Summer viral campaigns: Feeling pinpricked yet?
Viral marketing has gone positively bubonic. While this unconventional approach to building buzz online is nothing new, it has achieved full-blown plague status in the walk-up to the summer movie season. . . .
Gone are the days when marketing a movie online involved simply buying a URL like DarkKnight.com and uploading a trailer. Warner Bros. has launched more than 30 Web sites during the past year in support of the latest in the "Batman" franchise, a trail of virtual bread crumbs intended to sate fans until the July 18 release.
Although the bulk of these campaigns play out on the Internet, they also frequently move offline, often in the form of wacky public events intended to amass die-hard enthusiasts. One "Knight" site provides clues pointing to screenings that were scheduled for Monday in 12 different cities, including Hollywood & Highland.
But fans expecting a handy online guide that lists dates and locations for the screening will be disappointed. Instead, you'll arrive at a spooky Web site featuring portraits of presidents whose images had been defaced by the telltale makeup of the Joker. Clicking on each portrait links to a set of coordinates that require accessing Google Maps to decipher.
Nothing is ever simple in viral marketing. Take the sheer depth of the "Knight" campaign, in which dozens of seemingly marginal elements of the film have Web sites of their own, including a fictional bank, a travel agency -- even a deli, for crying out loud. Some are simple, single-page trifles, while others lead into games that would require wartime code-breaking skills to maneuver.
That's viral marketing for you -- compelling, creative and intricate but above all just plain exhausting. Since when should marketing feel like doing homework? . . .
Hollywood Reporter, April 29

I don't think I really believe in the concept of a Batman spoiler. What's to spoil? We all know that Batman will survive the movie, that the themes will be the same as they've been since the late 30's, that the iconography will be riffing off of the same set of images that were mixed and remixed in all of those Legends of the Dark Knight comics. The only suspense for me relates to the kinds of things that can't be spoiled in advance, like the actual acting and filmmaking. Will Heath Ledger sucessfully pull of a kind of satanic lunacy or will he just be hammy? Will the action sequences be silly, mind numbing or thrilling? The actual twists of the plot hardly matter (as long as there is one), becuase what does it mean if the Joker is killed or not killed at the end of the movie? All of these villains have died a thousand times by now. Death is meaningless in comic books. That's half the point.

A brief, new clip of what might be Harvey Dent's first appearance as Two-Face -- or at least the back of his head's first appearance -- is now up at WhySoSerious.com. Personally, I'm a wee bit miffed that we hear not one but TWO profane uses of Jesus' name in this 30-second clip. Only a wee bit, but still, of all the cusses out there, it's my least-favorite.

I'm with you on that one.

Likewise.

Me fourth.

Possible major spoiler in this new TV spot (though nothing you wouldn't have already gleaned from that Aaron Eckhart interview a while back):

Someone has seen it over at Aint It Cool

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37214

He compares it to both Heat and The Godfather 2.

Seriously.

I have to say, as much as I liked Batman Begins and anticipate this new one, I can't help but think it's getting a wee bit overhyped. Seriously, I have heard people online discussing how Heath Ledger is going to give the best performance in cinema history and how they would sell their newborn children to see the film early. Come on. I know they may have been exaggerating, but at this point, if Nolan turns in a merely "good" film, it will be widely seen as a failure. I think half of the love for Batman Begins (at least for me) was seeing Batman finally taken seriously, we had no expectations after the Schumacher travesties. The first kinda snuck up on me, while this new one is hammering into my skull how incredible it will be with all the advance hype. I hope it's good, but until I see it I am going to steer clear of hype so that I can be unbiased.

The conclusion of Batman Begins -- the "I don't have to save you" moment -- is something that I have trouble forgiving. But the rest of the film is too good to be spoiled by one moment of typical comic book comeuppance.

Overstreet wrote:
: The conclusion of Batman Begins -- the "I don't have to save you" moment -- is something that I have trouble forgiving.

[ blink ]

Really? That was one of the BRILLIANT things about that film. It was one of the things that told me the filmmakers GOT it, that they had actually READ the comics and had gotten a sense of the actual character.

