Terminator Movie Brings J.D. Salinger Out Of Hiding

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/new_terminator_movie_brings_j_d

New Terminator Movie Brings J.D. Salinger Out Of Hiding
June 8, 2009 Issue 45•24

CORNISH, NH — Famed literary giant and notorious recluse J.D. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965, came out of hiding Monday to gush about the new film Terminator Salvation, offering the world its first glimpse into his private life since his last interview nearly 30 years ago.

"I believe that a writer's privacy is among his most precious possessions, in that personal information about him distracts readers from what is most important: the work itself," the author of The Catcher In The Rye told reporters outside the Claremont Cinema 6 theater, moments after seeing the film for the third time. "But on the other hand, the new revival of the Terminator franchise is just way too awesome for me to remain quiet any longer. Hello? Time-travel paradoxes? Freaking amazing!"

"How sweet was it when that giant robot hand reached in through the roof and grabbed that old lady?" Salinger added. "Or when those motorcycle terminators detached from its legs and started speeding toward the escaping resistance fighters? Holy crap, was that fucking cool or what?"

Salinger, 90, explained that he first became a fan of the Terminator franchise in 1991, when he saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day and found the character of the young John Connor to be "a striking figure of teenage alienation and disillusionment." His interest in the series continued with his rental of the first Terminator film, which he described as "almost as awesome as the second one," and his Amazon purchase of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines on Blu-ray.

Salinger, whose fictional works featuring the Glass family are considered some of the most influential contributions to 20th-century American literature, stated that he "liked Terminator 3 okay," but that it was, in his opinion, "nowhere near as cool as the new film." In fact, the latest installment has so far exceeded his expectations that he has reversed nearly half a century of shunning the media.

In an interview granted to The Paris Review, The New York Review Of Books, Time, Newsweek, and Us Weekly, Salinger called Christian Bale "the most badass version of John Connor yet" and described the film's postapocalyptic war with the machines setting as "totally mind-blowing."

"I admit I was worried about it as first," Salinger explained to enthralled reporters. "The decision to go with McG as the new director seemed like a bad mistake—I mean, he made the Charlie's Angels movies for chrissakes—but boy oh boy was I worried for nothing. T4 may well be more awesome than the first three goddamn films combined, if you can believe that."

Added Salinger, "Those hydrobots are scary as shit."

He then invited reporters into his remote New Hampshire compound to discuss the movie in more detail.

"Come in, come in, sit down, there's plenty of space," an exuberant Salinger told reporters, gesturing around his sitting room, which was filled with movie posters, comic books, and other Terminator collectibles, including a life-sized statue of the T-800 Model terminator as portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. "What a frigging inspired choice to cast Bryce Dallas Howard. She made so much more sense in that part than Claire Danes."

Although the sole film made from Salinger's work, My Foolish Heart, based on his short story "Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut," was considered by Salinger to be such a bastardization of his prose that he never agreed to another adaptation, he now states that "if McG wants to do any of my stuff—'A Perfect Day For Bananafish'; Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters; hell, all of Nine Stories—he has my complete permission. Anything. Anything he wants."

When asked what he thought of today's novelists, and whether he had plans to publish any new work, Salinger replied that he loved it when the helicopter crashes and John Connor gets grabbed by that terminator that's only half a torso, and then he blows it away with the mounted machine gun.

"But by far the best part is when they reveal the T-800 for the first time and it looks just like a young Schwarzenegger," said Salinger, his voice reaching a fever pitch. "I was like, 'Holy shit.' I guess they must've used CGI or something to get that face just right. But what a moment! I practically lost it, if you want to know the truth."

Besides setting the literary community abuzz, Salinger's decision to come out of seclusion has allowed scholars access to his massive archive of unpublished work for the first time. So far, critics have examined three never-before-seen novels, eight novellas, and more than two dozen short stories—all of which appear to be Terminator fan fiction.

"But make no mistake," said Salinger expert Professor Duane Hartworth of nearby Dartmouth College, "this is without a doubt the most personal and affecting body of Terminator fan fiction ever discovered."

Salinger had only one negative comment for interviewers: He condemned the TV spin-off series The Sarah Connor Chronicles, saying that people who like that show are "a bunch of goddamn phonies."

