Dark Knight Rising

Have to toss in my two cents on The Dark Knight, which just opened in Paris seven days ago. I managed to see it while in Atlanta last month for the National Black Arts Festival, but I saw it again at Les Halles tonight with the missus. I’d totally lead the committee to get Heath Ledger his posthumous Oscar if I didn’t have a million other things to do. His Joker hits the perfect pitch of insanity and menace required to be true to the comic version. Nicholson seems real Cesar Romero by comparison. Award or no, he still pulled off a tour de force. For my dough, The Dark Knight is the best superhero flick since Spider-Man 2. I hear they’re talking Johnny Depp for the Riddler next time around, and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the Penguin. Can we get Eva Green as Catwoman though?

Glad to see Dark Knight a second time; there’s so much dialogue underneath bombastic orchestra music, you gotta pay twice to catch it all. I wasn’t mad at her presence or anything (it wasn’t that deep), but I’m glad the Rachel Dawes character is gone. She doesn’t exist in the comics, and neither Maggie Gyllenhaal nor Katie Holmes really did it for me. It was wild to see just how much darker Batman can get as a character. This rehabilitation of the character’s original, um, character has been going on for over 20 years now, since Frank Miller’s outta-this-world The Dark Knight Returns miniseries snatched Bats from the hokey 1960s TV series image (“Holy camp, Batman!”) that fucked everything up for everybody. From The Batman cartoon of a few years back to Tim Burton’s original Dark Knight-inspired films to grim visaged Batman action figures, ain’t many people holding on to that Adam West POW! BANG! ZAP! stuff anymore. Good riddance. I caught stiches in my forehead as a shorty, running into a wall, racing my babysitter’s kid (Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas’s nephew) for the rights to watch Batman over Tom & Jerry after homework. Thanks a lot, Robin.