Jumping tangents: Given the brouhaha over the relationship between movie and marketing when it comes to WALL*E, I do wonder how parents etc. will react to all the toys and stuff for The Dark Knight, given that the film itself is promising to be very, VERY dark. Though I don't necessarily see any contradiction (or, thus, hypocrisy) between the content of the movie and the content of the merchandise where The Dark Knight is concerned -- the only problem might be if a toy is marketed to, say, 5-year-olds when the film is clearly aimed at PG-13 audiences and has the sensibility of a "Mature Readers" graphic novel. (Was, say, The Killing Joke appropriate for 13-year-olds?)

I can't help but think of Transformers, which is based on a toy line for pre-teens but was "Michael Bay-ified" to include masturbation jokes and a half-dressed Megan Fox bending over to inspect Shia Lebeouf's engine.

Peter Travers really REALLY likes this movie. His review mentions a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger. Wow! This review will only feed the hype, even though Travers usually seems pretty level-headed.

Rolling Stone review

Definitely looking forward to the movie, as a longtime Batman fan. I'm excited about what I've seen of Ledger's performance so far, mostly because most other renditions of the Joker's character on-screen really bother me. They've never seemed to quite capture the sheer evil, insanity and intelligence of the Joker, as in the comics. It's the one villain that has, comic-wise, made Batman (and two Robins) seriously consider murder. I think Dick Grayson even tried once, but my comic reading has been sketchy lately, so I'm not sure.

I'm with Chattaway on the cussing thing. Also, the kids' toy market. Not a huge fan of that. There are few things in life that bother me more than seeing five-year-olds (or younger) sitting in theaters for PG-13 movies that I know are going to be on the darker side of cinema. There are some things that kids just aren't ready to process. It's a serious source of frustration that people take advantage of the "coolness" of something like Batman or the Hulk and market it towards kids, who then expect to see the film. Unfortunately, a lot of parents take little kids to stuff like this without thinking about what it really means to their minds and hearts.

Hm. Anyway. I'm still excited about it. I'm excited about Eckhart's role, Michael Caine as Alfred again, and ... Batman.

Press screening. Monday the 14th. In IMAX. Hoo boy.

Only four days before the film comes out -- three, if you count the presumably inevitable Thursday-midnight screenings -- but still. I'm stoked.

AP movie writer David Germain also talks about the Oscar worthiness of Ledger's performance...



Full review here.

I went to buy tickets for the midnight show at my local Imax theater and they were already sold out.



Three weeks out? That's the first time that has ever happened in my experience. This movie is gonna be huge

So does a guy named Sam Rubin from KTLA:

KTLA Blog

Don't take this the wrong way, because I obviously haven't seen the film yet, but if Heath Ledger was still living, do you think he'd be getting Oscar buzz for this performance? We are, after all, talking about a comic-book movie, no matter how much gravitas Nolan and Co. have brought to the material.

It wouldn't be a first, getting a nomination posthumously or a nomination for a comic book movie. Peter Finch won posthumously for Network, and Al Pacino got nominated for best supporting actor for Dick Tracy. A great performance is a great performance, and shouldn't be weighted on the basis of the film's genre. Unfortunately, that is not always the case - two performances come to my mind that were completely overlooked by the Academy, probably because of genre-bias. Christopher Walken delivered one of his best performances as Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone. And Jeff Goldblum gave his best performance in The Fly.

Hmmm... it didn't occur to me at the time that both these films are by David Cronenberg. Maybe it was a Cronenberg-bias.

Network also was a drama that had multiple nominations. I didn't realize that Pacino was nominated for Dick Tracy, though that was at a time in his career when he could sneeze in a film and get an Oscar nomination for it. Also, I'm not denigrating the fact that it is a comic-book movie; I'm only speaking of how the Academy Awards might view such a performance under ordinary circumstances. If Ledger is as fantastic as the hype, then I would by all means like to see him get a nomination.

LOL. I was editing my response with a notation of Academy bias, as you posted your response. I didn't mean to assume that you were denigrating a comic book movie, and now I see we were on the same wave length as to what the Academy looks for in it's nominating process.

jsyarb wrote:
: I didn't realize that Pacino was nominated for Dick Tracy, though that was at a time in his career when he could sneeze in a film and get an Oscar nomination for it.