Depp channels inner outlaw in 'Public Enemies'

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/30/johnny.depp.public.enemies/

Depp channels inner outlaw in 'Public Enemies'
Story Highlights
Johnny Depp plays charismatic bank robber John Dillinger in "Public Enemies"
Depression-era tale of first Public Enemy No. 1, idolized as modern-day Robin Hood
Dillinger's gang killed 10 men, wounded seven during a spree of less than one year
Depp on Dillinger: "I always kind of admired him, oddly"
6-30-9
By Mairi Mackay

LONDON, England (CNN) -- He's been a homicidal singing barber in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," and an drunken swashbuckler in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

Now, Hollywood shape-shifter Johnny Depp is back as another unexpectedly charismatic outlaw: Depression-era bank robber, John Dillinger, a character he says he's been drawn to since he was a boy.

"I sort of had a fascination with John Dillinger when I was about 10, 11 years old, for some reason," Depp told CNN. "I always kind of admired him, oddly."

Oddly, perhaps, because for a short but intense period between September 1933 and July 1934 Dillinger and his gang rampaged through the American Midwest, staging jail breaks, robbing banks and killing 10 men and wounding seven along the way.

Dillinger's violent spree is the focus of gangster drama "Public Enemies," the latest offering from director Michael Mann, and also starring Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard.

Mann is known for his sympathetic portrayal of criminals and Dillinger, whose antics on the wrong side of the law led him to become one of America's first celebrities, is the quintessential good hood.

In the 1930s, the United States was in the grips of the worst financial disaster in history -- a time when many Americans watched their life savings disappear and became jobless and hungry.

Members of the public blamed banks for losing their money and politicians for failing to stop them. For many, Dillinger's exploits represented sticking it to the fat cats, and he was idolized as a modern-day Robin Hood.

J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director at the time, may have made Dillinger America's first Public Enemy No. 1, but the bandit was careful not to alienate the public.

There is a memorable moment where he drapes a coat over a female bank hostage during a raid to keep her warm. Also, it's said he never swore in front of women.

He was always courteous even as he tried to meet his target of robbing banks in under two minutes. Crucially, he never robbed the average guy, telling him to put his money away during robberies.

It is this Dillinger that Depp captures: a captivating revolutionary with the gift of gab who lit the public's imagination, causing people to flock to cinemas to watch his exploits in weekly newsreels. Review: Depp is great in 'Public Enemies'

Of course, the dark, violent side of Dillinger's psyche is unavoidable. Depp plumbed the depths of his own character to come up with those murkier elements.

That was something that took courage, according to Mann: "He had Dillinger in him; that's something I sensed. Deep in the core of Johnny there's a toughness."

Depp gained recognition throughout the 1990s for immersing himself in characters. He shook off an early reputation as a teen pin-up in movies like Tim Burton's 1991 Gothic tale "Edward Scissorhands."

He went on to cement his reputation for unusual film choices and quirky performances in films like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) and "Finding Neverland" (2004).

The 46-year-old actor says he felt a close affinity to Dillinger: "I related to John Dillinger like he was a relative. I felt he was of the same blood. He reminded me of my stepdad and very much of my grandfather.

"He seemed to be one of those guys with absolutely no bull whatsoever, who lived at a time when a man was a man."

"Public Enemies" was adapted by Mann from a nonfiction book of the same name by Bryan Burrough.Is it sozzled Captain. Jack Sparrow or smooth Donnie Brasco? Tell us your favorite Johnny Depp character in the SoundOff box below.

The "Last of the Mohicans" director is known for fastidious research and attention to detail, which in this case included collaborating closely with the FBI to check facts -- although Mann subsequently chose to gloss over some elements for the sake of the story.

Mann filmed in many of the locations where Dillinger's story took place almost 80 years ago, including the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, where the bandit was finally shot dead by FBI agents as he came out of a Clark Gable movie.

They also shot at Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters in the far north of Wisconsin, the site of one of Dillinger's most famous showdowns with the FBI.

Dillinger was hiding out there after a botched robbery. When the feds finally caught up with him, two men were killed in the vicious gunfight.

"We were able to shoot not just in the actual place where this happened, but in his actual room," says Mann.

"There's a certain kind of magic for Johnny Depp to be lying in the bed that John Dillinger was actually in."

