So um, I liked Dark Knight. I didn't love it. I think I may need to see it again to work out exactly how much of a clusterfuck the plot is, and how much of that is deliberately done for effect. I definitely like it more this morning than I did last night - the good bits are sticking in my mind, and the ones I wish had been edited out aren't.
The performances are stellar. The production design continues to rock. The IMAX....WOW. I mean, WOW. This is one seriously good-looking movie. And it's BIG. Very, very big.
Spoilerish comments here. (Linking instead of whitefonting for added protection.)
Your LJ post starts duplicating itself, Jess.
By the way, I LOVE that avatar.
Thank you!
One other nonspoilery thing - as much as I like the actor, casting Nestor Carbonell as the Mayor was a mistake. There is just no way to make casting Batmanuel in a Batman movie not funny.
An interesting article about Pauline Kael, Will Smith, and how pop culture became the only culture.
Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there. They were, after all, built into the culture. But those standards were swiftly eroding. Schrader argued that she and her admirers won the battle but lost the war. Acceptable taste became mass-audience taste, box-office receipts the ultimate measure of a film's worth, sometimes the only measure. Traditional, well-written movies without violence or special effects were pushed to the margins. "It was fun watching the applecart being upset," Schrader said, "but now where do we go for apples?"
Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there.
I don't remember her being a populist so much as appreciating good genre work and not dismissing it out of hand. She didn't even like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she certainly loved certain high mandarin art films. (She disliked slow quiet filmmakers like Ozu and Bresson, but loved sensationalists like Fellini and Kurowasawa.)
I've been known to laugh at Family Guy, but I always feel kinda dirty about it.
TV Heresy:
It's totally time to cancel "The Simpsons". Makes me sad to say so because I used to love it so much. But things end, and it's a shadow of its former...everything.