Actually, not quite.

While it is true that Pacino was nominated five times for films that came out in the 1970s, his nomination for Dick Tracy was the first in over a decade. In fact, at that time, Pacino's career had been in a slump for several years: after the flop that was Revolution (1985), he didn't appear in any films AT ALL until Sea of Love (1989) brought things back to life. He followed that up with Dick Tracy and The Godfather Part III, both of which came out in 1990 -- and it was the comic-book movie, not the Godfather movie, that he was nominated for. Many saw that as a snub, as I recall; one pundit even asked whether Pacino would ACCEPT an Oscar that year, given the circumstances. Finally, in 1992, he was nominated again -- twice! -- and he won Best Actor for Scent of a Woman (while losing Best Supporting Actor, for Glengarry Glen Ross, to someone else). And, now that he finally has his long "overdue" Oscar, he has never been nominated since.

*pulls foot from mouth*
*retreats*

IGN's review:


And concerning Ledger's performance:

Here's yet another critic calling for an Oscar for Ledger:

New York Post

I think this might be getting a little out of hand now, especially because, as has already been noted, I doubt this discussion would even be happening if Heath Ledger were still alive. Regardless of how great his performance might be, the Academy just doesn't nominate movies like this.

That said, I'm afraid I'm getting swept up in the hype (for the movie itself, not just Ledger's performance) and can hardly wait to see this. I saw the opening scene on IMAX (it played before I Am Legend on IMAX a few months ago) and it looked incredible.

Maybe — and sadly — it would take a tragedy like this to make the Academy wake up?

Moriarty tells us to dial down our expectations, and that too much hyperbole is flying around.

And then he goes and inflates those expectations all over again.

And he's talking about both Dark Knight and Hellboy 2.

That's one of the more thought-provoking and worthwhile things I've read on AICN in a while. Hmmm.

I second that. I think this review transcends the AICN genre. Bottom line: this is a review that is built to last. When someone says to me, “It’s just an AICN review,” this is the review that makes that statement pointless. Nothing has to be “just” an AICN review.

I agree as well, but Drew "Moriarty" McWeeny has consistently for a long time been the best reviewer they have there, so it's not that surprising.

Sure. Moriarty does a great job - most of the time. I find more insightful commentary from him than from most professional critics. He also wears his film love earnestly on his sleeve. My previous comment was just a play on something he said in his review and the recent comments about AICN (and Harry in particular) on this site.

Michael Bay's Rejected The Dark Knight Script, or, the awesomest movie that might have been.

You beat me to it by like 20 minutes. GRRRR.

Justin Chang, Variety:

Having memorably explored the Caped Crusader's origins in "Batman Begins," director Christopher Nolan puts all of Gotham City under a microscope in "The Dark Knight," the enthralling second installment of his bold, bracing and altogether heroic reinvention of the iconic franchise. An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some. That should also hold true at the box office, with Heath Ledger's justly anticipated turn as the Joker adding to the must-see excitement surrounding the Warner Bros. release. . . .

There don't SEEM to be any serious spoilers in that review; the closest thing to one is something that anyone familiar with the comics and the origins of certain characters could probably have guessed.

The review also ends with this sentence, which seems erroneous: "Exteriors were lensed in Chicago aside from an early scenic detour to Hong Kong, which marks the first time a Batman film has ventured outside Gotham City." Um, what about all that globetrotting that Bruce Wayne did in the entire first act of Batman Begins? But apart from that, yeah, one of the great things about Chris Nolan's Batman films is that they all seem to take place in the real world -- and I do mean WORLD, not just city. The chintzy Burton-Schumacher films never got off the soundstage, and they looked it.

Anne Thompson (whose interview with Nolan includes what sounds like a spoiler, albeit one that Aaron Eckhart gave away in his L.A. Times interview a few months back):

My instincts told me when I first saw The Dark Knight trailer: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins follow-up would fall into the trap of the summer tentpole sequel. It's not entirely his fault. The studio gives him his marching orders: top the last one. Make it bigger, better, bolder, more FX, more action, more scale and scope and characters (read toys). What else should a poor boy to do with $180 million?

