I heard that the movie is sold out in Chicago through Sunday. That the AMC Cantera had it on 20 screens last night and sold out. (Or almost.) There were these young guys waiting for the 12:30 pm show with me who had driven around the 'burbs looking for tickets - Fandango said there were seats at Cantera and there was one. One seat.

It was on six screens in DeKalb last night - 5 sold out.

It wasn't very crowded at the first show (the one I went to this afternoon) but when we got out at about 3:35 - there was quite a heard of people waiting and that line went out the door.

Yeah, it's making a few $$ this weekend.

I really enjoyed it - I thought that Heath Ledger's Joker was just excellent and it just makes me all the more sad. I was thinkining on the way home that unlike the first movie they didn't lay in the next story - but really I guess they did. With a Batman trying to fight the baddies AND escape the GPD. The Jim Gordon death TOTALLY fooled me. I absolutely believed it.

Yes, Aaron Eckhart did an amazing job as Dent too.

Was Tiny Lister the guy that Dent is torturing to get info on the Joker ?

Coming back from Eddie Izzard last night, there was a long line for what I can only assume was a midnight showing of TDK. So I guess it's not only Sex in the City that draws that kind of crowd there.

Was Tiny Lister the guy that Dent is torturing to get info on the Joker ?

Tiny Lister was the giant scary bald black guy on the prisoner ferry.

I love Tiny.

(Edited for less spoileriness, for those who have gray spoiler font)

Oh, okay. Did anyone else think when they saw William Fichner (if only I could spell that name) that he was going to be a bigger character ?

Did anyone else think when they saw

Yes.

Whew and the guy I thought you were talking about was actually Cillian Murphy wasn't it? I is dum.

Saw Dark Knight. At a matinee that was not packed, thank the lord. Mostly, what Jessica and Ethan said. I liked it a lot, but I do not quite understand why the reviews are so rhapsodic. Although a lot of them seem to comparing it to other comic-superhero movies, and if I'd seen more of them I might understand that reaction better. Like the first one, there's a long slow build, which I'm okay with. Like the first one there's a weird fetishization of all the Bat-tech, which I find quite tiresome. Like the first one, I'd like to edit it down a little. Although there's other stuff I wish there'd been more of, so there's that. Like the first one, I love the themes and ideas and world enough that I'll probably see it again in the theater despite my quibbles, and like it more the second time.

I will disagree about a few things: I liked the mobster/corruption stuff in general, although some of that is in what I'd trim. But I wanted more of the Batfans, so. And I actually liked the sonar effect itself, though the concept and the fact that they needed to make an ethical issue out of it was silly and too on the nose.

And my problem with Eckhardt was that I didn't really buy his feelings for Rachel. Which made his transformation rather problematic. Though I think some of that was the writing, and maybe some of the things I'd cut could have been replaced with a few minutes that would make that play better. This may be superstition on my part, but I feel like if Nolan had done his usual messing about with chronology, that might have worked better for me.

And I'm not sure I understand Gordon's "death" either. I think that it was because he was Batman's special friend and the next obvious target. When he returned to his family, didn't he say something about how it was to protect them? Or am I blurring things together? The thing that bothered me about that was that it was so fast that I was like, "Wait.. what? He did? Just like that?" Not out of surprise that he'd been killed, but surprise that it seemed like a throwaway. Maybe it was hurried so that people wouldn't think about it enough to question it, but it had the opposite effect on me.

I agree with some reviewers I've read that this movie is a post-September 11th allegory and I think it is very effective.

I agree with your statement about Eckhardt. I feel like we are missing a few scenes there.