what the bloggery

’sup, ladies. As most of you know, I’ve recently taken to living in sin with the one known as James, so things have been really hectic since we got back from Florida. Things are good, for the record, just busy. Which is probably why I haven’t managed to blog at all and why I have to keep promising Nat that yes, I will totally make up for all the days I missed. Which I guess I’ll have to, even if it takes me the rest of my days >:(

(oh yeah, I will post pictures when I get around to it—there are over 1100 of them, it might take me some time.)

Today Nat and I went to The Dreaming, which is a fantastic hub of geekery (also known as a comic book store), and our favorite place to get a fix. I spent about forty bucks on a combination of Nightwing and Angel: After the Fall. However, this isn’t my comic review—that will come later tonight, maybe—it was just so much fucking fun to be the only two girls in The Dreaming on New Comics Day. There was this one part where we were ripping into Urru’s art in Angel and we noticed that a store full of nerdy guys had fallen completely silent. Around six guys were attentively listening to us talk. That was so endearing it wasn’t even creepy.

On our way back to the Bookstore, Nat and I had the following conversation:

“So, where’s all those posts you owe me?” she asked.

“I’m working on them, I promise,” I said. “I’m trying to write my reviews for Iron Man and The Dark Knight, but I’m at a loss about what to say.”

The answer was quite simple, as all brilliant answers are.

“Dude,” she said. “Just babble.”

Brilliant. I’m not being sarcastic, either. I was putting way too much effing thought into this shit. On that note, I present to you my babble on The Dark Knight. I ain’t even gonna call it a review, as I don’t much bother with being objective or very thoughtful. I find it difficult to say anything constructive or even remotely critical about this movie, mostly because I love it too much to dare.

p.s. nat, does this mean you’ll update your blag as well?

Look at this fucking Joker.

Man, just look at him. Prior to TDK, I honestly had no opinion of Heath Ledger whatsoever. Er, aside from the obvious gay cowboy cred. He earned that when he humped Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene well worth my ten bucks at The Egyptian. I’d seen him in a random assortment of other movies but I never noticed him. Well, he’s got my attention now. Now that he’s dead. Fuckin’ hell. There will never be another Joker for me. James raves about Mark Hamill’s voice acting for the Joker in the animated series, and Hilarie insists that Jack Nicholson is the way to go—but I’m sorry, I think the winner is obvious.

 

 

 

Hint: it ain’t Jack. Not for me, at any rate. The longer I look at him, the more and more I think, “Creepy Uncle”. When I look at Ledger’s Joker, my thoughts tend to stray more towards “That is the last thing you’ll see before you die”. I haven’t read much classic Batman, although I’ve tried to do some research, and what I’ve come up with is very interesting. In the olden days, in the Joker’s inception, he was terrifying. Completely batty, if you’ll pardon the pun. From there he morphed from something to be feared and into…well, this:

I’m really really really not going to make a “boner” joke. This is just an example of the ridiculous character he became. In one of my Nightwing trades, Dick refers to him as the “Sultan of Slapstick” and I sort of wanted to jam a pencil into my eye. (However, when Batgirl called him “Giggles”—okay, that cracked my shit up.) Eventually he returned to his darker, crazier roots, and that is why I love Ledger’s Joker. That is what he feels like. Old school, baby. Totally rocking in the chaos and the obsession and the dark. I love Heath Ledger’s Joker because—fuck, you know why? Because I don’t see Heath Ledger at all. It’s not just that the Joker is incredibly awesome and if you know me, you’ll know I have a bit of a penchant for the insane, but it feels like Ledger got so lost in the character you can’t even see the actor anymore. I don’t even know what to make of it, but it is amazing.

I didn’t even recognize him when he took off the makeup.

Gotta love those scars.

He was so intense. When he was holding a knife to Rachel’s face, I was freaking out in my seat. His laugh still unnerves me. I even loved the way he moved, is that weird? The way he scurried about, scrambling like a wild thing. I also enjoyed watching Batman beat the hell out of him. Not to mention his pencil trick.