Nolan delivered on the first Batman reboot and he does it again here. The Dark Knight will work at the boxoffice and keep the franchise alive.

[ snip ]

Somehow, David S. Goyer (who wrote the story), and screenwriter Nolan brothers Chris and Jonathan manage to play out all these plot strands. But they wind up with a half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie . . .

[ snip ]

Oddly, because The Dark Knight is busy servicing all these other characters, the movie doesn't spend enough time with its leading man, Bruce Wayne/Batman (BTW, Batman's basso-growly voice is silly).

[ snip ]

My fantasy of the ideal version of this movie doesn't matter a whit, because it will play. The complexities of the plot are more fun to talk about than anything since Wall-E or Iron Man, and that makes Dark Knight one of the best movies of the summer. Maybe some dark over-nourishment is better than a simpler, structurally perfect masterpiece, after all.

Personally, as one who found Iron Man and WALL*E both interesting and enjoyable to a point, but somewhat lacking, I hope The Dark Knight can SURPASS them both.

Interesting comment about the "half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie". Devin Faraci said something similar: "Plus I'd ague that one of The Dark Knight's flaws is that it doesn't have a strong storyline - there are too many detours and sidetracks, and the film climaxes at the end of the second act and, in many ways, becomes its own sequel in the third act. That's not a major problem - the movie remains good and compelling - but I think the story is disjointed enough to render it non-revolutionary."

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter:

"The Dark Knight" is pure adrenaline. Returning director Christopher Nolan, having dispensed with his introspective, moody origin story, now puts the Caped Crusader through a decathlon of explosions, vehicle flips, hand-to-hand combat, midair rescues and pulse-pounding suspense.

Nolan is one of our smarter directors. He builds movies around ideas and characters, and "Dark Knight" is no exception. The ideas here are not new to the movie world of cops and criminal, but in the context of a comic book movie, they ring out with startling clarity. In other words, you expect moralistic underpinnings in a Martin Scorsese movie; in a Batman movie, they hit home with renewed vigor.

[ snip ]

One wishes Nolan had cast a different actor than Eckhart as this White Knight. Although very good at playing duplicitousness and irony -- witness "Thank You for Smoking" -- Eckhart never quite seems the crusader presumably intended. He will, of course, turn into Two-Face, but you sense this propensity too early.

The Joker, though, sees everyone as two-faced, even Batman, in his estimation. When confronted by pure evil -- and there is a kind of purity to the Joker's rule of no rules -- what can a vigilante do but violate his own moral code? The Joker means to push Batman beyond those limits.

This ... is ... hysterical!

"...because she's also the smartest woman in the world."

David Poland:

What Nolan is clearly reaching for is a Godfather-esque effort. You can feel all the corrections of his first film… all the improvements by spending more freely… all the “stuff we would have done differently.” And almost all of them are, indeed, improvements. Maggie Gyllenhaal in for Katie Holmes was a step up, though in the context of the two films, switching actresses was unfortunate. Either one appearing in both would have been better. And eliminating Wayne Manor and The Batcave for a penthouse and array of basement hideouts is a daring, odd, and nearly unspoken call.

Still, it speaks to Nolan’s agenda. This is not a Batman movie… this is a 2008 version of The Untouchables with The Batman as Elliot Ness, The Joker as Al Capone, much better toys, and, it seems, a topper.

Great.

But the topper is a bit unwieldy, in that it makes the film too long to sustain by pushing beyond the main story – DePalma and Mamet’s The Untouchables was 119 minutes – and too short to do the second push of Nolan’s thematic idea real justice at 152 minutes. Unlike many long films, the problem with The Dark Knight is that it is too short.

Okay, that's at least three people saying the film's final section feels a little extra, a little much. Hmmm.

I love the allusions to The Godfather and The Untouchables, though. Those were huge, HUGE films for me in the late '80s and early '90s.

Not sure what I make about the penthouse substituting for Wayne Manor. The comics have been around for almost 70 years, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a precedent for this -- is there? -- but still.

