Dark Knight and Various Movies

I watched The Dark Knight the other day. It was excellent and I thought the cast did an amazing job. I saw bits and pieces of the first one, Batman Returns, and the story was a tad too dark for me so I worried about my expectations for this sequel.

Simply put, I love Heath Ledger as the Joker. His scenes were definitely disturbing sometimes - I could barely watch the psychotic man, my fingers were plastered over my face - but he was so good. It just makes the viewer wonder what roles might he have gone onto had he not died so unexpectedly.

So who was the better Joker: Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger?

I don't believe they could even be compared. Asides from the Joker identity, their portrayals were so different. Even the makeup indicated distinctions in their personalities: Jack was neat and crisp with his fitted suit and a wide, maniacal grin while Heath's paint was smeared all over his face combined with greasy hair and a nervous, awkward gait.

Jack's Joker was more intelligent and thought his plans through with a purpose. He walked with a swagger and punctuated actions with witty one-liners and jokes. His Joker was more light hearted.

Heath's depiction of Joker, on the other hand, was of a true lunatic. In that way, he's scarier than Jack's Joker since he's a killer so crazy, he doesn't even care about his own life, let alone yours. Everything is literally a game to him; pain doesn't seem to register on him at all and it makes the viewer wonder how he got to be such a twisted individual. He offers several stories about the origin of his lips ("Why so serious?") and you quickly realize that you can never be certain what the man is about. Suspense, tension, and a feeling that you're constantly playing Russian Roulette with the guy. Now that is creepy.

Did anyone else find Heath Ledger's Joker reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter and the Black Dahlia? That sibilant way he hisses words and the way his tongue flickers against his lips suggested Hannibal's quirks and the whole story about his lips carved into a smile reminded me of the story of the Black Dahlia.

For those who don't know about Black Dahlia, it's a real, unsolved murder and brutalization of this actress back around 1930s. She was tortured, slaughtered, and half of her corpse, butchered across the hip, was found. Her lips were split side-to-side with a knife into a wide smile and it was absolutely horrific. A movie regarding this came out a while back, I believe.

Back to less dismal topics, I've been loving this summer's selection of movies. There are so many superhero movies out and while I'm not usually a big fan of the genre, a lot of them have been really good (I adore Iron Man - who doesn't?).

On another happy note, I'm so excited about the next Mummy that's coming out (not so happy to see Rachel Weisz's character taken up by another actress though).

And! I can't wait for Tropic Thunder. Except, I don't want to jinx myself because usually when I get my expectations all high for a movie, it usually disappoints. And then I cry. Not really.

But the point is it's going to have Ben Stiller, Jack Black, AND Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. is an amazing actor and I'm glad he's coming back after his rehab.

Here's the promo thing they did for the movie. I love how Downey made fun of himself for his scandal thing and the comparison to Dark Knight - and the poster with Panda and Iron Man ... genius. Plus, the Panda head! Oh, Jack haha. The ending of this clip is kinda weird though and more disturbing than funny, but I still love the three of them.

The movie has a good premise (poking fun at the movie industry and setting up with three different actor stereotypes, throwing them into a real life war situation without any of them realizing it - cue funny and gross debacles) and I just hope it'll turn out well. I mean, we all know what happened to Hancock. Such good ideas, but they tried to do way too many things at once - romance, identity crisis, angst, action, and humor. It was like a bipolar flick on Prozac. You didn't know if it was a drama that had too much action or a superhero movie with too little action.

But I suppose it would make for some good fanfiction because there were definitely some novel points to it that could be explored more.

You see how I love my movies.

Writings: Still working on Through Me 19. And Unfinished Business 9. I hope to have at least one of them out by Sunday or Monday. Hopefully. If I'm not distracted by anything again. The summer heat makes me positively lethargic.