Fade To Black
Posted on | July 23, 2008 at 10:49 pm | 2 Comments
I’m still trying to fully take in The Dark Knight. Here’s a few more (non-spoiler) points.
- I forgot to mention in my original review that I saw the IMAX Presentation. Usually when a mainstream movie shows at IMAX, it’s not really in true IMAX format – there are “black bars” at the top of the screen to preserve the original aspect ratio. Real IMAX movies are in a 1.36:1 aspect ratio (similar to non-widescreen TVs) and are filmed on special cameras with larger film. However, some of the scenes in The Dark Knight were filmed with IMAX cameras and those scenes fill up the entire screen. It is breathtaking. The scene with Batman on top of the building in Hong Kong at night gave me vertigo. The transitions between those scenes and the “normal” scenes was pretty seamless. You got used to it after awhile, and they used some scene transition techniques that worked to hide the switch as much as possible. Every once in awhile, there would be a quick establishing shot in IMAX sandwiched between traditional scenes. That was pretty cool.
- I appreciated that the color pallet of the movie is opened up a bit from the mostly-brown Batman Begins. Any movie that features such a colorful character as The Joker can’t avoid it, I suppose. There’s a lot of blues and blacks, and of course some well-placed red. I don’t know why I’m so tuned-in to colors in movies, but it’s one of my primary evaluation criteria.
- I liked that The Joker is not given an origin in the movie. He doesn’t need one. He’s just an agent of chaos, sprung fully formed from the pits of hell. If he had some sort of life before becoming this demon, it’s irrelevant. No, the origin story belongs to Harvey Dent, and that’s really what the movie’s about. They are two sides of the same coin, so to speak (groan).
- In a lot of ways, this is the movie Batman and the movie Joker I’ve always wanted to see. Deathly serious. It finally erased all memories of the campy 60s TV show (which I loved at the time) and the Joel Schumacher debacles. It’s like those were from another life. Jack Nicholson’s Joker was appropriate for its time, but that time has passed. Ledger’s Joker is definitive. Makes me really wonder what Nolan would do the Penguin, though I’m not really sure I’d want to see that in this Batman universe. I know I don’t want to see Robin, though I think Nolan might be able to pull off something interesting there. Catwoman would be cool. Kate Beckinsale?
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 67°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “She Goes to Bed” (Jason Falkner)
- “Shaken” (Trotsky Icepick)
- “Attention” (The Information)
- “Julian H. Cope” (Julian Cope)
- “The Ambassador” (Pidgin)
- “Imitation Jewelery” (The Records)
- “All Of Our Love” (The Coral)
- “Black Shuck” (The Darkness)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “safeway hemorrhoidal ointment”.
Comments
2 Responses to “Fade To Black”
July 24th, 2008 @ 4:33 am
I’m afraid that once my wife sees the Imax version, she’ll want one of those screens installed at home. So I was just going to go to the local 20-plex and tell her it’s Imax…
July 24th, 2008 @ 6:48 am
you fool, you put it in writing on the internetssess…
wait, just here on Flasshe… I think you’re still good to go!
woyf xxxx