But the “extra part” of the movie, the topper, is not about them, it’s about about collateral damage… real humans in a real city with real ambitions to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And that is where it feels like Nolan is forced – by time - to restrain himself. For the first time in the movie, characters have to explain themselves, over and over and over again. (Well, one in particular.) Strong ideas don’t seem as clear and complete as they do earlier in the film. And the keynote of the last part of the film is delivered by a character we really don’t know (though the actor will be familiar to everyone), while other grace notes are offered in montage.

I wanted that movie that Nolan was chasing. I really wanted that movie. But as is the nature of the dramatic arts, there is a mystical and undeniable gut feeling when you know that even the best film has come to its natural end. And in The Dark Knight, this occurs more than half an hour before the picture actually ends… maybe an hour… before the issue of collateral damage.

Y'know, I'm almost wondering if Nolan has dared to make a Batman movie which includes a "scouring of the Shire" sequence -- something that seems tacked-on by conventional moviemaking standards but might be necessary for a complete exploration of the story's themes.

RE: Bruce Wayne living in a penthouse instead of Wayne Manor... Wayne Manor burned down in the first film, and we know that the Joker was already active as that movie came to an end (when Batman takes the Joker card and says, "I'll look into it.") Is it possible that this movie takes place IMMEDIATELY after Batman Begins and Wayne Manor simply hasn't been rebuilt yet?

I'm extremely curious about this "coda/second movie" that occupies the last 30 minutes of the film.

According to Fandango pre-sales, The Dark Knight may break Spider-Man 3's opening weekend record. The film has sold out so many of it's midnight showings, that some theatres are adding 3am and 6am showings on opening day.



Full story here.

Richard Corliss, Time:

There's a beautiful high-angle shot, early in The Dark Knight, that looks down on Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in full Batman regalia as he perches atop a Gotham skyscraper, surveying the city he lives to protect, then leaping off and spreading his majestic bat wings to swoop down into the night. Bruce's trajectory is also the film's. It traces a descent into moral anarchy, and each of its major characters will hit bottom. Some will never recover, broken by the touch of evil or by finding it, like a fatal infection, in themselves.

The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season's earlier movies based on comic books. It's the fifth, and three of the first four (Iron Man, Wanted and Hellboy II) have been terrific or just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.) It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases — including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels — and lots of stuff blowing up. Even the tie-in action figures with Reese's Pieces suggest this is a fast-food movie.

But Nolan has a more subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It's as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of the Joker. Batman Begins, the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony.

[ snip ]

In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.

No, really. This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history.

[ snip ]

The mayhem and torture wreaked here, by saint or scum, are so vivid and persistent that it's a wonder, and a puzzle, why The Dark Knight snagged a PG-13 rating. (Don't take your 9-year-old son unless you think he'd enjoy seeing a kid just like him tremble in fear while a gun is held to his head by a previously sympathetic character.) But kids would have trouble following the movie, let alone understanding it. For teens and adults, it's a strap-yourselves-in trip, handsome and assured as only a big-budget picture can be. (Part of it was shot in the IMAX process, which lends the action scenes a startling clarity and depth.) And for reassurance, Nolan brings back old friends from Batman Begins: Michael Caine as Bruce's butler Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Fox, who takes care of Bruce's toys.

Actually, they're just diversions from the epochal face-off of Bruce and the Joker. For a good part of the film, when the two embrace in a free fall of souls — one doomed, the other imperiled — you may think you're in the grip of a mordant masterpiece. That feeling will pass, as the film spends too many of its final moments setting up the series' third installment. The chill will linger, though. The Dark Knight is bound to haunt you long after you've told yourself, Aah, it's only a comic-book movie.

So, that's another critic saying, in effect, that the film goes on longer than the story demands. Hmmm.

Peter, I'm curious... do these articles have any effect on your expectations for this film?

I mean, you seemed very concerned that I was excited for the release of WALL-E, and that I was ready to blog in favor of a Best Picture nomination *if* the film in fact deserved it. You seemed worried that I would be so charged up about it.

You, meanwhile, are piling on the links here, and saying "Hmmmmm" a lot. Since I wouldn't want to presume, I'm asking... does this suggest that the articles are affecting your expectations, or how you'll watch the movie in question?

