Official Dark Knight Thread!, Friday, Friday, Friday!

Just watched it for the second time tonight and renewed all love. I offic. own this film, sans special features, but I don't really care. It is victorious. *pets*

Omgah, the ending just unfailingly gives me chills each time.

:radiates jealousy like odor from a pig in a hog wallow:

I totally watched it online last night. And though I've been in love with Bruce since Kevin Conroy and B:taS, I do not fail to fall in love with Bale!Bruce every time. :can't wait to have her very own copy in her grimy little fingers:

I... am so so so late on this it still nearly makes me cry reading through all of your posts and knowing I wasn't there. But self-pity is for a different time and place.

So, in light of that, thank PRESIDENT GOD for Christmas or I may have had to wait until it was on cable to see it AT ALL! I now have a lovely two-disc DVD in my possession and I bought the soundtrack yesterday as well. Obssessed? Try, 'I-can't-stop-watching-this-movie, even-in-my-sleep'. Yeah. Well, I don't watch it in my sleep, but since it's break all I do all day is watch this movie, over and over and over again... actually, I've only seen it full length once, mostly I just skip to Joker scenes .

Um... I agree with everything everyone else said. It would be redundant to reiterate, but I'm going to anyway because I haven't really had a chance to express my love for this movie in full.

1) It's both scary and amazing that Heath's last role is the Joker and therefore will always be remembered for him. This is amazing because I rarely see such good acting, and I watch a lot of movies, old, award-winning, critically-acclaimed movies. Precious few actors can perform a character without any scrap of their own personalities breaking through, and Heath did it, everything about the Joker was completely original and terrifying, it was awesome in the 'powerful and awe-inspiring' definition of that word.

2) I. LOVED. IT. All of it. From the sound to the lighting to the costumes and the make-up (both of which should get Oscars) to the props to the special effects (which also pwned all), EVERYTHING. Not since Return of the King has one movie been so perfectly and epically executed, bravo!

3) I should have bought the calendar. I am now kicking myself for that. *headdesk*

4) I was so happy seeing Cilian, I didn't think he'd be back at all and seeing him made me smile. I agree with Ari, it was a nice chunk of screen-time for him too.

5) I kinda died seeing Gordon died, but mostly I thought 'WTF??? SO not canon! He doesn't die, at least not yet. I know he makes Comissioner.' and then he came back and I celebrated internally .

6) New batmobile + new batsuit = even more awesome than before. And yay Christian Bale. He is teh bestest Bruce/Bat ever! And I've seen many of them.

7) Two-Face scared me more than the Joker honestly. See, Two-Face was enraged at everyone, literallys eeing red and blaming all the wrong people. The Joker was simply bored in the mentally ill sense. Two-Face is even harder to reason with than the Joker though, because of that intense emotional attachment to what's going on. The Joker wasn't attached to anything, therefore nothign mattered to him, Dent was out for revenge. Something bad always happens when someone wants revenge, it turns into an obssession and never ends well, with the exception of perhaps V.

8) Rachael's death was neccessary, and I was pretty much expecting it as Bruce's girlfriend or would-be girlfriends never last long.

9) I'm with Cait and Ari, go Nurse!Joker!!! I LOVED that whole scene more than I can say, it was probably my favorite of the whole movie. It was the first time I really laughed in the whole movie, and I was laughing hysterically, from the second the cop opens the door. I loved his talk with Harvey though, it was brilliant, I quoted it in my sig in fact, it's (one of) my favorite line. And then the explosion at the end just tickled me again .

10) I'm almost positive that sometime in the future they will bring back the Joker, probably not to play opposite Bale, but the character's too big and too well-known to let him end in Arkham after this squabble. But whoever's next will always pale into a dim, dim shadow next to Heath.

11) Did anyone else twinge at the sad, sick irony of "I think we're destined to do this forever"? The Joker and Batman did fight forever, but this particular pair will never go on, and it really crushed me when I heard it.

Jacob and I got the DVD as a Christmas present to ourselves.

Funny, I thought Heath went the entire movie without ever being seen sans Joker makeup, but when Jacob and I were watching the DVD and got to the scene where the commissioner gets shot, we both did a kind of double take and had to play it back again in freeze frame to be sure--but there it is.

It just goes by so fast that it just passed right over my head the first time I saw the movie. I didn't even realize it. Then when we played it back and paused it, it gave me kind of a little jolt, to see Joker!Heath looking so much like...Heath. Except for the scars, of course.

For those of you who've seen and noticed it, you probably know what I'm talking about. For those of you who haven't...eh, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about. I purposely try to pause that scene as much as possible just to see him without the make-up, well the scars are make-up, but you know what I mean. He does look so much more like himself, it's strange... But I feel like it's the last time anyone saw his real face, it was for me anyway.