A lot of Dillinger's success was down to superior guns and getaway cars. Depp, who has experience shooting guns from previous productions, had to learn a completely different technique for the heavy guns of the time.

Depp says shooting the 90-pound Thompson submachine gun was one of the highlights of the production: "When you've got a beast like that strapped to you and you're emptying magazines, a 50-round drum, it's a good feeling."

The ride may have been thrilling for Depp but he also recognizes that the Depression-era setting has some extra significance these tight-belted times.

"You know," says Depp, "We're in the middle of a recession, teetering on a depression. It's time to view the banks and grown-ups for what they are."

'Empire of the Sun' author J.G. Ballard dies at 78

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/04/empire-of-the-s.html

'Empire of the Sun' author J.G. Ballard dies at 78
Apr 19, 2009
by Josh Rottenberg

Author J.G. Ballard, whose best-known work, the autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, was adapted for the big screen by Steven Spielberg in 1987, died on Sunday at his home in London. He was 78 years old and had suffered from prostate cancer. In a career that spanned half a century, Ballard wrote many acclaimed dystopian, often sci-fi-inflected short stories and novels, including The Drowned World, Cocaine Nights, and Crash, a disturbing tale of car-accident fetishism that was adapted into a controversial 1996 film by director David Cronenberg. Empire of the Sun, which drew upon his own childhood experiences in a Shanghai internment camp during World War II, became the basis for Spielberg's sweeping film, which earned six Oscar nomations and launched the career of its young star, Christian Bale.

Eddie is Riddler in new Batman

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article2048300.ece

Eddie is Riddler in new Batman
By GORDON SMART and JESS ROGERS
12-17-8

FUNNYMAN EDDIE MURPHY will play The Riddler in the next Batman movie, The Sun can reveal.

The Beverly Hills Cop star, 47, has been signed up by British director CHRISTOPHER NOLAN to reprise the role played by JIM CARREY in 1995’s Batman Forever.

The surprise move follows speculation linking Pirates of the Caribbean star JOHNNY DEPP to the part.

The film, set for a 2010 release, is being developed under the working title Gotham.

Execs have also signed up rising Transformers star SHIA LABEOUF, 22, to play Robin.

CHRISTIAN BALE will return as Bruce Wayne, while MICHAEL CAINE will again play Bruce’s assistant Alfred.

Meanwhile, Brit RACHEL WEISZ is said to be up for the Catwoman role.

Insiders also revealed to The Sun the flick will end on a cliffhanger over whether Batman survives a blast at Wayne Towers.

Nolan had been tight-lipped about the future of the Batman films after being rocked by the January death of HEATH LEDGER — tipped to receive a posthumous Oscar for his role as The Joker in Batman Returns.

A film insider said: “Chris wasn’t sure if he wanted to do another movie but as soon as he decided to, he got the wheels in motion.

“Eddie’s a fantastic addition. Everyone’s excited to see what he does as the Riddler.”

g.smart@the-sun.co.uk

The Dark Knight Tops $500 Million at Box Office

http://www.usmagazine.com/the-dark-knight-tops-500-million-at-the-box-office

The Dark Knight Tops $500 Million at Box Office
Sunday August 31, 2008

After forty-five days in release, The Dark Knight continues to make movie history!

The Dark Knight– which was the fastest flick to earn $400 million – has become the second movie in history to gross over $500 million at the box office the Associated Press reported on Sunday.

The Batman sequel has raked in over $502.4 million in just over six weeks - half the time it took Titanic, which reached the half-billion mark in a little more than three months the AP reported.

The Dark Knight ranks second behind Titanic's $601 million gross.

Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Bros., said he expects The Dark Knight to finish at about $530 million, though it could reach $550 million.

"I keep raising the number because it just keeps holding better than expected," Fellman told the AP.

"It's wonderful!" Christian Bale told Usmagazine.com of the movie's box office success. "But I'm not a business man. I just enjoy doing what I do and whatever happens after that is gravy."

The Dark Knight is expected to reach about $505 million by Labor Day, the AP reported.

