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Monday, 10:29 am in Archive

Like everyone else in the Western world, last Friday ~Mat [h] and I went off to see The Dark Knight. And, really, after a weekend’s worth of reflection the one line that I think sums the whole experience up best just-so-happens to be the film’s tagline:

Why so serious?

Because, damn, this is one serious motherfucker of a film. In as far as I can tell when it comes to cinema, this is a good film. The writing is tight, the plot is near-flawless (though not completely) and every single member of the cast puts in an absolutely stunning performance. But.

But. This is a good film but it’s not an enjoyable film. Not by a long shot. And I think TDK is going to… surprise a lot of people, and not necessarily in a good way. Because people like you and me? We know about the DARKER and EDGIER Batman. We know about Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and about Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween and Dark Victory and all the rest. But those people? The ones out there? They don’t know. They don’t even suspect, and these are the people who are going to drag their kids along to yet another superhero flick, expecting to see a live-action version of the cartoons their kids watch on Saturday mornings, and they’re going to get… this.

And it’s funny, because there’s almost no gore for the entire film; no blood, no guts. But the film is violent; brutally so. And it’s intense. It’s so intense, in fact, that I spent a great deal of it hiding under ~Mat [h]’s arm. And even worse than all of that is the fact that nothing. Good. Happens.

Nothing.

Okay, maybe one tiny thing, right near the end, but for the most part watching TDK is like getting punched in the face for three hours with DARKER and EDGIER. People keep pointing out throughout the film that things are “darkest before the dawn”. It’s foreshadowing, maybe, but if it is it’s foreshadowing for the third film in the series. Because TDK is just that; dark.

Look, I’ve gotten down all this far and I haven’t yet mentioned Heath Ledger. So here’s the part where I do that. Ledger burns in this film. He is completely physically and vocally unrecognisable; you are not watching him, you are watching The Joker, writ large in dirty purple wool and cracked greasepaint. This is not a Joker disfigured by a Freak Chemical Accident. This is a Joker who is just a freak. Completely human and utterly terrifying. He’s not s supervillain, he’s a psychopath. And like I alluded to above, this is not a Joker who is unfamiliar to any semi-serious DCU reader but it’s not a Joker that we’ve ever seen live-action before. I think the closest is probably very, very late-season Diniverse Joker; and even that’s just skimming the surface.

He’s very, very hard to watch. And, see, there’s this thing you hear floating around; actors love playing villains. It’s like this… thing, when you’re a Srs Actor, apparently. A story is only as good as its villain, and watch most actors in this space and, yeah, they’re having fun. You can tell.

Ledger is not having fun.

It wasn’t immediately apparent when I was watching, but in retrospect… yeah. He’s not having fun. There are a couple of scenes where, I think, he should be (outside the hospital particularly), but the whole thing feels… hollow. And the thing is, I think this works for the performance. Ledger’s Joker is cold and empty; his smile is painted on and cut in so he affects this clown persona, but the laughter – no matter how crazed – never touches anything beneath the surface.

It works, but… this is where I stop that line of thought.

So. I was going to say some stuff about the Harvey/Rachel plot which I think is probably the film’s weak-point but… after reliving all that I think I need to go do something cheerful instead.

How about talking about the iPhone?

A couple of people have asked about it, so here’s the deal; it’s an 8 GB and I pay $41 a month for $20-something worth of calls and 250 MB of data. Pretty much the one thing I don’t use my phone for is making phonecalls – I hate the phone and avoid using it if at all possible – and the main reason I wanted an iPod was so I could keep a mobile email device in my pocket.

The thing people seem to want to know is whether or not it’s as functional as Apple makes out, and I have to admit that so far I’ve got very few complaints. I use a MacBook, of course, so it interfaces brilliantly with iCal and Address Book. It flawlessly imported all my email account settings from Mail (though not the messages themselves; use IMAP for that, though I don’t… yet). Its Exchange Outlook Mobile Access – that’s Microsoft’s corporate answer to BlackBerry – is simple to set up and works smoothly. The web browser is surprisingly good, as is the keyboard once you get used to it (plus its typo self-healing ability is a godsend). It snaps easily onto WiFi connections and uses these wherever it can, and I set myself a cool wallpaper (very important; it's Laucian, incidentally).

The things that bother me include its lack of a decent multi-protocol chat client (I’m using one at the moment that’s AJAX-based, but of course it doesn’t run in the background), the weird fact that you can’t use MP3s as ringtones unlike every other phone made for the last five years, the two-finger zoom control, and some of the configuration options – particularly for adding multiple email accounts – being a bit obtuse. It’s also doesn’t have a camera flash, and therefore no flashlight (the other thing I use my phone for on a regular basis), but you can get a free application that duplicates this feature through the high-tech solution of turning your screen completely white.

So, do I think it’s worth it? Hell yeah! Sure, it’s the most over-hyped piece of kit in years and a lot of people are going to hate it for that alone, but I’d bet my villain cape that it’s going to do to the mobile phone/PDA market what the iPod did for portable music…

Speaking of my villain cape… Laucian now has one! Double XP weekend means he’s now a grand Level 25; that’s totally like halfway to endgame! So now he’s got a cape, an alternate costume and five robot Henchmen (I get my final one next level). Plus I figured out how to make free money on the Black Market (slowly, but it’s easy pocket-change).

Not to mention that on Sunday, randomredux and I totally teamed up for some groups smashings, and I have to say that the Malefactor/Lackey system is awesome. Plus Lau now has a back-story and a supporting cast… but more on them later.

Life is good.

• Tags » batman, cov, games, iphone, movies, the dark knight
• Comments By » ~nounbeast [h], ~Arwym Starlight [h], Mick, Robbie, Corinne