I don't really care that much. I just find it interesting that you were so concerned about my expectations for WALL-E, and yet you're providing a lot of material here that could easily influence our expectations for Dark Knight... and certainly *seem* to be shaping your own expectations.

I'm probably way, way, way off base. If so, just disregard the question.

Overstreet wrote:
: Peter, I'm curious... do these articles have any effect on your expectations for this film?

I think ANYthing we see or hear about a film prior to seeing it for ourselves is bound to have an effect of some sort. But does it really seem like I'm "charging myself up" over this one?

I do have a particular interest in this film, inasmuch as I was an avid collector of Batman comics in the late '80s and early '90s and Chris Nolan's Batman Begins was the first movie to come anywhere CLOSE to telling the Batman story the way the comics did. (Burton and Schumacher? Please.) The fact that I'm a fan of Nolan's earlier film Memento, and I think his remake of Insomnia is one of the better Hollywood-remakes-of-a-foreign-film I've ever seen, certainly give me reason to believe that he may do a decent job here, too. On the other hand, I have qualms with aspects of most of his films, perhaps especially The Prestige, and the Dark Knight preview that played in IMAX theatres last year (which I have only seen on the internet) didn't get me all THAT excited (though it certainly didn't give me reason to despair either), so I'm curious to hear what sort of flaws people think they may have noticed in this particular film now that they have seen the whole thing.

I certainly have no interest in posting nothing but raves. I AM interested in posting things that made me think, and might make other people think too.

Kevin Buist asks: "How low can the viral marketing go?"

A glimpse of the Joker terrorizing Senator Patrick Leahy.

Wow! He does look like Leahy, and sound like him, too.

You might say exactly like him. (It is Patrick Leahy.)

Wow -- Ebert & Roeper (that is to say Roeper & Phillips) rave about the film...best superhero film ever, perhaps the best film of the year, most memorable villain in years, a balanced ensemble piece, etc.

I'm very excited. (Of course, I was excited about WALL*E, too, so we'll see...)

Jeffrey Wells has linked to a couple of newer, more mixed reviews that speak negatively of the fight scenes; you might recall that the fight scenes in the previous film were widely panned, or at least quibbled with, as well. At least one of the critics Wells cites also complains that the movie is too "intense" or even "oppressive" ... and yet the Associated Press critic remarked the other day that The Dark Knight is better than Batman Begins because it is LESS "self-serious . . . Nolan has found a way to mix in some fun with his philosophizing." Who to believe, who to believe...?

Incidentally, one thing about Batman Begins that has always irked me is the way the film often cuts to unnecessary dialogue bits in the middle of its chase/action sequences -- like when the cops start yelping things during the chase scene with the tumbler, or the way that guy at the elevated-train control centre keeps yelping things while the train seems headed for certain doom in the film's climactic sequence. There's an element of gratuitous exposition to those cutaway lines that has never quite rubbed me the right way. I'll be glad if The Dark Knight avoids that sort of thing, but it's things like that which do hold me back from hoping for Too Much from the sequel. They keep my expectations realistic.

Oh, and whatever y'all do, don't read Lou Lumenick's blog. He's apparently got a major, MAJOR spoiler up there right now. I diverted my eyes before seeing too much of it, but still, I can only hope that the spoiler he reveals comes earlier in the movie rather than later. (It's a weird thing, but for some reason his blog's RSS feed gives you only the first few sentences of his blog posts, but then if he tries to "hide" anything "after the jump", the RSS feed includes that, too. So when I clicked on this particular item in Google Reader, I got a couple of sentences... a brief gap... and then a BIG FAT SPOILER... from which I quickly averted my eyes. But not quickly enough.)

Fourteen hours until I see it ... fourteen hours until I see it ...

I need to read some negative reviews, or at least mildly positive reviews, and fast in order to get my expectations in check. Most of the reviews I've read thus far have included one or more of the following points:

1. Best comic book movie ever.
2. It transcends the comic book movie genre altogether and is more in the vein of Godfather and Untouchables.
3. Oscar for Heath Ledger (probably 8-10 reviews thus far have said this)
4. Best film of the summer and possible Best Picture candidate.
ETC. ETC. ETC.

Whew!