Is The Dark Knight Cursed?

http://stars.ign.com/articles/896/896478p1.html

Is The Dark Knight Cursed?
Further tragedy strikes the Batman sequel.
by Chris Tilly, IGN UK

UK, August 5, 2008 - In spite of the fact that the film is breaking records worldwide, news that star Morgan Freeman has been injured in a car crash has caused commentators to make the bizarre claim that there is a curse surrounding The Dark Knight.

Stories first started circulating that there might be a Batman curse when a special effects technician was killed while working on the production in September. The accident occurred when Conway Wickliffe was undertaking a test run for the Batmobile and the truck he was riding in struck a tree.

Rumours persisted when Heath Ledger, who is currently receiving rave notices for his performance as The Joker in the film, died from a fatal drug overdose at his New York apartment in January.

In the last fortnight two more of the film's stars have been in the news for very different reasons. Following the film's UK premiere, star Christian Bale was arrested , questioned and released by police for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister at the Dorchester - allegations he has denied.

And over the weekend Morgan Freeman, who plays Lucius Fox in the film, was involved in a serious car crash in Mississippi. His car apparently flipped several times before landing in a ditch, and while early reports suggested his injuries were potentially life-threatening, publicist Donna Lee later re-assured fans by telling TMZ.com, that he would make a full recover, saying Freeman has "a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage, but is in good spirits."

All of which has prompted claims that the production is cursed. Other films that have had such an outlandish allegation levelled against them include Superman and Poltergeist, and while common sense suggests a series of unfortunate incidents rather than anything more sinister, one can't help but hope that the bad luck has ended for The Dark Knight.

Batman and the "End of 9/11"

http://citystates.typepad.com/ius/2008/07/batman-and-amer.html

July 21, 2008
Batman and the "End of 9/11": Overcoming America's Dark Night in Gotham City
Michael Dudley

One of the "biggest" ideas of the year, according to James Fallows writing in the Atlantic Magazine, is the End of 9/11 as a metanarrative for American politics. For a growing domestic and international constituency, it is no longer tolerable for the very invocation of those events to warrant overriding every principle of American democracy. That moment of thoughtless panic has passed, and appears now to have been a dream of madness. Casting aside principles in the name of the "war on terror" -- to "work...the dark side, if you will", as Dick Cheney put it -- is now being recognized as the path to becoming the very evil we feared.

One of the most potent confirmations of this maturing zeitgeist is the overwhelmingly positive critical and public reception of Christopher Nolan's stunning new Batman film The Dark Knight , which, in its careful use of 9/11 visual tropes takes the viewer on a sometimes traumatic but ultimately redemptive and humanistic journey towards a truly post-9/11 ethic.

Many reviewers have already noted that the film is commenting on the "war on terror," and audiences were surely meant to revisit their own painful memories of 9/11 by the chilling advance posters for the film, which feature Batman standing before a skyscraper in which a gigantic flaming gash in the shape of a bat has been blasted. Cues evoking 9/11 build from the opening frames, which propel the viewer into a dark swirling cloud of smoke and then to an aerial shot flying us towards a glass building, through to a series of escalating depictions of urban chaos and destruction. Buildings implode, thousands of people flee Gotham city on foot, and at one point Batman broods in the foreground while firefighters struggle to contain fires amid twisted steel columns. Unlike any other superhero film ever made, The Dark Knight is set in a world of realism we -- sadly -- know only too well.

This realism is significantly owed to the actual urban locations of the film. Previous incarnations of Gotham City were either fascistic sets improbably dominated by statues or fanciful computer-generated creations that never succeeded in convincing us; here, the on-location shooting in downtown Chicago and Hong Kong goes a long way to grounding viewers and thereby preparing them for the moral arguments to come.

The morality play of The Dark Knight is driven by Heath Ledger's astonishing performance as the Joker, who is not so much a character as he is a force of unknowable, abstract evil. By positioning the villain this way, screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan have made the Joker the very incarnation of a Manichean view of morality: he is not an evil set apart from oneself that can be destroyed, but rather as a potentiality within oneself that must be resisted by one's predisposition for good.

What makes The Dark Knight so remarkable is that it frames this resistance to evil with nuanced debates about the natures of human moral agency and decision-making.