I should probably move onto another character. Oh, first, here’s some more Joker pictures I found when I was looking around:

Ahh, okay. Moving on. “Finally!”, you might say. How about Batman? Can I spare a moment for the Bat? I think I can. I loved that fucking voice. That voice that says, “I am Batman and I smoke seven thousand packs a day!” I FUCKING LOVE IT. Nat and I still sit around and imitate it when the mood arises. I wonder if Christian Bale destroyed his throat by talking like that for several hours a day?

I love Bruce Wayne. Loving Bruce Wayne is a lot different from loving Batman, as starts to look as though “Bruce Wayne” is the character he plays, and Batman is his true self. Therefore when I say I love Bruce Wayne, I’m saying I love that retarded frat-asshole he plays when he isn’t kicking the crap out of criminals in the middle of the night. Sleeping through meetings! Burning down his mansion! I love him so much it is ridiculous.

That’s really all I have to say about Batman. He’s BATMAN, and he is played by Christian Bale, so I have no complaints.

I think you should know who’s next. That’s right, baby—

—Rachel muthafuckin Dawes.

(I love that picture.)

I shall state this again: Maggie Gyllenhaal is gorgeous. Rachel Dawes might not be a very important character in the grand scheme of the Batman universe (considering she exists in film alone), yet I think Gyllenhaal did a fabulous job portraying her. Much better than Katie Holmes, who made me clench my jaw every time she came on-screen. Gyllenhaal didn’t look like a tween dressed up in her mother’s clothes. She looked adult, professional, and damn sexy. I’ll admit, I was…unexpectedly upset when Rachel died. The scene between her and Harvey sort of broke me. Time to change the subject. Although here’s another picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal, ’cause I fucking feel like it:

It’s time to talk about Harvey Dent.

When he first shows up in the movie, when he first jokes about flipping a coin, I had a moment of *eyeroll*. It was corny. Oh well, I no longer give a goddamn, since the moment he disarms the mobster he’s questioning and then protests when the bailiff tries to remove said mobster—hot damn, who wasn’t in love with him? It was still corny, I’ll say that, but corny like a fox.

Alright guys, I’m about to use a word I haven’t used since high school: juxtaposition. In other words, the rise of the Joker from simple felon to high-class terrorist (”better class of criminal”, indeed!) set against the fall of Harvey Dent from Gotham’s White Knight to a complete madman. Brilliantly done. Here’s a man, a truly good man who only wants the best for his city, who wants to marry the beautiful woman he loves and lead a good life—and the thing is, you really want it for him. His intentions were so damn pure they could have been nauseating, and maybe it’s just Aaron Eckhart’s ridonkulously handsome face that sells it, but somehow it all works. I believed in Harvey Dent.

Now, the introduction of Two-Face…

I’ll say this: original. Definitely not anything I’ve seen before. This amount of damage might have made more sense had he still been lying in a puddle of gasoline when the explosion went off, but who the fuck am I, I don’t know shit about burns. In fact, one of my favorite things about his scenes in the hospital was the gross little smudge on his pillow. God is in the details, they say. My only real complaint is that his eye wouldn’t be able to function without some kind of eyelid. It’d dry out really quickly otherwise. Come to think of it, how’d his eye even survive the damage that burned his fucking cheek away? I think they should have given him a fucked-up eye. That would have been cooler, but as I said, that’s my only complaint.

I think I’m out of steam, guys. Time to draw this post to a close. I’ll leave you with this, however, as it was one of my favorite scenes in the movie:

Ahhhh. Too awesome for words.

So, anyway. The Dark Knight was un-fucking-believable. If you are not yet convinced of my love for it, know this: this week, I’ll be seeing it for the third time, and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a fourth.

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 02:54 and is filed under movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.