supporting cast; (f) Love from critics; (g) No other summer blockbusters creating the anti-blockbuster hangover; and (h) the totally stand-alone, can’t-be-duplicated selling point of seeing Ledger’s finale, both for the reported genius and the respect people have for him as a person.
“In sports, art, music, whatever…there are certain moments where the stars align and every thing reacts based on a need for greatness. This might be it. There hasn’t been a movie thats come along in a while that has united critics and audiences like this. I just don’t know where you would even put the number on this. I don’t know if it will beat Titanic, but it definitely has a shot.”
I say no to that because of (a) the oppressive funereal element and (b) the feeling of beaten up rather than elated that made Edelstein, Denby, Ansen and Thompson unhappy.

I know I give the impression of disliking popcorn movies for the most part, but nobody loves good crap as much as I when it’s really done right. I was thinking last night about John Badham‘s Stakeout, which I saw and loved 21 years ago at the Cinerama Dome, and wondering why no-big-deal caper movies like this don’t happen more often.

The reason Stakeout works, of course, is that it’s not some throwaway buddy-cop movie about trying to catch an escaped fugitive. It’s a movie about a thoughtful 40ish poilceman suddenly and surprisingly falling in love (i.e., Richard Dreyfuss + Madeline Stowe), and his knowing without question that the girl in the house across the street is vitally important to know, be with, care for and protect. The trick is that Stakeout is disguised as as an amiable jerkoff buddy-cop thing. Plus it’s one of the best films ever about voyeurism, second only to Rear Window.
“Stealth” is what genre filmmakers never seem to get, or don’t have the talent to follow through upon. The way to make a run-of-the-mill genre film special is to pay attention to the undercurrent and shape it so it’s about something personal and intimate — any kind of heart issue, including creative ambition or career or whatever — while adhering to genre conventions.
98% of genre filmmakers (fantasy, crime, you-name-it) always seem to think in terms of elements. They think success of failure is defined by stars, plot, fights, car chases, FX. They never seem to realize that while these things work as selling points, they don’t matter to all that much to anyone (except for the under-20 morons) and are actually profoundly secondary. Movies that really work are always about characters trying to connect with some fundamental emotion or goal. If you get that part right, then you can add in the genre conventions any old way and you’re off to the races.

Here’s a Russian website with Watchmen trailer and clips, but I can’t get the clips to play. The trailer isn’t working at empireonline.com either, possibly on purpose. (There’s a note up about “Friday morning.”) Why can’t I find a nice easy embed code? When it appears, it may be at this currently inert URL.
I know it’s not worth suffering through a Comic-Con experience to absorb the hype close-up.
I’ll be doing a double-feature this evening — Stepbrothers in the early evening and then The Dark Knight IMAX around midnight. Bringing the laptop, intending to file between shows, etc.