In an early scene, when Batman's alter-ego Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), discuss the merits of having one strong man take responsibility for defending society against evil, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) reminds them that when Rome made that choice, it resulted in a dictatorship. For all his wistful temptation for Roman absolutism, however, Dent is a morally principled man who doggedly works within the legal system to put criminals behind bars. So certain is he of his own moral compass that he makes a show of flipping a coin to make crucial decisions -- a coin which is later revealed to have two faces. Wayne admires Dent for his principled, public and fully legal stand and is himself tempted to forsake the lawless vigilantism of Batman and make Dent alone the public face of justice in Gotham.

Between the unaccountability of the Batman and the deontological morality of Dent lies the consequentialism of Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman), a veteran cop whose situational judgments and actions in a corrupt, complex and dangerous environment are criticized by Dent, who once ran an Internal Affairs investigation against Gordon's precinct.

With this moral triad at its core, the film then proceeds to metaphorically -- and not so metaphorically -- demolish the methods, moral vacuity and false ontology of the "war on terror."

First, Batman practices some "enhanced interrogation techniques" on the Joker, only to learn that he was being manipulated by the Joker all along, with fatal results. Then when Bruce uses an advanced and secret project at Wayne Industries to turn every cell phone in Gotham into sonar-based surveillance devices, his partner in Bat-tech, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), is appalled, swearing to resign if the machine isn't destroyed. While they agree to use the mass "unwarranted wiretap" just once, successfully pinpointing the Joker and what appear to be his henchmen in a skyscraper on the waterfront, when Batman arrives in advance of the S.W.A.T. team he is horrified to discover that despite its sophistication his technology was incapable of distinguishing hostages from terrorists, something of which only human presence and judgment is capable.

Next, we see the abandonment of Dent's "constitution." The Joker destroys Harvey Dent by disfiguring him and killing Rachel. Traumatized, grieving and seeking revenge, the formerly principled Dent kills five people, including two corrupt cops, but not before flipping his lucky coin -- which by now is as burnt on one side as he is, thus surrendering all his moral choices to an external force: sheer chance.

But it is in the film's gut-wrenching climax that reveals the supposed existential crisis of the "war on terror" for the cruel and dehumanizing proposition it is.

Fleeing the chaos of Gotham city, two crowded ferries break down in the harbor: one filled with ordinary citizens, the other with convicts clad in Guantanomo-esque orange suits. Each ship's crew discovers the boats are filled with explosives, as well as provided with a gift-wrapped detonator. Over the intercom, the Joker reveals the nature of his "social experiment": the detonators are for the other ship's bombs. If the passengers don't blow up the other ship, he'll blow up both of them at midnight.

For 15 agonizing minutes, the passengers argue amongst themselves and the ship's authorities, who are themselves paralyzed but increasingly tempted to destroy their sister ships. The prison ship is held in particular contempt by some of the passengers, who argue that the men on that boat "made their choice" of lawlessness and may therefore be sacrificed -- in other words, it is best to kill them over there before they kill us over here. Unable to make the final fatal decision, the authorities on both boats abdicate responsibility and turn the detonators over to their passengers -- who ultimately refuse to kill out of fear. In the end, the simple recognition of shared humanity and the insistence on retaining one's own moral agency are shown to be the most heroic acts of all.

At the same time, however, Gotham City's moral leaders are undone. Dent is killed by Batman, who then convinces Gordon that, to preserve Gotham's "constitution" -- the public image of Dent and all he stood for -- Batman and all he stands for must instead accept culpability for Dent's crimes. Unilateral, lawless and unaccountable vigilantism are now publicly discredited. The final scenes of the film show Fox turning his back on and walking away from the machinery of surveillance while Batman flees into the night, chased by police and dogs. Gordon, surrounded by press and members of the public then grimly takes an axe to the bat-beacon, cutting off the state's recourse to vigilantism.

Without either Dent or Batman to intervene on their behalf, Gordon and all of Gotham -- and by extension, the audience -- are left to face a complex, dangerous and interconnected world as a community of individual moral agents, guided by Dent's principles of law, fairness and justice -- as well as their own reclaimed humanism. Even in the face of incomprehensible, implacable evil, The Dark Knight reminds us that these are our only anchors, for without them we betray both them and ourselves.