Some of the shadow is still there with his eyes though. I think it kinda looks mid-transformation from Heath to Joker. It's a very interesting shot. I wonder if there was maybe an alterior motive in showing the audience Heath's real face a little. Even just for the sake of reminding eveyrone that, yeah, that's really him. Because when I saw the very first trailer, way back when, the one that was just dialogue, I could not believe that it was Heath's voice. It sounded nothing like him and when I saw a later trailer with him in full make-up and costume, it took me a few minutes to distinguish him as Heath because they had changed how he looked so radically.

Sorry, random rambling here... I didn't have a chance to do this earlier with the rest of you, so you'll have to forgive me.

Demon, you're perfectly inclined to ramble. We all did. This movie is big. This movie is piss-your-pants big. Oh, and the "Destined to do this forever" line got me right in theatres. I was all, "Oh damn." But you know.

I loved the shot of Heath without face paint during the cop funeral. It's Heath but it's definitely not (even excluding the scars) -- he still looks utterly crazed and dangerous, and it reels you in like a fish.

And a "Hell yes!" and Todd-like high five for everything mentioned on Nurse!Joker, Christian Bale, and Cillian. Beautiful.

Seriously. His eyes...he got the eyes down pat. There's that scary unpredictability just swimming in them, and you can almost feel the crackle of danger emanating from all around him like sparks from a cut power line.

Still, it was kind of a surreal moment for me, just seeing him without the face paint that had physically transformed him so completely.
And I was kind of terribly smug, too, because just before we paused it to make sure, there was a bit of a heated debate going on between us as to whether the Joker had actually put on "normal" makeup OVER his face paint (Jacob's argument) or my insistence that he was not actually wearing any face paint at all.

We're such dorks.

Of course, in a perfectly canon comic-book world, the Joker would have had to put on "normal" makeup to make himself look ordinary, because from what I understand, that white-faced, red-lipped look isn't face paint, it's a permanent side-effect from falling into chemicals.

But I have to confess that I like the face paint idea a lot better.

I also like the Glasgow smile idea (the smile that's cut into his face, leaving the scars) a lot better than the "permanent grin from falling into chemicals" idea.
I just like Nolan's way of de-mythologizing elements of the Batman story and making it more "real," period. It just makes the whole thing a lot more believable.

Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Role (or whatever the heck it's called) tonight at the Golden Globes!

YAY FOR HEATH LEDGER!

Chris Nolan received it, and then they showed a clip of the famous Interrogation Scene from The Dark Knight, and...

Well, when they said "Heath Ledger", I am not ashamed to say, I cried. It started light, with my eyes, "glistening in the light", or whatever, but then the woman started talking, and some tears leaked out, and I watched the clip, and then Chris was just standing there for a moment, and I just started sobbing.

And then I got it together long enough to watch Chris's speech, and then I cried a little more, and then watched the rest of the show.

Sometimes, it takes a while for something to fully hit you. And Heath's death has been coming in segments, gradually. It's probably going to take a little more time for it to completely hit me, and when I do, I will probably sob for a good while before I feel better.

Anyways... in other news, I'm completely in love with Kate Winslet, she's my most favorite actress EVER.

She won Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Role (or whatever) for The Reader (which I will be seeing when it comes to my theatre) AND Best Actress in a Dramatic Role (or whatever) for Revolutionary Road (which I will also be seeing.)

And, I kid you not, it looked like she was hyperventilating for Best Actress when she got up there. She hugged a ton of people, and then got up there, and was gasping out names of people to thank like she was going to fall over if she didn't.

I'm surprised she didn't pass out, though I'm thankful she didn't.

Johnny Depp presented the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy, and, of course, he was extremely handsome and eloquent (that man can say anything at all, and it'll still sound like he came up with it himself. He's a natural) and perfect, and his hair was gorgeous, and I was THISCLOSE to squeeing, as were Tom Hanks and Glenn Close.

But that is neither here nor there.

In any case, we got a win for The Dark Knight, and come time for the Oscars, I think we'll have a few more nominations. If need be, I will host an Oscar Party, and we'll be happy and wait on baited breath for any award TDK is nominated for.

I really hope we (Team Dark Knight, y'all) get something. Chris Nolan has revolutionized the way superhero movies are done. They used to be campy, full of kid things, and, quite frankly, silly. And now, they are beginning to be taken more seriously. Sure, they're entertaining, and based on supernatural things, but the MORALS are still there, and just because a man is bitten by a spider or sees his parents die in front of him and fights crime to save the world doesn't mean that it deserves any less respect for its main point.

I'm SO making a "Team Dark Knight" shirt now. It'll be full of win. Maybe a picture of The Joker on the back or something.

Anyways... I'll get off my soapbox now, I just wanted to talk about Heath's awesome and how much I love that man, still.

Have a good week, everybody!