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.

A couple of days ago You Tube began running the horizontally-squeezed 1.33 to 1 version of the 1.85 trailer for James Marsh‘s Man on Wire (Magnolia, 7.25) — see below. Here, also, is the better looking Apple.com version with the correct aspect ratio. Talk about a movie that sinks in like a feeling, a thought, a prayer.

On 6.20 I wrote that this story “of Phillipe Petit‘s illegal high-wire walk between the World Trade Center’s towers in August 1974 is the most stirring and suspenseful film of its kind that I’ve seen since Touching The Void. It’s too electric and gripping to be called a mere documentary; another term has to be found.”
This trailer passes along the soul, suspense, wonder, poetry. And (important element) the sophisticated chops. Man on Wire will be an ’08 Oscar nominee for Best Feature-Length Doc, trust me.

A new trailer for Ridley Scott‘s Body of Lies (Warner Bros., 10.10) — clearly a first-rate thing about a CIA/Middle East/war-on-terror type deal. A tense, antagonistic partnership between pudged-up Russell Crowe (as a senior-level strategist) and bearded Leonardo DiCaprio (as some kind of agent-operator). Whatever happened to that announcement about changing the title to House of Lies? History, I guess. “Rock out on me…know what that means?” Looks a bit more like a Tony Scott film than a Ridley.

Scott is quoted on the Body of Lies Wikipedia page as saying “it’s about Islam, where we are and where we’re not, and it’s a very interesting, proactive, internalized view of that whole subject.”

Arizona Daily Star critic Phil Villarreal claims this is the first “Joker” Oscar image. Hats off to local reader Phllip Lybrand for creating it. The implication is that Heath Ledger‘s Joker performance is the front-runner as far Best Supporting Actor heat is concerned. But isn’t there something a bit translucent and see-through about Oscar’s chest in this shot? Isn’t he more buff than this? My first reaction was “Joker as Mr. Bill.” Or “Mr. Bill taken hostage by terrorists.”

Somebody needs to boil the spin snow out of the SnagFilms-purchase-of- IndieWIRE story and, you know, put out a statement that doesn’t include any tap-dancing or cheerleading. I’ve read the press release and stories about the press release three or four times and I still don’t understand what’s actually going to happen At least, not according to my own no-b.s., hamburger-eating, cut-to-the-chase standards.

Talk to me like a drunk leaning against a car in a 7-11 parking lot…okay? Is Indiewire as we’ve known it still going to cover the indie waterfront on a comprehensive basis during and between film festivals, or is it henceforth going to be some kind of half-Indiewire, half-SnagFilm hybrid that will somehow lessen or compromise the Indiewire brand? Sounds like the latter, but I’m not sure I get the whole picture regardless. I don’t care very much about or identify hugely with SnagFilms, but I do like Indiewire a great deal. When somebody out there figures it all out and musters the courage to just say it (whatever “it” is), I’d like be included on the e-mail list.