America may still have that chance. At the moment, however, its Constitution has been mauled, and politicians of both parties long ago surrendered their capacities to stop an illegal war and the looting of the nation's wealth. Now, however, The Dark Knight warns against both abandoning our principles out of fear, grief and hatred, as well as abdicating our moral agency to external authorities -- both of which comprised the hallmark moral syndrome of the years following 9/11.

That audiences and critics have embraced this film gives one hope that the days of uncritically turning to leaders promising to save us from our fears are at an end. As James Fallows says, the 9/11 era is over.

We are all Gothamites now.

Dark Knight Makes Record-Breaking $300M

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20215205,00.html

Dark Knight Makes Record-Breaking $300M in 10 Days
By Stephen M. Silverman
Sunday July 27, 2008

No argument: The Dark Knight is Hollywood's brightest light.

The Batman adventure, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, shattered another box-office benchmark this weekend – reaching beyond the $300 million mark in a mere 10 days.

The movie grossed $75.6 million in its second weekend in theaters, bringing its North American box-office total to $314,245,000, Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman tells the Associated Press.

The number breaks the record established by 2006's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which hit $300 million after 16 days.

Fellman says Dark Knight could conceivably reach the $400-million mark in about 18 days – placing it ahead of Shrek 2's 43-day record in 2004.

Hold on to your life preservers – The Dark Knight might also surpass 1997's Titanic as the highest-grossing film in U.S. history, according to Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. That sinking-ship saga, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, made $600,788,188 domestically.

Rounding out this weekend's top five at the box office were Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step Brothers, with an estimated $30 million; Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!, $17.9 million; David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, $10.2 million; and Brendan Fraser in Journey to the Center of the Earth, $9.4 million.

The Dark Knight

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080716/REVIEWS/55996637

The Dark Knight
No joke, Batman
Release Date: 2008
Ebert Rating: ****
Jul 16, 2008
By Roger Ebert

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

“The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.

The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His clown's makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his father exacted on him when he was a child. In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves. Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.

Because these actors and others are so powerful, and because the movie does not allow its spectacular special effects to upstage the humans, we’re surprised how deeply the drama affects us. Eckhart does an especially good job as Harvey Dent, whose character is transformed by a horrible fate into a bitter monster. It is customary in a comic book movie to maintain a certain knowing distance from the action, to view everything through a sophisticated screen. “The Dark Knight” slips around those defenses and engages us.

Yes, the special effects are extraordinary. They focus on the expected explosions and catastrophes, and have some superb, elaborate chase scenes. The movie was shot on location in Chicago, but it avoids such familiar landmarks as Marina City, the Wrigley Building or the skyline. Chicagoans will recognize many places, notably La Salle Street and Lower Wacker Drive, but director Nolan is not making a travelogue. He presents the city as a wilderness of skyscrapers, and a key sequence is set in the still-uncompleted Trump Tower. Through these heights, the Batman moves at the end of strong wires, or sometimes actually flies, using his cape as a parasail.

The plot involves nothing more or less than the Joker’s attempts to humiliate the forces for good and expose Batman’ secret identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud. He includes Gordon and Dent on his target list, and contrives cruel tricks to play with the fact that Bruce Wayne once loved, and Harvey Dent now loves, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The tricks are more cruel than he realizes, because the Joker doesn’t know Batman’s identity. Heath Ledger has a good deal of dialogue in the movie, and a lot of it isn’t the usual jabs and jests we’re familiar with: It’s psychologically more complex, outlining the dilemmas he has constructed, and explaining his reasons for them. The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who first worked together on “Memento”) has more depth and poetry than we might have expected.

Two of the supporting characters are crucial to the action, and are played effortlessly by the great actors Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Freeman, as the scientific genius Lucius Fox, is in charge of Bruce Wayne’s underground headquarters, and makes an ethical objection to a method of eavesdropping on all of the citizens of Gotham City. His stand has current political implictions. Caine is the faithful butler Alfred, who understands Wayne better than anybody, and makes a decision about a crucial letter.

Nolan also directed the previous, and excellent, “Batman Begins” (2005), which went into greater detail than ever before about Bruce Wayne’s origins and the reasons for his compulsions. Now it is the Joker’s turn, although his past is handled entirely with dialogue, not flashbacks. There are no references to Batman’s childhood, but we certainly remember it, and we realize that this conflict is between two adults who were twisted by childhood cruelty — one compensating by trying to do good, the other by trying to do evil. Perhaps they instinctively understand that themselves.

Something fundamental seems to be happening in the upper realms of the comic-book movie. “Spider-Man II” (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional film based on comic-book heroes. A movie like the new “Hellboy II” allows its director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now “Iron Man” and even more so “The Dark Knight” move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration.

In his two Batman movies, Nolan has freed the character to be a canvas for a broader scope of human emotion. For Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubled man, let there be no doubt, and if ever in exile from his heroic role, it would not surprise me what he finds himself capable of doing.

Cast & Credits

Bruce Wayne: Christian Bale

The Joker: Heath Ledger

Harvey Dent: Aaron Eckhart

Alfred: Michael Caine

Rachel: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gordon: Gary Oldman

Lucius Fox: Morgan Freeman

Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Running time: 152 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for for intense sequences of violence and some menace).

The Batsuit gets a makeover

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-ca-batsuit20-2008jul20,1,5720066.story

HOW'D THEY DO THAT?
The Batsuit gets a makeover
The 'Dark Knight' hero has tossed the sweaty rubber and molded-plastic costumes of yesteryear and sports a cooler, motocross-style flexi-suit this time around.
By Tom Russo
Special to The Times
July 20, 2008

WHEN "THE Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan and Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming considered how they would retool Christian Bale's Batman armor for the new movie, one question leaped to mind immediately: "Why, in 2008, would a superhero put on a rubber suit?" Hemming asks. "Why would he wear something that made him less active and unbelievably, unpleasantly hot? He wouldn't. He'd use all the technology available to be as comfortable as possible."

So when audiences get a look at the new, heavily segmented Batsuit with its Kevlar pecs and abs and exposed titanium-mesh under layer, they should know that this was no George Clooney Batnipple exercise in impishly messing with tradition. Rather, the "Dark Knight" crew was adhering to the creative mandate that Nolan first set on "Batman Begins": Ground the proceedings as much as possible in real-world believability. As costume effects supervisor Graham Churchyard pointedly puts it, "You're supposed to be scuba diving in a neoprene body suit, not kickboxing."

The filmmakers admit they had originally discussed many of the same design ideas for "Begins." At the time, though, they found themselves steered back toward the established molded-latex look by budget considerations, as well as concerns that they were already redefining the character pretty radically. "In the first movie, we spent the money on the car, the Tumbler," Nolan says. "But for the second film, I was intent on spending on the costume." A good six months in the making, the new design was replicated for 25 suits, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"This time we made the suit that Chris really wanted," says Churchyard, who oversaw a team of 40 craftsmen, from sculptors to computerized milling machine operators, in the production's London fabrication workshop. "In 'Begins,' there's that pre-suit that Bruce Wayne gets from [ Morgan Freeman's] Lucius Fox and sprays black. The script tells us it contains Kevlar weave and various layers. But now, it actually does. We've taken the pre-suit to the next stage, really."

While much of the costume development on the last go-round involved research into cutting-edge military and survival wear, the focus on "Dark Knight" was on motocross gear and extreme-sports apparel. (Hemming says it's purely coincidental that Batman races around on a motorcycle in the movie -- although the advent of this "Batpod" did lead directly to a Batpack, modeled on a bat's folded wings, for getting that flowing cape the heck out of the way.) Nolan liked the last Batsuit's overall silhouette, the shoulder line and the look of the cowl, but he wanted something that offered protection with greater freedom of movement. "Christian is so active, and does so many movements that previous Batmen weren't able to do," says Hemming, "it was important to us that he be able to do them even more."

At 30 pounds, the redesigned armor actually weighed slightly more than the "Begins" model, but its 110 component parts better distributed the load and let in a bit of air. "I hate to describe it this way, but the suit's like a big sneaker," Churchyard says. "It has armored elements with carbon fiber running through them, but also semi-rigid areas for flexibility, and mesh panels that allow it to breathe. You end up with these kinds of crumple zones that allow you to bend, to crunch."

Bale half-joked on the last movie that it wasn't difficult for him to get into brooding character when wearing his costume was such a brutally constricting experience. One of the biggest problems was the cowl, which was anchored to the suit's trunk only slightly less stiffly than it had been back in Michael Keaton's caped-crusading days nearly two decades ago. "That 'Begins' image of Batman with his head forward and that big, muscular, panther neck was great as a poster," says Churchyard. "But that's kind of what was stopping him from moving." So, after years of actors having to do "the Batmove," turning their head and shoulders in the same motion, the design team finally figured out a way to section off the cowl. A series of rings seamlessly incorporated around the base allowed it to function as a piece separate from the rest of the costume.

'I could turn my neck'

SUMMING UP the differences between the old Batsuit and this season's model, Bale sounds like he was liberated from something akin to that Bhutanese prison at the opening of "Begins." "For one thing, I could turn my neck," he says. "For another, I didn't get awful headaches just from wearing it. It was an entirely different experience. It was fewer pieces and it didn't require a team of people to get me in and out of it."

Nolan's satisfaction with the outfit is reflected in how visible it is in the movie. In the previous installment, the aesthetic approach was to portray Batman as a shadowy avenger -- minimally lit, always seen at night, and rendered as matte as possible to heighten the effect. Here, he steps into the light. Warner Bros.' publicity images have favored keeping the dark in "Dark Knight," but a recent, brightly photographed "Got Milk?" ad featuring Bale in costume showed every little detail -- and generated much discussion among fans. "A big thing we were after was giving the suit more texture," Hemming says. "Visually, you're getting much more information as to how it works."

"We wanted something that was real, something functional," Nolan says. "In the first film, it was designed to look real, but the mechanics and surfaces of it were not as they appeared. In this film, the suit is as it appears -- and it works."

Times staff writer Geoff Boucher contributed to this report.

Ledger's Joker Makes Dramatic Entrance

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080314/ap_en_ot/film_batman_ledger

Ledger's Joker Makes Dramatic Entrance
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
Fri Mar 14, 2008

This time out, there's no vat of chemicals to explain how Batman's greatest enemy came to be the twisted sociopath known as the Joker.

Heath Ledger's Joker springs full-blown in this summer's "The Dark Knight," the sequel to 2005's "Batman Begins" that was previewed for theater owners Thursday with a clip showing the new movie's opening sequence.

Unlike 1989's "Batman," in which the deranged, disfigured clown appearance of Jack Nicholson's Joker resulted from a dip in chemical goo, "The Dark Knight" starts right in with the bad guy in all his psychopathic glory.

"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stranger," Ledger's depraved Joker cryptically tells an accomplice in the opening scenes, in which he pulls off a daring bank robbery.

In an interview at ShoWest, a theater-owners convention where distributor Warner Bros. showed off footage of "The Dark Knight" and the rest of its summer lineup, director Christopher Nolan said it was almost inevitable that the sequel would pit Christian Bale's Batman against the Joker.

"The psychopathic clown, that's an icon to stand with the guy with the ears and cape," Nolan said. "It's just a wonderful visual relationship, and it's a terrifying image."

Long before Ledger's death of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January, the marketing of the movie had focused on the villain's rise to power and his creepy appearance.

There had been speculation among critics and fans that the studio and filmmakers might take a different approach to selling the film in light of Ledger's death, but the marketing has gone on as originally planned.

"I think he'd be very pleased to see we're just moving ahead as is," Nolan said. "If you try to honor somebody, you honor them by respecting their work and putting it out there for as many people to see. He was immensely proud of the work he did on the film. I feel a great burden to present that in an undistorted form."

"The Dark Knight" is due in theaters July 18.

The last time producer Charles Roven saw Ledger was when he showed the actor the very footage that was screened at ShoWest.

Fans have been buzzing over the anarchic style Ledger brings to the role in the movie's trailer, but the actor himself was utterly taken by what he saw of himself on screen, Roven said.

"He was just blown away by his own performance," Roven said. "He said, `Can I see it again?' So he was really, really thrilled."

Bale — reprising his role as the wealthy Bruce Wayne, who moonlights as the emotionally tormented crimefighter — said he watched the footage Thursday with a heaviness of heart over Ledger. But Bale said he hopes the movie will serve as a testament.

"I hope that this can be seen as a celebration of his work," Bale said. "He did a phenomenal job. It was a real joy working with the man. It was a joy knowing him, as well. I liked him a great deal, and I liked also how seriously he took his work."